Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy created many literary masterpieces during his lifetime, including Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Works of love and tragedy, Tolstoy’s real life mirrored the full spectrum of the human experience, including in his marriage.
Tolstoy married his wife Sophia Bers (also ‘Sofia’ and ‘Sofya’, as well as ‘Sonya‘, which is the common Russian diminutive for Sofya), in 1862. He was 34, she was 18. Her father was a successful doctor in Moscow. Their marriage was famously tumultuous, but lasted 48 years.
Tolstoy shared his insights into marriage, summing up his wisdom in a single sentence that holds true in modern day life:
“What counts in making a happy marriage is not how compatible you are but how you deal with incompatibility.”
Despite their differences, Tolstoy and his wife put his advice into practice.
How their marriage actually began
Tolstoy’s marriage to Sophia began like many: happy. Leah Bendavid-Val, author of Song Without Words: The Photographs and Diaries of Countess Sophia Tolstoy, told NPR that, “They were madly in love when they got married in 1862, and they shared everything, including their diaries. They used their diaries to talk to each other.”
The couple had 13 children together, with eight making it into adulthood. Sofia was an asset to Tolstoy’s writing.
“She copied his manuscripts and he listened to her opinions, which was very gratifying to her,” Bendavid-Val said.
When love turned to love-hate
However, their relationship evolved into one described as “love-hate.” Bendavid-Val explained that their relationship was “very emotional, very passionate, and their love was full and passionate and deep and rich, and so was their hatred. And unfortunately, the hatred seems to have won out in the end.”
According to The New York Times, Sophia served as “secretary, copy editor and financial manager” for her husband. In 1869, she copied the manuscript for War and Peace by hand eight times for him.
A devoted wife, she struggled to meet Tolstoy’s demands and principles. She honestly journaled about her feelings, and many have been translated.
“All the things that he preaches for the happiness of humanity only complicate life to the point where it becomes harder and harder for me to live,” she wrote in a diary in 1865, per The Guardian. “His vegetarian diet means the complication of preparing two dinners, which means twice the expense and twice the work. His sermons on love and goodness have made him indifferent to his family, and mean the intrusion of all kinds of riff-raff into our family life. And his (purely verbal) renunciation of worldly goods has made him endlessly critical and disapproving of others.”
How it all came to an end
Toward the end of his life, an argument over Leo’s will resulted in him leaving their family home called Yasnaya Polyana. Although their relationship had its challenges, the couple did remain married until her husband’s death shortly after he left their home in 1910.
“They needed each other. Neither of them could have lived as full and rich a life without the other,” Bendavid-Val said.
Love and hate can share a marriage
At the end of the day, the Tolstoys’ marriage doesn’t offer a tidy lesson. It wasn’t a fairy tale, and it wasn’t a cautionary tale either, it was 48 years of two people who loved each other fiercely, frustrated each other constantly, and somehow never quite managed to let go. Sophia’s diaries make clear how much that cost her. But Bendavid-Val’s observation cuts just as deep: neither of them could have lived as full a life without the other.
Maybe that’s what Tolstoy actually meant by his own advice. Compatibility was never really the point. It was what they built, argued over, and clung to anyway, for nearly half a century, that made the marriage what it was.
This article originally appeared in April. It has been updated.
