The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

Why, then, is it strange that the same thing
should result from moral Doctrine? 'Let those
who can, contain,' said Christ. And I take this
passage literally, as it is written. That moral-
ity may exist between people in their worldly re-
lations, they must make complete chastity their
object. In tending toward this end, man humili-
ates himself. When he shall reach the last de-
gree of humiliation, we shall have moral mar-
riage.

"But if man, as in our society, tends only
toward physical love, though he may clothe it
with pretexts and the false forms of marriage,
he will have only permissible debauchery, he
will know only the same immoral life in which I

fell and caused my wife to fall, a life which we
call the honest life of the family. Think what a
perversion of ideas must arise when the happiest
situation of man, liberty, chastity, is looked upon
as something wretched and ridiculous. The
highest ideal, the best situation of woman, to be
pure, to be a vestal, a virgin, excites fear and
laughter in our society. How many, how many
young girls sacrifice their purity to this Moloch
of opinion by marrying rascals that they may
not remain virgins,—that is, superiors!

Through fear of finding themselves in that ideal
state, they ruin themselves.

"But I did not understand formerly, I did not
understand that the words of the Gospel, that
'he who looks upon a woman to lust after her
has already committed adultery,' do not apply
to the wives of others, but notably and especially
to our own wives. I did not understand this,
and I thought that the honeymoon and all of my
acts during that period were virtuous, and that
to satisfy one's desires with his wife is an emi-
nently chaste thing. Know, then, that I con-
sider these departures, these isolations, which
young married couples arrange with the per-

mission of their parents, as nothing else than a
license to engage in debauchery.

"I saw, then, in this nothing bad or shameful,
and, hoping for great joys, I began to live the
honeymoon. And very certainly none of these
joys followed. But I had faith, and was deter-
mined to have them, cost what they might. But
the more I tried to secure them, the less I suc-
ceeded. All this time I felt anxious, ashamed,
and weary. Soon I began to suffer. I believe
that on the third or fourth day I found my wife
sad and asked her the reason. I began to em-
brace her, which in my opinion was all that she
could desire. She put me away with her hand,
and began to weep.

"At what? She could not tell me. She was
filled with sorrow, with anguish. Probably her
tortured nerves had suggested to her the truth
about the baseness of our relations, but she
found no words in which to say it. I began to
question her; she answered that she missed her
absent mother. It seemed to me that she was
not telling the truth. I sought to console her by
maintaining silence in regard to her parents. I
did not imagine that she felt herself simply over-

whelmed, and that her parents had nothing to do
with her sorrow. She did not listen to me, and
I accused her of caprice. I began to laugh at
her gently. She dried her tears, and began to
reproach me, in hard and wounding terms, for
my selfishness and cruelty.

"I looked at her. Her whole face expressed
hatred, and hatred of me. I cannot describe to
you the fright which this sight gave me. 'How?
What?' thought I, 'love is the unity of souls,
and here she hates me? Me? Why? But it is
impossible! It is no longexr she!'

"I tried to calm her. I came in conflict with
an immovable and cold hostility, so that, having
no time to reflect, I was seized with keen irrita-
tion. We exchanged disagreeable remarks. The
impression of this first quarrel was terrible. I
say quarrel, but the term is inexact. It was the
sudden discovery of the abyss that had been dug
between us. Love was exhausted with the satis-
faction of sensuality. We stood face to face in
our true light, like two egoists trying to procure
the greatest possible enjoyment, like two indi-
viduals trying to mutually exploit each other.

"So what I called our quarrel was our actual

situation as it appeared after the satisfaction of
sensual desire. I did not realize that this cold
hostility was our normal state, and that this first
quarrel would soon be drowned under a new
flood of the intensest sensuality. I thought that
we had disputed with each other, and had be-
come reconciled, and that it would not happen
again. But in this same honeymoon there came
a period of satiety, in which we ceased to be
necessary to each other, and a new quarrel broke
out.

"It became evident that the first was not a
matter of chance. 'It was inevitable,' I thought.

This second quarrel stupefied me the more, be-
cause it was based on an extremely unjust cause.

It was something like a question of money,—
and never had I haggled on that score; it was
even impossible that I should do so in relation to
her. I only remember that, in answer to some
remark that I made, she insinuated that it was
my intention to rule her by means of money, and
that it was upon money that I based my sole
right over her. In short, something extraordi-
narily stupid and base, which was neither in my
character nor in hers.

"I was beside myself. I accused her of indeli-
cacy. She made the same accusation against
me, and the dispute broke out. In her words,
in the expression of her face, of her eyes, I
noticed again the hatred that had so astonished
me before. With a brother, friends, my father,
I had occasionally quarrelled, but never had
there been between us this fierce spite. Some
time passed. Our mutual hatred was again con-
cealed beneath an access of sensual desire, and
I again consoled myself with the reflection that
these scenes were reparable faults.

"But when they were repeated a third and a
fourth time, I understood that they were not
simply faults, but a fatality that must happen
again. I was no longer frightened, I was simply
astonished that I should be precisely the one to
live so uncomfortably with my wife, and that the
same thing did not happen in other households.

I did not know that in all households the same
sudden changes take place, but that all, like my-
self, imagine that it is a misfortune exclusively
reserved for themselves alone, which they care-
fully conceal as shameful, not only to others, but
to themselves, like a bad disease.

"That was what happened to me. Begun in
the early days, it continued and increased with
characteristics of fury that were ever more pro-
nounced. At the bottom of my soul, from the
first weeks, I felt that I was in a trap, that I had
what I did not expect, and that marriage is not
a joy, but a painful trial. Like everybody else,
I refused to confess it (I should not have con-
fessed it even now but for the outcome). Now I
am astonished to think that I did not see my real
situation. It was so easy to perceive it, in
view of those quarrels, begun for reasons so
trivial that afterwards one could not recall them.

"Just as it often happens among gay young
people that, in the absence of jokes, they laugh
at their own laughter, so we found no reasons
for our hatred, and we hated each other because
hatred was naturally boiling up in us. More
extraordinary still was the absence of causes for
reconciliation.

"Sometimes words, explanations, or even
tears, but sometimes, I remember, after insult-
ing words, there tacitly followed embraces and
declarations. Abomination! Why is it that I
did not then perceive this baseness?

University of Virginia Library

12. CHAPTER XII