Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy as a writer. Treatment in the Bashkir nomadic camp Karalyk
In 1828, on August 26, in the Yasnaya Polyana estate, the future great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy was born. The family was well-born - his ancestor was a noble nobleman who received the title of count for his services to Tsar Peter. Mother was from ancient times noble family Volkonskikh. Belonging to a privileged layer of society influenced the behavior and thoughts of the writer throughout his life. Brief biography Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich does not fully disclose the whole story ancient family family.
Serene life in Yasnaya Polyana
The writer's childhood was quite prosperous, despite the fact that he lost his mother early. Thanks to family stories, he preserved her bright image in his memory. A short biography of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy indicates that his father was the embodiment of beauty and strength for the writer. He instilled in the boy a love of hound hunting, which was later described in detail in the novel War and Peace.
He also had a close relationship with his older brother Nikolenka - he taught little Levushka different games and told him interesting stories. Tolstoy's first story - "Childhood" - contains a lot of autobiographical memories about the childhood years of the writer himself.
Youth
A serene, joyful stay in Yasnaya Polyana was interrupted due to the death of his father. In 1837, the family was taken under the care of an aunt. In this city, according to a short biography of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, the writer spent his youth. Here he entered the university in 1844 - first at the Faculty of Philosophy and then at the Faculty of Law. True, studies attracted him little; the student preferred various amusements and revelries.
In this biography of Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich characterizes him as a person who disdainfully treated people of the lower, non-aristocratic class. He denied history as a science - in his eyes it had no practical benefit. The writer retained the sharpness of his judgments throughout his life.
As a landowner
In 1847, without graduating from university, Tolstoy decided to return to Yasnaya Polyana and try to arrange the life of their serfs. Reality sharply diverged from the writer’s ideas. The peasants did not understand the master’s intentions, and a short biography of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy describes his management experience as unsuccessful (the writer shared it in his story “The Morning of the Landowner”), as a result of which he leaves his estate.
The path to becoming a writer
The next few years spent in St. Petersburg and Moscow were not in vain for the future great prose writer. From 1847 to 1852, diaries were kept in which Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy carefully verified all his thoughts and reflections. A short biography tells that during his service in the Caucasus, work was being carried out in parallel on the story “Childhood”, which will be published a little later in the magazine “Sovremennik”. This marked the beginning of further creative path great Russian writer.
Ahead of the writer lies the creation of his great works "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina", but for now he is honing his style, publishing in Sovremennik and basking in favorable reviews from critics.
Later years of creativity
In 1855, Tolstoy came to St. Petersburg for a short time, but literally a couple of months later he left it and settled in Yasnaya Polyana, opening a school there for peasant children. In 1862 he married Sophia Bers and was very happy in the first years.
In 1863-1869, the novel “War and Peace” was written and revised, which bore little resemblance classic version. It lacks traditional key elements of that time. Or rather, they are present, but are not key.
1877 - Tolstoy completed the novel Anna Karenina, in which the technique of internal monologue is repeatedly used.
Since the second half of the 60s, Tolstoy has been going through an experience that was only overcome at the turn of the 1870s and 80s by completely rethinking his previous life. Then Tolstoy appears - his wife categorically did not accept his new views. The ideas of the late Tolstoy are similar to socialist teachings, the only difference being that he was an opponent of the revolution.
In 1896-1904, Tolstoy completed the story, which was published after his death, which occurred in November 1910 at the Astapovo station on the Ryazan-Ural road.
Years of life: from 09.09.1828 to 20.11.1910
Great Russian writer. Graph. Educator, publicist, religious thinker, whose authoritative opinion provoked the emergence of a new religious and moral movement - Tolstoyism.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9 (August 28), 1828 in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province, on his mother’s hereditary estate - Yasnaya Polyana. Leo was the fourth child in big noble family. His mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died when Tolstoy was not yet two years old. A distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya, took up the task of raising orphaned children. In 1837, the family moved to Moscow, settling on Plyushchikha, because the eldest son had to prepare to enter university, but soon his father suddenly died, leaving affairs (including some litigation related to the family’s property) in an unfinished state, and the three younger ones The children again settled in Yasnaya Polyana under the supervision of Ergolskaya and their paternal aunt, Countess A. M. Osten-Sacken, who was appointed guardian of the children. Here Lev Nikolaevich remained until 1840, when Countess Osten-Sacken died and the children moved to Kazan, to a new guardian - their father's sister P. I. Yushkova.
Tolstoy's education initially proceeded under the guidance of a rude French tutor, Saint-Thomas. From the age of 15, Tolstoy became a student at Kazan University, one of the leading universities of that time.
Having dropped out of the university, Tolstoy lived in Yasnaya Polyana from the spring of 1847. In 1851, realizing the purposelessness of his existence and, deeply despising himself, he went to the Caucasus to join the active army. In Crimea, Tolstoy was captured by new impressions and literary plans. There he began working on his first novel, “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth". Literary debut immediately brought Tolstoy real recognition.
In 1854, Tolstoy was assigned to the Danube Army in Bucharest. Boring life at the headquarters soon forced him to transfer to the Crimean Army, to besieged Sevastopol, where he commanded a battery on the 4th bastion, showing rare personal courage (awarded the Order of St. Anne and medals). In Crimea, Tolstoy was captured by new impressions and literary plans, here he began to write the cycle " Sevastopol stories", which was soon published and became a huge success.
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."
In the fall of 1856, Tolstoy, having retired, went to Yasnaya Polyana, and at the beginning of 1857 he went abroad. He visited France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and returned to Moscow in the fall, then to Yasnaya Polyana. In 1859, Tolstoy opened a school for peasant children in the village, helped to establish more than 20 schools in the vicinity of Yasnaya Polyana, and this activity fascinated Tolstoy so much that in 1860 he traveled abroad a second time to get acquainted with the schools of Europe.
In 1862, Tolstoy married Sofya Andreevna Bers. During the first 10-12 years after his marriage, he created War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Although a widely known, recognized and beloved writer for these works, Leo Tolstoy himself did not attach fundamental importance to them. More important to him was his philosophical system.
Leo Tolstoy was the founder of the Tolstoyanism movement, one of the fundamental theses of which is the Gospel “non-resistance to evil by force.” In 1925, around this topic among the Russian émigré community, a still ongoing debate flared up, in which many Russian philosophers of that time took part.
In the late autumn of 1910, at night, secretly from his family, 82-year-old Tolstoy, accompanied only by his personal doctor D.P. Makovitsky, left Yasnaya Polyana. The road turned out to be too much for him: on the way, Tolstoy fell ill and was forced to get off the train at the small railway station of Astapovo (now Leo Tolstoy, Lipetsk region). Here, in the station master's house, he spent the last seven days of his life. November 7 (20) Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died.
Information about the works:
IN former estate“Yasnaya Polyana” is now a museum dedicated to the life and work of L. N. Tolstoy. In addition to this museum, the main exhibition about his life and work can be seen in State Museum L. N. Tolstoy, in former house Lopukhinykh-Stanitskaya (Moscow, Prechistenka 11). Its branches are also: at Lev Tolstoy station (former Astapovo station), memorial estate museum L. N. Tolstoy “Khamovniki” (Lva Tolstoy Street, 21), exhibition hall on Pyatnitskaya.
Many writers and critics were surprised that the first Nobel Prize in Literature was not awarded to Leo Tolstoy, because at that time he was already famous not only in Russia, but also abroad. Numerous publications were published throughout Europe. But Tolstoy responded with the following address: “Dear and respected brothers! I was very pleased that the Nobel Prize was not awarded to me. Firstly, it saved me from a great difficulty - managing this money, which, like any money, in my conviction, can only bring evil; and secondly, it gave me honor and great fun to receive expressions of sympathy from so many people, although unfamiliar to me, but still deeply respected by me. Please accept, dear brothers, my sincere gratitude and best feelings. Leo Tolstoy."
But that's the story Nobel Prize the writer's life did not end. In 1905, Tolstoy's new work, The Great Sin, was published. This, now almost forgotten acutely nonfiction book talked about the hard lot of the Russian peasantry. The Russian Academy of Sciences came up with the idea of nominating Leo Tolstoy for the Nobel Prize. Having learned about this, Leo Tolstoy sent a letter to the Finnish writer and translator Arvid Järnefelt. In it, Tolstoy asked his acquaintance through his Swedish colleagues to “try to make sure that I am not awarded this prize,” because “if this happened, it would be very unpleasant for me to refuse.” Järnefelt carried out this delicate assignment, and the prize was awarded to the Italian poet Giosué Carducci.
Lev Nikolaevich was, among other things, musically gifted. He loved music, felt it subtly, and played music himself. So, in his youth, he picked up a waltz on the piano, which Alexander Goldenweiser later recorded by ear one evening in Yasnaya Polyana. Now this waltz in F major is often performed at events associated with Tolstoy, both in a piano version and orchestrated for a small string ensemble.
Bibliography
Stories:
List of stories -
Educational literature and teaching aids:
ABC (1872)
New ABC (1875)
Arithmetic (1875)
The first Russian book for reading (1875)
Second Russian book for reading (1875)
The third Russian book for reading (1875)
The fourth Russian book for reading (1875)
Plays:
The Infected Family (1864)
Nihilist (1866)
Power of Darkness (1886)
Dramatic Treatment of the Legend of Haggai (1886)
The first distiller, or How the little devil earned the edge (1886)
(1890)
Peter Khlebnik (1894)
Living Corpse (1900)
And the light shines in the darkness (1900)
All the qualities come from her (1910)
Religious and philosophical works:
, 1880-1881
, 1882
The Kingdom of God is within you - a treatise, 1890-1893.
Film adaptations of works, theatrical performances
“Resurrection” (English: Resurrection, 1909, UK). 12 minute silent film novel of the same name(filmed during the writer’s lifetime).
“The Power of Darkness” (1909, Russia). Silent film.
"Anna Karenina" (1910, Germany). Silent film.
"Anna Karenina" (1911, Russia). Silent film. Dir. - Maurice Maitre
“Living Corpse” (1911, Russia). Silent film.
“War and Peace” (1913, Russia). Silent film.
"Anna Karenina" (1914, Russia). Silent film. Dir. - V. Gardin
"Anna Karenina" (1915, USA). Silent film.
“The Power of Darkness” (1915, Russia). Silent film.
“War and Peace” (1915, Russia). Silent film. Dir. - Y. Protazanov, V. Gardin
“Natasha Rostova” (1915, Russia). Silent film. Producer - A. Khanzhonkov. Starring: V. Polonsky, I. Mozzhukhin
"Living Corpse" (1916). Silent film.
"Anna Karenina" (1918, Hungary). Silent film.
“The Power of Darkness” (1918, Russia). Silent film.
"Living Corpse" (1918). Silent film.
“Father Sergius” (1918, RSFSR). Silent film film by Yakov Protazanov, in leading role Ivan Mozzhukhin
"Anna Karenina" (1919, Germany). Silent film.
“Polikushka” (1919, USSR). Silent film.
“Love” (1927, USA. Based on the novel “Anna Karenina”). Silent film. As Anna - Greta Garbo
“Living Corpse” (1929, USSR). Starring: V. Pudovkin
"Anna Karenina" (Anna Karenina, 1935, USA). Sound film. As Anna - Greta Garbo
"Anna Karenina" (Anna Karenina, 1948, UK). As Anna - Vivien Leigh
“War and Peace” (War & Peace, 1956, USA, Italy). As Natasha Rostova - Audrey Hepburn
“Agi Murad il diavolo bianco” (1959, Italy, Yugoslavia). As Hadji Murat - Steve Reeves
“People Too” (1959, USSR, based on a fragment from “War and Peace”). Dir. G. Danelia, starring V. Sanaev, L. Durov
“Resurrection” (1960, USSR). Dir. - M. Schweitzer
"Anna Karenina" (Anna Karenina, 1961, USA). As Vronsky - Sean Connery
“Cossacks” (1961, USSR). Dir. - V. Pronin
"Anna Karenina" (1967, USSR). In the role of Anna - Tatiana Samoilova
“War and Peace” (1968, USSR). Dir. - S. Bondarchuk
“Living Corpse” (1968, USSR). In ch. roles - A. Batalov
"War and Peace" (War & Peace, 1972, UK). Series. As Pierre - Anthony Hopkins
“Father Sergius” (1978, USSR). Feature film Igor Talankin, starring Sergei Bondarchuk
« Caucasian story"(1978, USSR, based on the story "Cossacks"). In ch. roles - V. Konkin
“Money” (1983, France-Switzerland, based on the story “False Coupon”). Dir. - Robert Bresson
“Two Hussars” (1984, USSR). Dir. - Vyacheslav Krishtofovich
"Anna Karenina" (Anna Karenina, 1985, USA). As Anna - Jacqueline Bisset
« Simple death"(1985, USSR, based on the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich"). Dir. - A. Kaidanovsky
“The Kreutzer Sonata” (1987, USSR). Starring: Oleg Yankovsky
"For what?" (Za co?, 1996, Poland / Russia). Dir. - Jerzy Kawalerowicz
"Anna Karenina" (Anna Karenina, 1997, USA). In the role of Anna - Sophie Marceau, Vronsky - Sean Bean
"Anna Karenina" (2007, Russia). In the role of Anna - Tatiana Drubich
For more details, see also: List of film adaptations of “Anna Karenina” 1910-2007.
“War and Peace” (2007, Germany, Russia, Poland, France, Italy). Series. In the role of Andrei Bolkonsky - Alessio Boni.
Born into the noble family of Maria Nikolaevna, nee Princess Volkonskaya, and Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy in the Yasnaya Polyana estate in Krapivensky district of the Tula province, he was the fourth child. Happy marriage His parents became the prototype of the heroes in the novel “War and Peace” - Princess Marya and Nikolai Rostov. Parents died early. The future writer was educated by Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya, a distant relative, and educated by tutors: the German Reselman and the Frenchman Saint-Thomas, who became the heroes of the writer’s stories and novels. At 13 years old future writer and his family moved to the hospitable house of P.I.’s father’s sister. Yushkova in Kazan.
In 1844, Leo Tolstoy entered the Imperial Kazan University at the Department of Oriental Literature of the Faculty of Philosophy. After the first year, he failed the transition exam and transferred to the Faculty of Law, where he studied for two years, plunging into social entertainment. Leo Tolstoy, naturally shy and ugly, acquired secular society reputation for “thinking” about the happiness of death, eternity, love, although he himself wanted to shine. And in 1847, he left the university and went to Yasnaya Polyana with the intention of pursuing science and “reaching the highest degree of perfection in music and painting.”
In 1849, the first school for peasant children was opened on his estate, where Foka Demidovich, his serf, taught. former musician. Yermil Bazykin, who studied there, said: “There were about 20 of us boys, the teacher was Foka Demidovich, a yard man. Under father L.N. Tolstoy he performed the position of musician. The old man was good. He taught us the alphabet, counting, sacred history. Lev Nikolaevich also came to us, also studied with us, showed us his diploma. I went every other day, every other day, or even every day. He always ordered the teacher not to offend us...”
In 1851, under the influence of his older brother Nikolai, Lev left for the Caucasus, having already begun to write “Childhood”, and in the fall he became a cadet in the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in Cossack village Starogladovskaya on the Terek River. There he finished the first part of “Childhood” and sent it to the magazine “Sovremennik” to its editor N.A. Nekrasov. On September 18, 1852, the manuscript was published with great success.
Leo Tolstoy served for three years in the Caucasus and, having the right to the most honorable St. George Cross for bravery, “ceded” it to a fellow soldier, as giving a lifelong pension. At the beginning Crimean War 1853-1856 transferred to the Danube Army, participated in the battles of Oltenitsa, the siege of Silistria, and the defense of Sevastopol. Then the story “Sevastopol in December 1854” was written. was read by Emperor Alexander II, who ordered to take care of the talented officer.
In November 1856, already recognized and famous writer leaves military service and leaves to travel around Europe.
In 1862, Leo Tolstoy married seventeen-year-old Sofya Andreevna Bers. Their marriage produced 13 children, five died in early childhood, the novels “War and Peace” (1863-1869) and “Anna Karenina” (1873-1877) were written, recognized as great works.
In the 1880s Leo Tolstoy experienced a powerful crisis, which led to the denial of official state power and its institutions, awareness of the inevitability of death, faith in God and the creation of his own teaching - Tolstoyism. He lost interest in his usual lordly life, he began to have thoughts about suicide and the need to live correctly, become a vegetarian, engage in education and physical labor- he plowed, sewed boots, taught children at school. In 1891 he publicly renounced copyright on his literary works, written after 1880
During 1889-1899 Leo Tolstoy wrote the novel "Resurrection", whose plot is based on a real court case, and scathing articles about the system public administration- on this basis Holy Synod excommunicated Count Leo Tolstoy from Orthodox Church and anathematized in 1901.
On October 28 (November 10), 1910, Leo Tolstoy secretly left Yasnaya Polyana, going on a trip without specific plan for the sake of their moral and religious ideas recent years accompanied by doctor D.P. Makovitsky. On the way, he caught a cold, fell ill with lobar pneumonia and was forced to get off the train at Astapovo station (now Lev Tolstoy station in the Lipetsk region). Leo Tolstoy died on November 7 (20), 1910 in the house of the station chief I.I. Ozolin and was buried in Yasnaya Polyana.
Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828 on his father's estate Yasnaya Polyana, in the Tula province. Thick - old Russian noble surname; one representative of this family, the head of Peter's secret police Peter Tolstoy, was promoted to count. Tolstoy's mother was born Princess Volkonskaya. His father and mother served as prototypes for Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya in War and Peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). They belonged to the highest Russian aristocracy, and their family affiliation with the highest stratum ruling class sharply distinguishes Tolstoy from other writers of his time. He never forgot about her (even when this realization of his became completely negative), always remained an aristocrat and kept aloof from the intelligentsia.
Leo Tolstoy's childhood and adolescence passed between Moscow and Yasnaya Polyana, in big family, where there were several brothers. He left unusually vivid memories of his early environment, his relatives and servants, in wonderful autobiographical notes that he wrote for his biographer P. I. Biryukov. His mother died when he was two years old, his father when he was nine years old. His further upbringing was in charge of his aunt, Mademoiselle Ergolskaya, who presumably served as the prototype for Sonya in War and Peace.
Leo Tolstoy in his youth. Photo from 1848
In 1844, Tolstoy entered Kazan University, where he first studied oriental languages and then law, but in 1847 he left the university without receiving a diploma. In 1849, he settled in Yasnaya Polyana, where he tried to become useful to his peasants, but soon realized that his efforts were of no use because he lacked knowledge. IN student years and after leaving the university, he, as was usual with young people of his class, led chaotic life, filled with the pursuit of pleasure - wine, cards, women - somewhat similar to the life that Pushkin led before exile to the south. But Tolstoy was unable to accept life as it is with a light heart. From the very beginning, his diary (existing since 1847) testifies to an unquenchable thirst for mental and moral justification of life, a thirst that forever remained the guiding force of his thought. This same diary was the first experience in developing that technique psychological analysis, which later became Tolstoy’s main literary weapon. His first attempt to try himself in a more purposeful and creative type of writing dates back to 1851.
The tragedy of Leo Tolstoy. Documentary
In the same year, disgusted with his empty and useless Moscow life, he went to the Caucasus to the Terek Cossacks, where he joined the garrison artillery as a cadet (junker means a volunteer, a volunteer, but noble birth). The next year (1852) he finished his first story ( Childhood) and sent it to Nekrasov for publication in Contemporary. Nekrasov immediately accepted it and wrote about it to Tolstoy in very encouraging tones. The story was an immediate success, and Tolstoy immediately rose to prominence in literature.
At the battery, Leo Tolstoy led a rather easy and unburdened life as a cadet with means; the place to stay was also nice. He had a lot of free time most of which he spent on hunting. In the few fights in which he had to participate, he performed very well. In 1854 he received an officer's rank and, at his request, was transferred to the army fighting the Turks in Wallachia (see Crimean War), where he took part in the siege of Silistria. In the autumn of the same year he joined the Sevastopol garrison. There Tolstoy saw real war. He took part in the defense of the famous Fourth Bastion and in the Battle of the Black River and ridiculed bad command in a satirical song - the only work of his in poetry known to us. In Sevastopol he wrote famous Sevastopol stories that appeared in Contemporary, when the siege of Sevastopol was still ongoing, which greatly increased interest in their author. Soon after leaving Sevastopol, Tolstoy went on vacation to St. Petersburg and Moscow, and the next year he left the army.
Only in these years, after the Crimean War, did Tolstoy communicate with literary world. The writers of St. Petersburg and Moscow greeted him as an outstanding master and brother. As he later admitted, success greatly flattered his vanity and pride. But he did not get along with the writers. He was too much of an aristocrat for this semi-bohemian intelligentsia to please him. They were too awkward plebeians for him, and they were indignant that he clearly preferred the light to their company. On this occasion, he and Turgenev exchanged caustic epigrams. On the other hand, his very mentality was not to the heart of progressive Westerners. He did not believe in progress or culture. In addition, his dissatisfaction with the literary world intensified due to the fact that his new works disappointed them. Everything he wrote after childhood, did not show any movement towards innovation and development, and Tolstoy's critics failed to understand the experimental value of these imperfect works (see the article Tolstoy's Early Work for more details). All this contributed to his cessation of relations with the literary world. The culmination was a noisy quarrel with Turgenev (1861), whom he challenged to a duel, and then apologized for it. This whole story is very typical, and it revealed the character of Leo Tolstoy, with his hidden embarrassment and sensitivity to insults, with his intolerance for the imaginary superiority of other people. The only writers with whom he maintained friendly relations were the reactionary and “land lord” Fet (in whose house the quarrel with Turgenev broke out) and the Slavophile democrat Strakhov- people who were completely unsympathetic to the main trend of progressive thought of that time.
Tolstoy spent the years 1856–1861 between St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yasnaya Polyana and abroad. He traveled abroad in 1857 (and again in 1860–1861) and learned from there a disgust for the selfishness and materialism of the European bourgeois civilization. In 1859 he opened a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana and in 1862 began publishing a pedagogical magazine Yasnaya Polyana, in which he surprised the progressive world with the assertion that it is not the intellectuals who should teach the peasants, but rather the peasants who should teach the intellectuals. In 1861 he accepted the post of mediator, a post created to oversee the implementation of the emancipation of the peasants. But the unsatisfied thirst for moral strength continued to torment him. He abandoned the revelry of his youth and began to think about marriage. In 1856, he made his first unsuccessful attempt to marry (Arsenyeva). In 1860, he was deeply shocked by the death of his brother Nicholas - this was his first encounter with the inevitable reality of death. Finally, in 1862, after much hesitation (he was convinced that since he was old - thirty-four years old! - and ugly, no woman would love him), Tolstoy proposed to Sofya Andreevna Bers, and it was accepted. They got married in September of that year.
Marriage is one of the two main milestones in Tolstoy's life; the second milestone was his appeal. He was always haunted by one concern - how to justify his life before his conscience and achieve lasting moral well-being. When he was a bachelor, he oscillated between two opposing desires. The first was a passionate and hopeless striving for that integral and unreasoning, “natural” state that he found among the peasants and especially among the Cossacks, in whose village he lived in the Caucasus: this state does not strive for self-justification, for it is free from self-consciousness, this justification demanding. He tried to find such an unquestioning state in conscious submission to animal impulses, in the lives of his friends and (and here he was closest to achieving it) in his favorite pastime - hunting. But he was unable to be satisfied with this forever, and another equally passionate desire - to find a rational justification for life - led him astray every time it seemed to him that he had already achieved contentment with himself. Marriage was for him the gateway to a more stable and lasting natural state" It was a self-justification of life and a solution to a painful problem. Family life, its unreasoning acceptance and submission to it, henceforth became his religion.
For the first fifteen years of his married life, Tolstoy lived in a blissful state of contented vegetation, with a pacified conscience and a hushed need for higher rational justification. The philosophy of this plant conservatism is expressed with great creative power V War and Peace(see summary and analysis of this novel). IN family life he was extremely happy. Sofya Andreevna, almost still a girl when he married her, easily became what he wanted to make her; he explained his new philosophy, and she was her indestructible stronghold and constant guardian, which ultimately led to the breakup of the family. The writer's wife turned out to be ideal wife, mother and mistress of the house. In addition, she became a devoted assistant to her husband in literary work- everyone knows that she rewrote it seven times War and Peace from start to finish. She gave birth to Tolstoy many sons and daughters. She didn't have personal life: she completely disappeared into family life.
Thanks to Tolstoy's reasonable management of estates (Yasnaya Polyana was simply a place of residence; the large Trans-Volga estate brought in income) and the sale of his works, the family's fortune increased, as did the family itself. But Tolstoy, although absorbed and satisfied with his self-justifying life, although he glorified it with unsurpassed artistic power in his best novel, he was still not able to completely dissolve in family life, as his wife dissolved. “Life in Art” also did not absorb him as much as his brothers. A worm of moral thirst, although brought to tiny sizes, never died. Tolstoy was constantly concerned with questions and demands of morality. In 1866 he defended (unsuccessfully) before a military court a soldier accused of striking an officer. In 1873 he published articles on public education, on the basis of which the astute critic Mikhailovsky managed to predict further development his ideas.
Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, the fourth child in a wealthy aristocratic family. Tolstoy lost his parents early; his further upbringing was carried out by his distant relative T. A. Ergolskaya. In 1844, Tolstoy entered the Kazan University department of oriental languages Faculty of Philosophy, but because classes did not arouse any interest in him, in 1847. submitted his resignation from the university. At the age of 23, Tolstoy, together with his older brother Nikolai, left for the Caucasus, where he took part in hostilities. These years of the writer's life were reflected in the autobiographical story "Cossacks" (1852-63), in the stories "Raid" (1853), "Cutting Wood" (1855), as well as in the later story "Hadji Murat" (1896-1904, published in 1912). In the Caucasus, Tolstoy began to write the trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”.
During the Crimean War he went to Sevastopol, where he continued to fight. After the end of the war, he left for St. Petersburg and immediately joined the Sovremennik circle (N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. A. Goncharov, etc.), where he was greeted as " the great hope of Russian literature" (Nekrasov), published "Sevastopol Stories", which clearly reflected his outstanding writing talent. In 1857, Tolstoy went on a trip to Europe, which he was later disappointed with.
In the fall of 1856, Tolstoy, having retired, decided to interrupt his literary activity and become a landowner, went to Yasnaya Polyana, where he was engaged in educational work, opened a school, and created his own system of pedagogy. This activity fascinated Tolstoy so much that in 1860 he even went abroad to get acquainted with the schools of Europe.
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 completely devoted himself to family life and household concerns, but by the fall of 1863 he was captured by a new literary plan, as a result of which the world was born. the fundamental work “War and Peace” appeared. In 1873-1877 created the novel Anna Karenina. During these same years, the writer’s worldview, known as Tolstoyism, was fully formed, the essence of which is visible in the works: “Confession”, “What is my faith?”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”.
Admirers of the writer’s work came to Yasnaya Polyana from all over Russia and the world, whom they treated as a spiritual mentor. In 1899, the novel “Resurrection” was published.
Latest works The writer's stories were “Father Sergius”, “After the Ball”, “ Posthumous notes Elder Fyodor Kuzmich" and the drama "The Living Corpse".
In the late autumn of 1910, at night, secretly from his family, 82-year-old Tolstoy, accompanied only by his personal doctor D.P. Makovitsky, left Yasnaya Polyana, fell ill on the way and was forced to get off the train at the small Astapovo Ryazan-Uralskaya railway station railway. Here, in the station master's house, he spent the last seven days of his life. On November 7 (20), Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died.
