ABSTRACT
IN Anna Karenin Tolstoy had touched upon the subject which he now felt to be all important. But, to use Chekov's phrase, in his novel he had done no more than state the problem correctly. The solving of it was to demand all his energies for the next five years. Death, and the meaning of life, which formerly he had contemplated so often: these could no longer be evaded by excursions into new activities. And death had been a frequent visitor these last years to Yasnaya Polyana. In November 1873 his youngest son Peter, "a fat little boy my wife doted on," had been suddenly taken ill with croup, and died a few days later. In June 1874 came the death of his dear aunt Tatiana. "When already beginning to grow feeble, having waited her opportunity, one day when I was in her room she said to us, turning away (I saw that she was ready to cry)," Tolstoy wrote years later in his Recollections: "'Look here, mes chers amis, my room is a good one, and you will want it. If I die in it,' and her voice trembled,' the recollection will be unpleasant to you; so move me somewhere else. . . .'" Towards the end, she could recognize no one save her "cher Léon"; but at his approach her face always lit up with joy, and sometimes she moved her lips as though to pronounce the name Nicholas, "thus in death completely and inseparably uniting me with him she had loved all her life."
