“Childhood, Boyhood, Youth” by Leo Tolstoy (post 10): Narrator’s best friend has multiple personality in Tolstoy’s autobiographical first novel

Since Tolstoy’s most celebrated character, Anna Karenina, has multiple personality (search “Tolstoy” or “Karenina” for past posts), I was curious to see if there is anyone with multiple personality in his autobiographical first novel. There is. The first-person narrator describes “two different people” in his best friend, Dmitry:

“As soon as Dmitry had entered my room I could tell from his face, walk and the characteristic way he had in a bad mood of blinking and jerking his head to the side with a grimace, as if adjusting his cravat, that he was in the coldly obstinate mood that came over him whenever he was upset with himself, and that always had a chilling effect on my feeling for him. I had recently begun to observe and reflect on my friend’s character, but our friendship wasn’t changed in the least by that: it was still so young and strong that however I might regard Dmitry, I still couldn’t help but see him as perfect. There were two different people in him and both were excellent to me. One, of whom I was passionately fond, was kind, affectionate, mild, cheerful and aware of those likeable qualities. When he was in that mood, his whole appearance, the sound of his voice and all of his movements said, ‘I’m mild and virtuous and take pleasure in being mild and virtuous, and you can all see that.’ The other, whom I was only now starting to recognize and whose nobility I admired, was cold, severe with himself and others, proud, fanatically religious and pedantically moral. At the moment he was the second person” (1, p. 256).

Dmitry’s switches from his mild personality to his obstinate personality seem to occur when he is upset with himself, but it is more than just a bad mood. There is a change in “his whole appearance, the sound of his voice and all of his movements.” He goes from “mild and affectionate” to “cold, severe, and fanatically religious.” The alteration is so striking that he seems to become a “second person.”

If the above passage in Tolstoy’s autobiographical first novel was a reflection of multiple personality in the author, it would explain Anna Karenina’s multiple personality, and perhaps some of the changes that Tolstoy went through in his own life.

1. Leo Tolstoy. Childhood, Boyhood, Youth [1852-1857]. Translated by Judson Rosengrant. London, Penguin Classics, 2012.