u/PK_Ultra932

I recently came across a brief mention in Rosamund Bartlett’s Tolstoy biography that in 1861, Tolstoy challenged Turgenev to a duel. I knew he had a short fuse as a young man, but I had never heard this story. I started looking into it more, and was really surprised by the complexity of Tolstoy and Turgenev’s relationship. I closely read their letters and Tolstoy’s diary from this period. In short, they had a very off-and-on relationship. They would be the best of friends one day, and the next, they would be badmouthing each other.

In May 1861, the two were having breakfast at Afanasy Fet’s country estate. Fet’s wife, asked Turgenev if he was pleased with his daughter’s English governess. Turgenev responded that he was, adding that she “requires my daughter to take the ragged clothes of the poor in her hands and, having mended them with her own hands, return them to their owners.”

“And you consider this a good thing?” Tolstoy asked.

“Of course; it brings the benefactor closer to the pressing need,” Turgenev responded.

Tolstoy retorted, “But I think that a dressed-up girl, holding dirty and stinking rags on her lap, is playing an insincere, theatrical scene.”

Turgenev then got very angry and threatened to slap Tolstoy in the face. Tolstoy then sent for his weapons from his estate and challenged Turgenev to a duel.

After a series of letters and apologies spanning months that seemed to exacerbate the feud, with Turgenev ultimately challenging Tolstoy to a duel, the two agreed to cease all communications. In a letter to Fet, Tolstoy wrote, “Turgenev is a scoundrel who ought to be thrashed, a message I ask you to convey to him just as scrupulously as you convey his charming remarks to me, despite my repeated requests that you not speak of him.”

The silence, remarkably, lasted nearly 17 years, until Tolstoy penned a letter to Turgenev, asking for his forgiveness.

I wrote an article about it if anyone is interested in reading more

 

You and I love ordinary people; but we are loved because people see in us something extraordinary. I, for example, am invited everywhere as a guest, fed and given drink everywhere like a general at a wedding. My sister is indignant that she is invited everywhere simply because she is the sister of a writer.

No one wants to love the ordinary people in us. It follows from this that if tomorrow, in the eyes of our good acquaintances, we appear to be ordinary mortals, they will stop loving us and will only pity us. And that is vile. It is also vile that they love in us something that we ourselves often neither love nor respect in ourselves.

Tolstoy’s diary entry 31 May 1856:

I was riding to Turgenev’s at five in the morning, through a dewy little hollow. A postilion rode behind me; his saddle creaked, exactly like a fart. I said, “Was that you farting?” He replied, “How could I dare disturb you?”

I’ve had two “sections” for several months, and I love the idea of them, but I’m not really sure if they’ve helped growth or engagement at all. That being said, I don’t think it hurts anything, but I’m curious if anyone has had any success with them.

I came across this and loved it

Fell in love, or imagined that I had; was at a party and lost my head. Bought a horse I have no need of whatsoever.

Rules:

-Do not offer any price for something you do not need.

-When you enter a ball, immediately ask someone to dance and make a turn of a waltz or a polka.

-This evening, think over how to set matters right.

-Stay at home.

I'm revisiting Anna Karenina after several years, and this introduction of Stiva paints such a great picture:

“Stepan Arkadyich took and read a liberal newspaper, not an extreme one, but of that tendency to which the majority adhered. And, despite the fact that neither science, nor art, nor politics particularly interested him, he firmly held those views on all these subjects which the majority and his newspaper held, and changed them only when the majority changed them; or rather, he did not change them, but they themselves changed imperceptibly within him.

Stepan Arkadyich chose neither his direction nor his views; rather, these directions and views came to him of their own accord, just as he did not choose the shape of his hat or coat, but took those that were worn. And for him, living in a certain society, with the need for that mental activity which usually develops in the years of maturity, having views was as necessary as having a hat.”

“No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”

I see this word a lot in Dostoevsky books and some Pushkin poems