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# There is a well-worn quotation about how Tolstoy created the image of Natasha Rostova: "I took Tanya, ground her up with Sonya, and out came Natasha"
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/est-takaia-raskhozhaia-tsitata-o-tom-kak-tolstoi-sozdaval-obraz-natashi-rostovoi-vzial-taniu-peretolok-s-sonei-i-poluchilas-natasha/
- Published: 2019-04-14T18:12:50.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:44:06.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Books, Observations, Mores, Humour

Tanya is Tatyana Andreyevna Bers-Kuzminskaya, Lev Nikolayevich's sister-in-law, who also lived at Yasnaya Polyana; Sonya is his wife, Sofya Andreyevna. Agreed, it is hard, even with the greatest effort, to believe that these women could have been the prototypes of Natasha. For my part, I have long wondered how such a thing came about.

And the answer is very simple: the quotation from Lev Tolstoy that found its way into every school essay and every survey of *War and Peace* comes from the memoirs of his wife, by all accounts a beautiful woman. Do you see? It turns out that Sofya Andreyevna herself related how Lev Tolstoy, so she said, had told her that he had drawn one of his chief heroines from her, his beloved little wife. Now it all adds up.

As for the memoirist Tatyana Kuzminskaya, she, too, has a recollection of how Lev Nikolayevich and Sofya Andreyevna declared their love to one another by means of letters written on a slate: that very famous, exquisitely delicate and incredibly touching scene of the mutual avowal of Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. And Kuzminskaya herself, at that moment, do you know what she was doing? SITTING UNDER THE GRAND PIANO, LISTENING TO EVERYTHING AND COMMITTING IT TO MEMORY, IN CASE SHE SHOULD HAVE TO WRITE MEMOIRS LATER ABOUT THE CREATION OF A BRILLIANT SCENE.

How well everything turned out, after all, for Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy with his women: productively, and above all it flatters the young ladies. As for the man himself, to all appearances he did nothing but document, in quite some detail, the dazzling life and mores of his incomparable ladies.