lesson of “the kreutzer sonata.”
i have received, and still continue to receive, numbers of letters from persons who are perfect strangers to me, asking me to state in plain and simple language my own views on the subject handled in the story entitled “the kreutzer sonata.” with this request i shall now endeavor to comply.
my views on the question may be succinctly stated as follows: without entering into details, it will be generally admitted that i am accurate in saying that many people condone in young men a course of conduct with regard to the other sex which is incompatible with strict morality, and that this dissoluteness is pardoned generally. both parents and the government, in consequence of this view, may be said to wink at profligacy, and even in the last resource to encourage its practice. i am of opinion that this is not right.
it is not possible that the health of one class should necessitate the ruin of another, and, in consequence, it is our first duty to turn a deaf ear to such an essential immoral doctrine, no matter how strongly society may have established or law protected it. moreover, it needs to be fully recognized that men are rightly to be held responsible for the consequences of their own acts, and that these are no longer to be visited on the woman alone. it follows from this that it is the duty of men who do not wish to lead a life of infamy to practice such continence in respect to all woman as they would were the female society in which they move made up exclusively of their own mothers and sisters.
a more rational mode of life should be adopted which would include abstinence from all alcoholic drinks, from excess in eating and from flesh meat, on the one hand, and recourse to physical labor on the other. i am not speaking of gymnastics, or of any of those occupations which may be fitly described as playing at work; i mean the genuine toil that fatigues. no one need go far in search of proofs that this kind of abstemious living is not merely possible, but far less hurtful to health than excess. hundreds of instances are known to every one. this is my first contention.
in the second place, i think that of late years, through various reasons which i need not enter, but among which the above-mentioned laxity of opinion in society and the frequent idealization of the subject in current literature and painting may be mentioned, conjugal infidelity has become more common and is considered less reprehensible. i am of opinion that this is not right. the origin of the evil is twofold. it is due, in the first place, to a natural instinct, and, in the second, to the elevation of this instinct to a place to which it does not rightly belong. this being so, the evil can only be remedied by effecting a change in the views now in vogue about “falling in love” and all that this term implies, by educating men and women at home through family influence and example, and abroad by means of healthy public opinion, to practice that abstinence which morality and christianity alike enjoin. this is my second contention.
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 fourth place, i am of opinion that the children (who in our society are considered an obstacle to enjoyment — an unlucky accident, as it were) are educated not with a view to the problem which they will be one day called on to face and to solve, but solely with an eye to the pleasure which they may be made to yield to their parents. the consequence is, that the children of human beings are brought up for all the world like the young of animals, the chief care of their parents being not to train them to such work as is worthy of men and women, but to increase their weight, or add a cubit to their stature, to make them spruce, sleek, well-fed, and comely. they rig them out in all manner of fantastic costumes, wash them, over-feed them, and refuse to make them work. if the children of the lower orders differ in this last respect from those of the well-to-do classes, the difference is merely formal; they work from sheer necessity, and not because their parents recognize work as a duty. and in over-fed children, as in over-fed animals, sensuality is engendered unnaturally early.
fashionable dress to-day, the course of reading, plays, music, dances, luscious food, all the elements of our modern life, in a word, from the pictures on the little boxes of sweetmeats up to the novel, the tale, and the poem, contribute to fan this sensuality into a strong, consuming flame, with the result that sexual vices and diseases have come to be the normal conditions of the period of tender youth, and often continue into the riper age of full-blown manhood. and i am of opinion that this is not right.
it is high time it ceased. the children of human beings should not be brought up as if they were animals; and we should set up as the object and strive to maintain as the result of our labors something better and nobler than a well-dressed body. this is my fourth contention.
in the fifth place, i am of opinion that, owing to the exaggerated and erroneous significance attributed by our society to love and to the idealized states that accompany and succeed it, the best energies of our men and women are drawn forth and exhausted during the most promising period of life; those of the men in the work of looking for, choosing, and winning the most desirable objects of love, for which purpose lying and fraud are held to be quite excusable; those of the women and girls in alluring men and decoying them into liaisons or marriage by the most questionable means conceivable, as an instance of which the present fashions in evening dress may be cited. i am of opinion that this is not right.
the truth is, that the whole affair has been exalted by poets and romancers to an undue importance, and that love in its various developments is not a fitting object to consume the best energies of men. people set it before them and strive after it, because their view of life is as vulgar and brutish as is that other conception frequently met with in the lower stages of development, which sees in luscious and abundant food an end worthy of man’s best efforts. now, this is not right and should not be done. and, in order to avoid doing it, it is only needful to realize the fact that whatever truly deserves to be held up as a worthy object of man’s striving and working, whether it be the service of humanity, of one’s country, of science, of art, not to speak of the service of god, is far above and beyond the sphere of personal enjoyment. hence, it follows that not only to form a liaison, but even to contract marriage, is, from a christian point of view, not a progress, but a fall. love, and all the states that accompany and follow it, however we may try in prose and verse to prove the contrary, never do and never can facilitate the attainment of an aim worthy of men, but always make it more difficult. this is my fifth contention.
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.
chastity and celibacy, it is urged, cannot constitute the ideal of humanity, because chastity would annihilate the race which strove to realize it, and humanity cannot set up as its ideal its own annihilation. it may be pointed out in reply that only that is a true ideal, which, being unattainable, admits of infinite gradation in degrees of proximity. such is the christian ideal of the founding of god’s kingdom, the union of all living creatures by the bonds of love. the conception of its attainment is incompatible with the conception of the movement of life. what kind of life could subsist if all living creatures were joined together by the bonds of love? none. our conception of life is inseparably bound up with the conception of a continual striving after an unattainable ideal.
but even if we suppose the christian ideal of perfect chastity realized, what then? we should merely find ourselves face to face on the one hand with the familiar teaching of religion, one of whose dogmas is that the world will have an end; and on the other of so-called science, which informs us that the sun is gradually losing its heat, the result of which will in time be the extinction of the human race.
now there is not and cannot be such an institution as christian marriage, just as there cannot be such a thing as a christian liturgy (matt. vi. 5-12; john iv. 21), nor christian teachers, nor church fathers (matt. xxiii. 8-10), nor christian armies, christian law courts, nor christian states. this is what was always taught and believed by true christians of the first and following centuries. a christian’s ideal is not marriage, but love for god and for his neighbor. consequently in the eyes of a christian relations in marriage not only do not constitute a lawful, right, and happy state, as our society and our churches maintain, but, on the contrary, are always a fall.
such a thing as christian marriage never was and never could be. christ did not marry, nor did he establish marriage; neither did his disciples marry. but if christian marriage cannot exist, there is such a thing as a christian view of marriage. and this is how it may be formulated: a christian (and by this term i understand not those who call themselves christians merely because they were baptized and still receive the sacrament once a year, but those whose lives are shaped and regulated by the teachings of christ), i say, cannot view the marriage relation otherwise than as a deviation from the doctrine of christ,— as a sin. this is clearly laid down in matt. v. 28, and the ceremony called christian marriage does not alter its character one jot. a christian will never, therefore, desire marriage, but will always avoid it.
if the light of truth dawns upon a christian when he is already married, or if, being a christian, from weakness he enters into marital relations with the ceremonies of the church, or without them, he has no other alternative than to abide with his wife (and the wife with her husband, if it is she who is a christian) and to aspire together with her to free themselves of their sin. this is the christian view of marriage; and there cannot be any other for a man who honestly endeavors to shape his life in accordance with the teachings of christ.
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, “on which side is truth,— on the side of the thoughts which seem true and well-founded, or on the side of the lives of others and myself?” i, too, was weighed down by that same doubt when writing “the kreutzer sonata.” i had not the faintest presentiment that the train of thought i had started would lead me whither it did. i was terrified by my own conclusion, and i was at first disposed to reject it, but it was impossible not to hearken to the voice of my reason and my conscience. 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. “but man is weak,” people will object. “his task should be regulated by his strength.”
this is tantamount to saying, “my hand is weak. i cannot draw a straight line,— that is, a line which will be the shortest line between two given points,— and so, in order to make it more easy for myself, i, intending to draw a straight, will choose for my model a crooked line.”
the weaker my hand, the greater the need that my model should be perfect.
leo tolstoi.