Leo Tolstoy - Classic Literature Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy was born September 9, 1828 in Yasnya Polyana, Russia and was the fourth of five children. His father was a wealthy landowner. He grew up and spent most of his life there, although he traveled widely. His mother died when he was two, and his aunt became head of the house. Tolstoy was nine when his father died mysteriously during a business trip while the family was living in Moscow. His eldest sister assumed control of the estate and was legal guardian.
Tolstoy moved to Kajan with his aunt and, in 1844, entered the University of Kajan. He was not a good student and spent his time drinking and gambling. This was to be repeated through his life. He left university in 1847 and returned to back to Yasnya Polyana where he inherited the 4000-acre estate. He moved to Moscow in 1850 to take a law degree but gambling intervened.
He joined the army in 1851 and went with his brother to the Caucasus as part of an artillery regiment. He began to keep a journal about his experiences, later published as "Sevastapol Sketches". His experiences in battle helped him to develop his pacifism and allowed him to write realistically about war in later works.
From 1852-1857, he wrote his more or less autobiographical novels entitled "Childhood", "Boyhood" and "Youth". These reflected his experiences, thoughts and feeling as he grew up in the Russian countryside. His brother died in 1856 and Tolstoy left the army.
In 1857, Tolstoy visited France, Switzerland, and Germany. He had formulated his own ideas about education as he grew. He wanted to learn more about society and how to reform it. He had tried to free his serfs at Yashya Polyana, but they refused.
He returned to Yasnya Polyana and started a school for peasant children in 1859. He wrote articles and magazines and textbooks on educational theory and practice. He also developed a relationship with a peasant girl and had a son, Timothy. This type of sexual conduct along with gambling and drinking also became a recurrent theme in his life.
In 1862, Tolstoy married Sonya Behrs, who was 18 at the time. Although they remained married for the rest of his life, their married life was not happy. Even so, Sonya and he had 13 children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. His courtship of Sonya is reflected in the courtship of Levin and Kitty in "Anna Karenina".
Tolstoy wrote ostensibly out of his own experiences, out of his diaries. He tried to understand his own feelings and actions against an experiential backdrop reflecting his reality. Indeed, his book "Resurrection" had as its basis Tolstoy’s own experience with the taking of a young woman’s virtue, which forever disgraced her.
Between 1865 and 1869, Tolstoy wrote his major work "War and Peace". It is thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written. It includes 580 characters and was the depiction of the story of five families against the backdrop of Napoleons invasion of Russia.
Essentially, the book was an exploration of Tolstoy's own theory of the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon in terms of the true events of history. He used the work (and most of his works) to explore the impact of social and political issues on middle class life. Such was the emphasis on the families rather than the great historical figures.
In fact, Tolstoy did not consider "War and Peace" to be a novel! He felt "Anna Karenina" written from 1873-1877, to be his first true novel. This masterpiece tells the tragic story of a married woman, who follows her lover, but finally commits suicide. He juxtaposed the crisis of family with the quest for the meaning of life, again reflecting elements of his own life.
After he finished Anna Karenina, he renounced all of his prior books. He wrote "Conversion" in 1879 to try to explain his doctrines. He had converted to Christianity earlier and his view of Christianity was an embodiment of "The Sermon of the Mount". His last major novel "Voskresenia" was written in 1899.
As time went on, he began to see himself as a sage. His beliefs in non-violence led to an article entitled ‘A Letter to a Hindu" sent to an Indian newspaper. The article was read by Mohandas Gandhi who was in South Africa and led to a long series of correspondence that influenced Gandhi’s thoughts on nonviolent resistance.
His later novel such as ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "What Must We Do" postulated a very radical Christian Philosophy, which got him excommunicated in 1901.
Increasingly distanced form his family and desiring to fulfil what he felt was his destiny, in 1908 he wrote a will relinquishing all copyrights. Sonya and the family prevailed on him to write another giving these back to the family, and he did. Yet in 1909, he wrote another, leaving his estate to his disciple Vladimor Chertkov, and in 1910, fearing the wrath of his wife, he fled on a train. He fell ill, and left the train in Astapovo, a small town. He died some days later of pneumonia on November 10, 1910.
