The Kreutzer Sonata Page #9

"The Kreutzer Sonata" is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, first published in 1889. The story revolves around a man named Pozdnyshev, who recounts his tumultuous marriage and the deep-seated jealousy that led him to commit a tragic act of violence against his wife. Catalyzed by his obsession with her perceived infidelity, Pozdnyshev’s narrative explores themes of love, passion, and the complexities of human relationships, while also critiquing societal norms surrounding marriage and sexuality. The title refers to Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, which serves as a poignant backdrop to the emotional and psychological turmoil experienced by the protagonist. The novella challenges conventional views on love and the institution of marriage, making it a thought-provoking work that resonates with contemporary issues.

								

dried her tears, and began to reproach me, in hard and wounding terms,
for my selfishness and cruelty.

“I looked at her. Her whole face expressed hatred, and hatred of me. I
cannot describe to you the fright which this sight gave me. ‘How?
What?’ thought I, ‘love is the unity of souls, and here she hates me?
Me? Why? But it is impossible! It is no longer she!’

“I tried to calm her. I came in conflict with an immovable and cold
hostility, so that, having no time to reflect, I was seized with keen
irritation. We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The impression of this
first quarrel was terrible. I say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It
was the sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug between us.
Love was exhausted with the satisfaction of sensuality. We stood face
to face in our true light, like two egoists trying to procure the
greatest possible enjoyment, like two individuals trying to mutually
exploit each other.

“So what I called our quarrel was our actual situation as it appeared
after the satisfaction of sensual desire. I did not realize that this
cold hostility was our normal state, and that this first quarrel would
soon be drowned under a new flood of the intensest sensuality. I
thought that we had disputed with each other, and had become
reconciled, and that it would not happen again. But in this same
honeymoon there came a period of satiety, in which we ceased to be
necessary to each other, and a new quarrel broke out.

“It became evident that the first was not a matter of chance. ‘It was
inevitable,’ I thought. This second quarrel stupefied me the more,
because it was based on an extremely unjust cause. It was something
like a question of money,—and never had I haggled on that score; it was
even impossible that I should do so in relation to her. I only remember
that, in answer to some remark that I made, she insinuated that it was
my intention to rule her by means of money, and that it was upon money
that I based my sole right over her. In short, something
extraordinarily stupid and base, which was neither in my character nor
in hers.

“I was beside myself. I accused her of indelicacy. She made the same
accusation against me, and the dispute broke out. In her words, in the
expression of her face, of her eyes, I noticed again the hatred that
had so astonished me before. With a brother, friends, my father, I had
occasionally quarrelled, but never had there been between us this
fierce spite. Some time passed. Our mutual hatred was again concealed
beneath an access of sensual desire, and I again consoled myself with
the reflection that these scenes were reparable faults.

“But when they were repeated a third and a fourth time, I understood
that they were not simply faults, but a fatality that must happen
again. I was no longer frightened, I was simply astonished that I
should be precisely the one to live so uncomfortably with my wife, and
that the same thing did not happen in other households. I did not know
that in all households the same sudden changes take place, but that
all, like myself, imagine that it is a misfortune exclusively reserved
for themselves alone, which they carefully conceal as shameful, not
only to others, but to themselves, like a bad disease.

“That was what happened to me. Begun in the early days, it continued
and increased with characteristics of fury that were ever more
pronounced. At the bottom of my soul, from the first weeks, I felt that
I was in a trap, that I had what I did not expect, and that marriage is
not a joy, but a painful trial. Like everybody else, I refused to
confess it (I should not have confessed it even now but for the
outcome). Now I am astonished to think that I did not see my real
situation. It was so easy to perceive it, in view of those quarrels,
begun for reasons so trivial that afterwards one could not recall them.

“Just as it often happens among gay young people that, in the absence
of jokes, they laugh at their own laughter, so we found no reasons for
our hatred, and we hated each other because hatred was naturally
boiling up in us. More extraordinary still was the absence of causes
for reconciliation.

“Sometimes words, explanations, or even tears, but sometimes, I
remember, after insulting words, there tacitly followed embraces and
declarations. Abomination! Why is it that I did not then perceive this
baseness?”

CHAPTER XIII.

“All of us, men and women, are brought up in these aberrations of
feeling that we call love. I from childhood had prepared myself for
this thing, and I loved, and I loved during all my youth, and I was
joyous in loving. It had been put into my head that it was the noblest
and highest occupation in the world. But when this expected feeling
came at last, and I, a man, abandoned myself to it, the lie was pierced
through and through. Theoretically a lofty love is conceivable;
practically it is an ignoble and degrading thing, which it is equally
disgusting to talk about and to remember. It is not in vain that nature
has made ceremonies, but people pretend that the ignoble and the
shameful is beautiful and lofty.

“I will tell you brutally and briefly what were the first signs of my
love. I abandoned myself to beastly excesses, not only not ashamed of
them, but proud of them, giving no thought to the intellectual life of
my wife. And not only did I not think of her intellectual life, I did
not even consider her physical life.

“I was astonished at the origin of our hostility, and yet how clear it
was! This hostility is nothing but a protest of human nature against
the beast that enslaves it. It could not be otherwise. This hatred was
the hatred of accomplices in a crime. Was it not a crime that, this
poor woman having become pregnant in the first month, our liaison
should have continued just the same?

“You imagine that I am wandering from my story. Not at all. I am always
giving you an account of the events that led to the murder of my wife.
The imbeciles! They think that I killed my wife on the 5th of October.
It was long before that that I immolated her, just as they all kill
now. Understand well that in our society there is an idea shared by all
that woman procures man pleasure (and vice versa, probably, but I
know nothing of that, I only know my own case). Wein, Weiber und
Gesang. So say the poets in their verses: Wine, women, and song!

“If it were only that! Take all the poetry, the painting, the
sculpture, beginning with Pouschkine’s ‘Little Feet,’ with ‘Venus and
Phryne,’ and you will see that woman is only a means of enjoyment. That
is what she is at Trouba,[*] at Gratchevka, and in a court ball-room.
And think of this diabolical trick: if she were a thing without moral
value, it might be said that woman is a fine morsel; but, in the first
place, these knights assure us that they adore woman (they adore her
and look upon her, however, as a means of enjoyment), then all assure
us that they esteem woman. Some give up their seats to her, pick up her
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