Nothing came of this project, and of the three artists, Tolstoy was the only one to fulfil his part of the plan. What the incident appears to confirm, however, is that this hearing of Beethoven’s work was in some way deeply significant for Tolstoy, himself an accomplished pianist and a keen lover of music.*

On 17 November 1888, Tolstoy wrote to Chertkov that he had recently received from America a copy of a book ‘by a certain woman doctor’ which was absorbing his entire attention. This was Tokology – A Book for Every Woman, a recently published gynaecological manual dealing with practical aspects of pregnancy, childbirth and child care, by an American general practitioner named Alice Bunker Stockham. Chapter 11 of this work is entitled ‘Chastity in the Marriage Relation’, and advocates ‘the observance of the law of continence’ which

will do much to palliate the many nervous symptoms of pregnancy. I have known women so sensitive during gestation that even a touch or a kiss from the husband caused nausea and other distressing symptoms… The sexual relation at this time exhausts the mother and impairs the vitality of the child, inducing in its constitution precocious sexual development. The mind should be free from the subject, and every substance that has a tendency to promote desire should be studiously avoided. For this reason separate beds and even sleeping rooms for husband and wife are to be recommended.

Many features of this chapter, including a number of rhetorical flourishes and turns of phrase, found their way into the final drafts of The Kreutzer Sonata, where at times Pozdnyshev almost appears to be speaking with Stockham’s voice. Stockham visited Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana in the autumn of 1889.

In April 1889, while deep in his work on the tale, Tolstoy was startled and impressed, as by some act of providence, by the arrival of another package from the United States, this one containing tracts and brochures by members of the American Shaker community. These also preached absolute chastity. Tolstoy wrote to Chertkov on 10 April:

Are you familiar with their teaching? Especially that part of it that is against marriage, i.e. not against marriage per se, but in favour of an ideal of purity that is superior to marriage. This is a question that preoccupies me constantly, and as just that – a question. I am not in agreement with the solution proposed by the Shakers [voluntary castration], but I cannot help admitting that their solution is much more sensible than our universally accepted institution of marriage. The real reason why I can’t find an answer to the question is because I am an old man, and a repulsive, debauched old man at that…

On 3 July 1889, Tolstoy made the following entry in his notebook: ‘The mother’s selfishness. In the sense that work is a fine thing, but its value depends on what use it serves. And since the children were an expression of her selfishness, they brought nothing but torment.’ On 4 July he noted in his diary:

This morning and yesterday evening thought long and clearly about The Kreutzer Sonata. Sonya is copying it out, it is disturbing her, and last night she spoke of the young woman’s disillusionment, of the sensuality of men, so alien at first, and of their lack of sympathy with children. She is unjust, because she wants to justify herself, while in order to understand and to tell the truth, one must repent. The whole drama of the tale, which has never once gone out of my mind during all this time, is now clear in my mind. He has cultivated her sensuality. The doctors have forbidden her to have any more children. She is fed to satiety, dressed in chic clothes, and there are all the temptations of art. How could she fail to fall? He must feel that he himself has led her to this, that he really murdered her when he conceived this hatred for her, that he sought out a pretext for murdering her and was glad of it. Yes, yesterday the muzhiks confirmed that the klikushi [hysterical peasant women] are always married women, never unmarried girls. So it must be that the phenomenon is caused by sexual excess.

The nine drafts of the tale indicate that during this period its writing was something of an obsession for Tolstoy. This is confirmed by further diary and notebook entries, all of which point to the fact that the task of construction was arduous and frustrating. Something of Tolstoy’s ambivalence to what he eventually produced may be seen in the letter he wrote to the critic N. N. Strakhov on 6 November 1889: ‘Thank you, Nikolay Nikolayevich, for your letter. I greatly valued your criticism, which was much more lenient than I had expected.