A Message from Sofia

So far, my posts seem to be fairly light-hearted. And that is a reflection of how I have felt writing them. The first week, I chatted with my husband each evening about my progress, about comments from friends who have read along, and it buoyed me up. This week, I feel more contemplative about the project. I thought at first that this was the excitement of the first days wearing off, like when one of my kids woke up Monday morning of the SECOND week of Kindergarten and said, You mean I have to go back? I didn't have the heart to tell her that this was only the beginning.

 

And I'm sure there was some of that for me. The realization that I have committed to something that is much harder than I imagined, that I will have to find the willpower within myself to keep after, day after day, week after week, and yes, even month after month. But there is something else. A darker side to this project.

 

I have been reading a book about Sophia Tolstoy by Leah Bendavid-Val called Songs Without Words. The book is an in-depth look at Sophia's creative work, her photography, alongside entries from her and her husband's diaries. Sophia took a great number of self-portraits (I think of them as some of the first Selfies), some close-up, some far away, some artsy (there is one of her standing inside the hollow of a great tree that I particularly like), but the best ones, the most tender and revealing one, show her in her daily routine: making jam with children and the housekeeper, washing at a basin, and arranging flowers. Her original plan had been to photograph Leo Tolstoy for posterity, and she did until their later years, when Leo became quite close to his assistant Vladimir Grigoryevitch Chertkov. It is clear from the written documents of the time that Chertkov displaced Sophia as Leo closest confidante, and I have to wonder how much this contributed to reports of her hysteria. She had devoted her entire life to Leo and his work. Yesterday, I read this passage from her diary:

 

"For a genius one has to create a peaceful, cheerful, comfortable home; a genius must be fed, washed and dressed, must have his works copied out innumerable times, must be loved and spared all cause for jealousy, so that he can be calm; then one must feed and educate the innumerable children fathered by this genius, whom he cannot be bothered to care for himself...And when the members of his family circle have sacrificed their youth, beauty--everything--to serve this genius, they are then blamed for not understanding the geniuses properly--and they never get a word of thanks from the geniueses themselves of course, for sacrificing their pure young lives to him, and atrophying all their spiritual and intellectual capacities, which they are unable to nourish and develop due to lack of peace, leisure and energy." 13 March 1902

 

Not to go all feminist on you, but as a mother-wife-artist, I can relate. When I read that Sophia Tolstoy had recopied War and Peace more than seven times, when I saw the photograph of her handwriting, marked through, whole lines crossed out by her husband, ready for yet another recopying, my heart hurt for her. I thought, no wonder she took self-portraits. She had to find some way of not feeling completely invisible. And I was taken back to my own younger self, a twenty-five-year-old who sat at a computer for eight hours and cobbled together a philosophy paper for the man with whom I was in a relationship, so he wouldn't fail the class. I managed to earn a C+, and he passed the class. I know what this says about me as a woman. It is all true, or was then. I saw his success as necessary to my own happiness. In my mind, if he failed, I failed. It has taken me many years to unravel the shame of that day. It took a long, painful divorce, many years of therapy, and attempts undo the damage I did to my own daughters, and my son.

 

So somehow, I will find the time to complete this work, even if I have to work late into the night, the way Sophia did. She deserves to be heard, even if I am the only one listening.

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