Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work. Paul Birukoff
my cries, but do not unbind me as I desire, and I cry yet louder. They think that this is necessary (i.e. that I should be bound), whereas I know it is not necessary and I wish to prove it to them, and am convulsed with cries distasteful to myself but unrestrainable. I feel the injustice and cruelty, not of human beings, for they pity me, but of fate, and I feel pity for myself. I do not and never shall know what it was, whether I was swathed when a babe at the breast and tried to get my arm free, or whether I was swathed when more than a year old, in order that I should not scratch myself; or whether, as it happens in dreams, I have collected into this one reminiscence many impressions; but certain it is that this was my first and most powerful impression in life. Nor is it my cries that are impressed upon my mind, nor my sufferings, but the complexity and contrast of the impression. I desire freedom, it interferes with no one else, and I, who require strength, am weak, whilst they are strong.
"Another impression is a joyful one. I am sitting in a wooden trough, and am enveloped by the new and not unpleasant smell of some kind of stuff with which my little body is being rubbed. It was probably bran, and most likely I was having a bath, but the novelty of the impression from the bran aroused me, and for the first time I remarked and liked my little body with the ribs showing on the breast, and the smooth, dark-colored trough, my nurse's rolled-up sleeves, and the warm steaming bran-water, and its sound, and especially the feeling of the smoothness of the trough's edges when I passed my little hands along them.
"It is strange and dreadful to think that from my birth until the age of three years, during the time when I was fed from the breast, when I was weaned, when I began to crawl, to walk, to speak, however much I may seek them in my memory, I can find no other impressions save these two: When did I originate? When did I begin to live? And why is it joyous to me to imagine myself as at that time, and yet has been dreadful to me, as it is still dreadful to many, to imagine myself again entering that state of death of which there will be no recollections that can be expressed in words? Was I not alive when I learned to look, to listen, to understand, and to speak, when I slept, took the breast, kissed it, and laughed and gladdened my mother? I lived, and lived blissfully! Did I not then acquire all that by which I now live, and acquire it to such an extent and so quickly, that in all the rest of my life I have not acquired a hundredth part of the amount? From a five-year-old child to my present self there is only one step. From a new-born infant to a five-year-old child there is an awesome distance. From the germ to the infant an unfathomable distance. But from non-existence to the germ the distance is not only unfathomable, but inconceivable. Not only are space and time and causation forms of thought, and not only is the essence of life outside these forms, but all our life is a greater and greater subjection of oneself to these forms, and then again liberation from them.
"The next reminiscences refer to the time when I was already four or five years old, but of these I have very few, and not one of them concerns life outside the walls of the house. Nature, up to five years old, did not exist for me. All that I remember takes place in my little bed in a room. Neither grass nor leaves nor sky nor sun exists for me. It cannot be that I was not given flowers or leaves to play with, that I did not see the grass, was not shaded from the sun; still, up to five or six years, I have no recollection of what we call nature. Probably one has to leave it in order to see it, and I was nature itself.
"After that of the trough, the next reminiscence is one about `Yeremeyevna.' `Yeremeyevna' was a word with which we children were threatened, but my recollection of it is this: I am in my little bed, happy and content as always, and I should not remember this were it not that my nurse, or some person who formed part of my childish world, says something in a voice new to me, and goes away, and, besides being merry, I become afraid. And I call to mind that I am not alone, but with some one else who is like myself; this probably was my sister Mashenka, a year younger than myself, whose bed stood in the same room as mine. I recall that my bed has a curtain, and my sister and I are happy, and afraid of something extraordinary which has happened among us, and I hide under my pillow, both hide and watch the door, from which I expect something new and amusing, and we laugh and hide and wait. And lo! there appears some one in a dress and cap quite unlike anything I have ever seen, but I recognize that it is the same person who is always with me (whether my nurse or my aunt I do not know), and in a gruff voice which I recognize, this some one says something dreadful about naughty children and "Yeremeyevna." I shriek with fear and joy, and am indeed horrified and yet delighted to be horrified, and I wish the one who is frightening me not to know I have recognized her. We quiet down, but then purposely begin whispering to each other to recall `Yeremeyevna.'
"I have another recollection of `Yeremeyevna,' probably of a later period, for it is more distinct, although it has forever remained incomprehensible to me. In this reminiscence the chief part is played by the German, Feodor Ivanovich, our tutor; but I know for certain that I am not yet under his supervision; therefore that this takes place before I am five. And this is my first impression of Feodor Ivanovich, and it happened so early that I do not as yet remember any one, neither my brothers nor my father. If I have an idea of any separate person, it is only my sister, and that simply because she is, like me, afraid of `Yeremeyevna.' With this reminiscence is connected my first recognition that our house has a second story. How I got up there, whether I mounted alone or was carried up, I don't at all remember, but I remember that there were many of us, and that we were all moving in a circle, holding each other's hands. Among us there were women, strangers to us (I somehow remember that they were washerwomen), and we all begin to circle round and jump, and Feodor Ivanovich jumps, lifting his legs too high, flinging about and making a great noise, and I feel at one and the same moment that this is not right, and that it is wicked, and I rebuke him, and I think I begin to cry, and everything ceases."
The account given by Marie, Tolstoy's sister, of their childish games belongs to this period.
"Three of us slept in the same room - I, Lyovochka, and Dunechka[2] - and we often played with one another, making a children's party apart from our elder brothers, who lived with the tutor downstairs.
"`Milashki' was one of our favorite games. One of us would pretend to be the `milashki,' i.e., a child who was specially petted by others, put to bed, fed, given medical treatment, and generally made much fuss about. This `milashki' (favorite), according to the rules of the game, had to submit without complaining to all the tricks that were played with him, and to act his part submissively.
"I remember how grieved and vexed we were during the game when our `milashki' (generally Lev Nikolayevich) really fell asleep after having been put to bed. According to the rules of the game, he had to cry, then to be doctored, given medicine, rubbed, etc. And thus his sleep put an end to our play, and called us back from illusions to reality.
"This is all I remember till I was five years old," continues Tolstoy. "As for my nurses, my aunts, brothers, sisters, father, the rooms, and the playthings--of all these I remember nothing. My definite reminiscences commence from the time when I was transferred downstairs to Feodor Ivanovich and my elder brothers.
"With Feodor Ivanovich and the boys I experienced for the first time, and therefore more powerfully than ever after, that feeling which is called the feeling of duty--the feeling of the Cross, which every man is called to bear. I was sorry to abandon what I was used to (used to from eternity), I was sorry, poetically sorry, to separate not so much from persons, from my sister, my nurse, and my aunt, as from my little bed, with its curtain and the pillow, and I was afraid of the new life into which I entered. I tried to find what was joyful in the new life which confronted me; I tried to believe the caressing words with which Feodor Ivanovich sought to attract me; I tried not to see the contempt with which the boys received me, the younger one; I tried to think that it was shameful for a big boy to live with girls, and that there was nothing good in the upstairs life with the nurse. But inwardly I felt dreadfully sad, I knew that I was irretrievably losing innocence and happiness, and only the feeling of self-respect, the consciousness that I was fulfilling my duty, supported me. Many times later on I had to live through such moments at the parting of the ways in life, when I entered on a new road. I experienced a quiet grief at the irretrievableness of what was being lost, I kept disbelieving that it was really happening. Although I had been told that I was to be transferred to the boys, yet I remember that the dressing-gown, with belt sewn to the back, which was put on me, cut me off as it were forever