The War between the Diaries

John Bayley

  • Tolstoy’s Diaries translated by R.F. Christian
    Athlone, 755 pp, £45.00, October 1985, ISBN 0 485 11276 0
  • The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy translated by Cathy Porter
    Cape, 1043 pp, £30.00, September 1985, ISBN 0 224 02270 9

Tolstoy was much preoccupied with questions of identity. His brutally penetrating intelligence, as well as the instinctive self-confidence of an aristocrat, were always running incredulously up against the fact of existence, and the certainty of non-existence. What and who was he at different moments of the day? One of his earliest attempts at writing is a history of 24 hours, a record of his various selves during that period. His early diaries have the same feel to them. This is not like the stream of consciousness, but something far more urgent, emotional and volatile. ‘My God! Where am I? Where am I going? And what am I now?’ That is almost exactly like Natasha’s exclamation at the death of Prince Andrew, which the translators weaken by paraphrase, finding its literalness too disconcerting. It should be: ‘Where is he and who is he now?’

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