The Kreutzer Sonata

“Even if it should be admitted that Menelaus had preferred Helen all his life, Helen would have preferred Paris; and so it has been, is, and will be eternally. And it cannot be otherwise, just as it cannot happen that, in a load of chick-peas, two peas marked with a special sign should fall side by side. Further, this is not only an improbability, but it is certain that a feeling of satiety will come to Helen or to Menelaus. The whole difference is that to one it comes sooner, to the other later. It is only in stupid novels that it is written that ‘they loved each other all their lives.’ And none but children can believe it. To talk of loving a man or woman for life is like saying that a candle can burn forever.”

Tolstoy references the famous marital conflict between Menelaus and Helen of Troy that led to the Trojan War—a bloody, decade-long conflict from Greek mythology. This reference illustrates Pozdnychev’s belief in the inevitability of his marriage’s tragic conclusion, since all of the characters involved in the Trojan War were powerless to defy the gods or their own tragic fates. This allusion also foreshadows the events of the novella’s plot in that the relationships described here parallel that of Pozdnychev, his wife, and Troukhatchevsky.

“His face, while he was talking, changed several times so completely that it bore positively no resemblance to itself as it had appeared just before. His eyes, his mouth, his moustache, and even his beard, all were new. Each time it was a beautiful and touching physiognomy, and these transformations were produced suddenly in the penumbra; and for five minutes it was the same face, that could not be compared to that of five minutes before. And then, I know not how, it changed again, and became unrecognizable.”

Several times through the framing narrative, the unnamed narrator references how Pozdnychev’s facial features alter dramatically. This physical transformation symbolizes the inner turmoil that affects Pozdnychev when his passions are aroused.

“I led the life of so many other so-called respectable people,—that is, in debauchery. And like the majority, while leading the life of a débauché, I was convinced that I was a man of irreproachable morality.”

There’s irony in Pozdnychev’s description of “so-called respectable” people, when in reality he considers them the exact opposite. This is a striking illustration of the theme of Conflict Between Social Expectation and Moral Duty because Tolstoy suggests that the typical lives of the “majority” should not be misunderstood as morality.

“[I]f only a hundredth of the efforts spent in curing diseases were spent in curing debauchery, disease would long ago have ceased to exist, whereas now all efforts are employed, not in extirpating debauchery, but in favoring it, by assuring the harmlessness of the consequences.”

Pozdnychev expresses his disdain for modern medicine by suggesting that, by dedicating their efforts toward harm reduction rather than morally policing the populace, they are directly encouraging debauchery. His assumption allows Tolstoy to portray Sensual Passion as a Corruption of Purity.

“I had become what is called a voluptuary; and to be a voluptuary is a physical condition like the condition of a victim of the morphine habit, of a drunkard, and of a smoker. Just as the victim of the morphine habit, the drunkard, the smoker, is no longer a normal man, so the man who has known several women for his pleasure is no longer normal? He is abnormal forever. He is a voluptuary. […] He may repress himself and struggle, but nevermore will he enjoy simple, pure, and fraternal relations toward woman. […] I became a voluptuary, and I have remained one.”

Tolstoy draws parallels between substance misuse and acts of sensual pleasure, claiming that both affect the body in the same way. This comparison ties in with the theme of Sensual Passion as a Corruption of Purity by implying that indulging in sexual acts despoils the body of the participant and permanently changes someone’s moral compass into an undesirable state.

“I lived, until the age of thirty, without abandoning for a minute my intention of marrying, and building an elevated conjugal life; and with this in view I watched all young girls who might suit me. I was buried in rottenness, and at the same time I looked for virgins, whose purity was worthy of me! Many of them were rejected: they did not seem to me pure enough!”

Tolstoy uses emotive language—“buried in rottenness”—alongside exclamation marks to convey the heights of emotion with which the statement is uttered. He uses juxtaposition and irony to show the absurdity of the “double standard” between men and women, and the unfairness of Pozdnychev’s high standards.

“You say that the women of our society live for a different interest from that which actuates fallen women. And I say no, and I am going to prove it to you. If beings differ from one another according to the purpose of their life, according to their inner life, this will necessarily be reflected also in their outer life, and their exterior will be very different. Well, then, compare the wretched, the despised, with the women of the highest society: the same dresses, the same fashions, the same perfumeries, the same passion for jewelry, for brilliant and very expensive articles, the same amusements, dances, music, and songs. The former attract by all possible means; so do the latter. No difference, none whatever!”

As Tolstoy’s mouthpiece, Pozdnychev utilizes persuasive techniques to convince his listener—and through him, the reader—to agree with his point. He pre-empts the potential disagreement and declares with assurance that he will provide proof. His explanation then employs repetition and listing to build up momentum and make his words more striking and memorable.

“And it was very easy to capture me, since I was brought up under artificial conditions, like cucumbers in a hothouse. Our too abundant nourishment, together with complete physical idleness, is nothing but systematic excitement of the imagination. The men of our society are fed and kept like reproductive stallions. It is sufficient to close the valve,—that is, for a young man to live a quiet life for some time,—to produce as an immediate result a restlessness, which, becoming exaggerated by reflection through the prism of our unnatural life, provokes the illusion of love.”

Tolstoy uses similes, comparing young men to stallions and cucumbers, to illustrate the unnaturalness of their lifestyles and allude to the consequent state of heightened sensuality such a lifestyle causes.

“[I]f it is a question of equality, let the equality be complete. Though it has been found that to contract marriages through the agency of match-makers is humiliating, it is nevertheless a thousand times preferable to our system. There the rights and the chances are equal; here the woman is a slave, exhibited in the market. But as she cannot bend to her condition, or make advances herself, there begins that other and more abominable lie which is sometimes called going into society, sometimes amusing one’s self, and which is really nothing but the hunt for a husband.”

Tolstoy contrasts the old method of finding a match with the current in order to paint the current standard in a negative light. The dichotomy of these options immediately makes the lesser of the two evils seem positively desirable and the worse option seem unconscionable. The use of charged language here—“slave,” “abominable” and “hunt”—emphasize the negative aspects of the marriage market by evoking violent and dehumanizing scenes.

“The absence of the rights of woman does not consist in the fact that she has not the right to vote, or the right to sit on the bench, but in the fact that in her affectional relations she is not the equal of man, she has not the right to abstain, to choose instead of being chosen. You say that that would be abnormal. Very well! But then do not let man enjoy these rights, while his companion is deprived of them, and finds herself obliged to make use of the coquetry by which she governs, so that the result is that man chooses “formally,” whereas really it is woman who chooses. As soon as she is in possession of her means, she abuses them, and acquires a terrible supremacy.”

There is a paradox here in Pozdnychev’s words; he acknowledges that women lack rights, but then immediately asserts that they nonetheless have supremacy over men. While Tolstoy explores The Subjugation of Women, this quote also shows the logical fallacies by which Pozdnychev lives, highlighting the biases and unreliability of his narration.

“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. […]

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]n 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.”

Tolstoy shows that the pattern for the relationship between Pozdnychev and his wife throughout their married lives was already laid out in the early days of their honeymoon. The incompatibility of the two characters, and the suffering that this will cause them both, is foreshadowed here.

“[C]omplete physical idleness, an excessive care of the body, a vast consumption of sweetmeats; and God knows how the poor maidens suffer from their own sensuality, excited by all these things. […] And even the majority of these unfortunate creatures are so excited by a hidden sensuality (and it is lucky if it is hidden) that they are fit for nothing. They become animated only in the presence of men. Their whole life is spent in preparations for coquetry, or in coquetry itself. In the presence of men they become too animated; they begin to live by sensual energy. But the moment the man goes away, the life stops.”

This quote presents Pozdnychev’s main philosophy regarding the corruptions of modern society in relation to women. Almost all women in the novella are defined by their relationships to men—Pozdnychev’s wife and the lawyer’s companion—and Pozdnychev imagines that the lives of all women revolve around men. This passage highlights The Subjugation of Women.

“The following winter an incident happened to us which passed unnoticed, but which was the fundamental cause of all that happened later. My wife was suffering, and the rascals (the doctors) would not permit her to conceive a child, and taught her how to avoid it. I was profoundly disgusted. I struggled vainly against it, but she insisted frivolously and obstinately, and I surrendered. The last justification of our life as wretches was thereby suppressed, and life became baser than ever.”

This quote epitomizes Pozdnychev’s attitude toward his wife. She is in pain, and follows the recommendation of the doctors for her own health. Pozdnychev, absorbed by his own conceptions of morality and his own sensual desires, dismisses her decision. Tolstoy uses emotive language, such as “frivolous,” and “obstinate,” and “disgusting,” to convey the depth of Pozdnychev’s feelings.

“A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the presto! And a terrible thing is music in general. What is it? Why does it do what it does? They say that music stirs the soul. Stupidity! A lie! It acts, it acts frightfully (I speak for myself), but not in an ennobling way. It acts neither in an ennobling nor a debasing way, but in an irritating way. How shall I say it? Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand, to have powers which I cannot have.”

This reference is to the titular piece of music, which is a symbol of the power that sensuality and passion can wield. This shows the suggestibility of the protagonist when it comes to emotional impressions.

“Ah, what torture! It is not to a hospital filled with syphilitic patients that I would take a young man to deprive him of the desire for women, but into my soul, to show him the demon which tore it. The frightful part was that I recognized in myself an indisputable right to the body of my wife, as if her body were entirely mine. And at the same time I felt that I could not possess this body, that it was not mine, that she could do with it as she liked, and that she liked to do with it as I did not like. And I was powerless against him and against her.”

This passage suggests The Subjugation of Women. Although Pozdnychev declares himself “powerless,” he conflates his sense of personal autonomy with domination and ownership over his wife. The tragic irony is that, by killing her, Pozdnychev stakes a final claim over his wife’s body and asserts his dominance in perpetuity by depriving his wife of the agency to act against him.

“With my left hand I seized her hands. She disengaged herself. Then, without dropping my dagger, I seized her by the throat, forced her to the floor, and began to strangle her. With her two hands she clutched mine, tearing them from her throat, stifling. Then I struck her a blow with the dagger, in the left side, between the lower ribs.”

Tolstoy uses short, abrupt sentences to mimic the brutality of the fight and to build momentum through the attack. His description of the violence is blunt and explicit, with none of the flowery language or rhetorical flourishes that characterize most of the narration. This creates a strong and striking impression to drive home the shocking and brutal reality of the violence.

“When people say that they do not remember what they do in a fit of fury, they talk nonsense. It is false. I remember everything.

I did not lose my consciousness for a single moment. The more I lashed myself to fury, the clearer my mind became, and I could not help seeing what I did. I cannot say that I knew in advance what I would do, but at the moment when I acted, and it seems to me even a little before, I knew what I was doing, as if to make it possible to repent, and to be able to say later that I could have stopped.”

This is another instance of Pozdnychev’s over-generalization—assuming that his experiences are universal. He explains his state of mind while committing the murder in a matter-of-fact way. His calm description exemplifies the idea that the reader learns as much about Pozdnychev from his narration of events as the events themselves.

“I cast a glance at the children, and then at her bruised and swollen face, and for the first time I forgot myself (my rights, my pride), and for the first time I saw in her a human being, a sister. “

This is the first instance during which Pozdnychev seems to recognize that he has acted wrongly toward his wife. Only when she is at her lowest point, so damaged that she no longer wields any sensual power over him does he stop dehumanizing and objectifying her. He claims to have forgotten himself; however, the fact that he emphasizes this when narrating the event implies that his self-absorption was never fully effaced.

“‘Then only, when I saw her dead face, did I understand all that I had done. I understood that it was I, I, who had killed her. I understood that I was the cause of the fact that she, who had been a moving, living, palpitating being, had now become motionless and cold, and that there was no way of repairing this thing. He who has not lived through that cannot understand it.’

We remained silent a long time. Posdnicheff sobbed and trembled before me. His face had become delicate and long, and his mouth had grown larger.”

Tolstoy evokes pathos here, both in the emotive language of Pozdnychev’s realization and the touching description of his physical change and tears. This underlines the tragedy of the situation, evoking pity both for Pozdnychev and his wife.

“We must understand the real meaning of the words of the Gospel,—Matthew, v.28,—‘that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery’; and these words relate to the wife, to the sister, and not only to the wife of another, but especially to one’s own wife.”

The final lines of the novella are a summation of its main argument in favor of sexual abstinence and chastity. Pozdnychev evokes the authority of scripture, quoting a passage that directly corresponds to Tolstoy’s own beliefs on marriage and the relationship between the sexes.

“In the third place I am of opinion that another consequence of the false light in which “falling in love,” and what it leads to, are viewed in our society, is that the birth of children has lost its pristine significance, and that modern marriages are conceived less and less from the point of view of the family. I am of opinion that this is not right. This is my third contention.”

In “The Lesson of The Kreutzer Sonata,” Tolstoy repeats the phrases “in the [ordinal] place I am of the opinion that…,” then “I am of the opinion that this is not right,” and finally “This is my [ordinal] contention.” This repetition makes the section easier for the reader to follow and glean its arguments; this reflects its function as an explanatory piece for the novella.

“How about the human race? If we admit that celibacy is better and nobler than marriage, evidently the human race will come to an end. But, if the logical conclusion of the argument is that the human race will become extinct, the whole reasoning is wrong.

To that I reply that the argument is not mine; I did not invent it. That it is incumbent on mankind so to strive, and that celibacy is preferable to marriage, are truths revealed by Christ 1,900 years ago, set forth in our catechisms, and professed by us as followers of Christ.”

Tolstoy uses the rhetorical technique of hypophora: asking a question and then immediately answering it himself. This pre-empts the concerns of dissenters. While in the novella, Tolstoy uses the primary narrator as the voice of a dissenter, in this section he uses hypophora to address readers’ potential rebuttals.

“To very many persons the thoughts I have uttered here and in ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ will seem strange, vague, even contradictory. They certainly do contradict, not each other, but the whole tenor of our lives, and involuntarily a doubt arises […] And so, strange though they may appear to many, opposed as they undoubtedly are to the trend and tenor of our lives, and incompatible though they may prove with what I have heretofore thought and uttered, I have no choice but to accept them.”

Tolstoy uses his own experience of coming to terms with the beliefs he now holds to imply that his readers must do the same. He presents his arguments as though they are indisputable. In this sense, Tolstoy makes himself a conspicuous character in his arguments about the Conflict Between Social Expectation and Moral Duty.