Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in the Tula province (Russia) into a family belonging to the noble class. In the 1860s, he wrote his first major novel, War and Peace. In 1873 Tolstoy began work on the second of his most famous books, Anna Karenina.

He continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. One of his most successful later works is The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Tolstoy died on November 20, 1910 in Astapovo, Russia.

First years of life

September 9, 1828, in Yasnaya Polyana (Tula province, Russia) future writer Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. He was the fourth child in noble family. In 1830, when Tolstoy's mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died, the father's cousin took over the care of the children. Their father, Count Nikolai Tolstoy, died seven years later, and their aunt was appointed guardian. After the death of his aunt, Leo Tolstoy, his brothers and sisters moved to the second aunt in Kazan. Although Tolstoy experienced many losses at an early age, he later idealized his childhood memories in his work.

It is important to note that elementary education in Tolstoy's biography was received at home, lessons were given to him by French and German teachers. In 1843 he entered the Faculty of Oriental Languages ​​at the Imperial Kazan University. Tolstoy failed to excel in his studies - low grades forced him to switch to an easier Faculty of Law. Further academic difficulties led Tolstoy to eventually leave the Imperial Kazan University in 1847 without a degree. He returned to his parents' estate, where he planned to take up farming. However, this undertaking of his ended in failure - he was absent too often, leaving for Tula and Moscow. What he really excelled at was keeping his own diary - it was this lifelong habit that inspired Leo Tolstoy for most of his writings.

Tolstoy was fond of music, his favorite composers were Schumann, Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Mendelssohn. Lev Nikolaevich could play their works for several hours a day.

One day, Older brother Tolstoy, Nikolai, during his army vacation came to visit Lev, and persuaded his brother to go to the army as a cadet to the south, to the Caucasian mountains, where he served. After serving as a cadet, Leo Tolstoy was transferred to Sevastopol in November 1854, where he fought in the Crimean War until August 1855.

Early publications

During his Junker years in the army, Tolstoy had a lot of free time. During calm periods he worked on autobiographical story titled "Childhood". In it, he wrote about his favorite childhood memories. In 1852 Tolstoy submitted the story to Sovremennik, the most popular magazine of the day. The story was gladly received, and it became Tolstoy's first publication. Since that time, critics have placed him on a par with already well-known writers, among whom were Ivan Turgenev (with whom Tolstoy became friends), Ivan Goncharov, Alexander Ostrovsky and others.

After completing the story "Childhood", Tolstoy began to write about his daily life in an army outpost in the Caucasus. The work "Cossacks" begun in the army years, he finished only in 1862, after he had already left the army.

Surprisingly, Tolstoy managed to continue writing during active battles in the Crimean War. During this time he wrote Boyhood (1854), the sequel to Childhood, the second book in Tolstoy's autobiographical trilogy. At the height of the Crimean War, Tolstoy expressed his opinion about the striking contradictions of the war through the trilogy of works "Sevastopol Tales". In the second book Sevastopol stories”, Tolstoy experimented with a relatively new technique: part of the story is presented as a narration from the point of view of a soldier.

After the end of the Crimean War, Tolstoy left the army and returned to Russia. Arriving home, the author enjoyed great popularity on the literary scene of St. Petersburg.

Stubborn and arrogant, Tolstoy refused to belong to any particular philosophical school. Declaring himself an anarchist, he left for Paris in 1857. Once there, he lost all his money and was forced to return home to Russia. He also succeeded in publishing Youth, the third part of an autobiographical trilogy, in 1857.

Returning to Russia in 1862, Tolstoy published the first of 12 issues of the thematic magazine Yasnaya Polyana. In the same year, he married the daughter of a doctor named Sofya Andreevna Bers.

Major novels

Living in Yasnaya Polyana with his wife and children, Tolstoy spent most of the 1860s working on his first famous novel"War and Peace". Part of the novel was first published in Russkiy Vestnik in 1865 under the title "1805". By 1868 he had produced three more chapters. A year later, the novel was completely finished. Both critics and the public have debated the historical validity of the Napoleonic Wars in the novel, coupled with the development of his stories, thoughtful and realistic, but still fictional characters. The novel is also unique in that it includes three long satirical essays on the laws of history. Among the ideas that Tolstoy also tries to convey in this novel is the conviction that the position of a person in society and the meaning of human life are mainly derivatives of his daily activities.

After the success of War and Peace in 1873, Tolstoy began work on the second of his most famous books, Anna Karenina. It was partly based on real events during the war between Russia and Turkey. Like "War and Peace", this book describes some biographical events from the life of Tolstoy himself, this is especially noticeable in romantic relationship between the characters of Kitty and Levin, which is said to be reminiscent of Tolstoy's courtship of his own wife.

The opening lines of Anna Karenina are among the most famous: "All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Anna Karenina was published in installments from 1873 to 1877, and was highly acclaimed by the public. The fees received for the novel rapidly enriched the writer.

Conversion

Despite the success of Anna Karenina, after the completion of the novel, Tolstoy experienced a spiritual crisis and was depressed. The next stage of the biography of Leo Tolstoy is characterized by a search for the meaning of life. The writer first turned to the Russian Orthodox Church, but did not find answers to his questions there. He concluded that the Christian churches were corrupt and, instead of an organized religion, promoted their own beliefs. He decided to express these convictions by founding a new publication in 1883 called The Mediator.
As a result, for his non-standard and contradictory spiritual beliefs, Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. He was even watched by the secret police. When Tolstoy, driven by his new conviction, wanted to give away all his money and give up everything superfluous, his wife was categorically against it. Not wanting to escalate the situation, Tolstoy reluctantly agreed to a compromise: he transferred to his wife the copyright and, apparently, all deductions for his work until 1881.

Late fiction

In addition to his religious treatises, Tolstoy continued to write fiction throughout the 1880s and 1890s. Among the genres of his later works were moral stories and realistic fiction. One of the most successful of his later works was the story The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written in 1886. Main character struggles to fight death hanging over him. In short, Ivan Ilyich is horrified at the realization that he wasted his life on trifles, but the realization of this comes to him too late.

In 1898 Tolstoy wrote Father Sergius, a work of fiction in which he criticizes the beliefs he developed after his spiritual transformation. The following year, he wrote his third voluminous novel, Resurrection. Job received good feedback, but this success is unlikely to match the level of recognition of his previous novels. Other later works Tolstoy are essays on art, this is a satirical play called "The Living Corpse", written in 1890, and a story called "Hadji Murad" (1904), which was discovered and published after his death. In 1903 Tolstoy wrote short story After the Ball, which was first published after his death, in 1911.

Old age

During his late years, Tolstoy reaped the benefits of international recognition. However, he still struggled to reconcile his spiritual beliefs with the tension he had created in his family life. His wife not only disagreed with his teachings, she did not approve of his students, who regularly visited Tolstoy in family estate. In an effort to avoid the growing discontent of his wife, in October 1910 Tolstoy and his youngest daughter Alexandra went on a pilgrimage. Alexandra was a doctor for her elderly father during the trip. Trying not to flaunt their private lives, they traveled incognito, hoping to evade unnecessary inquiries, but this was sometimes to no avail.

Death and legacy

Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too burdensome for the aging writer. In November 1910, the head of the small Astapovo railway station opened the doors of his house for Tolstoy so that the ailing writer could rest. Shortly thereafter, on November 20, 1910, Tolstoy died. He was buried in the family estate, Yasnaya Polyana, where Tolstoy lost so many people close to him.

To this day, Tolstoy's novels are considered among the best literary art. "War and Peace" is often cited as greatest novel ever written. In the modern scientific community, Tolstoy is widely recognized as having a gift for describing the unconscious motives of character, the refinement of which he advocated by emphasizing the role of everyday actions in determining the character and goals of people.

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Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the estate of his mother Yasnaya Polyana, Krapivensky district, Tula province. Tolstoy's family belonged to a wealthy and noble family of counts. By the time Leo was born, the family already had three eldest sons: - Nikolai (1823-1860), Sergey (1826 -1904) and Dmitry (1827 - 1856), and in 1830 she was born younger sister Leo Maria.

A few years later, the mother died. In Tolstoy's autobiographical "Childhood" Irtenyev's mother dies when the boy is 10-12 years old and he is quite conscious. However, the portrait of the mother is described by the writer exclusively from the stories of his relatives. After the death of their mother, a distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya, took care of the orphaned children. She is represented by Sonya from War and Peace.

In 1837, the family moved to Moscow, because. older brother Nikolai had to prepare for entering the university. But a tragedy suddenly occurred in the family - the father died, leaving things in a bad state. Three younger children were forced to return to Yasnaya Polyana under the upbringing of T. A. Ergolskaya and his father's aunt, Countess A. M. Osten-Saken. Here Leo Tolstoy remained until 1840. This year, Countess A. M. Osten-Saken died and the children were moved to Kazan to their father's sister P. I. Yushkova. L. N. Tolstoy quite accurately conveyed this period of his life in his autobiography Childhood.

Tolstoy at the first stage was educated under the guidance of a rude French tutor Saint-Thomas. He is portrayed by a certain M-r Jérôme of Boyhood. In the future, he was replaced by the good-natured German Reselman. His Lev Nikolaevich lovingly portrayed in "Childhood" under the name of Karl Ivanovich.

In 1843, following his brother Tolstoy, he entered Kazan University. There, until 1847, Leo Tolstoy was preparing to enter the only Oriental Faculty in Russia in the category of Arabic-Turkish literature. For a year of study, Tolstoy showed himself as the best student of this course. However, between the poet's family and the teacher Russian history and German, a certain Ivanov, there was a conflict. This led to the fact that, according to the results of the year, Leo Tolstoy had poor progress in the relevant subjects and had to re-take the first year program. To avoid a complete repetition of the course, the poet is transferred to the Faculty of Law. But even there the problems with the teacher of German and Russian continue. Soon Tolstoy loses all interest in learning.

In the spring of 1847, Lev Nikolaevich left the university and settled in Yasnaya Polyana. Everything that Tolstoy did in the countryside can be found out by reading The Morning of the Landowner, where the poet introduces himself in the role of Nekhlyudov. There, a lot of time was spent on revelry, games and hunting.

In the spring of 1851, on the advice of his elder brother Nikolai, in order to cut costs and pay off his debts, Lev Nikolayevich left for the Caucasus.

In the fall of 1851, he became a cadet of the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladovo near Kizlyar. Soon L.N. Tolstoy became an officer. When at the end of 1853 the Crimean War Lev Nikolaevich transferred to the Danube army, participated in the battles of Oltenitsa and Silistra. From November 1854 to August 1855 he participated in the defense of Sevastopol. After the assault on August 27, 1855, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was sent to Petersburg. A noisy life began there: drinking parties, cards and carousing with gypsies.

In St. Petersburg, L.N. Tolstoy met the staff of the Sovremennik magazine with N.A. Nekrasov, I.S. Turgenev, I.A. Goncharov, N.G. Chernyshevsky.

At the beginning of 1857 Tolstoy went abroad. On the road in Germany, Switzerland, England, Italy, France, he spends a year and a half. Travel does not bring him pleasure. He expressed his disappointment with European life in the story "Lucerne". And returning to Russia, Lev Nikolaevich took up the improvement of schools in Yasnaya Polyana.

In the late 1850s, Tolstoy met Sophia Andreevna Bers, born in 1844, the daughter of a Moscow doctor from the Baltic Germans. He was almost 40 years old, and Sophia was only 17. It seemed to him that this difference was too great and sooner or later Sophia would fall in love with a young guy who had not become obsolete. These experiences of Lev Nikolaevich are set forth in his first novel, Family Happiness.

In September 1862, Leo Tolstoy nevertheless married 18-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. For 17 years life together they had 13 children. During the same period, "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" were created. In 1861-62. finishes his story "The Cossacks", the first of the works in which great talent Tolstoy was recognized as a genius.

In the early 70s, Tolstoy again showed interest in pedagogy, wrote the ABC and the New ABC, composed fables and stories that made up four Russian books for reading.

In order to answer the questions and doubts of a religious nature that tormented him, Lev Nikolayevich began to study theology. In 1891, in Geneva, the writer writes and publishes a Study of Dogmatic Theology, in which he criticizes Bulgakov's Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. He first began to talk with priests and monarchs, read theological treatises, studied ancient Greek and Hebrew. Tolstoy gets acquainted with schismatics, adjoins sectarian peasants.

In the early 1900s By the Holy Synod, Lev Nikolayevich was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church. L. N. Tolstoy lost all interest in life, he was tired of enjoying the achieved prosperity, the thought of suicide arose. He is fond of simple physical labor, becomes a vegetarian, gives his family all his wealth, renounces literary property rights.

On November 10, 1910, Tolstoy secretly left Yasnaya Polyana, but on the way he became very ill. November 20, 1910 at the Astapovo station of the Ryazan-Uralskaya railway Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy is dead.

"The world, perhaps, did not know another artist in whom the eternally epic, Homeric beginning would be as strong as that of Tolstoy. The element of the epic lives in his works, its majestic monotony and rhythm, like the measured breath of the sea, its tart, powerful freshness , its burning spice, indestructible health, indestructible realism"

Thomas Mann

Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, in the family of a landowner. Tolstoy's parents belonged to the highest nobility, even under Peter I, Tolstoy's paternal ancestors received the title of count. Lev Nikolaevich's parents died early, leaving him only a sister and three brothers. Tolstoy's aunt, who lived in Kazan, took care of the children. The whole family moved in with her.

In 1844, Lev Nikolaevich entered the university at the oriental faculty, and then studied at the law faculty. Tolstoy knew more than fifteen foreign languages back at the age of 19. He was seriously interested in history and literature. Studying at the university did not last long, Lev Nikolaevich left the university and returned home to Yasnaya Polyana. Soon he decides to leave for Moscow and devote himself to literary activity. His older brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich, leaves for the Caucasus, where the war was going on, as an artillery officer. Following the example of his brother, Lev Nikolaevich enters the army, receives an officer's rank and goes to the Caucasus. During the Crimean War, L. Tolstoy was transferred to the active Danube army, fought in the besieged Sevastopol, commanding a battery. Tolstoy was awarded the Order of Anna ("For Courage"), medals "For the Defense of Sevastopol", "In Memory of the War of 1853-1856".

In 1856 Lev Nikolayevich retired. After a while he goes abroad (France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany).

Since 1859, Lev Nikolayevich has been actively engaged in educational activities, opening a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, and then contributing to the opening of schools throughout the district, publishing the pedagogical magazine Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy became seriously interested in pedagogy, studied foreign teaching methods. In order to deepen his knowledge in pedagogy, he went abroad again in 1860.

After the abolition of serfdom, Tolstoy actively participated in resolving disputes between landlords and peasants, acting as a mediator. For his activities, Lev Nikolaevich receives a reputation as an unreliable person, as a result of which a search was carried out in Yasnaya Polyana in order to find a secret printing house. Tolstoy School closes, continued pedagogical activity becomes almost impossible. By this time, Lev Nikolaevich had already written the famous trilogy "Childhood. Adolescence. Youth.", The story "Cossacks", as well as many stories and articles. A special place in his work was occupied by "Sevastopol stories", in which the author conveyed his impressions of the Crimean War.

In 1862, Lev Nikolaevich married Sofya Andreevna Bers, the daughter of a doctor, who became his faithful friend and assistant for many years. Sofya Andreevna took care of all the household chores, and besides, she became her husband's editor and his first reader. Tolstoy's wife manually rewrote all of his novels before being sent to the editorial office. It is enough to imagine how difficult it was to prepare War and Peace for publication in order to appreciate the dedication of this woman.

In 1873, Lev Nikolayevich finished work on Anna Karenina. By this time, Count Leo Tolstoy became a well-known writer who received recognition, corresponded with many literary critics and authors, and actively participated in public life.

In the late 70s - early 80s, Lev Nikolayevich was going through a serious spiritual crisis, trying to rethink the changes taking place in society and determine his position as a citizen. Tolstoy decides that it is necessary to take care of the welfare and enlightenment of the common people, that a nobleman has no right to be happy when the peasants are in distress. He is trying to start the change from his own estate, from the restructuring of his attitude towards the peasants. Tolstoy's wife insists on moving to Moscow, as the children need to get a good education. From that moment, conflicts in the family begin, since Sofya Andreevna tried to ensure the future of her children, and Lev Nikolaevich believed that the nobility was over and it was time to live modestly, like the entire Russian people.

During these years Tolstoy writes philosophical writings, articles, participates in the creation of the Posrednik publishing house, which deals with books for the common people, writes the novels The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The History of the Horse, and The Kreutzer Sonata.

In 1889 - 1899 Tolstoy finished the novel "Resurrection".

At the end of his life, Lev Nikolaevich finally decides to break the connection with the wealthy noble life, is engaged in charity, education, changes the order in his estate, giving freedom to the peasants. Such a life position of Lev Nikolaevich became the cause of serious domestic conflicts and quarrels with his wife, who looked at life differently. Sofya Andreevna was worried about the future of her children, was against the unreasonable, from her point of view, expenses of Lev Nikolaevich. The quarrels became more and more serious, Tolstoy more than once made an attempt to leave home forever, the children experienced conflicts very hard. The former mutual understanding in the family disappeared. Sofya Andreevna tried to stop her husband, but then the conflicts escalated into attempts to divide property, as well as property rights to the works of Lev Nikolayevich.

Finally, on November 10, 1910, Tolstoy leaves his home in Yasnaya Polyana and leaves. Soon he falls ill with pneumonia, is forced to stop at the Astapovo station (now the Lev Tolstoy station) and dies there on November 23.

Control questions:
1. Tell the biography of the writer, mentioning the exact dates.
2. Explain how the connection between the biography of the writer and his work is manifested.
3. Summarize the biographical data and determine the features of it
creative heritage.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy(August 28 (September 9) 1828, Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, Russian empire- November 7 (20), 1910, Astapovo station, Ryazan province, Russian Empire) - one of the most widely known Russian writers and thinkers, revered as one of the greatest writers in the world.

Born in the estate of Yasnaya Polyana. Among the ancestors of the writer on the paternal side is an associate of Peter I - P. A. Tolstoy, one of the first in Russia to receive the title of count. Member of the Patriotic War of 1812 was the father of the writer gr. N. I. Tolstoy. On the maternal side, Tolstoy belonged to the family of the princes Bolkonsky, related by kinship with the princes Trubetskoy, Golitsyn, Odoevsky, Lykov and other noble families. On his mother's side, Tolstoy was a relative of A. S. Pushkin.
When Tolstoy was in his ninth year, his father took him to Moscow for the first time, the impressions of meeting with which were vividly conveyed by the future writer in the children's essay "Kremlin". Moscow is here called "the greatest and most populous city in Europe", whose walls "saw the shame and defeat of the invincible Napoleonic regiments." The first period of young Tolstoy's life in Moscow lasted less than four years. He was orphaned early, having lost first his mother and then his father. With his sister and three brothers, young Tolstoy moved to Kazan. Here lived one of the father's sisters, who became their guardians.
Living in Kazan, Tolstoy spent two and a half years preparing to enter the university, where he studied from 1844, first at the Oriental Faculty, and then at the Faculty of Law. Studied Turkish and Tatar languages from the famous Turkologist Professor Kazembek. In his mature life, the writer was fluent in English, French and German; read in Italian, Polish, Czech and Serbian; knew Greek, Latin, Ukrainian, Tatar, Church Slavonic; studied Hebrew, Turkish, Dutch, Bulgarian and other languages.
Classes in government programs and textbooks weighed heavily on Tolstoy the student. He got carried away independent work over the historical theme and, leaving the university, left Kazan for Yasnaya Polyana, which he received under the division of his father's inheritance. Then he went to Moscow, where at the end of 1850 he began his writing activity: an unfinished story from the gypsy life (the manuscript has not been preserved) and a description of one day lived ("The History of Yesterday"). Then the story "Childhood" was started. Soon Tolstoy decided to go to the Caucasus, where his older brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich, an artillery officer, served in the army. Entering the army as a cadet, he later passed the exam for a junior officer rank. Writer's impressions Caucasian war reflected in the stories "Raid" (1853), "Cutting down the forest" (1855), "Degraded" (1856), in the story "Cossacks" (1852-1863). In the Caucasus, the story "Childhood" was completed, which was published in 1852 in the journal Sovremennik.

When the Crimean War began, Tolstoy was transferred from the Caucasus to the Danube army, which acted against the Turks, and then to Sevastopol, besieged by the combined forces of England, France and Turkey. Commanding a battery on the 4th bastion, Tolstoy was awarded the Order of Anna and the medals "For the Defense of Sevastopol" and "In Memory of the War of 1853-1856." More than once Tolstoy was presented for the award of the military St. George Cross, but however, he never received the “George”. In the army, Tolstoy wrote a number of projects - on the reorganization of artillery batteries and the creation of battalions armed with rifled rifles, on the reorganization of the entire Russian army. Together with a group of officers of the Crimean army, Tolstoy intended to publish the magazine "Soldier's Bulletin" ("Military List"), but its publication was not allowed by Emperor Nicholas I.
In the autumn of 1856 he retired and soon went on a six-month trip abroad, visiting France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. In 1859, Tolstoy opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana, and then helped open more than 20 schools in the surrounding villages. In order to direct their activities along the right path, from his point of view, he published the pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana (1862). In order to study the setting of school affairs in foreign countries the writer in 1860 went abroad for the second time.
After the manifesto of 1861, Tolstoy became one of the world's mediators of the first call, who sought to help the peasants resolve their land disputes with the landowners. Soon in Yasnaya Polyana, when Tolstoy was away, the gendarmes searched for a secret printing house, which the writer allegedly started after talking with A. I. Herzen in London. Tolstoy had to close the school and stop publishing the pedagogical journal. In total, he wrote eleven articles on school and pedagogy ("On Public Education", "Upbringing and Education", "On Public Activities in the Field of Public Education" and others). In them, he described in detail the experience of his work with students ("Yasnopolyanskaya school for the months of November and December", "On the methods of teaching literacy", "Who should learn to write from whom, peasant children from us or us from peasant children"). Tolstoy the teacher demanded that the school be closer to life, sought to put it at the service of the needs of the people, and for this to intensify the processes of education and upbringing, to develop the creative abilities of children.
However, already at the beginning creative way Tolstoy becomes a supervised writer. One of the first works of the writer were the stories "Childhood", "Adolescence" and "Youth", "Youth" (which, however, was not written). As conceived by the author, they were to compose the novel "Four Epochs of Development".
In the early 1860s for decades, the order of Tolstoy's life, his way of life, is established. In 1862, he married the daughter of a Moscow doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers.
The writer is working on the novel "War and Peace" (1863-1869). After completing War and Peace, Tolstoy spent several years studying materials about Peter I and his time. However, after writing several chapters of the "Petrine" novel, Tolstoy abandoned his plan. In the early 1870s the writer was again fascinated by pedagogy. He put a lot of work into the creation of the ABC, and then the New ABC. Then he compiled "Books for reading", where he included many of his stories.
In the spring of 1873, Tolstoy began and four years later completed work on a large novel about modernity, naming it by name main character- Anna Karenina.
The spiritual crisis experienced by Tolstoy in the late 1870s - early. 1880, ended with a turning point in his worldview. In "Confession" (1879-1882), the writer speaks of a revolution in his views, the meaning of which he saw in the break with the ideology of the noble class and the transition to the side of the "simple working people."
At the beginning of 1880s. Tolstoy moved with his family from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow, taking care to educate his growing children. In 1882, a census of the Moscow population took place, in which the writer took part. He saw the inhabitants of the city's slums up close and described them terrible life in the article on the census and in the treatise "So what shall we do?" (1882-1886). In them, the writer made the main conclusion: "... You can't live like that, you can't live like that, you can't!" "Confession" and "So what shall we do?" were works in which Tolstoy acted both as an artist and as a publicist, as a deep psychologist and a bold sociologist-analyst. Later, this kind of works - according to the genre of journalistic, but including artistic scenes and paintings saturated with figurative elements will take great place in his work.
In these and subsequent years, Tolstoy also wrote religious and philosophical works: "Criticism of dogmatic theology", "What is my faith?", "Combination, translation and study of the four Gospels", "The kingdom of God is within you". In them, the writer not only showed a change in his religious and moral views, but also subjected to a critical revision of the main dogmas and principles of the teaching of the official church. In the middle of 1880s. Tolstoy and his like-minded people created the Posrednik publishing house in Moscow, which printed books and pictures for the people. The first of Tolstoy's works, printed for the "simple" people, was the story "What makes people alive." In it, as in many other works of this cycle, the writer widely used not only folklore plots, but also expressive means oral art. Tolstoy's folk stories are thematically and stylistically related to his plays for folk theaters and, most of all, the drama "The Power of Darkness" (1886), which depicts the tragedy of the post-reform village, where centuries-old patriarchal orders collapsed under the "power of money".
In the 1880s Tolstoy's novels "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Kholstomer" ("History of a Horse"), "Kreutzer Sonata" (1887-1889) appeared. In it, as well as in the story "The Devil" (1889-1890) and the story "Father Sergius" (1890-1898), the problems of love and marriage, the purity of family relationships are raised.
On the basis of social and psychological contrast, Tolstoy's story "The Master and the Worker" (1895) is built, stylistically connected with the cycle of his folk stories written in the 80s. Five years earlier Tolstoy had written for " home performance"The comedy "The Fruits of Enlightenment". It also shows the "owners" and "workers": noble landowners living in the city and peasants who came from a hungry village, deprived of land. The images of the first are given satirically, the second author portrays as reasonable and positive people, but in some scenes and "serves" them in an ironic light.
All these works of the writer are united by the thought of the inevitable and close in time "decoupling" of social contradictions, of replacing the obsolete social "order". “What the outcome will be, I don’t know,” wrote Tolstoy in 1892, “but that things are coming to it and that life cannot go on like this, in such forms, I am sure.” This idea inspired the largest work of all the work of the "late" Tolstoy - the novel "Resurrection" (1889-1899).
Less than ten years separate Anna Karenina from War and Peace. "Resurrection" is separated from "Anna Karenina" by two decades. And although much distinguishes the third novel from the two previous ones, they are united by a truly epic scope in the depiction of life, the ability to "match" in the narrative separate human fates with the fate of the people. Tolstoy himself pointed to the unity that exists between his novels: he said that Resurrection was written in the "old manner", referring primarily to the epic "manner" in which War and Peace and Anna Karenina were written. ". "Resurrection" has become latest novel in the work of the writer.
In the early 1900s Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Orthodox Church by the Holy Synod.
IN last decade In his lifetime, the writer worked on the story "Hadji Murad" (1896-1904), in which he sought to compare "two poles of imperious absolutism" - the European, personified by Nicholas I, and the Asian, personified by Shamil. At the same time, Tolstoy creates one of his best plays - "The Living Corpse". Her hero is kindest soul, soft, conscientious Fedya Protasov leaves the family, breaks off relations with his usual environment, falls to the "bottom" and in the courthouse, unable to bear the lies, pretense, hypocrisy of "respectable" people, shoots himself with a pistol commits suicide. An article written in 1908, "I Can't Be Silent", in which he protested against the repressions of participants in the events of 1905-1907, sounded sharp. The stories of the writer "After the ball", "For what?" belong to the same period.
Burdened by the way of life in Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy more than once intended and for a long time did not dare to leave it. But he could no longer live according to the "together-apart" principle, and on the night of October 28 (November 10) he secretly left Yasnaya Polyana. On the way, he fell ill with pneumonia and was forced to make a stop at the small station Astapovo (now Leo Tolstoy), where he died. On November 10 (23), 1910, the writer was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, in the forest, on the edge of a ravine, where, as a child, he and his brother searched for a "green stick" that kept the "secret" of how to make all people happy.

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich(August 28, 1828, the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province - November 7, 1910, Astapovo station (now Lev Tolstoy station) of the Ryazan-Ural railway) - count, Russian writer.

Tolstoy was the fourth child in a large noble family. His mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died when Tolstoy was not yet two years old, but according to the stories of family members, he had a good idea of ​​\u200b\u200b"her spiritual appearance": some features of the mother (brilliant education, sensitivity to art, a penchant for reflection and even a portrait resemblance Tolstoy gave Princess Marya Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya ("War and Peace") Tolstoy's father, a participant in the Patriotic War, remembered by the writer for his good-natured and mocking character, love of reading, hunting (served as the prototype for Nikolai Rostov), ​​also died early (1837). a distant relative T. A. Ergolskaya, who had a huge influence on Tolstoy, was engaged in: “she taught me the spiritual pleasure of love.” Childhood memories always remained the most joyful for Tolstoy: family lore, first impressions of life noble estate served as rich material for his works, reflected in the autobiographical story "Childhood".

Kazan University

When Tolstoy was 13 years old, the family moved to Kazan, to the house of P. I. Yushkova, a relative and guardian of the children. In 1844 Tolstoy entered Kazan University in the Department of Oriental Languages ​​of the Faculty of Philosophy, then transferred to the Faculty of Law, where he studied for less than two years: classes did not arouse a lively interest in him and he passionately indulged in secular entertainment. In the spring of 1847, having filed a letter of resignation from the university “due to poor health and domestic circumstances”, Tolstoy left for Yasnaya Polyana with the firm intention of studying the entire course of legal sciences (in order to pass the exam as an external student), “practical medicine”, languages, Agriculture, history, geographical statistics, write a dissertation and "achieve the highest degree excellence in music and painting.

"The turbulent life of adolescence"

After a summer in the countryside, disappointed by the unsuccessful experience of managing on new, favorable conditions for serfdom (this attempt is captured in the story "The Morning of the Landowner", 1857), in the fall of 1847 Tolstoy went first to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg, to take the candidate's exams at the university. His way of life during this period often changed: either he prepared for days and passed exams, then he passionately devoted himself to music, then he intended to start a bureaucratic career, then he dreamed of becoming a cadet in a horse guard regiment. Religious moods, reaching asceticism, alternated with revelry, cards, trips to the gypsies. In the family, he was considered "the most trifling fellow", and he managed to repay the debts he had made then only many years later. However, it was these years that were colored by intense introspection and struggle with oneself, which is reflected in the diary that Tolstoy kept throughout his life. At the same time, he had a serious desire to write and the first unfinished artistic sketches appeared.

"War and Freedom"

In 1851, his elder brother Nikolai, an officer in the army, persuaded Tolstoy to travel together to the Caucasus. For almost three years, Tolstoy lived in a Cossack village on the banks of the Terek, traveling to Kizlyar, Tiflis, Vladikavkaz and participating in hostilities (at first voluntarily, then he was hired). The Caucasian nature and the patriarchal simplicity of the Cossack life, which struck Tolstoy in contrast with the life of the noble circle and with the painful reflection of a man of an educated society, provided material for the autobiographical story The Cossacks (1852-63). Caucasian impressions were also reflected in the stories "Raid" (1853), "Cutting the Forest" (1855), as well as in the late story "Hadji Murad" (1896-1904, published in 1912). Returning to Russia, Tolstoy wrote in his diary that he fell in love with this "wild land, in which two most opposite things - war and freedom - are so strangely and poetically combined." In the Caucasus, Tolstoy wrote the story "Childhood" and sent it to the journal "Sovremennik" without revealing his name (published in 1852 under the initials L. N.; together with the later stories "Boyhood", 1852-54, and "Youth", 1855 -57, amounted to autobiographical trilogy). Literary debut immediately brought real recognition to Tolstoy.

Crimean campaign

In 1854 Tolstoy was assigned to the Danube army, in Bucharest. Boring staff life soon forced him to transfer to the Crimean army, to the besieged Sevastopol, where he commanded a battery on the 4th bastion, showing rare personal courage (he was awarded the Order of St. Anne and medals). In the Crimea, Tolstoy was captured by new impressions and literary plans(I was going to publish a magazine for soldiers), here he began to write a cycle of “Sevastopol stories”, which were soon published and had a huge success (Even Alexander II read the essay “Sevastopol in December”). The first works of Tolstoy struck literary critics the courage of psychological analysis and a detailed picture of the “dialectic of the soul” (N. G. Chernyshevsky). Some of the ideas that appeared during these years allow us to guess in the young artillery officer of the late Tolstoy the preacher: he dreamed of "founding new religion- "the religion of Christ, but purified from faith and mystery, a practical religion."

In the circle of writers and abroad

In November 1855, Tolstoy arrived in St. Petersburg and immediately entered the Sovremennik circle (N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. A. Goncharov, etc.), where he was greeted as a “great hope of Russian literature" (Nekrasov). Tolstoy took part in dinners and readings, in the establishment of the Literary Fund, was involved in disputes and conflicts of writers, but he felt like a stranger in this environment, which he described in detail later in Confession (1879-82): “These people disgusted me, and I disgusted myself." In the autumn of 1856, after retiring, Tolstoy went to Yasnaya Polyana, and at the beginning of 1857 went abroad. He visited France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany (Swiss impressions are reflected in the story "Lucerne"), returned to Moscow in the fall, then to Yasnaya Polyana.

folk school

In 1859, Tolstoy opened a school for peasant children in the village, helped set up more than 20 schools in the vicinity of Yasnaya Polyana, and this activity fascinated Tolstoy so much that in 1860 he went abroad again to get acquainted with the schools of Europe. Tolstoy traveled a lot, spent a month and a half in London (where he often saw A. I. Herzen), was in Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, studied popular pedagogical systems, which basically did not satisfy the writer. Tolstoy outlined his own ideas in special articles, arguing that the basis of education should be the "student's freedom" and the rejection of violence in teaching. In 1862 he published the pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana with books for reading as an appendix, which in Russia became the same classic examples of children's and folk literature, as well as compiled by him in the early 1870s. Alphabet and New Alphabet. In 1862, in the absence of Tolstoy, a search was conducted in Yasnaya Polyana (they were looking for a secret printing house).

"War and Peace" (1863-69)

In September 1862, Tolstoy married the eighteen-year-old daughter of a doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers, and immediately after the wedding, he took his wife from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana, where he devoted himself completely to family life and household chores. However, already in the autumn of 1863, he was captured by a new literary idea, which for a long time was called "Year 1805". The time of the creation of the novel was a period of spiritual uplift, family happiness and quiet solitary work. Tolstoy read the memoirs and correspondence of people of the Alexander era (including the materials of Tolstoy and Volkonsky), worked in the archives, studied Masonic manuscripts, traveled to the Borodino field, moving slowly in his work, through many editions (his wife helped him a lot in copying the manuscripts, refuting the fact the very joke of friends that she is still so young, as if playing with dolls), and only at the beginning of 1865 he published the first part of War and Peace in the Russkiy vestnik. The novel was read avidly, caused a lot of responses, striking with a combination of a wide epic canvas with a thin psychological analysis, with live picture privacy organically inscribed in history. Heated debate provoked the subsequent parts of the novel, in which Tolstoy developed a fatalistic philosophy of history. There were reproaches that the writer "entrusted" to the people of the beginning of the century the intellectual demands of his era: the idea of ​​a novel about Patriotic War really was a response to the problems that worried the Russian post-reform society. Tolstoy himself characterized his plan as an attempt to “write the history of the people” and considered it impossible to determine its genre nature (“it will not fit into any form, neither a novel, nor a short story, nor a poem, nor a history”).

"Anna Karenina" (1873-77)

In the 1870s, still living in Yasnaya Polyana, continuing to teach peasant children and develop his pedagogical views in print, Tolstoy worked on a novel about the life of his contemporary society, building a composition on the opposition of two storylines: the family drama of Anna Karenina is drawn in contrast with the life and domestic idyll of the young landowner Konstantin Levin, who is close to the writer himself in terms of lifestyle, convictions, and psychological drawing. The beginning of work coincided with the passion for Pushkin's prose: Tolstoy strove for simplicity of style, for outward nonjudgmental tone, paving his way to the new style of the 1880s, in particular to folk tales. Only tendentious criticism interpreted the novel as a love story. The meaning of the existence of the “educated class” and the deep truth of peasant life - this circle of questions, close to Levin and alien to most of the heroes even sympathetic to the author (including Anna), sounded acutely publicistic for many contemporaries, primarily for F. M. Dostoevsky, who highly appreciated “Anna Karenin" in "A Writer's Diary". “Family thought” (the main one in the novel, according to Tolstoy) is translated into a social channel, Levin’s merciless self-disclosures, his thoughts about suicide are read as a figurative illustration spiritual crisis, experienced by Tolstoy himself in the 1880s, but matured in the course of work on the novel.

Fracture (1880s)

The course of the revolution that took place in Tolstoy's mind was reflected in artistic creativity, primarily in the experiences of the characters, in that spiritual insight that refracts their lives. These heroes occupy a central place in the stories "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1884-86), "Kreutzer Sonata" (1887-89, published in Russia in 1891), "Father Sergius" (1890-98, published in 1912), drama " Living Corpse" (1900, unfinished, published 1911), in the story "After the Ball" (1903, published 1911). Tolstoy's confessional journalism gives a detailed idea of ​​his emotional drama: drawing pictures social inequality and the idleness of the educated strata, Tolstoy in a pointed form posed before himself and before society questions of the meaning of life and faith, criticized all state institutions, reaching the denial of science, art, court, marriage, and the achievements of civilization. The writer's new worldview is reflected in Confession (published in 1884 in Geneva, in 1906 in Russia), in the articles On the Census in Moscow (1882), and So What Should We Do? (1882-86, published in full 1906), "On the Famine" (1891, published on English language in 1892, in Russian - in 1954), "What is art?" (1897-98), Slavery of Our Time (1900, published in full in Russia in 1917), On Shakespeare and Drama (1906), I Cannot Be Silent (1908).

Tolstoy's social declaration is based on the idea of ​​Christianity as a moral doctrine, and the ethical ideas of Christianity are interpreted by him in a humanistic key as the basis of the worldwide brotherhood of people. This set of problems involved the analysis of the Gospel and critical studies of theological writings, which are devoted to Tolstoy's religious and philosophical treatises "Study of dogmatic theology" (1879-80), "Combining and translating the four Gospels" (1880-81), "What is my faith" ( 1884), "The kingdom of God is within you" (1893). A stormy reaction in society was accompanied by Tolstoy's calls for direct and immediate adherence to Christian commandments.

In particular, his preaching of non-resistance to evil by violence was widely discussed, which became the impetus for the creation of a number of works of art - the drama "The Power of Darkness, or the Claw Got Stuck, the Abyss of the Bird" (1887) and folk stories written in a deliberately simplified, "artless" manner. Along with the congenial works of V. M. Garshin, N. S. Leskov and other writers, these stories were published by the Posrednik publishing house, founded by V. G. Chertkov on the initiative and with the close participation of Tolstoy, who defined the task of the Intermediary as "expression in artistic images teachings of Christ", "so that you can read this book to an old man, a woman, a child, and so that both of them become interested, touched and feel kinder."

As part of the new worldview and ideas about Christianity, Tolstoy opposed Christian dogma and criticized the rapprochement of the church with the state, which led him to complete separation from the Orthodox Church. In 1901, the reaction of the Synod followed: the world-renowned writer and preacher was officially excommunicated, which caused a huge public outcry.

"Resurrection" (1889-99)

Tolstoy's last novel embodied the whole range of problems that worried him during the years of the turning point. The main character, Dmitry Nekhlyudov, who is spiritually close to the author, goes through the path of moral purification, leading him to active goodness. The narration is built on a system of emphatically evaluative oppositions, exposing the unreasonableness of the social structure (the beauty of nature and the falsity of the social world, the truth of peasant life and the falsehood that prevails in the life of the educated strata of society). Character traits late Tolstoy - a frank, highlighted "trend" (in these years Tolstoy was a supporter of deliberately tendentious, didactic art), sharp criticism, a satirical beginning - appeared in the novel with all clarity.

Departure and death

The years of change abruptly changed the writer's personal biography, turning into a break with the social environment and leading to family discord (the rejection of private property proclaimed by Tolstoy caused sharp discontent among family members, especially his wife). The personal drama experienced by Tolstoy is reflected in his diary entries.

Late autumn 1910, at night, secretly from the family, 82-year-old Tolstoy, accompanied only by the personal doctor D.P. Makovitsky, left Yasnaya Polyana. The road turned out to be unbearable for him: on the way, Tolstoy fell ill and had to get off the train at the small Astapovo railway station. Here, in the stationmaster's house, he spent the last seven days of his life. Behind reports about the health of Tolstoy, who by this time had already acquired world fame not only as a writer, but as religious thinker, a preacher of the new faith, followed the whole of Russia. Tolstoy's funeral in Yasnaya Polyana became an event of all-Russian scale.

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to be one of best writers world history - an honorary right, and Leo Tolstoy deserved it, leaving behind a huge creative legacy. Stories, novellas, novels, which are presented in a whole series of volumes, were appreciated not only by the writer's contemporaries, but also by his descendants. What is the secret of this brilliant author, who was able to fit in his life and ""?

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Writer's childhood

Where was the future novelist born? Pen Master came into being in September 9, 1828 in the estate of his mother Yasnaya Polyana, located in Tula province. The family of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was large. father had county title and mother was born Princess Volkonskaya. When he was two years old, his mother died, and after another 7 years, his father.

Leo was the fourth child in a noble family, so he was not deprived of the attention of relatives. The literary genius never thought of his losses with heartache. On the contrary, only good memories about childhood, because mother and father were very affectionate with him. In the work of the same name, the author idealizes his childhood and writes that it was the most wonderful time of his life.

The little count received education at home, where he was invited French and German teachers . After leaving school, Leo was fluent in three languages, and also had extensive knowledge in various fields. In addition, the young man was fond of musical creativity, could play the works of his favorite composers for a long time: Schumann, Bach, Chopin and Mozart.

Young years

In 1843 a young man becomes student of the Imperial Kazan University, chooses the Faculty of Oriental Languages, however, later changes his specialty due to poor academic performance and begins to practice law. Unable to complete the course. The young count returns to his estate in order to become real farmer.

But here, too, failure awaits him: frequent trips completely distract the owner from the important affairs of the estate. Keeping your diary- the only occupation that was done with amazing scrupulousness: a habit that lasted a lifetime and became the foundation of most future works.

Important! The unfortunate student did not become inactive for a long time. Having allowed himself to be persuaded by his brother, he went to serve as a cadet to the south, after which, after spending some time in the Caucasian mountains, he received a transfer to Sevastopol. There, from November 1854 to August 1855, the young count participated in.

Early work

The rich experience gained on the battlefields, as well as in the era of the Junkers, prompted the future writer to create the first literary works. Even in the years of service as a cadet, having a lot of free time, the count begins to work on his first autobiographical story. "Childhood".

Natural observation, a special flair were clearly reflected in the style: the author wrote about what was close, understandable not only to him alone. Life and creativity merge together.

In the story "Childhood" every boy or young man would recognize himself. The story was originally a short story and was published in a magazine. "Contemporary" in 1852. It is noteworthy that already the first story was splendidly received by critics, and the young novelist was compared with Turgenev, Ostrovsky and Goncharov, which was already a real recognition. All these masters of the word were already quite famous and loved by the people.

What works did Leo Tolstoy write at that time?

The young count, feeling that he has finally found his calling, continues to work. Brilliant stories come out of the pen one after another, stories that instantly become popular due to their originality and amazing realistic approach to reality: “Cossacks” (1852), “Boyhood” (1854), “Sevastopol Tales” (1854 - 1855), "Youth" (1857).

IN literary world rushes in new writer Lev Tolstoy, which strikes the reader's imagination with detailed details, does not hide the truth and applies new technology letters: second collection "Sevastopol stories" written from the point of view of the soldiers, to bring the story even closer to the reader. The young author is not afraid to openly, frankly write about the horrors and contradictions of war. The characters are not heroes from paintings and canvases of artists, but ordinary people who are able to perform real feats in order to save the lives of others.

Belong to something literary movement or to be a supporter of a particular philosophical school, Lev Nikolaevich refused, declaring himself anarchist. Later, the master of the word in the course of a religious search will take the right path, but for now, the whole world lay before the young, successful genius, and he did not want to be one of many.

Family status

In Russia, where he lived and was born, Tolstoy returns after a wild trip to Paris without a penny in his pocket. Here took place marriage to Sofya Andreevna Bers, daughter of a doctor. This woman was main companion in life Tolstoy, became his support to the very end.

Sophia expressed her readiness to be a secretary, wife, mother of his children, girlfriend and even a cleaning lady, although the estate, for which servants were a common thing, was always kept in exemplary order.

The count's title constantly obliged households to observe a certain status. Over time, the husband and wife separated religious views: Sophia did not understand and did not accept the attempts of a loved one to create her own philosophical dogma and follow it.

Attention! Only the eldest daughter of the writer Alexandra supported her father's undertakings: in 1910 they made a pilgrimage trip together. Other children adored dad as a great storyteller, although a rather strict parent.

According to the recollections of descendants, the father could scold the little dirty trick, but after a moment he would put him on his knees, regret, composing on the go interesting story. In the literary arsenal of the famous realist there are many children's works recommended for study at preschool and primary school age - these are "Book for reading" and "ABC". The first work contains stories by L.N. Tolstoy for the 4th grade of the school, which was organized in the Yasnaya Polyana estate.

How many children did Leo and Sophia have? A total of 13 children were born, three of whom died in infancy.

Maturity and creative flourishing of the writer

From the age of thirty-two, Tolstoy began work on his main work - an epic novel. The first part was published in 1865 in the Russky Vestnik magazine, and in 1869 the final edition of the epic saw the light of day. Most of 1860s was devoted to this monumental work, which the count repeatedly rewrote, corrected, supplemented, and at the end of his life got so tired of it that he called it "War and Peace" - " verbose rubbish". The novel was written in Yasnaya Polyana.

The work, which is four volumes long, turned out to be truly unique. What are its advantages? This is first of all:

• historical truth;
• the action in the novel of both realistic and fictional characters, the number of which exceeded a thousand according to philologists;
• interspersing the plot of three historical essays on the laws of history into the outline; accuracy in the description of life and everyday life.

This is the basis of the novel - the path of a person, his position and the meaning of life is made up of these ordinary actions.

After the success of the military-historical epic, the author begins to work on the novel "Anna Karenina" based on much of his autobiography. In particular, the relationship between Kitty and Levina- these are partial memories of the life of the author himself with his wife Sophia, a certain short biography writer, as well as a reflection of the canvas of real events of the Russian-Turkish war.

The novel was published in 1875 - 1877, and almost immediately became the most discussed literary event that time. The story of Anna, written with amazing warmth, attention to female psychology, made a splash. Before him, only Ostrovsky in his poems turned to female soul And revealed the rich inner world beautiful half of humanity. Naturally, high fees for the work were not long in coming, because each educated person read Tolstoy's Karenina. After the release, that's enough secular romance, the author was not at all happy, but was in constant mental torment.

Change of outlook and later literary successes

Many years of life were devoted search for the meaning of life which led the writer to Orthodox faith, however, this step only confuses the graph. Lev Nikolaevich sees corruption in the church diaspora, complete subordination to personal convictions, which does not correspond to the dogma that his soul longed for.

Attention! Leo Tolstoy becomes an apostate and even publishes the incriminating magazine Posrednik (1883), because of which he is excommunicated and accused of "heresy".

However, Leo does not stop there and tries to follow the path of purification, taking rather bold steps. For example, gives all his possessions to the poor, which Sofya Andreevna categorically opposed. The husband reluctantly transferred all the property to her and gave the copyright to the works, but still did not give up the search for his destiny.

This period of creativity is characterized great religious enthusiasm Treatises and moral stories are being created. What works with religious overtones did the author write? Among the most successful works between 1880 and 1990 were:

• the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (1886), describing a man near death, who is trying to understand and comprehend his "empty" life;
• the story "Father Sergius" (1898), aimed at criticizing his own religious quest;
• the novel "Resurrection", which tells about the moral pain of Katyusha Maslova and the ways of her moral purification.

Completion of life

Having written many works in his life, the count appeared before his contemporaries and descendants as a strong religious leader and spiritual mentor, such as Mahatma Gandhi, with whom he corresponded. The life and work of the writer is permeated by the idea that it is necessary hourly resist evil with all the strength of your soul while demonstrating humility and saving thousands of lives. The master of the word has become a real teacher among the lost souls. Entire pilgrimage trips were organized to the Yasnaya Polyana estate, the students of the great Tolstoy came to “know themselves”, listening to their ideological guru for hours on end, which the writer became in his declining years.

The author-mentor accepted everyone who came with problems, questions and aspirations of the soul, he was ready to distribute his savings and shelter wanderers for any period. Unfortunately, this increased the degree of tension in relations with his wife Sophia and, in the end, resulted in the unwillingness of the great realist to live in his house. Together with his daughter, Lev Nikolaevich went on a pilgrimage to Russia, wanting to travel incognito, but often this was to no avail - they were recognized everywhere.

Where did Lev Nikolaevich die? November 1910 was fatal for the writer: already being ill, he stayed in the house of the head of the railway station, where he died on November 20. Lev Nikolaevich was a real idol. During the funeral of this, verily, folk writer, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, people cried bitterly and followed the coffin in a crowd of thousands. There were so many people, as if they were burying a king.

Short biography of Leo Tolstoy

Lev Tolstoy. Short biography.

Conclusion

The story about the life and work of Leo Tolstoy can be endless, many monographs have been written about this. The writer's novels still remain the standard of literary art, and the military epic "War and Peace" was included in the golden collection greatest works peace. Lev Nikolaevich became the first writer who drew attention to the depths human subconscious, unconscious and refined motives of character, as well as the great role of everyday life, which determines the whole essence of the personality.