. MONTHERLANT, Henry de (1895–1972).

On TOLSTOY. A first draft manuscript, in purple ink, containing numerous and significant corrections, of a preface that was not selected for a TOLSTOY edition; in a very different form, the text was later included in Montherlant’s *Essais critiques* (Gallimard, 1995). “ However worthy of respect Tolstoy’s final words may be—which are to be found here—what dominates this book is not so much the moral expression of Tolstoy in his final year as the problem of that Tolstoy’s relationship with his wife. [...] Tolstoy’s marriage serves as a warning of the utmost importance, because it symbolises a common situation: the marriage of a man who is not cut out for marriage, and who marries without serious reason, to a woman who is no worse than others, but from whom he can only suffer, simply because she is a woman, that is to say, of a kind incompatible with his own”...