“Romance without words”, the storytelling talent of Sofia Tolstaja

Sofia Tolstaia (1844-1919) completed her artistic genius when, at the age of 18, she married the great Leo Tolstoy, who was then 34. not only as a wife but also as a writer: she copied her manuscripts, read and criticized them, and took care of her intellectual legacy. Such a yoke and possessive attitude of the author from Anna Karenina they caused a depression in the woman that further intensified the pain she suffered due to the very early loss of the youngest of her children, Vánechka, to scarlet fever at the age of seven. The couple’s relationship suffered from situations of jealousy and constant tension — and so, amid misunderstandings, it would continue until the writer’s death in 1910. One of the darkest episodes of the marriage was related to another man, the pianist and composer Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev, with whom Sofia Tolstaia maintained a long and complex friendship — fueled by the love they both expressed for music — in which they supported him to try to overcome the depressive process to which he was brought by the death of the thirteenth descendant. Despite their strictly platonic relationship and the pianist’s homosexuality, Tolstoy repeatedly demanded that they end their meetings, exacerbating the already chronic crisis affecting their married life. Much of this biographical experience lies beneath the lyrics romance without words (Xordica), Tolstoy’s second novel — as happened in the first, Whose fault is it?, which also appeared on the Aragonese label— and in which aspects such as passion, sense of duty and the healing power of music prevail strongly. The reader knew the subtlety of his prose from diaries (Dawn, 2010); now you know you’re looking at a talented storyteller who has been unfairly overlooked — both titles remained unpublished in Russian until 2010.