In the text The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) Leo Tolstoy combines detailed physical descriptions with perceptive psychological insight to sweep aside the sham of surface appearances and lay bare man's intimate gestures, acts, and thoughts on murder and sacrifice, greed and devotion, lust and affection, vanity and love (Duff). As Tolstoy's key figure in Kreutzer Sonata, Pozdnyshev, grapples with basic human drives, desires, emotions and motives of ordinary individuals striving for spiritual perfection, we as readers easily unravel the fundamental source of his struggles. Tolstoy's thorough understanding of the underlying forces, which mold one's ideas and views, as reflected in his characters, parallels that of Karl Marx, as wrought in German Ideology (1846); moreover, as readers we engage with each character subconsciously through our communal relationship to their insufferable longings. Tolstoy's psychological insight into love and desire, as revealed through Pozdnyshev's dialogue with another train passenger, prematurely parallels that of Jacques Lacan, as described in The Mirror Stage (1949) and The Signification of the Phallus (1958).

While it is not certain whether Tolstoy read the works of Marx or not, it is absolutely clear, however, that passages in Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonanta suggest an unequivocal agreement between the two writers. Passages such as the following reveal Tolstoy's perception of how society's ideas are constructed by material life. This passage comes to us from the first half of the story, in which Pozdnyshev details the "special powers" possessed by women to another passenger on the train :

"...As it is at present, a woman is deprived of that that right while a man has it. And to make up for that right she acts on man's sensuality, and through his sensuality subdues him so that he only chooses formally, while in reality it is she who chooses. And once she has obtained these means she abuses them and acquires a terrible power of people."

"But where is this special power?" I inquired.

"where is it? Why everywhere, in everything! Go round the shops in any big town. There are goods worth millions and you cannot estimate the human labor expended on them, and look whether in nine-tenths of these shops there is anything for the use of men. All the luxuries of life are demanded and maintained by women..."

This passage reminds us of Marx's revolutionary conception of the agencies molding individual and societal consciousness that ultimately leads to its overall structure, as articulated in German Ideology. Tolstoy's key character then expounds on how this consciousness reinforces the suppression of women, and why it ought to remain this way. But, as depicted in this story, such a society benefits no one, it forces the dominant to formulate a thinking that may not be to their liking but is necessary. The formulation and internalization of these ideas deprive the individual of the organic unity he or she may once have held or what Lacan refers to as the "Ideal-I" in Mirror Stage.

As Pozdnyshev grows and assimilates into a society structured before him, he feels he lacks something, he desires something, but what? He doesn't know. What he does know or rather senses, is that he lacks the organic unity, his Ideal-I. It has been modified against his will, and he now seeks to regain its original form. He sublimates this desire unto love and marries, just as Lacan suggests in both Mirror Stage and The signification of the Phallus. However, this does not satisfy him, in fact it has the opposite effect, it brings him to murder.

This lack of organic unity is a hallmark of Tolstoy's best pieces. Tolstoy's insight into the causes of desire, and the inevitable shortcoming of its fulfillment has provided us with the most profound, cognitive and memorable pieces of literature both during his lifetime and today.

-O. James

© Orin James 2008