The First Journey Abroad—Life in Moscow—Bear Hunting
January 29th [1857] Tolstoy left Moscow and traveled by mail
post to Warsaw and from Warsaw by rail to Paris, where he arrived
on February 21 [1857].
There turgenev awaited him. As early as January 23rd the
latter wrote to Druzhinin:
Tolstoy writes that he intends coming over here, and
then going in the spring from here to Italy. Tell him to
make haste, if he wishes to find me. Anyhow, I will
write to him myself. Judging from his letters, I see
that he is going through most beneficial changes, and I
am rejoicing at it like an "old nurse". I have read his
"A Russian Landowner" which pleased me very much by its
frankness and almost full freedom of conviction; I say
"almost", because in the way he states the problem to
himself lies (perhaps unknown to him) a certain
prejudice. The essential moral impression of the tale (I
don't speak of the artistic one) is this, that until
serfdom ceases to exist, there would be no possibility of
rapprochement and mutual understanding in spite of the
most disinterested, honest desire to meet, and this
impression is good and true; but side by side with it
runs another secondary impression -- namely, that on the
whole, teaching the peasant or improving his position is
useless, and I cannot agree with this impression. But
his mastery of the language, of the tale, of
characteristics is very great.
After meeting Tolstoy, Turgenev wrote to Polonskiy:
Tolstoy is here. A change for the better has taken
place in him, and a very considerable one.
This man will go far and will leave a deep trail
after him.
In a letter to Kalbasin dated March 8, 1857, from Paris, Turgenev said:
I very often see Tolstoy here, and I had the other
day a very nice letter from Nekrasov dated from Rome.
But I cannot become intimate with Tolstoy, we take
such different views.
This is Tolstoy's estimate at that time of Turgenev and
Nekrasov, whom Tolstoy found in Paris, as quoted by Botkin in his
letter to Druzhinin of March 8, 1857.
Tolstoy writes thus about his interview with him:
They are both roaming in a sort of darkness, they
are dejected and complain of life, do nothing, and
apparently both feel the weight of their mutual
relations.
Turgenev writes that Nekrasov suddenly went away again to
Rome. Tolstoy's letter is only a page but full of vitality and
freshness. Germany interests him very much and he intends to study
that country more fully by-and-by. In a month's time he starts for
Rome.
This correspondence shows that the relations between Tolstoy
and Turgenev were always unsatisfactory, and that with all their
efforts, they could not become cordial friends.
In March, Tolstoy and Turgenev made a journey to Dijon and
spent a few days together there. While there, Tolstoy wrote the
tale about the musician Albert. Then they came back to Paris, where Tolstoy witnessed an execution which he described in his "Confession," and which made an indelible impression upon him, of which he made a brief entry in his diary:
6th April 1857: I rose before seven and went to see
an execution. A stout, white, health neck and breast: he kissed the Gospel and then--death. What a senseless thing! It made a strong impression, which has not been in vain. I am not a political man. Morality and Art I know that I love and can...The guillotine for a long time prevented me from sleeping, forcing me to look round.
This is what he says on the subject in "How I Came to
Believe":
thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of a public
execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious
belief in progress. When I saw the head divided from the
body and heard the sound with which they fell separately
into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with
my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all
established things, nor of progress, could justify such
an act; and that if all the men in the world from the day
of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing
necessary, it was not so, it was an evil thing. and
that, therefore, I must judge of what was right and
necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress, but what I felt to be true in my heart.