“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person” -Mignon McLaughlin
The juxtaposition of love and marriage, and the existence of the former for the success of the latter, is a common recurring theme in literature and popular media but is love a guarantor for a successful marriage? The ideal place to explore this juxtaposition is 19th Century Russia, where love marriages were replacing traditional arranged marriages, and adultery and divorce rates were higher than the years of its predecessors. The Kreutzer Sonata, a novella by Leo Tolstoy analyses marriages in such a society under a unique light, and Tolstoy argues that a marriage shouldn’t be based on love as it could often be confused with physical desire. This essay will explore this notion by analyzing the characters in the train as a microcosm of the opinions of 19th century Russian society, Pozdnyshev’s (the protagonist) marriage as a case against love marriages and Pozdnyshev as Tolstoy’s self-insertion.
The book sets off with a train ride where we see a heated argument about love and arranged marriages among several interesting characters who portray different opinions Russian society held about marriage. There is: “the old man”, a conservative who believes in the power of arranged marriage as he wants to retain the values and traditions of the yester years, “the lady”, a modern liberal woman who believes in the power of love and feels empowered by love marriage by gaining the right to choose, “the lawyer”, who wants the right to choose his partner, “the narrator”, an observer and Pozdnyshev, our protagonist and a man in a failed marriage who has lost hope and belief in the institution of marriage and the emotion of love. This train scene juxtaposes the conflicting opinions their society possessed when it came to marriage. It also symbolizes Russian society’s rush to adopt liberal values as expressed by the following lines set in the background of a discussion about women’s education and divorce, “The train moved faster and faster and jolted over the joint of rails, making it difficult to hear but I moved nearer” (Tolstoy 160). Here we see the narrator move towards liberal values. The narrator also acts as a reader who silently observes the argument and as a result is persuaded in certain instants and introduced to new ideas in others.
The scene continues on to passengers arguing if one should or shouldn’t marry for love, and is intercepted by Pozdnyshev. Pozdnyshev begins with a deceptively simple and hesitant question: “‘What kind of love is it that sanctifies marriage?” (Tolstoy 165), within minutes he has torn to shreds every one of the high-minded sentiments expressed by the lady and the lawyer. To the lady’s response that the answer to his question is “true love,” Pozdnyshev immediately interposes the question, “…. for how long?” (Tolstoy 165). To the answer “for a lifetime,” Pozdnyshev scoffs that “you are talking about what is supposed to be, but I am speaking of what is.” “What is,” in his estimate, is nothing but animal attraction, which is destined to bum out quickly: “To love one person for a whole lifetime is like saying that one candle will burn forever” (Tolstoy 166).Through this phrase, Pozdnyshev tries to explain that a deep feeling of love doesn’t equate to infinite love, that one falls out of love like a candle that burns out at some point. As a matter of fact, Pozdnyshev maintains, “‘people marry regarding marriage as nothing but copulation.” But because this fact is papered over with the fiction of “true love, …. the result is either deception or coercion” (Tolstoy 167). This can be connected to Tolstoys own experience according to Leah Bendavid-Val, in her 2007 interview with the National Public Radio, “Tolstoy’s own marriage seems to have fallen into the second category …She [Sophia Tolstoy- Tolstoy’s wife] was an invaluable assistant in his work, hand copying his manuscripts. But Sophia, a countess from Russia’s aristocracy, was impatient with Tolstoy’s ideas about social reform and a simpler life. And he had little sympathy with her interests in music and photography” (Bendavid-Val 1).
As the author of Song without Words: The Photographs and Diaries of Countess Sophie Tolstoy, Bendavid- Val has made this comment after extensive research on their relationship. Its strikingly similar to Pozdnyshev and his wife. At the point when the coercion-deception statement is made we do not know that Pozdyshev is talking from personal experience but once the lawyer and lady leave the train we see Pozdnyshev share his tale of marriage to the narrator to learn that he is one of the latter kind: a man who has murdered his wife in a fit of jealousy, and then gotten off on the time-honored defense of a crime of passion, only to suffer from remorse ever after. Pozdynshev’s wife was a connoisseur of art and music and begins learning music, and Pozdnyshev claims that she has an affair with her music teacher and he kills her as he caught them in a compromising position. The aversion to the arts and its representation as a tool that instigates romantic love, physical or sexual desire is another interesting theme throughout the story which we observe through phrases like “a couple are occupied with the noblest of arts, music; this demands a certain nearness” (Tolstoy 218). This dramatic ending to the conversation and reiteration of love, lust and its link to bad omen strengthens Tolstoys argument. Pozdnyshevs opinion on love and marriage is crystal clear through this conversation, he begins nervously but his ideas and beliefs are strong willed as observed by Nomi Maya Stolzenberg, “As Pozdnyshev sees it, it was love, marriage, and libertinism-the three are virtually indistinguishable for him-that brought things to such a disastrous pass” (Stolzenberg 952). So, by the end of the train ride Tolstoy brings us back to where it all started, before the rush toward liberal ideals and love marriages.
For Pozdnyshev and Tolstoy alike sex is repulsive and destructive, even in marriage. Pozdnyshev’s marriage highlights this premise by suggesting that sexual love degrades a human being and results in hostility to others and to one’s self. When questioned why sex — natural aspect of human biology — was considered a vice, Pozdnyshev claims it is quite “unnatural” and one must ask “a child” or “an unperverted girl” (Tolstoy 184), if they want to figure it out. When asked if human race would perish if people start practicing celibacy, Pozdnyshev launches into a sermon saying that “sex-passion” must endure only till human race reaches its aim as a society and after that couples should live as “brother and sister” (Tolstoy 185). This monologue by Pozdnyshev is a direct reflection of Tolstoy’s beliefs as a radical Christian, as McLean says, “And now, since his [Tolstoy] religious conversion of 1879–81, this need for commitment had been greatly intensified… Extracting from the somewhat garbled Gospels the true teachings of Jesus, he would show people how to live together in harmony and love (brotherly)” (McLean 73). Like in his work War and Peace, Tolstoy through this novella asserts his radical Christian beliefs which as explained in the above quote is for a person to reach a higher state by living with his wife or her husband as a sister or brother by practicing celibacy.
This did not leave Tolstoy or Pozdnyshev immune to the charms of sexual desire. This struggle with sexual desire is further explored by Hugh McLean who explains, “A few months before he died Tolstoy told his biographer, Pavel Biriukov, that in his university days at Kazan, while living in the house of his aunt Pelageya Yushkova, he had seduced a maid in the household who had later come to a bad end” (McLean 72). Pozdnyshev talks about his upbringing in a similar manner, he says he was a constant visitor to the brothels and engaged in sexual activities well before his marriage and paid the prostitutes to get rid of the “moral obligations”, like young Tolstoy in the above situation (Tolstoy 169). As mentioned before, this theme of sexual desire or lust leading to “bad ends” or negative consequences is a recurrent theme in the story.
Another interesting dimension is Pozdnyshev’s dismissal of physical beauty as a subset of lust or sexual desire. This is also an assertion of Tolstoys ideals. Pozdnyshev talks of how physical beauty influenced his every decision, that he misconstrued it as love when it came to choosing his wife. Pozdnyshev explains how he chose his wife blinded by beauty with absolute frustration in the following lines, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm.” (Tolstoy 192) This beauty made him propose to his wife on the day after he first saw her despite not knowing her and after their marriage the only period of peace was till their honeymoon, after both their carnal desires were satisfied they had nothing in common to talk about which proved that the ‘love’ Pozdnyshev experienced was just superficial lust.
The twist in Pozdnyshev’s analysis is that he perceives moral dissolution and sexual debauchery to exist everywhere. What passes for society among the upper classes “‘is simply a brothel” and marriage nothing but “‘licensed debauchery” (Tolstoy 176). Although everyone pretends otherwise “what women know very well” is that “the most exalted poetic love, as we call it, depends not on moral qualities but on physical nearness and on the coiffure, and the colour and cut of the dress” (Tolstoy 177). That is why to Pozdnyshev’s never-ending torment, “there are those detestable jerseys, bustles, and naked shoulders, arms, almost breasts” (Tolstoy 177). This comparison of society to a brothel is radical but Tolstoy through Pozdnyshev wants to realize the kind of hypocritical society we are living in, where we claim love moves mountains while we let lust drive us on. He takes this a step further by criticizing modern marriage in 19th century Russia as bazaars where women sell themselves as slaves under all kind of falsehoods, “only if there is equality, let it be equality. If they only discovered that prearranged marriages are degrading, why, this is a thousand times worse! Then the rights and chances are equal, but here the woman is a slave in a bazaar or the bait in a trap” (Tolstoy 179). Through the above phrase he goes a step further to argue that love marriages aren’t just bad but worse than arranged marriages for the very reason they are claimed to be better. This irony leaves the readers quite confused and really pushes us to evaluate our notions on marriage.
Tolstoy’s take on love-arranged marriage—marriages were people of same social standing—are pushed to fall in love and marry one another or as he calls it the mating rituals of aristocratic society is equally interesting, he describes them as, “‘marriages [that] are arranged… like traps” and “amorous young people are forced like cucumbers in a hot-bed” amid a “superabundance of food, together with complete physical idleness”-an atmosphere which “is nothing but a systematic excitement of desire papered over by the romantic liberal fiction of true love,” (Tolstoy 177). The dramatic language used to explain marriages is aimed at pushing for the Christian way of life according to Stolzenberg, “One recognizes here intimations of the same domestic idyll-the natural rhythms of hard work, a simple life, and the “natural love” between a man and a woman uncorrupted by society-that characterize the relations between Pierre and Natasha at the end of War and Peace and, in fits and starts, between Kitty and Levin in Anna Karenina. However, such pure love, Pozdnyshev observes mournfully, is given to only a few.” (Stolzenberg 959).
Apart from arguing against love marriages, Tolstoy through Pozdnyshev dismisses love distinct from sensuality, as non-existent between the sexes. While questioning the passengers in the train on what constitutes true love, Pozdnyshev rebuttals to the claim that it is spiritual affinity as follows, “Spiritual affinity! Identity of ideals! … But in that case why go to bed together? Or do people go to bed together because of their ideals” (Tolstoy 166) This is again to highlight how often humans confuse love and lust, to Tolstoy a mix of the two can not exist. Robert G. Ingersoll explains this best on his essay for the North American Review, “To him [Tolstoy] there seems to be no purity in love, because men are influenced by forms, by the beauty of women; and women, knowing this fact, according to him, act, and consequently both are equally guilty. He endeavors to show that love is a delusion; that at best it can last but for a few days; that it must of necessity be succeeded by indifference, then by disgust, lastly by hatred; that in every Garden of Eden is a serpent of jealousy, and that the brightest days end with the yawn of ennui” (Ingersoll 291). This phrase apart from explaining that Tolstoy didn’t believe in love, summarizes the message Tolstoy wants readers to carry home from these stories.
To conclude, Kreutzer Sonata argues that love marriages are unsuccessful because love without physical desire or lust is non-existent between the sexes, and physical desire or lust can never make a strong foundation for a successful marriage because they are misleading, bad omens and are easily satiated. He uses Pozdnyshev as his mouthpiece, the train as a reflection of society’s opinions and Pozdnyshev’s marriage as an example to prove this.
Works Cited
Bendavid-Val, Leah. “Love and Hate: A Tolstoy Family Tale.” NPR, NPR, 16 Oct. 2007, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15244466 .
Ingersoll, Robert G. “Tolstoï and ‘The Kreutzer Sonata.’” The North American Review, vol. 151, no. 406, 1890, pp. 289–299. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25102046.
“Love in Resurrection: Eros or Agape?” In Quest of Tolstoy, by Hugh McLean, Academic Studies Press, Brighton, MA, 2008, pp. 71–86. JSTOR
“Mignon McLaughlin Quotes.” BrainyQuote, Xplore, www.brainyquote.com/quotes/mignon_mclaughlin_106607 .
Stolzenberg, Nomi Maya. “Liberals and Libertines: The Marriage Question in the Liberal Political Imagination,” San Diego Law Review vol. 42, no. 3 (2005): p. 949-974. HeinOnline, https://heinonline-org.ccny-proxy1.libr.ccny.cuny.edu/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/sanlr42&i=961.
Tolstoy, Leo. “Kreutzer Sonata.” The Death Of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories, Signet Classics, 2012, pp. 157–245.
