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lschiff's review against another edition
5.0
A page turner and what an interesting view of Leo Tolstoy for those who love his writing.
danelleeb's review
4.0
The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy are just that: the personal diaries of the wife of Count Lev Nikolavevich Tolstoy (or as most of us know him, Leo Tolstoy). This book is no walk in the park. It's big and tedious, but in between all of those days with mundane entries, there are some pretty amazing ones - and those are what make this book stand out.
We get an inside look at what Tolstoy was like, how it was to live with this 'genius', how life in Russia was at this turbulent stage in that country's history, and the struggle many women have with trying to be everything. Because that is exactly what Sophia did - everything. She raised the children, took care of the peasants, kept track of the planting and harvesting, & payment of workers, managed Tolstoy's publishing and printing, did all of his copying, made clothing for her family...this woman had no time to herself except for when she wrote in her diary. (It was no surprise that she felt suicidal!) Her husband hated that his copyrights weren't given to 'the people'. He hated that he lived in a large house with servants. He raved about this and said he would be better off without all of it and preached this to his followers - yet he never did a thing to change any of it. He constantly berated Sophia for being "materialistic" but never once thought of how else they would manage to feed their children (they had 13 - 5 died in infancy or childhood). And through all of this, it seems that only she sees how contradictory and hypocritical his views were when one looked at how he lived.
She struggles most with how much of herself she's given to her family and how little of it she has left for herself.
She writes, “Everyone asks: ‘But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual, artistic life?’ To this I can only reply: ‘I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.’ ”
We get an inside look at what Tolstoy was like, how it was to live with this 'genius', how life in Russia was at this turbulent stage in that country's history, and the struggle many women have with trying to be everything. Because that is exactly what Sophia did - everything. She raised the children, took care of the peasants, kept track of the planting and harvesting, & payment of workers, managed Tolstoy's publishing and printing, did all of his copying, made clothing for her family...this woman had no time to herself except for when she wrote in her diary. (It was no surprise that she felt suicidal!) Her husband hated that his copyrights weren't given to 'the people'. He hated that he lived in a large house with servants. He raved about this and said he would be better off without all of it and preached this to his followers - yet he never did a thing to change any of it. He constantly berated Sophia for being "materialistic" but never once thought of how else they would manage to feed their children (they had 13 - 5 died in infancy or childhood). And through all of this, it seems that only she sees how contradictory and hypocritical his views were when one looked at how he lived.
She struggles most with how much of herself she's given to her family and how little of it she has left for herself.
She writes, “Everyone asks: ‘But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual, artistic life?’ To this I can only reply: ‘I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.’ ”
fionnualalirsdottir's review
Sophia and Lev Tolstoy surrounded by eight of their children.
Sophia went to live at Tolstoy's estate of Yasnaya Polyana after her marriage. She was eighteen, he was thirty-four. The couple had thirteen children in all—five didn't survive childhood.
atticmoth's review
5.0
This is why Jane Austen’s books never go beyond the wedding. Sofia Tolstoy lived a long, mostly miserable life, controlled and overshadowed by her husband, the more famous Leo Tolstoy. Had she not carried thirteen children (not counting the miscarriages), had she not been so occupied with editing and transcribing Leo’s work, getting it past the Tsar’s censors, and publishing it to furnish income for her family, would she be remembered as a better writer than Leo ever was? Unfortunately, much of Sofia Tolstoy’s writing aside from her diaries have been kept secret by the estate, but spending so much time with this hefty volume represents a “what could have been” of a great literary mind, lost to history.
I had read about Sofia Tolstoy’s life and her diaries in Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse, which considers parallels in her life to Leo’s The Kreutzer Sonata. I was vaguely aware that they had a long and fraught marriage, but I expected at least some sort of arc. On the second page of her diary (out of almost five hundred!) she already laments, “I am terribly sad, and am withdrawing further and further into myself. My husband is ill and out of sorts and doesn’t love me.” The first year of their marriage (Sofia was 18, Leo was 34) was bad (tainted by Leo’s affairs with maids) and it only got worse for the next 48 years. By far the most disturbing episode was when Leo wrote The Kreutzer Sonata as essentially a thinly-veiled murder threat. Every time it seemed like Leo was about to die, I cheered, and when he finally did it was depressing that Sofia spent her last seven years of freedom grieving for someone who never cared for her. A literary feat in their own right, her diaries also demystify the cult of Leo Tolstoy:
“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires - a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune".”
I have spent a long time reading this. I frequently found myself putting it down because it was too overwhelmingly tragic. Like all real diaries, there are definitely a lot of slow moments of everyday life, but experiencing fifty years of someone’s life in the span of mere months really makes you feel like you’ve got a parasocial relationship with that person. Perhaps that’s why reading diaries interests me; it helps keep alive those forgotten by history.
I had read about Sofia Tolstoy’s life and her diaries in Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse, which considers parallels in her life to Leo’s The Kreutzer Sonata. I was vaguely aware that they had a long and fraught marriage, but I expected at least some sort of arc. On the second page of her diary (out of almost five hundred!) she already laments, “I am terribly sad, and am withdrawing further and further into myself. My husband is ill and out of sorts and doesn’t love me.” The first year of their marriage (Sofia was 18, Leo was 34) was bad (tainted by Leo’s affairs with maids) and it only got worse for the next 48 years. By far the most disturbing episode was when Leo wrote The Kreutzer Sonata as essentially a thinly-veiled murder threat. Every time it seemed like Leo was about to die, I cheered, and when he finally did it was depressing that Sofia spent her last seven years of freedom grieving for someone who never cared for her. A literary feat in their own right, her diaries also demystify the cult of Leo Tolstoy:
“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires - a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune".”
I have spent a long time reading this. I frequently found myself putting it down because it was too overwhelmingly tragic. Like all real diaries, there are definitely a lot of slow moments of everyday life, but experiencing fifty years of someone’s life in the span of mere months really makes you feel like you’ve got a parasocial relationship with that person. Perhaps that’s why reading diaries interests me; it helps keep alive those forgotten by history.
dresselaersdaphne's review
I'm dropping the course that assigned me this book. Not that it's because this book is so astonishly boring but I just really, really don't like the course.
This book, however, really does make you want to throw it against a wall, rip your hair out, go back in time to slap Sofia in the face so she might start to rethink her life and leave her f*cktard of an husband. I would have never been able to finish this book and I'm so glad I found a way out of having to read this.
This book, however, really does make you want to throw it against a wall, rip your hair out, go back in time to slap Sofia in the face so she might start to rethink her life and leave her f*cktard of an husband. I would have never been able to finish this book and I'm so glad I found a way out of having to read this.
read247_instyle_inca's review
3.0
I find these diaries fascinating - another view into the life of Leo Tolstoy as well.