Lyeff Tolstoy biography

Dromo's Den

Tolstoi Biography

TOLSTOY, Liov, (Leo) Nikolaievitch, Count (1828–1910). A famous Russian author and one of the world’s greatest novelists. He was born on his father's estate at Yasnaya Polyana in the Government of Tula, Aug. 28, 1828. In 1843 he studied Oriental languages at the University of Kazan, but soon found linguistic study uncongenial and took up law. He received his diploma in 1848, "knowing literally nothing," as he declared later. He lived on his estate until 1851, when his brother, an artillery officer, induced him to visit Caucasia. Charmed by the life there, he joined an artillery regiment and in 1853 was attached to the army of the Danube during the Crimean campaign. During this period he published Childhood (his maiden work), The Incursion, Boyhood, The Morning of a Landed Proprietor, and The Cossacks. He took part in the defense of Sebastopol, embodying his experiences in Sebastopol in December of 1854, Sebastopol in May of 1855, and Sebastopol in August of 1855. These sketches immediately placed Tolstoy among the great writers of the day. They painted the horrors of war, with its false and real heroes, in the spirit of that cruel, cold-blooded realism which is the chief trait of Tolstoy’s unique art. At the end of that war Tolstoy resigned and went to the capital. A visit abroad in 1857 shattered his faith in modern civilization, and From the Memoirs of Prince Nekhlyudov was an indignant protest against the poverty and ignorance in modern society. He settled on his estate at Yasnaya Polyana and devoted himself to teaching peasant children. Finding himself deficient in educational knowledge, he went abroad (for the second time) to study German methods of education, which, however, served only to intensify his doubts and disappointment. He questioned the right and wisdom of all compulsory education and maintained that the pupil’s interest must alone determine the curriculum. About this time work on The Decembrists, a long novel, of which only three chapters appeared, led Tolstoy to the study of the reign of Alexander I, and his interest gradually centred on the great Napoleonic campaign. Thus he came to write his War and Peace (1864–69), a colossal prose epic, reflecting the whole range of Russian life at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

Again the elemental forces of the common people in contrast to the artificiality of the upper classes are lovingly dwelt upon. With the artistic exposition is intertwined a new philosophy of history, which in the last analysis is but old fatalism in a new guise. After this the above-mentioned pedagogical pursuits absorbed Tolstoy's energies until in 1875–76 Anna Karenina appeared in the Russian Herald. This great work deals with the unlawful relations of the social lion, Vronsky, and Anna, wife of Karenin, the bureaucratic official. The great questions of human life which centre about marriage are here treated with inimitable mastery, force, and naturalness. The novel has a second plot—the life of the rationalist landed proprietor, Konstantin Levin, and his wife, Kitty. Amid perfect home surroundings Levin is discontented and even contemplates suicide, until he is "regenerated" through contact with the common people and finds new strength in manual labor. According to Tolstoy's own statements this work contained much autobiographical material.

After this philosophical and social questions took complete possession of Tolstoy, and for more than a decade he gave to the world a series of religious, social, and philosophical treatises, such as Commentary on the Gospel; Letter on the Census (1883); Confession: My Religion; What Shall we then Do? a few short stories written for the people; The Death of Ivan Ilyitch (1885); and the dramas The Power of Darkness and Fruits of Culture. Works of literary art were also produced at this period. The Kreutzer Sonata (q.v.), its intent misunderstood, raised a storm of indignation on both sides of the Atlantic. What is Art? (1898), a great philippic against art as commonly understood, was a brilliant contribution to the literature of the subject, although its author left the question raised by the title unanswered for many of his readers. It contains ideas of great depth and breadth, interspersed with paradoxes, and affords an interesting illustration of the thoroughness with which Tolstoy entered upon his work. It involved a minute study of every writer of any consequence on the subject. In 1899 Resurrection, a new work of fiction, appeared. Its central figure, Nekhlyudov, while acting as a juror, recognizes in the culprit the woman whom he had betrayed in his youth. Torn by remorse, he finally comes to the conclusion that he is the real cause of the woman's guilt and downfall and wishes to expiate his former wrongdoing by accompanying her to Siberia and sharing with her all the hardships of exile. All the bitterness that had welled up in the heart of the author seems to have found free utterance in this work, which is a powerful arraignment of all existing institutions. In 1900 his drama, The Living Corpse, appeared. In March, 1901, the Holy Synod issued the excommunication which had been hanging over his head for 30 years.

In 1862 Tolstoy married Sophie Andreévna Behrs, of Moscow. One of his sons, Liov Liovitch, who inherited literary inclinations, attracted attention by his sketches in periodical publications. Another son, Ilya, wrote Reminiscences of his father. In 1910, in pursuance of a long-delayed plan to end his days in solitude, Tolstoy suddenly fled his estate, but contracted pneumonia on his journey and died, Nov. 20, 1910, at a small railroad station (Astapovo).

Tolstoy has the same power of psychological analysis that characterizes Dostoyevsky (q.v.), whom he greatly excels, however, in range and variety. Dostoyevsky never gets beyond the narrow circle of the middle classes, while Tolstoy is equally at home in all walks of life. He draws, with the same firm and unerring hand, the rulers of men's fates, courtiers, generals, petty officers, common soldiers, great noblemen, peasants, prisoners in the dungeons and on their weary march to Siberia, men, women, children, and everywhere he fathoms the depths of human character. There is in Tolstoy none of Dostoyevsky's nerve harassing for the sake of satisfying the author's abnormal bent. The great reformer is actuated by nothing but the desire to get at truth, and his conscience can never rest until he succeeds. Hence Tolstoy's works, although depicting the genesis and growth of controlling passions in a masterly manner and containing scenes that are fascinating, possess none of those elements of piquancy that attract many to the works of the realistic school.

Coming to know his peasants through his pedagogical work among them, he became a great believer in the salutary influence of labor. His community work during the famines of 1873 and 1891 gave him an impulse for the simplification of life, and soon the foreign periodicals were filled with sensational pictures and descriptions of Tolstoy in a cheap blouse or smock, girded with a rope, with his hands on a plow, tilling his estate at Yasnaya Polyana. Gradually he dispensed with all unnecessary comforts of life and did cobbling and other manual labor for himself, preaching Karma (q.v.) and the doctrines of Lao-tse. (See Taoism.) The principle of simplification was carried into his religious beliefs: all teaching not coming from Christ himself was ruthlessly discarded, and his gospel was newly constructed. The doctrine of Christian humility was carried to an extreme in his famous championship of non-resistance, especially remarkable side by side with individualism of an extreme kind. All human institutions—kingly power, state, church, judiciary, jury, army, even marriage—were ruthlessly criticized as standing in the way of the natural development of the powers of the individual. Always allowing his logic to lead him as it would, Tolstoy had to denounce his own literary achievements along with all products of civilization, as begotten of idle fancy and human craving for the plaudits of the world. In 1905 and 1906 he addressed to the Czar notable letters advocating universal suffrage, representative assemblies, and other reforms.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XXII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 328-329.