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"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 it and
will fall in love with life,
I would devote all my life
and all my strengths to it."
-Leo Tolstoy
Use the links below to help find
information on Tolstoy:
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH
EDUCATION
PERSONAL LIFE
RELIGION,
LATER YEARS, AND DEATH
WRITING CAREER
ADDITIONAL LINKS
Childhood and Youth
Leo Nicolayevich Tolstoy was born
on August 28, 1828, to father Nicolay Tolstoy and mother
Marya Volkonsky. He was the fourth of five children
born to wealthy parents on their estate and Tolstoy’s
lifelong home, Yasnaya Polyana. When Tolstoy was only 2
years old, his mother passed away, leaving Tolstoy and
his siblings under the care of their father’s cousin,
Toinette. Tolstoy became an orphan at the age of 9,
when his father died of apoplexy. The family moved to
Moscow around this time to further the education of
Tolstoy and his brothers. A year later, the family split
up, and the youngest three children moved back to
Yasnaya Polyana with Toinette. Perhaps the most
significant childhood memory for Tolstoy was the
“legend” of the Green Stick: his older brother Nicolai
told him there was a magical green stick buried in the
forest where the boys often played that could destroy
all evil in the hearts of men. Tolstoy remembered this
story all his life, and at death requested to be buried
near the spot.
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Education
In 1845 Tolstoy began his formal
education, studying Oriental languages and law at the
University of Kazan. By all reports, he was a poor and
uninterested student. At any rate, he never finished or
earned a degree, and spent much of his time at Yasnaya
Polyana or in Moscow or St. Petersburg, where he lived a
wild lifestyle, drinking and squandering his inheritance
on gambling.
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Personal
Life
After a tumultuous and broken
childhood, Tolstoy began a wild and decadent
adulthood—he drank heavily, gambled compulsively, and
was troubled by “fits of lust,” as he wrote in his
diary. He lost his virginity in 1845, when his brothers
dragged him to a brothel, and this experience was the
beginning of lifelong personal complexes about sex and
women. He was treated for gonorrhea two years later.
In 1951 Tolstoy joined his brother Nicolai for a
four-year stint in the army during the Crimean War,
beginning as an artillery cadet. During this time he
wrote his first novels, which later became an
autobiographical trilogy—Childhood, Boyhood,
and Youth. In the mid 1850s Tolstoy traveled
through Europe, returning home in the latter part of the
decade to take care of the family estate. In 1855,
Tolstoy wrote in his diary about “a new religion of
Christ... a practical religion.” For Tolstoy, these
thoughts would later develop into a comprehensive
philosophy and whole new way of life, which some would
come to call “Tolstoyism.” For the moment, they
influenced his decisions back at the estate—in 1856, he
tried to free his serfs, but he was unsuccessful (they
were convinced he was trying to trick them). In the
later 1850s, Tolstoy became focused on the education of
the serfs; he established schools, wrote educational
texts, and described the project as “the supreme goal of
his life.” From 1858 to 1862, Tolstoy conducted a
three-year affair with a married peasant, who also bore
him a son, Timothy. In 1862 he met, fell in love with,
and married 17-year-old Sonya Behrs. Their relationship
was troubled from the start, as Tolstoy, right before
the wedding, had Sonya read his personal diaries,
describing vividly his sexual experiences and
psychological problems. The couple had a total of 13
children, although three did not make it past
childhood. During these years, as Tolstoy focused more
and more on his writing and became a huge success, Sonya
gradually took over the management of the estate as well
as acting as his secretary. Despite great literary
success, Tolstoy was miserable for much of his adulthood
and struggled with serious depression. He was often
overcome by feelings of despair, terror, and futility,
and struggled with suicidal impulses.
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Religion,
Later Years, and Death
Tolstoy’s increasingly more unique
religious beliefs resulted in a great number of
significant lifestyle changes in his later life. He
continued to be deeply interested in the welfare of the
serfs, and he was dedicated to living the “simple life”
himself—he loved working with the peasants in the fields
of his estate, he gave up drinking, smoking, and eating
meat, and he started preaching abstinence (although he
did not practice it). Tolstoy’s brand of Christianity
was based on the Sermon on the Mount, and centered
around five basic tenets:
human beings
should suppress their anger, whether warranted or not;
no sex outside marriage; no oaths of any sort;
renunciation of all resistance to evil; and love of
enemies. Around this time, in 1883, Tolstoy met
Chertkov, who became his lead disciple and Sonya’s rival
for control over Tolstoy’s affairs—eventually, (in 1909)
Chertkov drafted a secret will for Tolstoy (unbeknownst
to Sonya), granting the rights to all Tolstoy’s
manuscripts to himself. Tolstoy had previously wished
to make his writings public property. In 1891, Tolstoy
announced that he intended to give all his possessions
and property to the peasants, but after months of
complaining from Sonya and his children, Tolstoy
relented and bequeathed it all to his family. In 1901,
as his writings on religion became increasingly critical
of the Russian church, he was excommunicated from the
Russian Orthodox Church. In 1910, after being bedridden
for two years, Tolstoy fell seriously ill and died at
the age of 82. The Russian Orthodox Church banned any
memorial services. He was buried, as he requested, near
the site of the mythical green stick of his childhood.
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Writing
Career
Tolstoy kept a diary all his life,
and he drew on his personal thoughts and struggles for
much of his fiction. He began writing during his
military service, with the publication of his
autobiographical trio, Childhood, Boyhood,
and Youth (1852-57). He drew on his experiences
during his military stint in the Caucasus for “The Raid”
(1853), The Cossacks (1863), and Hadji Murad
(1904), but most of his fiction, as well as his most
famous fiction, centered around family and private
drama. “Family Happiness” (1859) was based on his
affair with a peasant woman, and “A Landlord’s Morning”
(1856) was based on his failed attempt to free his
serfs. War and Peace (1865-9), which along with
Anna Karenina is widely regarded as the height of
Tolstoy’s literary achievement, tells the story of five
Russian families during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
This epic novel follows more than 500 characters and
combines Tolstoy’s knowledge of and interest in military
affairs with his talent for capturing the most intimate
personal struggles and situations in private life.
After five years of laboring over it, Tolstoy published
the finished version of his second masterpiece,
Anna Karenina,
in 1878. Anna Karenina chronicles the inner
struggles of Anna as she conducts an adulterous affair
which eventually leads to her suicide. The character of
Levin, who searches for life’s meaning and domestic
happiness and lives a country life, concerned with the
well-being of the peasants, is said to be
autobiographical. After he finished Anna Karenina,
Tolstoy renounced all his earlier writing, saying, “I
wrote everything into Anna Karenina, and nothing
was left over.” Although Tolstoy continued to write
until his death, his works became increasingly
philosophical and religious, as Tolstoy published
numerous controversial tracts, such as A Criticism of
Dogmatic Philosophy (1880), Confession
(1882), and What I Believe (1884), which were all
censored by the government. He still continued to
publish fiction, however: in 1886, Tolstoy wrote “The
Death of Ivan Illyich,” a short story about a government
official who must come to terms with dying, and in 1890
he published the Kreutzer Sonata, describing the
misery of marriage. As Tolstoy entered his later years,
his writings became increasingly radical: The
Kingdom of Heaven is Within You (1893), preaching
nonviolence, was profoundly influential, affecting even
the young Ghandi, at the time a South African lawyer.
His essay What is Art? (1897) denounced any art
not serving a higher social or political purpose, which
would, of course, include much of his previous fiction.
Tolstoy continued to write prolifically in his old age,
completing his last novel, Hadji Murad, in 1904.
Follow this link to the Literary
Works site of this web page.
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Additional Links
A great variety of pictures of Tolstoy:
http://www.utoronto.ca/tolstoy/gallery/index.html
For biographical information, including a full timeline
of Tolstoy’s personal and professional life:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/anna/timeline_text.html
A nice general site, including a
photo gallery, biography, links, and general
information:
http://www.ltolstoy.com
For biography, works, and further
reading:
http://www.booksfactory.com/writers/tolstoi.htm
For general background information
on Tolstoy, including his ancestry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_tolstoy
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