Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy Writer and Thinker

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Count Lev Nikolaevich TolstoyWriter and Thinker

• 1828-1910

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Ivan KramskoyPortrait of Count Leo
Tolstoy(1828-1910)
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Born August 28 (Sept. 9) 1828 on family estate,
Yasnaya Polyana
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Childhood and Youth

• Born into an ancient noble family
• Parents die when
• Tolstoy is young
• Raised by his
• aunts
• Studies law at the
• Kazan University

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Tolstoys Military Career 1851-56

• Serves first in the
• Caucasus
• Then in an artillery
• regiment in
• Sebastopol, Crimea
• Writes and publishes
• his first fiction
• Childhood (1852)
• Boyhood (1854)
• Youth (1857)

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Literary Beginnings

• Moves to Petersburg, tries to integrate into
  literary circles
• In 1857 visits France, Italy, Switzerland and
  Germany
• Photo Tolstoy in 1862

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1859 Interest in education

• Upon his return from Europe, establishes
  schools for peasant children on his estate at
  Yasnaya Polyana
• 1860 goes to W. Europe to study schools

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Sophia Andreevna Behrs (1844-1919)

• Tolstoy and Sophia marry in 1862
• They immediately settle in Yasnaya Polyana
• They have 13 children (only 9 survive)

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Life with Tolstoy

• Sophia Andreevna
• "I lived with Lev
• Nikolayevich
• for forty-eight years,
• but I never really
• learned what kind of
• man he was.
•  

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The Tolstoys
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• Tolstoy, his children and grandchildren

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War and Peace (1863-69)

• Begins to appear in literary magazine Russky
  vestnik in 1865
• Reflects Tolstoys interest in the Russian narod
  (people)
• Graphic descriptions of slaughter on the
  battlefield reflect Tolstoys experience as a
  soldier, amount to a pacifist critique of war

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Tolstoy in his study
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Anna Karenina, 1873-77

• Family novel centred around an autobiographical
  hero plus a novel about adultery (cf. Flauberts
  Madame Bovary)
• Vehicle for Tolstoy to express his opinion on the
  reforms of the 1860s, agriculture, modernity

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Critical, Psychological Realism

• Investigation into the more profound aspects of
  life
• Social inequality
• Motivation, why do we do what we do?
• Psychological contradictions
• Politics
• What is Russia? What is Russias role in the
  world?

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The 1880s The Spiritual Crisis

• Tolstoy radically questions society, religion,
  morality, sex, artistic practices
• Renounces his previous literary works
• Publishes A Confession (1884), Death of Ivan
  Ilich (1886), Kreuzer Sonata (1887-89)

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Tolstoys core beliefs

• Non-resistance to evil
• Renounce all luxury and wealth
• Live by ones own labour
• Be like the humble peasant
• Vegetarianism

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Tolstoys Philosophy
Ilya Repin. Tolstoy as ploughman
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Vladimir Chertkov (1854-1936) and the Tolstoyans

• Meets Tolstoy in 1883
• 1884 becomes publisher of Tolstoys and others
  work in popular cheap editions
• Educational projects for moral improvement
• After Tolstoys death edits his work

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The last Chapter

• 1884 first attempt to
• leave home, gave up his
• estate in Yasnaya
• Polyana
• 1901 Excommunication
• from Russian Orthodox
• Church
• In November of 1910,
• Tolstoy leaves home

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His letter to Sofya Andreevna

• My departure will sadden you. But understand and
  believe that I cannot act in any other way. My
  position in the house is becoming, or has become,
  unbearable. Apart from anything else, I cannot
  live in those conditions of luxury in which I
  have lived, and am doing what old men of my age
  usually do they abandon the worldly life to live
  out in isolation and silence their last days

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Tolstoy falls ill on the train,is taken in by
the stationmaster
in the small railway station of Astapovo
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Tolstoys room in Astapovo
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The End

• Fell ill and died
• seven days later

• Thousands of people came to ask about the
  writers condition

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• Tolstoys wife looking through the window

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Clock at the Astapovo railway station stopped at
the time of Tolstoys death
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Last words

• There are masses of people, apart from Leo
  Tolstoy, but you only pay attention to Leo
  Tolstoythats not how peasants die. I love
  the truth.

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Tolstoys grave
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Leo Tolstoys Biography

• I clearly realized that my biography, if
• it suppressed all the nastiness and
• criminality of my life - as they
• customarily write biographies - would
• be a lie, and that if one is going to
• write my biography, one must write the
• whole truth.
• Leo Tolstoy

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• Thoughts from the book "For Every Day That
  the only object of man's life is self-perfection
  the perfecting of immortal souls that this is
  is seen to be correct by the fact alone that
  every other object is senseless in view of death.
  
• Therefore the question whether you have done
  what you should have done is of immense
  importance, for the only meaning of your life is
  in doing in this short term allowed you that
  which is desired of you by Him who or that which
  has sent you into life. Are you doing the right
  thing?

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