Tolstoy, << TOL stoy or TOHL stoy, >> Leo (1828-1910), a Russian writer, ranks among the greatest novelists in world literature. Tolstoy was also an important moral and religious thinker and social reformer. His name is sometimes spelled Tolstoi.
Early life and works.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on Sept. 9, 1828, at Yasnaya Polyana, his family’s estate near Tula. Both of his parents died when he was young, and he was raised by relatives. Tolstoy received his elementary education from foreign tutors. He entered the University of Kazan in 1844, but he became bored with university instruction and did not earn a degree. He returned to Yasnaya Polyana in 1847 to manage the estate and devote himself to his own study. He wrote three semiautobiographical novels that reflect his formative years—Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857).
As a young man, Tolstoy spent considerable time among the high society of Moscow and St. Petersburg. His diaries reveal that he became restless and dissatisfied with this life, and thus decided to volunteer for the Russian Army.
Tolstoy was a soldier during the Crimean War (1853-1856). He distinguished himself for bravery at the Battle of Sevastopol. He wrote several Sevastopol sketches for magazines in 1855, depicting war as an unglamorous blood bath and attacking romantic ideas of war heroes. Another work based on Tolstoy’s travels with the army was the highly praised short novel The Cossacks (1863). Olenin, the central character of the novel, is a refined aristocrat. He finds much to admire in the wild, free life of the Cossacks of the Caucasus region in southwestern Russia.
Tolstoy retired from military service in 1856. Between 1857 and 1861, he made two trips to western Europe, where he took a keen interest in educational methods. After returning to his estate, he opened a school for peasant children there. Tolstoy was successful as a progressive educator who believed that teaching should be adapted to the needs of each pupil. He published a journal, called Yasnaya Polyana, explaining his educational theories.
His masterpieces.
In 1862, Tolstoy married Sonya Behrs. At first they had a happy marriage, but it later became troubled. During this period, Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, his greatest works.
The epic novel War and Peace was published in its complete form in 1869. Like many other works of Russian realism, War and Peace is a family chronicle. It shows the lives of five families as they go through the universal experiences and stages of life that always concerned Tolstoy—birth, growing up, marriage, sex, childbirth, maturity, old age, and death. War and Peace is also a historical novel, describing the political and military events that occurred in Europe between 1805 and 1820. It focuses in particular on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. In the novel, Tolstoy rejected the “Great Man” theory of history. According to Tolstoy’s theory, prominent people or heroes actually have no significant impact on the course of history.
Tolstoy’s second masterpiece, Anna Karenina, was published in installments from 1875 to 1877. Its plot concerns the open infidelity of a Russian princess, Anna Karenina, to her husband, Karenin. The novel examines Anna’s romance with Count Vronsky. Anna and Vronsky show contempt for the disapproving opinions of the members of the high society to which they belong. The difficulties of their relationship eventually lead to Anna’s suicide. But Anna Karenina is more than a tragic love story. The novel explores broad social, moral, and philosophical issues of Russia and its aristocracy in the 1870’s. These issues include the hypocritical attitude of the upper class toward adultery and the role of religious faith in a person’s life. Many of these issues are raised through the thoughts and actions of Konstantin Levin, the novel’s second most important figure. Through Levin, Tolstoy expresses many of his own views.
His conversion.
During the years that Tolstoy was writing Anna Karenina, he became obsessed with the questions he had always pondered concerning the meaning and purpose of life. Tolstoy described his agonizing moral self-examination and his quest for life’s meaning in the essay “My Confession” (1882).
Tolstoy changed dramatically as a result of his spiritual crisis. Rejecting the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church, he developed his own version of Christianity, which he later detailed in the essay “The Kingdom of God Is Within You” (1894). Tolstoy believed that people are able to know and affirm the good in themselves if they engage in self-examination and willingly reform themselves. Tolstoy also believed that any use of violence or force is harmful, and that force should be opposed nonviolently. He objected to all forms of force, including that represented by organized government and religion, private property, and the bonds of oaths.
Tolstoy produced no fiction between 1878 and 1885, writing instead on his religious beliefs and social themes. In his zeal to live in conformity with his religion, he gave up his property and sex life. He left his estate to his family, and his wife obtained the copyrights to all his works written before 1881. Tolstoy dressed as a peasant and often worked in the fields. He tried to be as self-sufficient as possible. Tolstoy’s great fame as a novelist sparked a public interest in his religion that spread quickly. People made pilgrimages from all over the world to visit him. His authority was so great that the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated him in 1901 in an effort to minimize his influence.
In his essay “What Is Art?” (1898), Tolstoy denounced all of the works he created before his conversion. The essay advances the idea that art should help to morally instruct and improve people. Tolstoy also wrote that art should communicate its ideas to even the simplest people. By these standards, Tolstoy judged most of his earlier works as “aristocratic art” written for vain purposes and not intelligible to the common person.
Later works.
Tolstoy returned to writing fiction with the tale “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1886). In the story, Ivan Ilyich is the victim of a fatal disease. While he is dying, he sees the emptiness of his life, and he can only accept the inevitability of death. Tolstoy also wrote several plays. His best-known drama, The Power of Darkness (1888), is a tragedy about a peasant whose adulterous passion drives him to commit terrible crimes. Tolstoy was interested in the stage for its potential to reach a wide-ranging audience, but his dramas seldom reached the heights of his novels and short stories.
The major novel of Tolstoy’s later period is Resurrection (1899), the story of the spiritual reformation of a young nobleman. The stories “The Devil” (1889) and “The Kreutzer Sonata” (1891) focus on love, jealousy, and the destructive component of the sex drive. The novel Hadji Murad, published after Tolstoy’s death, tells the tale of a tribal leader in the Caucasus Mountains. In this story, Tolstoy again shows himself as the masterful psychologist and great literary craftsman of his earlier years. He died on Nov. 20, 1910.
While important and influential as a moralist, Tolstoy was, first and foremost, a creative writer. Tolstoy’s religious and moralistic works are flat when compared to the beauty of his greatest fiction.
