Leo Tolstoy

Writers Datebook: September 9

Russian Novelist, Also a Moralist, Philosopher and Mystic

Brief biography of Leo Tolstoy, one of Russia's best writers best known for War and Peace and Anna karenina.

Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy, or simply, Leo Tolstoy, was one of Russia's finest writers. He is best known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, books considered to be among the greatest of all time.

Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828. His parents were wealthy landowners, and they lived on a huge estate, Yasnaya Polyana, near Moscow. Hoever, his parents died when he was young, leaving his aunts to bring him up. He was privately educated at home, then at Kazan University where he studied law and Asian languages. From his writings, Tolstoy had a happy childhood. A dreamy young man, he failed to graduate and moved to Moscow where he lived a fairly wild life.

When he was 23, he accompanied his elder brother Nikolay Tolstoy and joined the artillery regiment serving in the Crimean War. It was this time that Tolstoy also began his literary career. He published his autobiography and Sevastapol Sketches, a view of war as soldiers see it. He toured Europe as a literary celebrity but returned to Russia, where he set up a school for peasant children on his estate.

When he was 34, he married 18-year-old Sofya Behrs. They were happy and had 10 surviving children. Tolstoy devoted himself to his family, his writing and as a conscientious landlord, and committed to improving the lives of the peasants who lived on his Volga estate. During these years he produced his two literary masterpieces. War and Peace is a huge and complicated novel set in Russia during the Napoleonic Wars. It was followed by Anna Karenina, the story of doomed love.

In his mid-life, Tolstoy went through a 'spiritual crisis' that he described in My Confession. In his serious search for God, he expounded Christ-like doctrines. As a result, he rejected materialism, war, the church, and his own wealth in favour of a simple, peasantlike life. 

Quoted from his last major work A Calendar of Wisdom page 257 (refer Resources below):

"Try to establish an inner silence in yourself, a complete silence of your lips and your heart. And then you will hear how God speaks to us, and you will know how to fulfil his will."

Leo Tolstoy died at the age of 82. This brilliant writer, philosopher, moralist and mystic, seemed to look at life slam in the face: passionately, wondering, perhaps too seriously even to argue itself with life, or even death. He died at the age of 82.  

Suggested Listening:

War & Peace. By Martin Phipps, James Laing, Latvian Radio Choir & BBC National Orchestra of Wales. YouTube, uploaded by The Greatest Bird. Accessed September 9, 2017

                          

Books by Tolstoy:

1851 Istoria vcherashchnevo dnya (Accounts of Yesterday)

1852 Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, an autobiographical trilogy

1855-56 Sevastapol Sketches

1865-69 War and Peace

1875-7 Anna Karenina

1884 My Confession

1886 How Much Land Does a Man Need?

1886 The Death of Ivan Ilyich

1895 Master and Man

1899 Resurrection

Note: I first wrote and published this piece for Suite101.com, September 13, 2007 / Tel 

Image Credit:
en.wikipedia.org Commons / Public Domain.

Resources: 

1. Dictionary of Writers, Larousse, 1994.
2. Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. Carlton Books, 1997. 



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