Leo Tolstoy
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Chapter 7: People Alone Leo Tolstoy |
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Leo Tolstoy
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Leo Tolstoy was born in Yasna Polana, the Russian estate of his noble family. Tolstoy, who inherited the title of Count, was orphaned at nine and raised by aunts. He was educated at the University of Kazan, but did not complete his studies. Without any real goal, Tolstoy took up a profligate life in Moscow, Russia and St. Petersburg, and in 1851 joined the army where he served in active combat in the Crimean War. In 1852, he began writing his autobiography Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857). After leaving the army in 1855, he went to live at Yasna Polana and attempted to educate the estate’s peasants, whom he eventually freed. He married Sophie Behrs in 1862 and began writing seriously, perhaps because he realized that he was unhappily married. Tolstoy’s major novels include The Cossacks (1863), War and Peace (1869), and Anna Karenina (1877). Among his important stories are "The Death of Ivan Ilych" (1884), "The Kreutzer Sonata" (1889), "God Sees the Truth but Waits," and "Master and Man" (1895). Beginning in the late 1870s, Tolstoy began to concern himself with moral philosophy and radically changed the tenor of his life by undergoing a religious conversion that advocated the principles of renunciation of property, abolition of churches and government, and acceptance of evil as a part of life. Eventually Tolstoy was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church, censored by the government of the Czar, and alienated from his family. At the age of 82, Tolstoy left home to live in the world as he had been preaching. Huge crowds followed him, but old and sickly, he collapsed in a provincial railroad station, dying soon afterwards. Author Links
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"The Death of Ivan Ilych"
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