I LOATHE what I have written. The
proof-sheets for the April number [of "Anna Karenina" in
the "Russky Vyestnik"] now lie on my table, and I am
afraid that I have not the heart to correct them.
EVERYTHING in them is BEASTLY, and the whole thing
ought to be rewritten,--all that has been printed, too,--scrapped
and melted down, thrown away, renounced. I ought to say, 'I am
sorry; I will not do it any more,' and try to write something
fresh instead of all this incoherent, neither-fish-nor-flesh-
nor-fowlish stuff."
That was how my father felt toward his novel while he was
writing it. Afterward I often heard him say much harsher things
about it.
"What difficulty is there in writing about how an officer
fell in love with a married woman?" he used to say. "There's no
difficulty in it, and above all no good in it."
I am quite convinced that if my father could have done so,
he long ago would have destroyed this novel, which he never liked
and always wanted to disown.
(To be continued)
REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY
BY HIS SON, COUNT ILYA TOLSTOY
TRANSLATED BY GEORGE CALDERON
IN the summer, when both families were together at Yasnaya,
our own and the Kuzminsky's, when both the house and the
annex were full of the family and their guests, we used our
letter-box.
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