Adela and Albert: A Tolstoyan Love Story

Canadian Slavonic Papers, Sep-Dec 2003 by Brock, Peter

ABSTRACT: Albert Skarvan (1869-1926) is regarded today as a figure of some importance in Slovak literature. Though he played no part in political life, he was an enthusiastic cultural nationalist and an advocate of the use of the Slovak vernacular for literature. His Memoirs of an Army Doctor (1920), republished in 1992, reveal the mindset of a Tolstoyan antimilitarist. They also present a unique picture of conditions prevailing in military prisons of the Habsburg Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1895 Skarvan, who was then near the completion of his conscript service, had, largely under the influence of Tolstoy's writings, refused to serve any longer-to the surprise of his fellow officers. he remained firmly behind his decision and, as a result, he was eventually sentenced to a term of imprisonment in a military jail. His stand was warmly supported by Tolstoy, with whom Skarvan had started to correspond. Before being sentenced Skarvan spent some time in the psychiatric ward of a Viennese hospital, to which the army authorities had sent him for examination. There he met a charming Austrian aristocrat, a widow of Polish origin, Adela von Mazzuchelli, who was visiting another patient in the psychiatric ward. The two fell in love. After he was released from jail, Albert, however, broke off the relationship, even though Adela wished to continue it. The romance came to an end for various reasons, among these the chief perhaps were the difference in social status of the couple in a class-bound society and Skarvan's desire not to become emotionally entangled. Tolstoy was fascinated by their story; so, in a long letter, now preserved in the manuscript collection of the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow, Skarvan related in detail the course of his romance. The letter forms the main source for the present article.

In 1895 Tolstoy became intensely interested in the case of a twenty-six year old Slovak doctor, Albert Skarvan (1869-1926), who, in February of that year, refused on grounds of conscience to complete his term of conscript service in the Austro-Hungarian army.1 he had drawn his inspiration for this unusual act of defiance largely from reading Tolstoy's challenging treatise, The Kingdom of God Is Within You (Tsarstvo Bozhie vnutri vas), with its powerful antiwar message. The Russian text had been published abroad in 1893, and a copy had reached Skarvan while on service. Tolstoy was overjoyed when he discovered that writings of his, suppressed at home, had produced results abroad. he saw this development, somewhat unrealistically, as the beginning of a movement that would eventually embrace the whole world and bring an end to human warfare.

The Slovaks of northern Hungary, since the outset of their national awakening in the previous century, had looked to Russia as an ally in their struggle to preserve a national identity threatened most visibly by the Magyar ruling class. Cultural slavophilism and even political union of all Slavs under the sceptre of the Russian Tsar had been popular ideas among the leaders of the Slovak national movement. However, by the end of the nineteenth century the old-time Slovak national party was on the wane. Its political panslavism and sympathy for the Russian autocracy had alienated many young Slovak intellectuals, who now sought new ways to strengthen their still largely rural people. Protestants among them tended to look to Prague and the person of T.G. Masaryk, then a professor of philosophy at the Czech University there. Members of the majority Catholic faith, on the other hand, concentrated their hopes on the Slovak Catholic priesthood as potential leaders of the national movement.

Tolstoyism was to find only a handful of adherents among the Slovak intelligentsia. The significance of Slovak Tolstoyism lies in its providing the only example of the fusion of Tolstoyan nonviolence with nationalism of the cultural-linguistic variety. (State nationalism and Tolstoyism are, of course, incompatible ideologies.) It was Albert Skarvan, along with his mentor and Tolstoy's house physician Dusan Makovicky, who were to become Slovakia's leading Tolstoyans. An able translator from the Russian, an eloquent exponent of Slovak cultural nationalism, and a skilled writer in his mother tongue, Skarvan also enjoys a secure place among the masters of Slovak prose.2

The young Slovak had been sentenced by court-martial to a term of imprisonment in july 1895, and he was released from jail on 3 October.3 While still in detention waiting for his official discharge from the army, which came three weeks later, Skarvan wrote at some length to Tolstoy to thank him for his warm support and to tell him something of his own experiences over the previous months.4 Once having taken the decision to refuse further service he had no longer hesitated how to proceed. he no longer attempted to weigh the consequences; he was no longer affected by those who tried to persuade him to act differently. "From then on," he told Tolstoy, "I had no regrets. On the contrary I felt increasingly that I had acted logically and as I should do. Throughout my time in prison I only rarely felt a slight pang of regret at the change in my fate. Otherwise I was entirely at peace with myself."5