Tolstoy Lecture One

Lecture One

Count Leo (Lev) Nikolaevich Tolstoy

1828 – 1910

Count Leo Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana (Clear (sunny, unclouded) Glade or meadow) near the town of Tula. Today this is about a four-hour train/bus ride from Moscow.
Tula is famous for its pryaniki (ginger cookies) and samovars (Russian tea kettles). Tolstoy by birth and education was an utmost nobleman. His father, Nicholas Ilyich Tolstoy, fought in the war of 1812 (against Napoleon) and was a count. Maria Nikolayevna (Tolstoy’s mother) was a countess in her own right. His family was in the midst of Russian history – the Decembrist uprising and the war against Napoleon.

Tolstoy loved the common man – the “muzhik”. His brother told young Leo the tall tale that in the woods there is this “green stick” that will bring freedom and happiness to the common man. Tolstoy truly believed this story and diligently searched for the stick.

From very tender years, little Lyovushka (how he was called) was interested in the meaning of life, the person’s life purpose, and good vs. bad. He was pudgy and his father called him a “poof” (a French pastry). He was also quite shy. Tolstoy was not the best student like his elder brothers, but the teacher remarked on the incredible depth of opinions and views for such a young person.

He was orphaned very early and kept trying to remember his mother’s face and had a really difficult time believing his father was dead. His mother died when he was a baby. His father performed a friendly adoption of two daughters of a fellow nobleman to help his friend to settle the estate in favor of his two illegitimate daughters (and not the nobleman’s sisters). Tolstoy the elder was rushing to a court date for estate proceedings when he dropped dead on a street.

At the age of sixteen (16), Leo Tolstoy enters the University of Kazan, which is quite a renown university. The city of Kazan is famous for such great historical figures as the poet/soldier/statesman Gavrila Romanovich Derzhavin (whose first word was “God”), the mathematician Lobachevsky, and the great bass singer Fyodor Shalyapin. Tolstoy’s major was Eastern languages, which he later changed to jurisprudence (the law). Leo partied quite a bit as a young aristocratic gentleman, but did study languages and was interested in a career in diplomacy. But he becomes somewhat restless and bored with city life and is concerned for his elder brother in the Caucasus. The Crimean was starts in 1853 (now Crimea is in the country of Ukraine, if you’ll remember, Crimea Yalta is where the Yalta accords were signed at the end of WWII by Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill. Also remember that the Tartars used to inhabit the Crimean peninsula as well as Bulgarians in Feodosia. Stalin moved the Tartars out to Uzbekistan and elsewhere out of Crimea and Nikita Kruschev (the shoe on podium) gave the Crimean peninsula to Ukraine)
In Tolstoy’s time the Caucasus region was (and still is) inhabited by a variety of different nations and tribes – some Orthodox Christian, some Muslim, and some of various religious sects.

Tolstoy travels to the Crimea and Caucasus as a tourist, but later enlists in the military to defend Sevastopol (now also in Ukraine). Based on person experience, Leo Tolstoy writes Sevastopol sketches. He also completes Childhood, Boyhood, Youth. When Leo finally returns to St. Petersburg, he returns as a renown writer. He also travels abroad extensively. In 1862, Tolstoy marries Sofia Andreevna Bers after courting both of the Bers sisters. Sofia Andreevna is a very young lady, yet she has great respect and admiration for Leo Tolstoy. (She even copies the manuscript of Anna Karenina 7 times for him). After the marriage Leo and Sofia move to Yasnaya Polyana (Clear Glade).

Tolstoy creates a school for the village kids, writes children’s books and a basic reader for kids, after his greatest works War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy undergoes a great spiritual and moral crisis. Much later he continues on with his writing urged (from his deathbed) by the greatest (up to this time) Russian writer Turgenev (author of two novels that were very very popular in the West Fathers and Sons and Nest of the Gentry).

In 1860s Tolstoy writes War and Society translated into Russian and understood by the world incorrectly (the title is misunderstood) because of the final hard sign in Russian. The title was translated into English as War and Peace. The time span of the novel is fifteen (15) years. The novel exemplifies life in the beginning of the 19th century and the war of 1812. The role of a person in history, the person and one’s nation, personal relationships – are some of the main themes.

After War and Peace Tolstoy was looking and started several historical novels, yet did not complete them. Finally he started on Anna Karenina – one of the true masterpieces of world literature. This novel is about the power of love, the understanding and the call of duty, and about modern family relationships. Tolstoy shows himself to be a gifted psychologist and a writer that can understand a woman’s side of the story (thoughts and feelings). War and Peace and Anna Karenina bring Leo Tolstoy world renown. But at the height of his literary career he decides to part with literature and to create his own philosophical school of thought. He writes religious literature in which he describes his own understanding of religion (Gospel) and this puts him at odds with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). Only in the late 80s does he again return to literature, he writes Resurrection, one of the most powerful novels dealing with the state, the morals of society, ROC, and personal choice.

In the last ten years of his life he gives up his riches (or tries to), does not want servants to help him, ploughs the land, chops wood, wears homespun clothing and encourages his wife to do the same. (Needless to say she was not gung ho about these ideas)

In 1910, at the age of 82, Tolstoy after a confrontation with his wire, Tolstoy quietly leaves Clear Glade and dies on the 7th of November at a train station surrounded by Tolstovite followers. They keep his wife away from his almost until his last moments.

Paintings of Leo Tolstoy by great masters

By Nicolas Ghe



By Kramskoy



By Nesterov:





Sources:

Spravochnik po Tolstomu, Gosudarstvennoye Izdatel’stvo Moscow 1928

Rogover, Russkaya Literatura Vtoroi Poloviny XIX veka, Saga, Moscow, 2005

Various web publications

Henri Troyat, Tolstoy, Doubleday and Co, Garden City NY, 1967