Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy- an outstanding Russian prose writer, playwright and public figure. Born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, Tula region. On the maternal side, the writer belonged to the eminent family of the Volkonsky princes, and on the paternal side, to the ancient family of the Counts Tolstoy. Great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and father of Leo Tolstoy were military men. Even under Ivan the Terrible, representatives of the ancient Tolstoy family served as governors in many cities of Rus'.
The writer's grandfather on his mother's side, "a descendant of Rurik", Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky, from the age of seven was enrolled in military service. He was a member Russian-Turkish war and retired with the rank of general-in-chief. The writer's paternal grandfather - Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy - served in the Navy, and then in the Life Guards of the Preobrazhensky Regiment. The writer's father, Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, voluntarily entered military service at the age of seventeen. He participated in the Patriotic War of 1812, was captured by the French and was released by Russian troops who entered Paris after the defeat of Napoleon's army. On the maternal side, Tolstoy was related to the Pushkins. Their common ancestor was the boyar I.M. Golovin, an associate of Peter I, who studied shipbuilding with him. One of his daughters is the great-grandmother of the poet, the other is the great-grandmother of Tolstoy's mother. Thus, Pushkin was Tolstoy's fourth cousin.
Writer's childhood passed in Yasnaya Polyana- an old family estate. Tolstoy's interest in history and literature arose in his childhood: living in the countryside, he saw how the life of the working people proceeded, from him he heard many folk tales, epics, songs, legends. The life of the people, their work, interests and views, oral creativity - everything alive and wise - was revealed to Tolstoy by Yasnaya Polyana.
Maria Nikolaevna Tolstaya, the writer's mother, was a kind and sympathetic person, an intelligent and educated woman: she knew French, German, English and Italian She played the piano and took up painting. Tolstoy was not even two years old when his mother died. The writer did not remember her, but he heard so much about her from those around him that he clearly and vividly imagined her appearance and character.
Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, his father, was loved and appreciated by the children for his humane attitude towards serfs. In addition to doing housework and children, he read a lot. During his life, Nikolai Ilyich collected a rich library, consisting of books of French classics, rare for those times, historical and natural history works. It was he who first noticed the tendency of his younger son to the living perception of the artistic word.
When Tolstoy was in his ninth year, his father took him to Moscow for the first time. The first impressions of the Moscow life of Lev Nikolaevich served as the basis for many paintings, scenes and episodes of the hero’s life in Moscow Tolstoy's trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence" and "Youth". Young Tolstoy saw not only the open side of life big city but also some hidden, shady sides. With his first stay in Moscow, the writer connected the end of the earliest period of his life, childhood, and the transition to adolescence. The first period of Tolstoy's life in Moscow did not last long. In the summer of 1837, having gone on business to Tula, his father died suddenly. Soon after the death of his father, Tolstoy, his sister and brothers had to endure a new misfortune: the grandmother died, whom all relatives considered the head of the family. Sudden death her son was a terrible blow to her and less than a year later carried her to the grave. A few years later, the first guardian of the orphaned Tolstoy children, the father's sister, Alexandra Ilyinichna Osten-Saken, died. Ten-year-old Leo, his three brothers and sister were taken to Kazan, where their new guardian, aunt Pelageya Ilyinichna Yushkova, lived.
Tolstoy wrote about his second guardian as a woman "kind and very pious", but at the same time very "frivolous and vain". According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Pelageya Ilyinichna did not enjoy authority among Tolstoy and his brothers, therefore moving to Kazan is considered to be a new stage in the life of the writer: education ended, a period of independent life began.
Tolstoy lived in Kazan for more than six years. It was the time of formation of his character and choice life path. Living with his brothers and sister at Pelageya Ilyinichna, young Tolstoy spent two years preparing to enter Kazan University. Deciding to enter the eastern department of the university, he paid special attention to preparing for exams in foreign languages. At the exams in mathematics and Russian literature, Tolstoy received fours, and in foreign languages - fives. At the exams in history and geography, Lev Nikolaevich failed - he received unsatisfactory marks.
Failure in the entrance exams served as a serious lesson for Tolstoy. He devoted the whole summer to a thorough study of history and geography, passed additional exams on them, and in September 1844 he was enrolled in the first year of the eastern department of the philosophical faculty of Kazan University in the category of Arabic-Turkish literature. However, the study of languages did not captivate Tolstoy, and after summer holidays in Yasnaya Polyana, he transferred from the Oriental Faculty to the Faculty of Law.
But even in the future, university studies did not arouse Lev Nikolayevich's interest in the sciences being studied. Most of the time he studied philosophy on his own, compiled the "Rules of Life" and carefully made entries in his diary. By the end of the third year of studies, Tolstoy was finally convinced that the then university order only interfered with independent creative work, and he decided to leave the university. However, he needed a university degree to qualify for employment. And in order to get a diploma, Tolstoy passed the university exams as an external student, having spent two years of his life in the countryside preparing for them. Having received university documents at the end of April 1847, the former student Tolstoy left Kazan.
After leaving the university, Tolstoy again went to Yasnaya Polyana, and then to Moscow. Here, at the end of 1850, he took up literary work. At this time, he decided to write two stories, but he did not finish either of them. In the spring of 1851, Lev Nikolaevich, together with his older brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich, who served in the army as an artillery officer, arrived in the Caucasus. Here Tolstoy lived for almost three years, being mainly in the village of Starogladkovskaya, located on the left bank of the Terek. From here he traveled to Kizlyar, Tiflis, Vladikavkaz, visited many villages and villages.
started in the Caucasus Tolstoy's military service. He took part in the combat operations of the Russian troops. Tolstoy's impressions and observations are reflected in his stories "Raid", "Cutting the Forest", "Degraded", in the story "Cossacks". Later, turning to the memories of this period of life, Tolstoy created the story "Hadji Murad". In March 1854, Tolstoy arrived in Bucharest, where the office of the chief of artillery troops was located. From here, as a staff officer, he made trips to Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia.
In the spring and summer of 1854, the writer took part in the siege of the Turkish fortress of Silistria. However, the main place of hostilities at that time was Crimean peninsula. Here, Russian troops led by V.A. Kornilov and P.S. Nakhimov heroically defended Sevastopol for eleven months, besieged by Turkish and Anglo-French troops. Participation in the Crimean War is an important stage in Tolstoy's life. Here he closely recognized ordinary Russian soldiers, sailors, residents of Sevastopol, sought to understand the source of the heroism of the defenders of the city, to understand the special character traits inherent in the defender of the Fatherland. Tolstoy himself showed bravery and courage in the defense of Sevastopol.
In November 1855 Tolstoy left Sevastopol for St. Petersburg. By this time, he had already earned recognition in the advanced literary circles. During this period, the attention of public life in Russia was focused around the issue of serfdom. Tolstoy's stories of this time ("The Morning of the Landowner", "Polikushka", etc.) are also devoted to this problem.
In 1857 the writer made overseas travel. He traveled to France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. Traveling through different cities, the writer got acquainted with the culture and social system of Western European countries with great interest. Much of what he saw later reflected in his work. In 1860 Tolstoy made another trip abroad. The year before, he opened a school for children in Yasnaya Polyana. Traveling through the cities of Germany, France, Switzerland, England and Belgium, the writer visited schools and studied the features of public education. In most of the schools that Tolstoy visited, caning discipline was in effect and corporal punishment was used. Returning to Russia and visiting a number of schools, Tolstoy discovered that many teaching methods that were in force in Western European countries, in particular in Germany, also penetrated into Russian schools. At this time, Lev Nikolaevich wrote a number of articles in which he criticized the system of public education both in Russia and in Western European countries.
Arriving at home after a trip abroad, Tolstoy devoted himself to work at school and the publication of the pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana. The school, founded by the writer, was located not far from his house - in an outbuilding that has survived to our time. In the early 1970s, Tolstoy compiled and published a number of textbooks for elementary school: "ABC", "Arithmetic", four "Books for reading". More than one generation of children have learned from these books. Stories from them are read with enthusiasm by children in our time.
In 1862, when Tolstoy was away, landowners arrived in Yasnaya Polyana and searched the writer's house. In 1861, the tsar's manifesto announced the abolition of serfdom. During the reform, disputes broke out between the landowners and peasants, the settlement of which was entrusted to the so-called peace mediators. Tolstoy was appointed mediator in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province. Dealing with controversial cases between nobles and peasants, the writer most often took a position in favor of the peasantry, which caused discontent among the nobles. This was the reason for the search. Because of this, Tolstoy had to stop the activities of the mediator, close the school in Yasnaya Polyana and refuse to publish a pedagogical journal.
In 1862 Tolstoy married Sofya Andreevna Bers, daughter of a Moscow doctor. Arriving with her husband in Yasnaya Polyana, Sofya Andreevna tried with all her might to create such an environment on the estate in which nothing would distract the writer from hard work. In the 60s, Tolstoy led a solitary life, devoting himself entirely to work on War and Peace.
At the end of the epic War and Peace, Tolstoy decided to write a new work - a novel about the era of Peter I. However, social events in Russia, caused by the abolition of serfdom, captured the writer so much that he left work on a historical novel and began to create a new work, in which reflected the post-reform life of Russia. This is how the novel "Anna Karenina" appeared, which Tolstoy devoted four years to work on.
In the early 1980s, Tolstoy moved with his family to Moscow to educate his growing children. Here the writer, well acquainted with rural poverty, became a witness to urban poverty. In the early 90s of the XIX century, almost half of the central provinces of the country were gripped by famine, and Tolstoy joined the fight against the people's disaster. Thanks to his call, the collection of donations, the purchase and delivery of food to the villages was launched. At this time, under the leadership of Tolstoy, about two hundred free canteens for the starving population were opened in the villages of the Tula and Ryazan provinces. A number of articles written by Tolstoy on the famine belong to the same period, in which the writer truthfully portrayed the plight of the people and condemned the policy of the ruling classes.
In the mid-1980s Tolstoy wrote Drama "Power of Darkness", which depicts the death of the old foundations of patriarchal-peasant Russia, and the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", dedicated to the fate of a man who only before his death realized the emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. In 1890, Tolstoy wrote the comedy The Fruits of Enlightenment, which shows the true state of the peasantry after the abolition of serfdom. Created in the early 1990s novel "Sunday", on which the writer worked intermittently for ten years. In all the works relating to this period of creativity, Tolstoy openly shows whom he sympathizes with and whom he condemns; depicts the hypocrisy and insignificance of the "masters of life."
The novel "Sunday" more than other works of Tolstoy was subjected to censorship. Most of the novel's chapters have been released or cut. The ruling circles launched an active policy against the writer. Fearing popular indignation, the authorities did not dare to use open repressions against Tolstoy. With the consent of the tsar and at the insistence of the chief procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobedonostsev, the synod adopted a resolution on excommunication of Tolstoy from the church. The writer was put under police surveillance. The world community was outraged by the persecution of Lev Nikolaevich. The peasantry, the progressive intelligentsia and the common people were on the side of the writer, they sought to express their respect and support to him. The love and sympathy of the people served as a reliable support for the writer in the years when the reaction sought to silence him.
However, despite all the efforts of reactionary circles, every year Tolstoy denounced the noble-bourgeois society more and more sharply and boldly, and openly opposed the autocracy. Works from this period "After the Ball", "For what?", "Hadji Murad", "The Living Corpse") are imbued with a deep hatred for royal power, a limited and ambitious ruler. In publicistic articles relating to this time, the writer sharply condemned the instigators of wars, called for a peaceful resolution of all disputes and conflicts.
In 1901-1902 Tolstoy suffered serious illness. At the insistence of doctors, the writer had to go to the Crimea, where he spent more than six months.
In the Crimea, he met with writers, actors, artists: Chekhov, Korolenko, Gorky, Chaliapin, and others. When Tolstoy returned home, hundreds of ordinary people warmly greeted him at the stations. In the autumn of 1909 the writer last time traveled to Moscow.
In the diaries and letters of Tolstoy in the last decades of his life, the difficult experiences that were caused by the discord between the writer and his family were reflected. Tolstoy wanted to transfer the land that belonged to him to the peasants and wanted his works to be freely and free of charge published by anyone who wanted to. The writer's family opposed this, not wanting to give up either the rights to the land or the rights to works. The old landlord way of life, preserved in Yasnaya Polyana, weighed heavily on Tolstoy.
In the summer of 1881, Tolstoy made his first attempt to leave Yasnaya Polyana, but a feeling of pity for his wife and children forced him to return. Several more attempts by the writer to leave his native estate ended with the same result. On October 28, 1910, secretly from his family, he left Yasnaya Polyana forever, deciding to go south and spend the rest of his life in a peasant's hut, among the simple Russian people. However, on the way, Tolstoy fell seriously ill and was forced to leave the train at the small Astapovo station. The great writer spent the last seven days of his life in the house of the head of the station. The news of the death of one of the outstanding thinkers, a remarkable writer, a great humanist deeply struck the hearts of all advanced people this time. creative heritage Tolstoy is of great importance for world literature. Over the years, interest in the writer's work does not weaken, but, on the contrary, grows. As A. Frans rightly noted: “With his life he proclaims sincerity, directness, purposefulness, firmness, calm and constant heroism, he teaches that one must be truthful and one must be strong ... Precisely because he was full of strength, he always was true!
Tolstoy's work is determined by moral and philosophical issues. The main object of knowledge is life human soul. Tolstoy showed the social contradictions of contemporary reality from the moral positions of the patriarchal peasantry. One of the cardinal ideas of his work is moral perfection, which was seen as a condition for the revival of man and society.
The most important feature of Tolstoy's work is the "dialectics of the soul", which was already defined in the first works ("Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth") and developed in his novels ("Anna Karenina", "Resurrection", "War and Peace") .The second property of his talent is sensitivity to the movement of history. Tolstoy was especially interested in the psychology of war, the manifestation of patriotic consciousness (“ Sevastopol stories", "War and Peace").
All Tolstoy's work is permeated by "folk thought". The people are the main force of history, the bearer of morality, the keeper of spiritual values. On the position of the peasantry, the writer moves to the beginning of the 1880s. The stage of moral and didactic creativity for the education of the people, the preaching of the theory of "simplification" begins.
Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace" became the most significant phenomenon in all world literature.
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If only you could write like Tolstoy and make the whole world listen! T. Dreiser By the end of the 70s - the beginning of the 80s of the 19th century, a turning point in Tolstoy's worldview occurred, prepared by all heads historical development post-reform Russia...
just as in the Kazan period, even more so than in the Kazan period, in the years from 1847 to 1851 Tolstoy lives, as it were, a double life. A young and strong will to live and a clear inner consciousness of the fact that ...
Without my Yasnaya Polyana, I can hardly imagine Russia and my attitude towards it. Without Yasnaya Polyana, maybe I can see more clearly general laws necessary for my fatherland, but I will not love it to the point of partiality. L. Tolstoy...
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"The great writer of the Russian land", Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the village of Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province. His father, a hussar lieutenant colonel, and his mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, are described partly in Childhood and Boyhood, partly in War and Peace. The boy was one and a half years old when his mother died, and nine years old when his father died; an orphan, he remained in the care of his aunt, Countess Osten-Saken; the upbringing of the boy was entrusted to a distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya. About this kind and meek woman who had beneficial effect on the children entrusted to her upbringing, Tolstoy later recalled touchingly. Being 24 years old, he wrote to her from the Caucasus: "The tears that I shed, thinking of you and your love for us, are so joyful that I let them flow without any false shame."
Having received a home education, which was common at that time for the children of landlords, in 1844 Tolstoy entered the Kazan University at the Faculty of Oriental Languages; a year later he goes to law school. A young man precocious, prone to self-observation and a critical attitude towards everything around him, Tolstoy remains extremely dissatisfied with the composition of professors and university teaching. At first, he rather diligently set to work, began to write an essay, where he drew a parallel between the “Instruction” by Catherine the Great II and the works of Montesquieu; but these studies were soon abandoned, and for a while Tolstoy was seized by the interests of secular life: the brilliant outer side secular world and his eternal festivities, picnics, balls, receptions, captivated the impressionable young man; he gave himself up to the interests of this world with all the passion of his nature. And, as in everything in his life, he was consistent here to the end, denying at that time everything that was not included in the circle of interests of a secular person.
But, as shown in "Childhood, Adolescence and Youth", which contains a lot of autobiographical material, even in childhood Tolstoy showed signs of self-deepening, some kind of persistent moral and mental quest; the boy was forever haunted by the questions of his still vague inner world. It can be said, judging by the writer left to us artistic material that he almost did not know about a carefree childhood, with its unconscious joy. Self-loving, always subordinating everything to his reflection, he, like most great people, spent a painful childhood, depressed by various questions of external and internal life, which it was beyond his childish strength to resolve.
It was this peculiarity of the nature of the young Tolstoy that took over in him after a certain period of time spent in secular pleasures. Under the influence of his own reflections and reading, Tolstoy decided to change his life dramatically. What he decided was immediately carried out. Convinced of the emptiness of secular life, disappointed with university studies, Tolstoy returns to his constant ideals of life. In "Childhood" and Adolescence, we read more than once about how the boy, the hero of the story, draws up programs for a future clean and reasonable life that meets some vague requirements of conscience. As if an unknown voice always resounded in his soul, the voice of moral commands, and forced him to follow him. The same was in Kazan. Tolstoy gives up secular entertainment, stops attending the university, gets carried away by Rousseau and spends days and nights over the books of this writer, who had a great influence on him.
In books, Tolstoy is looking not for intellectual pleasures and not for knowledge in itself, but for practical answers to questions, How live and how to live, that is, in what to see the meaning and true content of life. Under the influence of these reflections and the reading of Rousseau's books, Tolstoy wrote the essay "On the Purpose of Philosophy", in which he defines philosophy as a "science of life", that is, as one that clarifies the goals and way of life of a person. Already at this time, Rousseau's books posed a problem for young Tolstoy that irresistibly attracted his mental gaze: about moral perfection. Tolstoy, through increased spiritual tension, determines the plan for his future life: it should take place in the implementation of good and in active help to people. Having come to this conclusion, Tolstoy left the university and went to Yasnaya Polyana to take care of the life of the peasants and improve their situation. Here, many failures and disappointments awaited him, described in the story “Morning of the landowner”: it was impossible to solve such a big task at once with the help of one person, especially since many imperceptible little things and interference made the work difficult.
Leo Tolstoy in his youth. Photo 1848
In 1851 Tolstoy left for the Caucasus; here awaits him a mass of impressions, strong and fresh, which the heroic nature of the 23-year-old Tolstoy craved. Hunting for wild boars, elks, birds, grandiose pictures of the Caucasian nature, and finally, skirmishes and battles with the mountaineers (Tolstoy enlisted as a cadet in the artillery) - all this produced great impression for a future writer. In battles, he was cold-blooded and courageous, he was always in the most dangerous places and was repeatedly presented for a reward. The way of life at that time Tolstoy led a Spartan, healthy and simple; composure and courage did not leave him at the most dangerous moments, as, for example, in the case when, while hunting a bear, he missed the beast and was crushed by it, saved a minute later by other hunters and miraculously escaped with two non-dangerous wounds. But he led a life not only of fighting and hunting, he also had hours for literary work, which few people knew about yet. At the end of 1851, he tells Ergolskaya that he is writing a novel, not knowing if it will ever be published, but working on it gives him deep pleasure. Characteristic of the young Tolstoy is the lack of ambition and endurance in leisurely and diligent work. “I redid the work three times, which I started a long time ago,” he writes to Ergolskaya, “and I expect to redo it again in order to be satisfied; I write not out of vanity, but out of inclination, it is pleasant and useful for me to work, and I work.
The manuscript that Tolstoy was working on at that time was the story "Childhood"; among all the impressions of the Caucasus, the young writer loved to revive childhood memories with sadness and love, reviving every feature of a past life. Life in the Caucasus did not roughen his impressionable and childishly tender soul. In 1852, Tolstoy's first story was published in Nekrasov's journal Sovremennik with a modest signature L.N.; only a few close people knew the author of this story, noted in critical literature. Behind "Childhood" appeared "Boyhood" and a number of stories from the Caucasian military life: "Raid", "Cutting down the forest" and the large story "Cossacks", outstanding in its artistic merits and reflecting the features of a new worldview. In this story, Tolstoy for the first time emphasized a negative attitude towards the city cultural life and the advantage over it is simple and healthy life in the fresh bosom of nature, in proximity to the simple and pure spiritual masses of the people.
Tolstoy's military wandering life continued during the then outbreak of the Crimean War. He participated in the unsuccessful siege of Silistria on the Danube and observed with curiosity the life of the southern peoples. Promoted to officer in 1854, Tolstoy arrived in Sevastopol, where he survived the siege until the surrender of the city in 1855. Here Tolstoy tried to start a magazine for the soldiers, but did not get permission. Courageous, as always, who was here in the most dangerous places, Tolstoy reproduced the rich observations of this siege in three stories “Sevastopol in December, in May and in August”. Appearing also in Sovremennik, these stories drew general attention.
After the fall of Sevastopol, Tolstoy retired, moved to St. Petersburg and devoted himself primarily to literary interests; he draws closer to the circle of writers of that time - Turgenev, Goncharov, Ostrovsky, Nekrasov, Druzhinin, is friends with Fet. But to a large extent determined in Tolstoy during his solitary life in the Caucasian wilderness, his new views on life, on culture, on the goals and objectives of a person’s personal life, were alien to the general views of writers and alienated Tolstoy from them: he remained generally closed and lonely.
After several years of living introspectively and alone, having reached several certain items of his own world outlook created by great spiritual tension, Tolstoy now, with some kind of mental greed, seeks to embrace all the heritage of the spiritual culture of the West. After studying agriculture and school in Yasnaya Polyana, he travels abroad, visits Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, looks closely at the life and institutions of the Western world, absorbs a lot of books on philosophy, sociology, history, public education, etc. Everything he saw and what he hears, everything he reads, everything that strikes his mind and soul, becomes material for internal processing in the process of achieving the firm foundations of the worldview, which Tolstoy's thought is tirelessly looking for.
A great event for his inner life was the death of his brother, Nicholas; questions about the purpose and meaning of life, questions about death, took possession of his soul with even greater force, for a time inclining him to extremely pessimistic conclusions. But soon the ardent thirst for mental labor and activity again seizes him. Studying the organization of school affairs in Western European countries, Tolstoy comes to his own pedagogical theory, which he tries to implement upon his return to Yasnaya Polyana. He started a school there for peasant children and a pedagogical magazine called Yasnaya Polyana. Education, as a powerful tool for social reforms, seems to him the most important business of life. In Yasnaya Polyana, he wanted to make something in miniature that could later take root all over the world. At the heart of Tolstoy's theory was the same point of view of the need for personal improvement of a person, not by forcible inoculation of views and beliefs, but in accordance with the basic properties of his nature.
Having married S. A. Bers and having arranged a quiet family life, Tolstoy devotes himself to the study of philosophy, the ancient classics, his own literary works without forgetting either school or agriculture. The period of time from the sixties to the eighties of the last century is distinguished for Tolstoy by exceptional artistic productivity: during these years he wrote the most important in terms of artistic value and outstanding in volume of his works. From 1864 to 1869, he was busy with the huge historical epic "War and Peace" (see summary and analysis of this novel). From 1873 to 1876 he worked on the novel Anna Karenina. In this novel, in the history of Levin's inner life, the turning point in the spiritual life of Tolstoy himself is already reflected. In him, that desire for the realization in his personal life of the ideas of goodness and truth recognized by him, which manifested itself in him from his youth, finally prevails. Religious and moral-philosophical interests take precedence over literary and artistic interests. He depicted the history of this spiritual turn in Confession, written in 1881.
Portrait of Leo Tolstoy. Artist I. Repin, 1901
From that time on, Tolstoy subordinated his literary activity to accepted moral ideas, becoming a preacher and moralist (see Tolstoy), denying his lived artistic activity. His mental productivity is still enormous: in addition to a whole series of religious-philosophical and social treatises, he writes dramas, stories and novels. Since the end of the eighties, stories have appeared for the people: “What makes people alive”, “Two old men”, “Candle”, “You will miss the fire, you will not put it out”; novels: "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", "Kreutzer Sonata", "Master and Worker", dramas "The Power of Darkness" and "The Fruits of Enlightenment", and the novel " Resurrection".
Tolstoy's fame in these years becomes worldwide, his works are translated into the languages of all countries, his name enjoys great honor and respect among the entire educated world; in the west, special societies are organized dedicated to the study of the works of the great writer. Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived, was visited by people from all countries, driven by the desire to talk with the great writer. Until the very end of his life, an unexpected end that struck the whole world, Tolstoy, an 80-year-old elder, tirelessly devoted himself to mental pursuits, creating new philosophical and artistic works.
Wishing before the end of his life to retire and live in full harmony with the spirit of his teaching, which was always his cherished desire, Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana in the last days of October 1910, but on the way to the Caucasus he fell ill and had to stop at the Astapovo station, where died 11 days later - November 7 (20), 1910.
A.P. Chekhov said that Tolstoy occupies the first place among the great figures of Russian art. Tolstoy is our general teacher”, - said the outstanding French writer Anatole France. More than half a century has passed since the death of the great Russian artist of the word, but his worldwide fame continues to grow steadily. Wonderful stories, stories, dramas and three brilliant novels by Leo Tolstoy - "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina" and "Resurrection" - will never cease to excite human minds and hearts.
The first work of the writer is autobiographical. This is the trilogy "Childhood" (1852), "Boyhood" (1854), "Youth" (1857). Its protagonist, Nikolenka Irteniev, an impressionable, sensitive and introspective boy, in many ways resembles Leo Tolstoy himself. The author shows how in the soul of Nikolenka, i.e. in the soul of the future writer himself, a critical attitude towards the environment gradually arises, a desire to live better, more honestly than the people of his circle - aristocratic nobles, grows.
In 1847, Tolstoy unexpectedly left Kazan University, where he entered in 1844, and went to his estate Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy later described this period of his life in the story "The Morning of the Landowner". The young landowner Nekhlyudov tries to improve the life of the serfs, to understand their situation and help everyone, but he is faced with the people's distrust of him and blatant poverty, from which it is impossible to get rid of.
Having lived in the estate, and later in Moscow and St. Petersburg for about four years and not finding a job to his liking, Leo Tolstoy in 1851 went to the Caucasus, where he entered military service. By this act, he surprised those around him: a wealthy landowner with county title and connections in higher circles, he could, if desired, make brilliant career in the capital.
But Tolstoy dreams of something else. Once in the Caucasus, he seeks to better know the life of the common people, to get closer to the Cossacks, among whom he found himself, and to live a different life, a better life. Tolstoy spoke about his impressions of the life of the Cossacks and thoughts at that time in the “song of his youth” (Romain Rolland) - the story “Cossacks”, written ten years later. This story echoes such works as Pushkin's "Gypsies", "Bela" from Lermontov's "Hero of Our Time", Kuprin's "Olesya". It tells the story of the love of a man from the "civilized" world - a nobleman Dmitry Olenin for a simple girl from the people - the proud beauty of the Cossack Maryana. Olenin, who is close to the author in many ways, despises the life he left behind in St. Petersburg. He dreams of living as the Cossacks live, and wants to marry Maryana, whom he fell in love with. But Olenin cannot really get close to the Cossacks.
Upbringing and environment left their mark on him. Olenin cares very little about the joys and sorrows of those around him, he thinks first of all about himself. And the Cossacks feel it. It is not surprising that Maryana has a dislike for Olenin. Lonely, a stranger to everyone, he is forced to leave the Cossack village for hated Petersburg.
In 1853 the Crimean War began. Tolstoy participated in the defense of Sevastopol in the most dangerous area - the famous fourth bastion. Following the living traces of military events, he then wrote Sevastopol Tales. True Heroes Crimean War, according to the writer, are ordinary Russian people who "can do everything." “Because of the cross, because of the title, because of the threat, people cannot accept these terrible conditions: there must be another, high motive. And this reason is a feeling that is rarely manifested, bashful in Russian, but lying in the depths of everyone's soul - love for the motherland. The writer sharply contrasts the courageous and modest soldiers with those noble officers who boast of “aristocratism” in front of each other and try to flaunt their courage. “Each of the officers,” writes Tolstoy, “is a little Napoleon, a little monster, and is now ready to start a battle, kill a hundred people just to get an extra star or a third of the salary.”
Tolstoy saw that the life of high society - courtiers, eminent landowners, senior officials and the military - is full of vanity, selfishness, lies and is unreal, "artificial". However, the writer believed that in itself mutual love- rich and poor, oppressors and oppressed - can change lives for the better, destroy the vices of contemporary society. Tolstoy also hoped that by believing in God and following the precepts of religion, people would do good to each other and become happy. It was a naive illusion of a brilliant writer.
Returning from the war to St. Petersburg, Tolstoy became close friends with Nekrasov, Chernyshevsky, Turgenev and found his vocation in literary activity. But she did not become a "safe haven" for him. “In order to live honestly, one must tear, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again, and quit again, and always struggle and lose. And calmness is spiritual meanness, ”he argued in one of his letters in 1857. In tireless, intense thoughts, in constant anxiety, dissatisfaction with himself and those around him, the whole life of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy passed.
In 1862, the writer married Sofya Andreevna Bers, who became his assistant and devoted friend. From that time on, he lived almost without a break in his estate. With extraordinary concentration and perseverance he worked on his books. When Sofya Andreevna once asked if he was overworked, Lev Nikolaevich answered: “Do you think that writing is given for free? No, every day of work you leave a piece of yourself in the inkwell.
During the 1960s, Tolstoy worked on the epic novel War and Peace. This work broadly covers Russian life at the beginning of the 19th century. The focus is on the Patriotic War of 1812. Among the huge number of characters in War and Peace (and there are about six hundred of them) there are both outstanding historical figures and ordinary participants in the war of 1812. Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov are depicted with great sympathy, like Tolstoy, they were looking for truth, justice and genuine human happiness in life.
Unforgettable are the images of women in the novel, and above all, the image of Natasha Rostova, filled with special charm, in which, according to R. Rolland, “the thrill of life itself” is captured.
In "War and Peace" Tolstoy's ability to depict human experiences was very clearly manifested. He, in the apt expression of Chernyshevsky, conveyed "the dialectic of the human soul", "the very mysterious process of developing thoughts and feelings." The writer achieved this by using internal monologues characters that sometimes occupy entire pages in a novel. Such, for example, are the thoughts that flicker in the mind of Petya Rostov on the eve of the fatal battle for him, or the thoughts of the wounded Andrei Bolkonsky, who suddenly saw the high sky above him.
Tolstoy managed with extraordinary force to convey the patriotic enthusiasm that the Russian people experienced in 1812. “In War and Peace, I loved the thought of the people,” said the writer. And with the whole content of the epic novel, Tolstoy showed that it was the Russian people, who had risen to fight for national independence, that drove the French out of their country and ensured victory.
There is no other work in Russian literature where the power and greatness of the Russian people were conveyed with such persuasiveness and force as in War and Peace. Tolstoy's patriotic novel, infinitely dear to the people of our country, is of worldwide significance. “This novel is perhaps the greatest of all that has ever been written,” said the French communist writer Louis Aragon.
Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina" reflected that vague, anxious time when in Russia, after the abolition of serfdom, the old foundations of life broke down and new, bourgeois relations replaced them. In the life of the people of this era, according to the writer, everything was "obscure and confusing." Tolstoy showed that the most natural human feelings distorted and mutilated high society. Tragic was the fate of the wife of a prominent St. Petersburg dignitary Karenin, charming and sincere Anna, who fell in love with another person and did not hide this feeling. Secular hypocrites and hypocrites condemned her love for Vronsky as a criminal violation of family duty.
Tolstoy opposed the landowner Levin to Petersburg society. His relationship with his wife Kitty is based on complete trust and great sensitivity to each other. But in the soul of Levin, a happy family man, does not have a shadow of serene calmness: he, like Tolstoy himself, is not satisfied with his life. He is full of anxiety and tirelessly thinks about the meaning of life, about his relationship with the peasants, about the present and future of the country.
Working hard on works of art, L. Tolstoy in the 60-70s gave a lot of effort social activities. In 1859, he opened a school for peasant children and adults in Yasnaya Polyana, and he himself was their teacher. With the participation of Leo Tolstoy, twenty-one more schools were organized in the districts of the Tula province. In the 70s, the writer compiled an alphabet for children. He helped the peasants in lean, hungry years.
The tsarist government was hostile and distrustful of pedagogical activity Tolstoy. The Yasnaya Polyana school caused particular dissatisfaction with the authorities. A search was carried out at the writer's estate, which deeply offended Tolstoy. Later, the school was completely closed.
Reflections on the unlimited power of the tsar, the arbitrariness of landlords and officials, on poverty, lack of rights and oppression of the people, whose situation after the reform of 1861 remained very difficult, led Tolstoy in the late 70s and 80s to a mental crisis. There was a long-prepared coup in the views of the writer. Tolstoy finally understood the "criminality, cruelty, abomination of that life" that people of the rich classes lead, building their "stupid material external well-being on the suffering, downtroddenness, humiliation" of the people.
In journalistic and artistic works of 1880-1900. Tolstoy castigates the propertied classes with particular vigor. He, in the words of Lenin, "falls upon" the masters who are drowning in luxury, cruelly oppressing the people, and angrily tears off "all and sundry masks" from them. The harsh truth of the life of the propertied classes was exposed by the writer in his story The Death of Ivan Ilyich. Its protagonist, a successful official, only before his death notices the monstrous hypocrisy and lies that fill the daily life of all the people of his circle to the brim.
Small in volume, but very deep in thought, Tolstoy's story "After the Ball". Its hero is an elderly colonel. Sweet and graceful in the evening at the ball, he changes unrecognizably in the morning when he directs the public punishment of a soldier with gauntlets, driving him through the ranks. He beats one of the soldiers, who hit his comrade's bloodied back with a stick not as hard as the authorities demanded. The good nature, the secular sophistication of the colonel is just a deceitful and hypocritical mask. Behind it lies a brutal cruelty worthy of an executioner.
In the 90s, L. Tolstoy creates the last of his famous novels- "Resurrection". With an unprecedented, even in his works, sharpness and passion, the writer here scourges the capital's aristocrats and major royal officials, corrupted by exorbitant luxury and unlimited power, criminally indifferent to people who lived in humiliation and captivity, on the verge of poverty and in poverty. The focus of the readers of the novel is the terrible fate of Katyusha Maslova. A young girl who served as a maid in a landowner's family was seduced and abandoned by the young prince Nekhlyudov, and after several years of a homeless life surrounded by low, depraved people, after wanderings and ordeals, she ended up in brothel, and later, due to a misunderstanding, was accused of murder and exiled to hard labor. About the experiences of Katyusha Maslova and Prince Nekhlyudov, who, accidentally seeing Katyusha in the dock, realized his irreparable guilt before her, and is told in the novel.
Exposing the anti-people essence of the royal court, the army, the church and the state itself, sharply denying private property, proving the relationship and life of people in all their complexity, Leo Tolstoy in his artistic and journalistic works, according to Lenin, raised the great questions of his time. He made readers think about the serious, deep contradictions of reality.
IN late XIX- the beginning of the XX century. advanced Russian people were especially worried about the ways of destroying the evil that reigned in the country. Leo Tolstoy could not answer this question correctly either.
V. I. Lenin in the article “Leo Tolstoy, as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution” gave a deep interpretation of the essence of the contradictions in Tolstoy’s views: “On the one hand, a merciless picture of capitalist exploitation, exposure of government violence, comedies of the court and government controlled revealing the entire depth of the contradictions between the growth of wealth and the gains of civilization and the growth of poverty, savagery and torment of the working masses; on the other hand, the foolish preaching of “non-resistance to evil” by violence...”
Tolstoy himself felt the contradictory nature of his views. He realized that by following his preaching, the people would not be able to get rid of oppression and poverty. Recent decades life was for him a time of especially painful reflection, hesitation and dissatisfaction with himself.
Tolstoy refused the help of servants, he himself plowed the land, carried water, sawed and chopped firewood, helped the peasants build huts, put stoves in them, and made boots. However, the writer did not find the strength to break with his family and remained to live in the Yasnaya Polyana estate. “More and more, almost physically, I suffer from inequality, wealth, excess of our life in poverty and I cannot reduce this inequality. This is the secret tragedy of my life,” he writes in his diary in 1907.
In October 1910, Tolstoy secretly left Yasnaya Polyana so as not to return there. He was 82 years old. On the way, Lev Nikolayevich fell ill with pneumonia and was forced to leave the train at the Astapovo station. A week later, on November 7 (20), Tolstoy died. They buried him in Yasnaya Polyana. Hundreds of people visit this place, dear to all mankind, every day. They walk past the ponds surrounded by perennial willows to the estate, inspect a small two-storey house, where Tolstoy worked, and, having walked along the alleys of a shady park to a deep ravine, they stand for a long time at the grave of the great writer overgrown with thick grass.
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 the primary 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 move to an easier law faculty. 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, Tolstoy's older brother, Nikolai, came to visit Leo during his army leave, and convinced his brother to join the army as a cadet in the south, in the Caucasus 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 put him on a par with already famous 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), a sequel to Childhood, the second book in autobiographical trilogy Tolstoy. 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 relatively new technology: part of the story is presented in the form of a narration from the perspective 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 much of the 1860s writing his first known 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 novel's Napoleonic Wars, coupled with the development of the stories of its thoughtful and realistic yet 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 is also trying to convey in this novel is the conviction that the position of a person in society and the meaning human life are basically 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 in the life of Tolstoy himself, this is especially evident in the romantic relationship between the characters of Kitty and Levin, which is said to be reminiscent of Tolstoy's courtship of his own wife.
The first lines of the book "Anna Karenina" are among the most famous: "Everything happy families similar to each other, 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 came to the conclusion that 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. The protagonist struggles to fight the 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. The work received good reviews, but it is unlikely that this success corresponded to the level of recognition of his previous novels. Tolstoy's other late works are essays on art, a satirical play entitled 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 a 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 the 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 one of the best achievements 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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