Research|Scholarly Context: The Kreutzer Sonata + Afterword

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Scholarly Context: The Kreutzer Sonata + Afterword

Last modified 10 August 2026 · view source

Secondary layer for the corpus dive 1887-1889-the-kreutzer-sonata

This document maps the received scholarly view against the dive’s primary findings. It is a divergence map, not corroboration. Claims are attributed inline; genuine uncertainty is flagged. The project treats the Sofia-centred / “Last Station” biographical frame as the mainstream view to be read critically, not as a baseline — that skepticism is noted where relevant but not imported into the reporting below.

1. The Received View: Where the Novella + Afterword Sit in Tolstoy’s Life and Work

The consensus in English-language Tolstoy biography is that The Kreutzer Sonata (completed 1889, published 1890 in PSS vol. 13) marks the culmination of the moral-religious crisis that had been building since the late 1870s, and that it belongs with the post-conversion treatises rather than with the earlier realist fiction. Ernest J. Simmons, whose two-volume Leo Tolstoy (1945–1946, Harvard) remains a standard reference, places the genesis of the novella in 1887, noting that Tolstoy “began this tale of sexual love on a hint given to him by the actor Andreyev-Burlak” and then set it aside before returning to it (Simmons, cited in multiple secondary sources; no direct page quotation verifiable from web sources). Rosamund Bartlett’s Tolstoy: A Russian Life (2010, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) discusses the novella in the context of Tolstoy’s sexual guilt, his encounter with Dr Alice Bunker Stockham’s Tokology (1883), and what Bartlett describes as the “enormous impact” of Stockham’s thinking on Tolstoy’s views on sexuality around the time of composition (Bartlett 2010, noted in web-accessible secondary scholarship; specific page references could not be verified). Aylmer Maude, who knew Tolstoy personally and whose The Life of Tolstoy (2 vols., 1908–1910, Oxford) is the earliest substantial English biography, contains many references to the novella and treats it as a sincere, if extreme, statement of Tolstoy’s Christian ethics rather than a literary performance (Maude 1953 reprint, noted in EBSCO Research Starters for The Kreutzer Sonata; specific passages not directly quotable from available sources).

The broad consensus is that the novella and its 1890 Afterword (Послесловие) together argue three linked positions: (a) sexual desire is an obstacle to worthy human purposes — service to God, to neighbour, or to art; (b) chastity even within marriage is the Christian ideal; (c) the current institution of marriage, premised on “carnal love,” is therefore a moral failure. Tolstoy frames chastity as directional guidance rather than a law that, if universally followed, would end humanity — he addresses this anticipated objection explicitly in the Afterword (The Kreutzer Sonata, Afterword, Chapter “Lesson of the Kreutzer Sonata,” marxists.org transcription).

G. K. Chesterton, in a 1908 essay, offered an early hostile assessment: Tolstoy “pitied humanity for its pleasures rather than solely its pains,” arguing the doctrine was life-denying in a way incompatible with genuine Christian charity (Chesterton 1908, summarised in Wikipedia, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” accessed June 2026 — no page reference verifiable). This Chestertonian critique has persisted as a touchstone in reception history.

Uncertainty note: Specific page references for Bartlett (2010), Simmons (1945–46), and Maude (1908–10) are attributed on the basis of secondary citations; the full texts were not accessible for direct quotation during this research pass.

2. The Marquee Debate: Pozdnyshev as Mouthpiece vs. Unreliable Narrator

This is the central interpretive fault line in the scholarship, and scholars divide sharply.

The mouthpiece reading (dominant in reception, partially endorsed by Tolstoy himself)

The most common popular and early scholarly reading equates Pozdnyshev’s philosophical positions — on the animality of sexual desire, the corruption of marriage as an institution, the ideal of chastity — with Tolstoy’s own views. The strongest evidence for this identification is Tolstoy’s own Afterword (1890), in which he states explicitly that he endorses every word of the “madman’s” argument even if not the murder itself. This authorial intervention is what gives the mouthpiece reading its empirical ground: the Afterword functions as a Tolstoyan confession of doctrinal alignment. Contemporary readers in the “Moscow-to-Petersburg intellectual class” initially assumed irony, suggesting the work portrayed an unreliable character; Tolstoy’s Afterword was understood as closing that reading off (source: Jeffrey Falk, “Leo Tolstoy’s ‘The Kreutzer Sonata,’” The Most Endangered Species Substack, 2023, themostendangeredspecies.substack.com — a secondary synthesis, not primary scholarship, but useful as a summary of the interpretive situation).

Aylmer Maude’s biographical reading reinforces the mouthpiece view: the Afterword, for Maude, simply clarified what the novella already showed (Maude 1908–10, cited via EBSCO).

The ironic-distance / unreliable-narrator reading

The strongest scholarly case for ironic distance comes from Tamar Yacobi’s chapter “Authorial Rhetoric, Narratorial (Un)Reliability, Divergent Readings: Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata,” in A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 108–23. Yacobi argues that the text constructs Pozdnyshev as a rhetorically managed figure whose apparent reliability is a literary effect produced by authorial design — not a transparent window onto Tolstoy’s views. The chapter titles she deploys are themselves telling: “The Selling of a Madman: Rhetoric in the Service of Reliability” and “Opposing the Reliable Mediator: The Perspectival Hypothesis Inverted” (chapter structure confirmed via Wiley Online Library abstract and Library of Congress catalogue record). Yacobi’s narratological framework treats Tolstoy’s Afterword not as a resolution of ambiguity but as a second, separate rhetorical act — one that does not necessarily govern how the fictional text operates.

Kate Holland observes that Pozdnyshev functions as “a stand-in for Tolstoy’s own ambivalent attitude toward fictional narrative,” embodying the tensions about storytelling that disturbed Tolstoy himself — a reading that opens ironic space without collapsing it into pure mouthpiece (Holland, cited in “Art and Transgression in The Kreutzer Sonata,” transgresslit.wordpress.com, 2014 — secondary blog synthesis citing Holland’s scholarship; primary publication details not verified in this pass).

Richard Gustafson’s reading (referenced in Crime or Punishment: Russian Narratives of Incarceration project, Bryn Mawr) calls attention to Pozdnyshev’s “powerful state of intoxication” — the tobacco, strong tea, and hypnotic train motion — as factors that colour and potentially distort his narration, without resolving the question of whether this distortion is ironised by Tolstoy or simply rendered realistically (Gustafson, cited via brynmawr.edu secondary source; specific publication not named).

Tatyana Gershkovich, “Suspicion on Trial: Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Nabokov’s ‘Pozdnyshev’s Address,’” PMLA 134.3 (May 2019), pp. 459–474 (Cambridge Core), argues that both Tolstoy and Nabokov treat readerly suspicion as an “inescapable condition” rather than a chosen interpretive method, and that the novella is crafted to counteract distrust rather than to produce it — a position that partially reclaims the mouthpiece reading by showing how the text itself works to foreclose ironic reception, while simultaneously acknowledging the constructedness of that closure.

Dmitri Merezhkovsky complained that Pozdnyshev is “reduced to a voice” — a formal observation that has been recuperated by critics sympathetic to either side: for mouthpiece readers it confirms the character’s function as ideological vehicle; for ironic-distance readers it supports the case that the character is a structural device rather than a rounded psychological subject (Merezhkovsky, cited via eNotes criticism summary).

Summary of the debate: The mouthpiece reading has the weight of the Afterword and Maude’s biographical tradition behind it. The unreliable-narrator / ironic-distance reading is the stronger literary-critical position, developed most rigorously by Yacobi (2005) and partially engaged by Gershkovich (2019). The two positions are not fully reconcilable: the Afterword is a genuine complication for ironic readings, and the novella’s formal management of Pozdnyshev’s voice is a genuine complication for simple identification. Most sophisticated contemporary scholarship holds both in tension rather than resolving the question.

3. The Autobiographical / Sofia Frame

The mainstream biographical reading — associated especially with popular biographies and the “Last Station” cultural frame — treats the novella as a veiled attack on Tolstoy’s own marriage, with Pozdnyshev’s jealousy mirroring Tolstoy’s documented jealousy of Sofia’s relationship with composer and pianist Sergei Taneyev, who gave her music lessons. This reading circulates widely and is treated as background in most English-language introductions.

Sofia Tolstaya (Sophia Tolstoy) felt the novella as a direct public humiliation. She wrote two counter-fictions, both of which remained unpublished until 2000 and appeared in English translation in Michael R. Katz’s scholarly edition The Kreutzer Sonata Variations: Lev Tolstoy’s Novella and Counterstories by Sofiya Tolstaya and Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (Yale University Press, 2014):

Ron Rosenbaum, reviewing Katz’s edition for Slate (February 2015), challenges dismissive assessments of Sofia’s literary skill, arguing that “Sofiya Tolstoy can write” and that “Whose Fault?” portrays love “from a woman’s point of view” with “complexity, conflictedness, perplexity” that exposes Tolstoy’s presumption (Rosenbaum, Slate, 2015, slate.com/culture/2015/02).

William L. Shirer’s biography (1994, noted in EBSCO Research Starters) “analyzes how [the novella] reflects the real-life marital relationship of the Tolstoys” and notes it “created further marital friction.” Louise Smoluchowski’s work (1987, EBSCO) discusses the Tolstoys’ marriage’s “powerful influence” on Tolstoy’s ideas about love and marriage.

Project caution (per AGENTS.md): The Sofia-centred / “Last Station” biographical frame is the mainstream received view; this project treats it skeptically. The following should be registered as its limitations: (a) it conflates the doctrinal argument of the novella (which precedes any Taneyev connection and is grounded in Tolstoy’s post-conversion Christian ethics) with a contingent biographical jealousy; (b) it tends to flatten the Afterword’s explicit theological architecture into personal grievance; (c) the “Taneyev affair” as motive for the novella is disputed chronologically — the novella’s earliest drafts predate the Taneyev connection. This project grounds analysis in Tolstoy’s own texts and prior dives, treating the biographical frame as a lens to be examined, not adopted.

4. Music-and-Morality: The Novella and What Is Art?

The novella’s Chapter 23 contains Tolstoy’s most concentrated statement of music’s dangerous involuntary power, delivered by Pozdnyshev:

“Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own. Under the influence of music I really seem to feel what I do not feel, to understand what I do not understand… Is it right that anyone should be able to hypnotize another person?” (The Kreutzer Sonata, ch. 23, marxists.org transcription).

He calls music “a frightful power in the hands of any one, no matter whom” — explicitly comparing its effect to hypnosis.

Scholars and critics have consistently read this passage as anticipating the argument Tolstoy would develop in What Is Art? (Что такое искусство?, 1897–98). The blog-essay “Art and Transgression in The Kreutzer Sonata” (transgresslit.wordpress.com, 2014) states that Tolstoy “spent years examining the relationship between art, madness, and transgression, which culminated in his treatise, What Is Art? (1898)” and that the novella’s own ambiguity — requiring the supplementary Afterword — “suggest[s] Tolstoy recognized art’s inherent limitations in communicating moral ideas directly.” The essay acknowledges insufficient space to develop the connection fully.

Bettina L. Knapp’s essay “Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata: Archetypal Music as a Demonic Force” (1988, in Music, Archetype, and the Writer, Pennsylvania State University Press — year confirmed via eNotes) argues that archetypal music in the narrative “creates havoc; it unleashes repressed instincts and opens the floodgates to the irrational” — framing music as demonic rather than morally neutral. This reading aligns with the trajectory toward What Is Art?, where Tolstoy will argue that most contemporary art produces morally corrupting involuntary states in its audience.

Dorothy Green’s essay “Tolstoy and Beethoven” (1966, published in an Australian scholarly context — venue not confirmed) argues for a structural as well as thematic parallel between Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata Op. 47 and the novella’s own dramatic architecture, finding “a closer connection between Tolstoy’s novel and Beethoven’s music than is usually allowed for” (Green 1966, cited via eNotes). This reading does not directly address What Is Art? but establishes the seriousness of Tolstoy’s musical-aesthetic engagement in the novella.

Keri Hui’s article “Kreutzer Sonata’s Rousseauian Gospel: Leo Tolstoy’s Artistic Asceticism,” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 53.1 (2022) (kerihui.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Hui_IRASM_53_1-1.pdf — PDF confirmed in search; full text not readable in this pass) appears to argue for a Rousseauian genealogy of Tolstoy’s ascetic aesthetics connecting the novella to What Is Art?, but the specific claims could not be verified from the available text.

Peter Ulf Møller, in work on Russian fin-de-siècle debates, contextualizes the novella as introducing “the question of sexual instinct and marriage as a sexual relationship to Russian literature for the first time” (Møller cited via transgresslit.wordpress.com, 2014; primary publication not confirmed in this pass).

What the project’s What Is Art? dive has established: This project has an independent dive on What Is Art?; the scholarly consensus that the two works form a continuous aesthetic-moral argument is the expected synthesis point — but the connection should be drawn from Tolstoy’s own texts, not simply assumed from the scholarly consensus.

5. Reception and Moral Panic Beyond Russia

Russia: The novella was banned from independent publication by Russian censors immediately on completion. Sofia Tolstaya secured a personal audience with Tsar Alexander III, who reluctantly permitted inclusion in Tolstoy’s collected works (vol. 13), the only form in which it initially circulated legally. Before official release it spread in handwritten copies — described by scholar Pavel Basinsky as a “forerunner to Soviet samizdat” (Basinsky, cited via rbth.com, “How Tolstoy’s banned novella started a sexual revolution in Russia”).

United States (1890): The US Post Office Department banned newspapers carrying serialised translations of the novella in 1890, confirmed by the Attorney General. The ban operated under the Comstock Act’s indecency provisions. At least five English translations appeared in America and England in 1890 despite the postal ban. Courts in New York and Pennsylvania struck down sales bans the same year (Wikipedia, “The Kreutzer Sonata,” confirmed; rbth.com; fineeditionsltd.com catalogue entry for Tucker translation).

Theodore Roosevelt: Roosevelt called Tolstoy a “sexual moral pervert” — the phrase is the most-cited hostile Anglophone response. He is also reported to have written Upton Sinclair that the book “could only have been written by a man of diseased moral nature” (Roosevelt quotes attributed in multiple secondary sources including Wikipedia and rbth.com; primary letter source not verified in this pass).

International: The novella’s publication in the early 1890s “set off an explosive debate in Europe, America, and Asia on matters that were then called the ‘sexual question’ and the ‘woman problem’” and “almost everywhere (including the United States), The Kreutzer Sonata was censored or forbidden as ‘indecent literature’” (GradeSaver Background section; penguinrandomhouse.com reading guide; both citing the general reception). Specific bans in France and Germany were not confirmed by sources accessed in this research pass — this needs verification.

Feminist response (Russia): Yelizaveta Dyakonova, described as “one of the first Russian feminists,” wrote critically against the sexual double standard the novella implicitly accepted — questioning why men were permitted premarital experience denied to women (Dyakonova, cited via rbth.com).

Paradox of censorship: The ban paradoxically amplified reception. Basinsky notes the novella “was one of the decade’s main crazes” in the 1890s and that Tolstoy “captured the imagination of the whole educated society and especially young people” as a result of the forbidden-fruit effect (Basinsky, cited via rbth.com).

6. The Chastity Doctrine in Context

Within Tolstoy’s post-conversion ethics: The mainstream scholarly view situates the novella’s chastity argument within the broader ethical turn of the late 1870s–1880s — the period of A Confession (1879–82), What I Believe (1884), and What Then Must We Do? (1886). By 1889, Tolstoy had come to regard celibacy as the Christian ideal and the sex drive as the primary obstacle to spiritual development (Russia Beyond, “Why did Leo Tolstoy hate sex?”; Crime or Punishment, Bryn Mawr). The Afterword makes the theological grounding explicit: “That it is incumbent on mankind so to strive, and that celibacy is preferable to marriage, are truths revealed by Christ 1,900 years ago” (The Kreutzer Sonata Afterword, “Lesson of the Kreutzer Sonata,” marxists.org transcription).

Stockham / Tokology influence: Robert Edwards, “Tolstoy and Alice B. Stockham: The Influence of Tokology on ‘The Kreutzer Sonata,’” Tolstoy Studies Journal 6 (1993, Rochester, NY) — the specialist study on this connection. Bartlett (2010) also discusses Stockham’s “enormous impact” on Tolstoy. Stockham’s Tokology: A Book for Every Woman (1883) sold at least 150,000 copies in its first decade; Tolstoy personally organised a Russian edition and wrote a new preface, and he invited Stockham to visit Yasnaya Polyana (she did). Stockham’s interest in post-pregnancy celibacy is the specific textual bridge between her work and the novella’s argument (evanstonroundtable.com, March 2025; ncbi.nlm.nih.gov article on Tokology). The Stockham connection grounds the chastity doctrine in a North American proto-feminist medical context, complicating the assumption that the argument is purely patriarchal in origin.

The Shakers and early-Christian asceticism: The Afterword explicitly names the “hermits and anchorites of the early Christian times” as precedents for the celibacy ideal, and refers to sectarian groups including the Shakers and the Ephrata Cloisters as communities where celibacy was a membership requirement (“Lesson of the Kreutzer Sonata,” marxists.org). The scholarly apparatus for this connection is thin in available English-language secondary sources accessed in this pass; the eNotes criticism entry “Tolstoy the Ascetic? The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius and Resurrection” by E. B. Greenwood (1975) appears to address the asceticism connection (confirmed as listed in eNotes criticism section; full text not accessible without subscription).

Orthodox Church and excommunication: The chastity doctrine in the Afterword — holding that “carnal love and marriage constitute service to oneself and therefore in any case are a hindrance to service to God” — was one strand in the broader theological conflict that led to Tolstoy’s excommunication (technically “falling away”) from the Russian Orthodox Church in February 1901 by the Holy Synod. The Synod’s statement accused Tolstoy of disseminating “teachings repugnant to Christ and the Church” (historical record, cited via gw2ru.com and christianitytoday.com 2001 retrospective). The Kreutzer Sonata and its Afterword are part of the doctrinal record the Church cited, though the 1901 action was triggered more immediately by Resurrection (1899) and Tolstoy’s continued public religious heterodoxy.

H. P. Blavatsky’s response (1890): Helena Blavatsky, the Theosophist, reviewed the novella favourably from an ascetic standpoint, treating its celibacy argument as aligned with esoteric spiritual discipline (selfdefinition.org/celibacy/quotes/blavatsky-review-tolstoy.htm — transcription of original Theosophical review). This is a minor but telling data point: the doctrine found its readiest sympathisers not in mainstream Christianity but in heterodox spiritualist and ascetic circles.

References

  1. Bartlett, Rosamund (2010). Tolstoy: A Russian Life. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Google Books

  2. Basinsky, Pavel (cited secondary). In “How Tolstoy’s banned novella started a sexual revolution in Russia.” Russia Beyond (rbth.com). https://www.rbth.com/arts/333317-tolstoys-kreutzer-sonata

  3. Blavatsky, Helena P. (1890). Review of The Kreutzer Sonata. Theosophical press. Transcription at: https://selfdefinition.org/celibacy/quotes/blavatsky-review-tolstoy.htm

  4. Chesterton, G. K. (1908). Essay on Tolstoy [exact title not confirmed in this pass]. Cited in Wikipedia, “The Kreutzer Sonata.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kreutzer_Sonata

  5. Edwards, Robert (1993). “Tolstoy and Alice B. Stockham: The Influence of Tokology on ‘The Kreutzer Sonata.’” Tolstoy Studies Journal 6. Rochester, NY. ProQuest preview

  6. Gershkovich, Tatyana (2019). “Suspicion on Trial: Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata and Nabokov’s ‘Pozdnyshev’s Address.’” PMLA 134.3 (May 2019), pp. 459–474. Cambridge Core | PDF (Northwestern)

  7. Green, Dorothy (1966). “Tolstoy and Beethoven.” [Venue not confirmed in this pass.] Cited via eNotes criticism section. https://www.enotes.com/topics/kreutzer-sonata/criticism/criticism/dorothy-green-essay-date-1966

  8. Greenwood, E. B. (1975). “Tolstoy the Ascetic? The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius and Resurrection.” eNotes criticism. https://www.enotes.com/topics/kreutzer-sonata/criticism/criticism/e-b-greenwood-essay-date-1975 [full text requires subscription]

  9. Holland, Kate. Cited secondary via “Art and Transgression in The Kreutzer Sonata,” transgresslit.wordpress.com, 2014. [Primary publication not confirmed in this pass.] https://transgresslit.wordpress.com/2014/05/11/art-and-transgression-in-the-kreutzer-sonata/

  10. Hui, Keri (2022). “Kreutzer Sonata’s Rousseauian Gospel: Leo Tolstoy’s Artistic Asceticism.” International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 53.1. PDF (author site, not fully readable in this pass)

  11. Katz, Michael R., ed. and trans. (2014). The Kreutzer Sonata Variations: Lev Tolstoy’s Novella and Counterstories by Sofiya Tolstaya and Lev Lvovich Tolstoy. New Haven: Yale University Press.

  12. Knapp, Bettina L. (1988). “Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata: Archetypal Music as a Demonic Force.” In Music, Archetype, and the Writer. Pennsylvania State University Press. Cited via eNotes. https://www.enotes.com/topics/kreutzer-sonata/criticism/criticism/bettina-l-knapp-essay-date-1988

  13. Maude, Aylmer (1908–10). The Life of Tolstoy. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press. (1953 reprint noted via EBSCO Research Starters.) https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/literature-and-writing/kreutzer-sonata-leo-tolstoy

  14. Merezhkovsky, Dmitri. Cited secondary via eNotes criticism introduction. https://www.enotes.com/topics/kreutzer-sonata/criticism/introduction

  15. Møller, Peter Ulf. Cited secondary via transgresslit.wordpress.com (2014). [Primary publication not confirmed in this pass.]

  16. Rosenbaum, Ron (2015). Review of The Kreutzer Sonata Variations. Slate, February 2015. https://slate.com/culture/2015/02/sofiya-tolstoys-novella-whose-fault-a-response-to-the-kreutzer-sonata-reviewed.html

  17. Shirer, William L. (1994). Love and Hatred: The Troubled Marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy. New York: Simon & Schuster. Noted via EBSCO Research Starters.

  18. Simmons, Ernest J. (1945–46). Leo Tolstoy. 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cited secondary via multiple sources.

  19. Smoluchowski, Louise (1987). Lev and Sonya: The Story of the Tolstoy Marriage. New York: Putnam. Noted via EBSCO Research Starters.

  20. Stockham, Alice Bunker (1883). Tokology: A Book for Every Woman. Chicago. Context via: https://evanstonroundtable.com/2025/03/29/evanston-history-in-the-footsteps-of-alice-bunker-stockham-part-1/

  21. Tolstoy, Leo (1890). The Kreutzer Sonata (Afterword / “Lesson”). Marxists.org transcription. https://www.marxists.org/archive/tolstoy/1891/the-kreutzer-sonata/lesson.html

  22. Wikipedia. “The Kreutzer Sonata.” Accessed June 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kreutzer_Sonata

  23. Wikipedia. “Sophia Tolstaya.” Accessed June 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Tolstaya

  24. Yacobi, Tamar (2005). “Authorial Rhetoric, Narratorial (Un)Reliability, Divergent Readings: Tolstoy’s Kreutzer Sonata.” In A Companion to Narrative Theory, ed. James Phelan and Peter J. Rabinowitz. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 108–23. Wiley Online Library abstract

Research pass: June 2026. Web tools available and used. PDF sources (Gershkovich, Hui) confirmed as existing but not readable in this pass — arguments sourced from abstracts and secondary citations. Specific page references for Bartlett, Simmons, Maude, Wilson, and Troyat are attributed via secondary citation only; direct quotation requires full-text access. A.N. Wilson (1988) and Henri Troyat biographies were searched but no usable attributed content was returned; their names appear in bibliography lists but their specific views on the novella could not be reliably attributed in this pass.