M. K. Elpidin (Михаил Константинович Элпидин) was a Russian publisher in Geneva. In 1884 he printed the first separate edition of A Confession, two years after the work had been cut from the May 1882 issue of Russkaya Mysl. The PSS commentary records that the banned book was first printed by him in Geneva in 1884, under the title “The Confession of Count L. N. Tolstoy. Introduction to an unpublished work”.1
The title
The title “Confession” appears for the first time in Elpidin’s 1884 edition. It is in neither the manuscripts nor the proofs.2 The word had already been used of the work by others, among them Sophia Tolstaya in her diary in 1881 and Nikolai Strakhov in a letter of 1883. Tolstoy himself used it in a letter to L. D. Urusov of 1 May 1885, and in a letter to his wife of 15–18 December 1885 he gave page references, in the editors’ view “evidently by Elpidin’s Geneva edition of 1884”.3
The text
Elpidin’s text differs from the one set for Russkaya Mysl. It lacks the author’s last stylistic corrections, but it also lacks the softenings made there for the church censor. The editors conclude that he printed from the second-to-last page proof.4 The Jubilee edition prints the Russkaya Mysl text and undoes the softenings from Elpidin’s. One example: where Elpidin has “this God separate from the world, from me, melted like a block of ice before my eyes”, Russkaya Mysl has “hid from my eyes”.5
Elpidin reissued the work in a second edition (Geneva, 1889), a third (1895), and a new printing under the same number in 1900.6 Vladimir Chertkov published it at Christchurch in 1901.
Open questions
- The dossier notes that the place on the 1884 title page (Genève or Carouge) has not been seen; no open scan of the 1884, 1889 or 1895 editions was found. The PSS commentary itself gives “Geneva” for 1884 as well as 1889.
- Birth and death years in the frontmatter are not from this dive.
Dive provenance
- 1879-1882-a-confession — the 1884 edition, the title and the text history, from the PSS 23 commentary, 2026-10-02.
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«Запрещенная книга была впервые напечатана М. К. Элпидиным в Женеве в 1884 г. под заглавием: «Исповедь графа Л. Н. Толстого. Вступление к ненапечатанному сочинению» (PSS 23, commentary). English: ours. ↩
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«Название «Исповедь гр. Л. Н. Толстого» является впервые в издании Элпидина 1884 г. Ни в рукописях, ни в корректурах этого названия нет» (PSS 23, commentary). English: ours. ↩
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«(очевидно, по женевскому изданию Элпидина 1884 г.)» (PSS 23, commentary). English: ours. The Sophia Tolstaya diary entry (31 January 1881), the Strakhov letter to N. Ya. Danilevsky (13 September 1883) and the Urusov letter are cited from the same commentary, not read in this dive. ↩
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«В издании Элпидина текст произведения Толстого появился без цензурных искажений. Очевидно, Элпидин печатал по предпоследней сверстанной корректуре — без последних поправок автора, но и без цензурных смягчений и выкидок» (PSS 23, commentary). English: ours. ↩
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«И опять этот отдельный от мира, от меня бог, как льдина, таял, таял на моих глазах»; «И опять этот отдельный от мира, от меня бог скрывался от моих глаз» (PSS 23, commentary, table of censor’s softenings, at 45, 4–5). English: ours. ↩
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«2-е изд. Элпидина, Женева, 1889; 3-е изд. его же 1895 г. и под тем же номером новое издание 1900 г.» (PSS 23, commentary). English: ours. ↩