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Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy 1828-1910

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Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy 1828-1910 Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy 1828-1910 1 Yasnaya Polyana Maternal Grandfather N.S. Volkonsky 1753-1821 33 Paternal Grandfather I.A. Tolstoy (1757-1820) 44 Tolstoy’s Father N.I. Tolstoy (1795-1837) 55 Tolstoy as Boy Rules 1847 • Get up early (five o’clock) Go to bed early (nine to ten o’clock) Eat little and avoid sweets Try to do everything by yourself Have a goal for your whole life, a goal for one section of your life, a goal for a shorter period and a goal for the year; a goal for every month, a goal for every week, a goal for every day, a goal for every hour and for every minute, and sacrifice the lesser goal to the greater Keep away from women Kill desire by work Be good, but try to let no one know it Always live less expensively than you might Change nothing in your style of living even if you become ten times richer 77 Daily Schedule • 5 to 6, practical agriculture 6 to 9, letters 9 to 10, drink tea 10 to 11, set copybooks in order 11 to 1, bookkeeping 1 to 1:30, lunch 1:30 to 3, Italian 3 to 5, English 6 to 8, Russian history • Nothing done. 88 Kazan 1844 Tolstoy as Student Caucasus War 1851 Crimean War 1854 Childhood, Boyhood, Youth 1851-1856 13 Tolstoy as Young Dandy Tolstoy in 1860 Sonya Behrs Married 1862 Code • Y.y.a.n.o.h.r.m.t.s.o.m.a.a.t.i.o.h. I.y.f.e.a.f.o.a.m.a.y.s.L.D.m.w.y.s.T. 1716 Decoded • Y.y.a.n.o.h.r.m.t.s.o.m.a.a.t.i.o.h. • “Your youth and need of happiness remind me too strongly of my age and the impossibility of happiness.” I.y.f.e.a.f.o.a.m.a.y.s.L.D.m.w.y.s.T. “In your family exists a false opinion about me and your sister Liza. Defend me with your sister Tatyanchik.” 18 Kramskoi portrait of Tolstoy 1919 War and Peace 1863-1868 20 Tolstoy’s Literary Goals My hero is truth. (Sebastopol in May, 1855) Questions of the emancipation of women and literary parties seem important to us, unwittingly, in our literary Petersburg milieu, but they are all fluttering about in a little puddle of dirty water which seems to be an ocean only for those whom fate placed in the middle of that puddle. the goals of art are incommensurate (as mathematicians say) with social goals. The goal of the artist is not to solve a question irrefutably, but to force people to love life in all its innumerable, inexhaustible manifestations. If I were told that I could write a novel in which I should set forth the apparently correct attitudes toward all social questions, I would not devote even two hours of work to such a novel, but if I were told that what I shall write will be read in twenty years by the children of today, and that they will weep and smile over its and will fall in love with life, I would devote all my life and all my strengths to it. (Letter to P.D. Bobvorykin, 1865) The poet takes the best things out of his life and puts them into his work. Hence his work is beautiful and his life bad. (Notebook entry 1866) What I published previously I consider only a test of the pen and ink. (Letter to poet Fet, 1865) 21 Saint Petersburg 22 Moscow, Red Square Tolstoy House, Moscow Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821 Alexander I 1777-1825 Prince M.I. Kutuzov 1745-1813 27 Repin, Tolstoy Plowing Family Portrait, 1887 2922 With Sonya, 1880s 3023 Last years.
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    About This Volume Brett Cooke We continue to be surprised by how the extremely rewarding world WKDW/HR7ROVWR\FUHDWHGLVDG\QDPLFVWLOOJURZLQJRQH:KHQWKH Russian writer sat down in 1863 to begin what became War and PeaceKHXWLOL]HGSRUWUDLWVRIfamily members, as well as images RIKLPVHOILQZKDWDW¿UVWFRQVWLWXWHGDOLJKWO\¿FWLRQDOL]HGfamily chronicle; he evidently used the exercise to consider how he and the SUHVHQWVWDWHRIKLVFRXQWU\FDPHWREH7KLVLQYROYHGDUHWKLQNLQJRI KRZKLVSDUHQWV¶JHQHUDWLRQZLWKVWRRGWKH)UHQFKLQYDVLRQRI slightly more than a half century prior, both militarily and culturally. Of course, one thinks about many things in the course of six highly FUHDWLYH \HDUV DQG KLV WH[W UHÀHFWV PDQ\ RI WKHVH LQWHUHVWV +LV words are over determined in that a single scene or even image typically serves several themes as he simultaneously pondered the Napoleonic Era, the present day in Russia, his family, and himself, DVZHOODVPXFKHOVH6HOIGHYHORSPHQWEHLQJWKH¿UVWRUGHUIRUDQ\ VHULRXVDUWLVWZHVHHDQWLFLSDWLRQVRIWKHSURWHDQFKDOOHQJHV7ROVWR\ posed to the contemporary world decades after War and Peace in terms of religion, political systems, and, especially, moral behavior. In other words, he grew in stature. As the initial reception of the QRYHO VKRZV 7ROVWR\ UHVSRQGHG WR WKH FRQVWHUQDWLRQ RI LWV ¿UVW readers by increasing the dynamism of its form and considerably DXJPHQWLQJLWVLQWHOOHFWXDODPELWLRQV,QKLVKDQGV¿FWLRQEHFDPH emboldened to question the structure of our universe and expand our sense of our own nature. We are all much the richer spiritually for his achievement. One of the happy accidents of literary history is that War and Peace and Fyodor 'RVWRHYVN\¶VCrime and PunishmentZHUH¿UVW published in the same literary periodical, The Russian Messenger. )XUWKHUPRUHDV-DQHW7XFNHUH[SODLQVERWKQRYHOVH[SUHVVFRQFHUQ whether Russia should continue to conform its culture to West (XURSHDQ PRGHOV VLPXOWDQHRXVO\ VHL]LQJ RQ WKH VDPH ¿JXUH vii Napoleon Bonaparte, in one case leading a literal invasion of the country, in the other inspiring a premeditated murder.
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