Scene da un matrimonio: la replica di Sof’ja Andreevna Tolstaja alla Sonata a Kreutzer

Abstract · Scenes from a Marriage: Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya’s Reply to The Kreutzer Sonata · In the aftermath of the publication of the novel The Kreutzer Sonata (Krejcerova sonata, 1891), Tolstoy found himself once again in the midst of a heated controversy which, in addition to concerning the different members of society (from religious authors to the so-called populists), also found echoes within his own family. His son Lev, but mainly his wife, felt that they had to give their own response to that blatantly provocative and in some respect offensive short novel. Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya wrote in one sitting her own novel (entitled Chya vina? [Whose Fault?], which for decades remained locked in a drawer along with her memoirs, Moya zhizn [My life]), and she did so with the firm intention of revealing the ins and outs of her marriage (of which she caught a distorted image in The Kreutzer Sonata), of providing her version of the facts of the ménage that for years had been on everyone’s lips. The article thus aims to reconstruct the difficult dialogue between the spouses (which only occasionally and only in letters becomes relaxed, loving) through the comparison of the two works (The Kreutzer Sonata and Whose Fault?), which together form the complete tale of a love’s defeat.