Leo Tolstoy

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Leo Tolstoy, pictured late in life Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy listen [▶] (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й; commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 – November 20, 1910; August 28, 1828 – November 7, 1910, O.S.) was a Russian novelist, social reformer, pacifist, Christian anarchist, vegetarian, moral thinker and an influential member of the Tolstoy family. Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina; in their scope, breadth and depiction of Russian aristocracy, the two books stand at the peak of realistic fiction. As a moral philosopher he was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. Contents[hide]· 1 Early life · 2 Novels and Fictional Works · 3 Religious and political beliefs · 4 Bibliography · 5 See also · 6 External links

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Early life Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate situated in the region of Tula, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in his family. His parents died when he was young, so he was brought up by relatives. Tolstoy studied law and Oriental languages at Kazan University in 1844, but never earned a degree. He returned in the middle of his studies to Yasnaya Polyana, and spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg. After contracting heavy gambling debts, Tolstoy accompanied his elder brother to the Caucasus in 1851 and joined the Russian Army. Tolstoy began writing literature around this time. In 1862 he married Sofia Andreevna Bers, and together they had thirteen children. His marriage has been described by A.N.Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. It was marked for trouble from the outset. On the eve of his marriage, Tolstoy gave his diaries, detailing his sexual relations with his serfs, to his fiancee.. His relationship with his wife further deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. [edit] Novels and Fictional Works Tolstoy was one of the giants of 19th century Russian literature. His most famous works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and many shorter works, including the novellas The Death of Ivan Ilych and Hadji Murad. Tolstoy’s first publications, his autobiographical novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852–1856), tell the story of a rich landowner's son who is slow to realize the differences between him and his peasant playmates. Although in later life Tolstoy rejected these books as sentimental, a great deal of his own life is revealed, and the books are still recognized as significant contributions to the coming of age genre. Tolstoy served as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War. His experiences are recounted in his Sevastapol Sketches. His experiences in battle helped develop his pacifism, and gave him material for the realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later work. The Cossacks (1863) describes the Cossack life and people through a story of a Russian aristocrat in love with a Cossack girl. Tolstoy is one of the greatest examples of the genre of realism. Realism is a literary technique that uses detailed verbal descriptions of places and things to imply attributes of character. Tolstoy’s description of Russian aristocratic society, like the lavish restaurant scence between Levin and Count Oblonsky in Anna Karenina, is unparalleled. War and Peace 1869 is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. It was written with the purpose of exploring Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Tolstoy rejects the “great man” theory of history in favor of the view that larger, more impersonal forces are at work. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider War and Peace to be a novel, but an examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life. War and Peace (which Tolstoy considered an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that Anna Karenina was his first true novel, and it is indeed one of the greatest of all realist novels.

Anna Karenina (1877) begins with one of the most famous opening lines in literature, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Anna Karenina tells parallel stories of two families, one happy and one unhappy.  Anna, trapped in a loveless marriage, feels trapped by the conventions and falsities of society.  She falls in love with the dashing Count Vronsky and leaves her husband to live the life of a mistress.  Count Levin, after an unsuccessful romance, marries Kitty and lives the life of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside his serfs in the fields and seeks to reform their lives.

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) Tolstoy addressed a theme that personally haunted him, death. Not long after he underwent a spiritual crisis and spiritual transformation. His later works often took the form of folk tales and moral aphorisms, such as What Then Must We Do?and How Much Land Does One Man Need?. He developed a radical anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his excommunication from the Orthodox church in 1901. [edit]

Religious and political beliefs

Portrait of Leo Tolstoy (1887) by Ilya Yefimovich Repin Tolstoy's Christian beliefs were based on the Sermon on the Mount, and particularly on Jesus’s instruction to turn the other cheek. Tolstoy saw in this teaching a mandate for pacifism. Tolstoy’s religious conversion began as a middle aged crisis, including a depression so severe that if he saw a rope it made him think of hanging himself. He had to hide his guns to stop himself from committing suicide. Yet this depression led Tolstoy to a radical and very original new approach to Christianity. He rejected the institution of the church in favor of of a more personalized orientation. In particular, his belief in nonviolence as a positive feature of Jesus’ teaching characterized his beliefs. Although himself an aristocract, he came to believe that the aristocracy posed a burden on the poor, and to embrace some elements of anarchism, like the abolition of private property and the institution of marriage. Although he led a profligate youth, he came to value the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in Father Sergius). He also became a vegetarian. Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of anarchist thought. Prince Peter Kropotkin wrote of him in the article on anarchism in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica: Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God is Within You [2]) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike. A letter Tolstoy wrote to an Indian newspaper entitled "A Letter to a Hindu" resulted in a long-running correspondence with Mohandas Gandhi, who was at the time a young activist in South Africa. The correspondence with Tolstoy strongly influenced Gandhi towards adopting the method of nonviolent resistance. Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. He was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors’ migration to Canada.

Theory of Art After Tolstoy’s religious conversion, his view of art also changed dramatically. His book on art, What is Art? is an iconoclastic treatment that dismisses much of the canons of Western art. The proper role of art, he concluded, is to inspire moral vision in its audience. Not surprisingly, he reserved his strongest invective for modern art, which emphasized artifice and the formal properties of the artistic medium over the message. Modern art was artificial, not spontaneous, and thus immoral in Tolstoy’s interpretation. Ironically, by his new standards, much of his own work did not qualify as true art, including the novels for which he is beloved. Even Shakespeare did not escape criticism in Tolstoy’s moral aestheticism.

Final Days Toward the end of his life, Tolstoy rejected his wealth and privilege. He came to believe that he was undeserving of his inherited wealth, and was renowned among the peasantry for his generosity. He would frequently return to his country estate with vagrants whom he felt needed a helping hand, and would often dispense large sums of money to street beggars while on trips to the city, much to his wife's chagrin. He died of pneumonia at Astapovo station in 1910 after leaving home in the middle of winter at the age of 82. His death came only days after gathering the nerve to abandon his family and wealth and take up the path of a wandering ascetic—a path that he had agonized over not pursuing for decades. Thousands of peasants turned out to line the streets at his funeral. [edit] Bibliography

Ivan Mozzhukhin in the 1917 screen version of Father Sergius. · Childhood (Детство [Detstvo]; 1852) · Boyhood (Отрочество [Otrochestvo]; 1854) · Youth (Юность [Yunost']; 1856) · Sevastopol Stories (Севастопольские рассказы [Sevastolpolskye Rasskazi]; 1855–56) · Family Happiness (1859) · The Cossacks (Казаки [Kazaki]; 1863) · Ivan the Fool: A Lost Opportunity (1863) · Polikushka (1863) · War and Peace (Война и мир; [Voyna i mir] 1865–69) · A Prisoner in the Caucasus (Кавказский Пленник; 1872) · Father Sergius (Отец Сергий; 1873) · Anna Karenina (Анна Каренина; 1875–77) · A Confession (1882) · Strider: The Story of a Horse (1864, 1886) · The Death of Ivan Ilych (1886) · How Much Land Does a Man Need? (1886) · The Power of Darkness (Власть тьмы [Vlast' t'my]; 1886), drama · The Fruits of Culture (play) (1889) · The Kreutzer Sonata and other stories (Крейцерова соната [Kreutzerova Sonata]; 1889) · The Kingdom of God is Within You [3] (1894) · Master and Man and other stories (1895) · The Gospel in Brief (1896) · What Is Art? (1897) · Resurrection (Воскресение [Voskresenie]; 1899) · The Living Corpse (Живой труп [Zhivoi trup]; published 1911), drama · Hadji Murad (Хаджи-Мурат; written in 1896-1904, published 1912) [edit] See also · Christian anarchism · Mahatma Gandhi (1929) The Story of My Experiments with Truth (available at wikisource) · Tolstoy family · Tolstoyan · Vladimir Chertkov [edit] External links

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Wikimedia Commons has more media related to: Leo Tolstoy · Leo Tolstoy's Life - Tolstoy's personal, professional and world event timeline, from Masterpiece Theatre. · Synopsis of Leo Tolstoy's Life - from Masterpiece Theatre. · Leo Tolstoy - A comprehensive site with pictures, e-texts, biography, genealogy, etc. · Tolstoy On Life, Death & Belief - an article at Philosophical Society.com. · Project Gutenberg e-texts of some of Leo Tolstoy's works · Full texts of some Leo Tolstoy's works in the original Russian · The Kingdom of God Is Within You - free e-text · Walk in the Light - free e-book · Brief bio · Bruderhof Peacemakers Guide profile on Leo Tolstoy · The Last Days of Leo Tolstoy · Illustrated Biography online at University of Virginia · Tolstoy at The Anarchist Library · Tolstoy at Great Books Online · Tolstoy at CCEL · Links to works online · Aleksandra Tolstaya, "Tragedy of Tolstoy" · Tolstoy's Legacy for Mankind: A Manifesto for Nonviolence, Part 1 · Tolstoy's Legacy for Mankind: A Manifesto for Nonviolence, Part 2 Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy" Categories: 1828 births | 1910 deaths | Anarchists | Russian essayists | Russian novelists | Russian short story writers | Autodidacts | Vegetarians | Anti-war people

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