Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy devoted his whole life to Tolstoy - his life, social and religious views. Literary criticism of Shakespeare's works

Tolstoy, Lev Nikolaevich(Count; 1828-1910) - the most famous writer in the history of general literature. Z eminent writer, who reached an unprecedented level in the history of literature of the 19th century. glory. In his face powerfully united great artist with a great moralist.

The personal life of Leo Tolstoy, his steadfastness, tirelessness, responsiveness, animation in defending his ideals, his attempt to abandon the blessings of this world, to live a new, good life, based on only high, ideal goals and knowledge of the truth - all this brings the charm of the name of Tolstoy to legendary proportions.

rich and noble family, to which it belongs, already in the time of Peter the Great occupied prominence. It is not devoid of peculiar interest that great-great-grandfather Peter Andreevich The forerunner of such humane ideals had a sad role in the history of Tsarevich Alexei. Great-grandson of Peter Andreevich, Ilya Andreevich, is described in "War and Peace" in the face of the most good-natured, impractical old Count Rostov. Son of Ilya Andreevich, Nikolai Ilyich, was the father of Lev Nikolaevich. He is depicted quite close to reality in "Childhood" and "Boyhood" in the person of Father Nikolinka and partly in "War and Peace" in the person of Nikolai Rostov. In the rank of lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd hussar regiment, he took part in the war of 1812 and after the conclusion of peace he retired. Having spent his youth merrily, Nikolai Ilyich lost a lot of money and completely upset his affairs. The passion for the game passed to Leo Tolstoy, who, already being famous writer, gambled.

To put his frustrated affairs in order, Nikolai Ilyich, like Nikolai Rostov, married the ugly and no longer very young Princess Volkonskaya. The marriage, however, was a happy one. They had four sons: Nikolai, Sergei, Dmitry and Lev, and a daughter, Maria. Except Leo, outstanding person was Nikolai, whose death (abroad, in 1860) Tolstoy so amazingly described in one of his letters to Fet.

Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, Catherine's General, is brought to the stage in "War and Peace" in the face of a stern rigorist - the old Prince Bolkonsky. Best Features of his moral temper, Lev Nikolaevich undoubtedly borrowed from the Volkonskys.

The writer's mother, depicted with great accuracy in "War and Peace" in the face of Princess Mary, possessed a wonderful gift for storytelling, for which, with her shyness passed on to her son, she had to lock herself with a large number of listeners who gathered around her in a dark room.

In addition to the Volkonskys, Tolstoy is closely related to a number of other aristocratic families - the princes Gorchakov, Trubetskoy and others.

Lev Nikolayevich was born on August 28, 1828 in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province. (15 versts from Tula), which has now received worldwide fame hereditary magnificent estate of the mother - Yasnaya Polyana.

Tolstoy was not even two years old when his mother died. A distant relative, T. A. Ergolskaya, took up the upbringing of orphaned children. In 1837 the family moved to Moscow, because the eldest son had to prepare for entering the university; but soon the father died suddenly, leaving affairs in a rather disorganized state, and the three younger children again settled in Yasnaya Polyana under the supervision of T.A. Ergolskaya and paternal aunt, Countess A. M. Osten-Saken. Here Lev Nikolayevich remained until 1840, when c. Osten-Saken and the children moved to Kazan, to a new guardian - the father's sister P. I. Yushkova.

This ends the first period of Tolstoy's life, described by him in "Childhood" with great accuracy in the transfer of thoughts and impressions and only with a slight change in external details. The Yushkovs' house, somewhat provincial in style, but typically secular, was one of the most cheerful in Kazan; all members of the family highly valued comme il faut and outward brilliance. " My good aunt Leo Tolstoy says the purest being, always said that she would want nothing more for me than that I have a relationship with a married woman." Two the most important beginnings Tolstoy's nature - great pride and desire to achieve something real, to know the truth - now entered into a struggle.

At the same time, a tense internal struggle and the development of a strict moral ideal were going on in him. The whole subsequent life of Leo Tolstoy is a painful struggle with the contradictions of life. If Belinsky can rightly be called great heart, then the epithet fits Tolstoy great conscience.

receiving Higher education he studied at the Oriental and Law faculties. He was only enrolled at the university, studying very little and getting deuces and ones in exams. The failure of Tolstoy's university studies is hardly a mere accident. Being one of the truly great sages in the sense of the ability to think about the purpose and purpose of human life, Tolstoy at the same time lacks the ability to think scientifically, that is, to subordinate his thought to the results of research. Having left the university even before the transitional exams for the 3rd year of law. faculty, Tolstoy from the spring of 1847 settled in Yasnaya Polyana.

Tolstoy was very fond of Rousseau. With no one does he have so many points of contact as with the great hater of civilization and preacher of a return to primitive simplicity. The peasants, however, did not completely capture Tolstoy, he soon left for St. Petersburg and in the spring of 1848 began to take an exam for a candidate of jurisprudence. He successfully passed two exams, from criminal law and criminal proceedings, then he got tired of studying, and he again took it and simply left for the village. Later, he traveled to Moscow, where he often succumbed to an inherited passion for the game, which greatly upset his financial affairs.

During this period of life Leo Tolstoy. he was especially passionately interested in music (he played the piano not badly and was very fond of classical composers). Much time was also spent on carousing, playing and hunting.

Soon he decided to enter the military service, but there were obstacles in the form of the lack of the necessary papers, which were difficult to obtain, and Tolstoy lived for about 5 months in complete seclusion in Pyatigorsk, in a simple hut. In the autumn of 1851, having passed an exam in Tiflis, Tolstoy entered as a cadet in the 4th battery of the 20th artillery brigade, stationed in the Cossack village of Starogladovo, on the banks of the Terek, near Kizlyar. In a remote village, Tolstoy found the best part of himself: he began to write and in 1852 sent the first part of an autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, to the editors of Sovremennik.

Tolstoy, who was soon promoted to officer, remained in the Caucasus for two years, participating in many skirmishes and being exposed to all the dangers of military life in the Caucasus. He had the rights and claims to the St. George Cross, but did not receive it, which, apparently, was upset. When the Crimean War broke out at the end of 1853, Tolstoy transferred to the Danube army, participated in the battle of Oltenitsa and in the siege of Silistria, and from November 1854 to the end of August 1855 was in Sevastopol. All the horrors, hardships and suffering that befell his heroic defenders were also endured by Tolstoy. He lived for a long time on the terrible 4th bastion, commanded a battery in the battle of Chernaya, was during the hellish bombardment during the assault on Malakhov Kurgan.

Drinking parties and cards, carousing with gypsy friends took Tolstoy whole days and even nights. He was criticized for it. former comrades from the writers' circle. As a result, “people got sick of him and he got sick of himself,” and at the beginning of 1857 Tolstoy left Petersburg without any regret and went abroad. Western Europe made an unexpected impression on him - Germany, France, England, Switzerland, Italy - where Tolstoy spent only about 1½ years. And when he returned home, he actively engaged in the organization of schools in his Yasnaya Polyana.

Tolstoy resolutely rebelled against all regulation and discipline in the school; the only method of teaching and education that he recognized was that no methods were needed. Everything in teaching should be individual - both the teacher and the student, and their mutual relationship. In the Yasnaya Polyana school, the children sat where they wanted, for as long as they wanted, and as they wanted. There was no specific curriculum. The teacher's only job was to keep the class interested. Despite this extreme pedagogical anarchism, the classes were going great. They were led by Tolstoy himself with the help of several permanent teachers and a few random ones, from the closest acquaintances and visitors.

At that time he began to have a strong feeling for Sofia Andreevna Bers, daughters of a Moscow doctor from Baltic Germans. He was already in his fourth decade, Sofya Andreevna was only 17 years old. Having endured passion for Sofya Andreevna in his heart for three years, Tolstoy married her in the autumn of 1862, and the greatest fullness of family happiness fell to his lot, which only happens on earth. In the person of his wife, he found not only the most faithful and devoted friend, but also an indispensable assistant in all matters, practical and literary.

Tolstoy revels in the happiness of family life. During the first 10-12 years after his marriage, he creates "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina".

The horror lay in the fact that, being in the flower of strength and health, Leo Tolstoy lost all desire to enjoy the prosperity achieved; he had "nothing to live with", because he could not understand the purpose and meaning of life. In the sphere of material interests, he began to say to himself: “Well, all right, you will have 6,000 acres in the Samara province. - 300 heads of horses, and then? in the literary sphere: "Well, all right, you will be more glorious than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all the writers in the world - so what!". Starting to think about raising children, he asked himself: “why?”; discussing “how the people can achieve prosperity,” he “suddenly said to himself: what does it matter to me?” In general, he “felt that what he stood on had given way, that what he lived by was no longer there.».

The natural result was the thought of suicide.. « I, a happy man, hid the string from me so as not to hang myself on the crossbar between the cupboards in my room, where I was alone every day, undressing, and stopped going hunting with a gun, so as not to be tempted by a too easy way to rid myself of life. I myself did not know what I wanted: I was afraid of life, strove to get away from it, and, meanwhile, still hoped for something from it.". In order to find an answer to the questions and doubts that tormented him, Tolstoy first of all frantically rushed into the realm of theology. He began to talk with priests and monks, went to the elders in Optina Pustyn, read theological treatises, studied ancient Greek and Hebrew languages in order to know the original sources Christian doctrine.

At the same time, he kept an eye on the schismatic Old Believers, became close to the thoughtful peasant sectarian Syutaev, and talked with Molokans and Stundists. With the same feverishness he sought the meaning of life in the study of philosophy and in acquaintance with the results of the exact sciences. He made a series of attempts at greater and greater simplification, striving to live a life close to nature and agricultural life. Gradually he refuses whims and comforts rich life, does a lot of physical labor, dresses in the simplest clothes, becomes a vegetarian, gives his family all his large fortune, renounces literary property rights.

In the opinion of people who are indignant at Tolstoy for turning from an artist into a preacher, these artistic teachings, written for a specific purpose, are grossly tendentious. But everyone understood that in the words of Tolstoy, the lofty and terrible truth.

Tolstoy directly comes to the conclusion that " the more we surrender artistic beauty the more we move away from good". Tolstoy pursues his new religious worldview, which was the fruit of many years of painful work of his deep analytical mind.The foundations of his worldview are in the doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence, in saving the world with goodness and love, in saving a person through personal free self-improvement, in the denial of all coercive forms of society acting by an external force. (state, church hierarchy, military organization and war, etc.). Tolstoy attracted a huge number of followers in Russia

The latest fact of Tolstoy's biography is the decision of the Holy Synod of February 20-22, 1901. " A writer known to the whole world, - we read in this definition, - Russian by birth, Orthodox by his baptism and upbringing, Count Tolstoy, in the seduction of his proud mind, boldly rebelled against the Lord and His Christ and His holy property, clearly in front of everyone having renounced the Mother who nursed and raised him, the Orthodox Church, and dedicated his literary activity and the talent given to him by God to spread among the people teachings that are contrary to Christ and the Church, and to exterminate in the minds and hearts of people the faith of the fathers, the Orthodox faith, which established the universe, by which our ancestors lived and saved, and which hitherto held and strong was Holy Russia . In his writings and letters, in the multitude scattered by him and his disciples all over the world, especially within the borders of our dear fatherland, he preaches, with the zeal of a fanatic, the overthrow of all the dogmas of the Orthodox Church and the very essence of the Christian faith: he rejects the personal living God, in Holy Trinity glorified, Creator and Provider of the universe; denies the Lord Jesus Christ, the God-Man, Redeemer and Savior of the world, who suffered for us for the sake of men and ours for the sake of salvation, and rose from the dead; denies the seedless conception according to the humanity of Christ the Lord and virginity before and after the birth of the Most Pure Theotokos Ever-Virgin Mary, does not recognize afterlife and retribution, rejects all the sacraments of the Church and the grace-filled action of the Holy Spirit in them, and, scolding the most sacred objects of the faith of the Orthodox people, did not shudder to mock the greatest of the sacraments, the holy Eucharist. Because of all this, “the Church does not consider him a member and cannot consider him until he repents and restores his fellowship with her.».

Some of Tolstoy's works, written before 1905, were banned by censorship from being printed in Russia.

On August 28, 1908, the 80th anniversary of his birth was celebrated throughout the civilized world, despite the position of the Russian Church.

The religious problem has always stood for Count Tolstoy in the foreground. Experiencing a painful mental crisis in the late seventies, Count Tolstoy turned to a thorough study historical foundations Christianity. For this purpose, he even studied the Jewish language under the guidance of the Moscow Rabbi Minor.

After re-reading many commentaries on the Bible, Tolstoy unconditionally condemned all orthodox-nationalist statements and embarked on the path of broad universalism. According to Count Tolstoy, in the soul of the Russian people there is no hatred, either religious or tribal, towards foreigners. This hatred has been artificially instilled for centuries by a short-sighted and self-serving policy.

Judeophobia, in the eyes of Tolstoy, is not a faith, not a political conviction, but a morbid passion. Poisoned by their own poison, some anti-Semite maniacs reach the point of wild eccentricity and savage obscurantism.

It is not economic hardships, not regiments of enemy armies that destroy peoples and countries, but disintegration inner strength, the degeneration of the moral core and the pernicious infection of national intolerance - this is what sweeps away tribes and states from the face of the earth. Rome, Egypt and Babylon fell and crumbled for hatred of the peoples who inhabited their country, for hatred, like ice, cannot be a binding cement for a long time. Woe to that country where subjugated and destitute peoples, doused with malice and frozen with fierce cruelty, serve as the pillars of a fragile statehood.

Only deliberate slander can assert that between Jews and Christians there is a spontaneous, racial enmity, an ineradicable tribal strife. If some think that, by squeezing the Jews, they are fulfilling the irresistible command of fate, which for some reason doomed entire nations to suffering, then their blind habit must be countered with the undoubted truth, expressed in antiquity by one Jewish teacher: God, as it were, does not care about the food of the poor, so that we have a reason good deed get rid of the torments of the future; God allows the lack of rights of individual nationalities, so that we have a reason to correct all previous sins in relation to foreigners by a living feat of active peacefulness.

Of the Hebrew legends, Count Tolstoy especially appreciated the legend " About the lament of the patriarchs"for the optimistic belief in the proximity of that time," when the peoples, forgetting strife, in great family unite"; a story about the birth of Abraham for his immortal, captivating dream of nature rejoicing at the birth of a new spiritual leader.

The close and inseparable relationship between the religion of Israel and the moral gospel of Jesus predetermines, according to Tolstoy, the obligation for true Christians to carefully guard against all the temptations of intolerance towards the Jews. " Jews are persecuted only for their faith - baptism entails, for the most part, almost complete equalization of rights».

No, in Tolstoy's eyes, there is no more blasphemous combination of concepts than religious persecution. Religion certainly excludes hatred and persecution, because the first natural movement of the human soul, in which a religious feeling has woken up, is the consciousness of power over oneself. high strength who called him to life and wishing good to all living things. Just as a religious soul cannot harbor a vindictive feeling towards those who persist in prejudices, so it cannot be characterized by an arrogant alienation from those who seek divine truth insatiable, but seeks in other ways. People who raise the sword of religious persecution are dead and not yet born to faith.

In creating the Jewish question, they are making a terrible mistake. In national disputes, especially in relation to a dependent people, it is necessary, first of all, to eliminate all repressions and all kinds of restrictions on rights. Evil can only be overcome with good. If some Jews pay active anti-Semites in kind, if centuries of insults and oppression accumulate vindictive feelings among the persecuted, then the Russian people, who have seen this long-standing mistake, can only correct it with patient and unfeigned generosity.

Some of the worldly weaknesses often attributed to commercial Jewry are, in Tolstoy's interpretation, the direct result of persecution. " To get rid of them, you need to fight persecution, not with them.". The best argument in favor of the Jews is, according to Tolstoy, those incredible excesses that others allow themselves militant Judeophobes and from the church pulpit , and from the parliamentary rostrum.

“If all the accusations against the Jews, the accusations that I personally do not believe, were just, then even then it would remain undoubted that the Jews could not do any harm to people living a Christian life"- Count Tolstoy.

– Today's lecture is dedicated to Leo Tolstoy. I must say that I am by no means enthusiastic about either social or religious views of Tolstoy, and I consider them, in general, incorrect, and even not interesting. But, nevertheless, at the beginning of the course I was approached by several people who, as it turned out, consider Tolstoy a religious genius, a Christian torch. And so I wanted to speak a little more about Lev Nikolaevich. Still, this figure is amazing. He is, of course, a world-class writer.

By the way, in the West, in fact, only Dostoevsky and Tolstoy are known from Russian literature. They don't know Pushkin, or Lermontov, or Nekrasov, or Gogol, or Chekhov, but only Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. It seems to me because, in the perception of a Westerner, Dostoevsky's novels are, as it were, thrillers of the 19th century, they pinch a little for the soul. As for Tolstoy, it's a 19th-century soap opera. Here "War and Peace", in fact, is perceived by a modern Western person as a serial soap opera. Western man, in my opinion, does not see any deep searches in them.

Speaking of Tolstoy, I must immediately try to explain his essence, and I will express the three most striking aspects of his soul. Taken together, they define what Tolstoy is.

First, this great power Tolstoy's selfishness, in the Christian sense, is his, perhaps, pride, self-confidence. He is a man who did only what he wanted to do. But, you yourself understand, it is very hard to live like this, and this is connected with a mass of sorrows, sorrows, and, of course, they did not pass Tolstoy. In general, every person, especially great person, is a tragedy, and Tolstoy is, in my opinion, a tragedy squared. Tolstoy is a very passionate person, and he always gave free rein to his passions: if I want, I will do what I want, and in fact, no one can tell me. He always had his personal definite opinion, there were no authorities for him at all. We'll get back to this.

Secondly, in contrast to this, Tolstoy always strove, and sincerely strove for the lofty and pure, always in the depths of his soul wanted to resolve the most important questions of being, the most important questions of life. He constantly improves himself, keeps a diary in which he writes down his spiritual, emotional experiences, ups and downs. He always wants to be honest, fair, good, and in this, in fact, he sees the purpose of his life.

And thirdly, he brilliantly knew how to embody all these thoughts and experiences in his works, in literature. In my opinion, a stronger writer than Tolstoy was simply not born. His skill is amazing, it always surprised me, delighted me, I just with some kind of bated breath, opening my mouth, read any of his things. Tolstoy possessed exceptional creative power, simply phenomenal power, and he carried this power through his whole life. For all 82 years of his life, he did not lose it at all.

Now a little about life, biography, Tolstoy's family. By the way, family and family ties in general have always been extremely important for Tolstoy, he is even considered a descriptor family values, he especially knew how to skillfully embody this side. We will simultaneously remember his relatives and the characters of "War and Peace".

Mother - Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya. You should immediately remember Princess Marya, Maria Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya. He, in fact, did not change anything, only changed his last name a little. By the way, the image of Princess Marya in "War and Peace" is quite close to the prototype. Leo Tolstoy simply idolized his mother, but she died early, when Tolstoy was not yet three years old, and he mostly knew about her from stories, from family traditions. He had an exceptionally high opinion of his mother.

By the way, my maternal grandfather - Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky - is the old man Bolkonsky, a man of Catherine's, even Elizabethan time, a man of strict order. Remember how he forced Princess Mary to learn algebra so that she would not be the same fool as all the other noble ladies? Actually, this is also written off from nature, because Nikolai Sergeevich, in the end, retired and devoted the rest of his life to raising his daughter (in his own style, of course).

Tolstoy's father is Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy. What was the name of Rostov? Nikolai Ilyich Rostov. I also changed my name a bit here. In "War and Peace" Nikolai Rostov is a rather narrow-minded person, but, as they say, "a kind fellow", and indeed, it looks like his father, Nikolai Ilyich. In general, Maria Nikolaevna married Nikolai Tolstoy when she was over 30, then it was considered very late, she completely sat up in the girls. But the marriage was very happy. The children went: Nikolai, Sergey, Dmitry and four - Levushka, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. last child in this happy family was Maria, Tolstoy's younger sister, after whose birth her mother died. Maria Nikolaevna later became a nun, at the end of her life (although, having lived hectic life- children, two husbands), she became a nun in the Shamorda monastery. It was to her in the last days of his life that Lev Nikolayevich came. The first thing he did after his famous departure was to go to her.

Tolstoy's father also died quite early, when Tolstoy was, if I am not mistaken, nine years old, and the whole family was brought up by different tutors and tutors at different times, some aunts. The last teacher lived in Kazan, it was there that everyone moved, and the children began to enter Kazan University. The older brothers entered the Faculty of Mathematics, at that time the famous mathematician Lobachevsky taught there, everyone went to him, and Levushka decided to enter Faculty of Philology, and he had a specialization in oriental languages. He did very well in his exams. In general, Tolstoy was exceptionally capable of languages, he easily learned languages. For this he it just took a week or two work out. He perceived the grammatical structure and learned the vocabulary. In general, in life, he not only spoke French, because then all of our aristocracy spoke it, but masterfully, at the level of an Englishman, owned English language, corresponded with the British, German at the same level. And in general, a dozen or one and a half languages ​​- he read them freely.

But, you see, such a nature - I do what I want - for her studying at the university is not a very suitable occupation, Levushka launched classes, flunked the exams. He should have already been expelled - he left the university himself, went to Moscow, to his family estate, Yasnaya Polyana. Yasnaya Polyana - it was actually the estate of the mother, the estate of Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky. There, the unbridled nature of the young Tolstoy manifested itself in full. He tried to do something, started a school for the children of the surrounding peasants, but basically he spent his life, to be honest, playing cards and squandered a lot of money, got into debt. And his older brother Nikolai, a man very positive, whom Tolstoy always respected very much, advised him: “You know, you need to become a military man. Go somewhere south. This, in general, is your business, maybe you will earn money there.

And Levushka went south, fought there with the Chechens. And after the Crimean War and the Sevastopol defense began, he participated in the defense of Sevastopol, showed remarkable courage, received an order. Already at that time he began to write. If in Yasnaya Polyana he did not know what to do, and thought: "I will write a novel." The novel did not work out, but the story “Childhood” turned out, which he sent to Nekrasov in Sovremennik, and everyone there admired it, it was immediately printed. He never learned to write anywhere, but he wrote so well right away. If you remember this story, it is brilliantly written, exceptionally talented. Then came his Sevastopol Tales, which made a huge impression on our public. I advise you to just read them, they are so well written.

And everyone understood this. Our sovereigns - Alexander II and Alexander III after - they read Tolstoy, they were simply delighted with his writings. And at the request of Alexander II, he was not yet emperor, he was removed from the theater of operations, because he was too valuable for Russia.

Tolstoy ends up in Moscow. There he meets all the writers. He writes a lot of new things, although he continues to play cards and behave inappropriately. I will keep silent about the "exploits" of Tolstoy, I will only say that gossips it was said that in the school for peasant children, which was organized by Tolstoy, literally his children are studying. I still think this is an exaggeration.

Tolstoy marries, having already settled down a little - he was 34 years old, to an 18-year-old girl - Sofya Andreevna Bers. She was the wife of a physician, received an excellent education, was very talented - both a musician and a writer, in general, a very lively, active person. In general, love and a fairly quick wedding. Tolstoy changed: he suddenly turned into a zealous owner, who began to raise the economy in Yasnaya Polyana (before that it had been completely abandoned). He decided to devote himself to writing, said that he would earn money by this work. Yasnaya Polyana is a rather average estate, by the way, Tolstoy had more than one, he inherited several villages with peasants, with land, which he lost everything except Yasnaya Polyana in cards. Yasnaya Polyana remained.

He behaved very harshly and with the publishers of his works, demanded decent fees. And if Dostoevsky could hardly bargain for 150 rubles for a printed sheet, being at the height of his fame, then Tolstoy managed to put things in such a way that he already received 500 rubles for a printed sheet for War and Peace. And you know, "War and Peace" is four thick volumes. He organized a farm in Yasnaya Polyana, it began to generate income, connected his wife to this, who was happy to do all this.

Relations between Sofia Andreevna and Lev Nikolaevich in different periods were, it must be said, different. fiery at first, sacrificial love, 13 children, by the way, of which eight lived to a ripe old age. Sofya Andreevna helped Tolstoy in every possible way. After his marriage, Tolstoy conceived his epic War and Peace, which he wrote in about four years. Sofya Andreevna copied all the time his manuscripts at night.

As an author, Tolstoy was exceptionally demanding. He made very high demands on himself and on his literature. And if Dostoevsky had no time all the time, he wrote in a hurry, and often could not somehow finish his works in a literary way, Tolstoy rewrote, including War and Peace, several times, seven or eight times. Tolstoy's exceptional creative ability to work all his life is amazing.

World fame. Tolstoy after "War and Peace" became the largest writer. After several stories, the following appears big romance- "Anna Karenina", written with the same skill, perhaps even higher skill than "War and Peace".

Tolstoy was very self-critical about his writings. For example, after the publication of War and Peace, he remarked to Feta in a letter: “How happy I am that I will never write verbose rubbish like War and Peace!” But, it is true, he wrote a lot, and Anna Karenina is not a thin pamphlet, and neither is Resurrection. Generally, complete collection The works of Leo Tolstoy comprise 90 volumes, each volume is thick.

After Anna Karenina, something absolutely amazing happened: Tolstoy changed dramatically, he became interested in religious issues, and he turned from a great writer into a religious preacher. The second, most interesting and most tragic period of Tolstoy's life began.

I will talk a little more about Tolstoy as a writer. This was a man who did not recognize any authorities, if he was strict about his writings, all the more so he was very strict about the works of other authors, so strict that it is simply amazing. For example, Chekhov, with whom, in general, he briefly met, one might say, was friends, wrote:“What I especially admire in him is his contempt for all of us, other writers, or, better, not contempt, but the fact that he considers all of us, other writers, absolutely nothing. Here he sometimes praises Maupassant, Kuprin, Semenov, me. Why praise? Because he looks at us like children. Our stories, stories, novels are child's play for him, and therefore he, in essence, looks with the same eyes at both Maupassant and Semyonov. Shakespeare is another matter. This is already an adult and annoys him that he does not write in Tolstoyan style. I was once very fascinated by Tolstoy and outlined it. I had access to this 90-volume collected works. Well, I did not read all 90 volumes, but, nevertheless, I went crazy for several years, and I still have several notebooks of extracts.

Tolstoy about writers: "I read Goethe and see all the harmful influence of this insignificant, bourgeois-egoistic gifted person." “I read The Dead House. I forgot a lot, re-read and don't know better books of all new literature,” he respected Dostoevsky. “I read everything Leskov. It's not good, because it's not true." “I thought I liked Schiller’s The Robbers so much because they are deeply true and true.”

At the end of his life, Tolstoy writes an article about Shakespeare, it is called "On Shakespeare and the Theater", where he simply smears Shakespeare on the wall (this is not enough, probably said, it's something!). Moreover, he is a professional himself, he wrote several plays: "The Living Corpse", "The Power of Darkness". And he, in the course of criticizing Shakespeare, makes a lot of subtle remarks about how plays should be written, what a play should be. He finds absolutely nothing of this in Shakespeare, and his conclusion is that he is a very mediocre writer. In our country, they say, a person is often greatly inflated, and it seems that he means something, but in fact his writings - they bring only harm, they are immoral. Shakespeare does not know how to create images. By the way, think - this remark is actually true.

Let's move on to religion. I will say right away, Tolstoy, in fact, denied all of Christianity: he denied the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus Christ, denied his atoning sacrifice, denied eternal life (for Tolstoy, the soul does not have eternal life), denied church sacraments, denied devils and angels, denied the immaculate conception of Christ, denied the fall of the first people and, in fact, the fall of the human race. Everything that distinguishes Christianity from other religions - he openly and loudly denied all this.

God for Tolstoy has no personality, do you understand? It is something, dissolved somewhere, somehow lives, but God is not a person. It's amazing. Therefore, according to Tolstoy, one cannot pray to God, one cannot love him (as a person, you understand), one can worship God, one can serve him. For Tolstoy, God is a master who launches a person into the world and expects him to lead himself well, in God's way.

His biggest enemy in life was Orthodox Church. He is loyal to all religions - and to the Indian religions, and Buddhism - anything, everything, except Orthodoxy, which he sharply, rudely criticized. I'll read something a little later. Tolstoy came to this not out of the blue, but through quite a long religious quest. He had a period when he went to church, went to confession, even took communion, but all this, you see, was not a horse's fodder. And after that, this hypertrophied self of Tolstoy, these doubts, these denials that he had, they turned into certainty, and then Tolstoy only affirmed the truth of his religious position. From all Christianity he took only the moral teaching. Of course, this is a very important part, and the moral teaching of Christianity, in my opinion, is unique and different from other religions, but there is also much in common. For Tolstoy, Christ, of course, was no God, but he was a brilliant preacher. However, Confucius, Buddha, Lao Tzu.

Sometimes he added Rousseau to this cohort, whom he loved and respected very much. Tolstoy made a translation, a compilation, so to speak, of the four Gospels into one text. He threw out everything I talked about, threw out all the miracles, left only the moral teaching. For example, the beginning of the Gospel of John is “in the beginning was the Word”, that is, the Logos, Christ, the Second Hypostasis of the Trinity. But Tolstoy, taking advantage of the fact that the word "logos" is ambiguous, meaning both "word", and "thought", and "reason", so he changed it so that he got "in the beginning there was an understanding of life." And in this spirit he retold all the Gospels.

After, 1881 is the death of Dostoevsky, and the next year Tolstoy's "Confession" is published: a rather large work in which he honestly and sincerely describes all the vicissitudes of his religious consciousness and formulates what he came to. In fact, Tolstoy created a new religion, so to speak, a religion for the intelligentsia, where he threw out the baby with water. Although this idea to create a new religion he had in his youth. For some reason, already in his youth, he considered that he was called to do this.

Tolstoy wrote a lot in his diaries and later - in numerous religious writings, which the current generation, it must be said, is completely unaware of, although this would O part of Tolstoy's legacy. The fact is that the 90-volume collected works, all of his great novels fit in the first 15 volumes, a maximum of 20. And the remaining 70 are his religious writings, these are his diaries, these are his letters, which mainly come from a later period.

It is often said that Tolstoy lost his gift for writing in the second part of his life. I cannot agree with this. Both What Is My Faith and a host of other thick books of the second period are very talentedly written. And his journalistic articles - they usually have powerful titles for him: “Think about it!”, “I can’t be silent!”, “Shame on!”, “So what should we do?” - in general, such drums - they are all very well written.

Tolstoy's "Confession" was still printed in Russia, and after that it was no longer published. But Tolstoy had a student: Vladimir Grigorievich Chertkov. This is an amazing personality. The son of very high-ranking parents close to the court, a man of great will, a dry man, a fanatic. He got acquainted with Tolstoy's new views, admired them, imbued himself with them and became, as they say now, a lifelong fan of Tolstoy, accepted Tolstoyism, in general, became holier than the Pope, was more Tolstoy than Tolstoy himself. Chertkov, firstly, took upon himself the task of publishing everything that Tolstoy writes. Tolstoy was quickly banned in Russia, but in London Chertkov organized an entire intermediary publishing house that published Tolstoy's new works in Russian and imported them to Russia. And the second role of Chertkov, very unattractive: he was constantly dripping on Tolstoy's brains, all the time explaining to Tolstoy that he was called by providence to create a new word in religion, to explain the truth to people. He constantly, at every conversation, inspired Tolstoy, and Tolstoy is a vain man, although after his religious upheaval, it must be said, Tolstoy nevertheless changed a lot in better side, but vanity, pride remained with him - he constantly urged Tolstoy to follow the path he had chosen. He was a man, according to reviews, very unpleasant, but Tolstoy loved him, considered him his closest friend, although all of Tolstoy's relatives - and Sofya Andreevna, and sons who had grown up by that time, and daughters - they all did not like this Vladimir Grigoryevich endured. Here, imagine, for example, such a picture: a mosquito sat on Chertkov's bald spot, Tolstoy quietly creeps up behind him - bang! killed a mosquito. Chertkov's voice: “Lev Nikolaevich! How could you, this creature!" - that is, a terrible bore.

Of course, Tolstoy's preaching made an impression on many, but very many did not like it either. Naturally, Tolstoy had a lot of enemies, mostly from the people of the Church. Many priests and bishops read this and wondered: how can you write all this, how did this appear in Russia? But Tolstoy seemed to get away with everything. If Chertkov was expelled from Russia, in the end, despite intercession in very high spheres, then to Tolstoy for a long time no reprisals were applied. Why? Because both Alexander II and Alexander III loved Tolstoy very much as a writer, they read his books. And with them it was impossible to somehow condemn Tolstoy.

So Alexander III died - and work began in the Synod on drawing up a document on Tolstoy's excommunication. It was carried out for several years, the first version, tough enough, wrote K.P. Pobedonostsev, but after the bishops and metropolitans who sat in the Synod, they edited it great, softened it, threw out all the words like “ anathematization”, “excommunication”. A document called “The Definition of the Holy Synod” appeared in 1901, it says: “Former attempts to reason with him, that is, with Tolstoy, were unsuccessful. Therefore, the Church does not consider him a member and cannot count him until he repents and restores his communion with her. Therefore, bearing witness to his falling away from the Church, we pray together that the Lord grant him repentance into the mind of truth.” That yes in this document no anathematization, but there is only a statement that Tolstoy separated himself from the Church with his views, with his writings, that is, he “fell away” from the Church, as formulated in this “Definition”. And something a little awkward happened. The point is that falling away without anathematization our church canons do not recognize, but the words " anathematization”is not in the document, therefore this definition itself is, as it were, a little non-canonical, does not fit into our canons. But, nevertheless, nevertheless, in its meaning and in the consequences that it had, it is, of course, excommunication from the Church.

By the way, I forgot to say that Tolstoy's sermon was certainly a success in Russian society and made a great impression. Moreover, it was believed that in Russia the most famous people are considered to be two: Leo Tolstoy and Father John of Kronstadt. Father John had exceptional authority among the people: a fiery faith, a miracle worker, a wonderful person. Both of the most famous people in Russia, of course, did not love each other, but if Tolstoy still did not speak about John of Kronstadt, although, having an amazing gift for words, he could speak very strongly, I think, then John of Kronstadt, on the contrary, was not shy at all in expressions. His fiery heart could not endure this blasphemy with which Tolstoy flaunted. He called it like this: "Julian the apostate", "new Arius", "roaring lion", "crucifier of Christ", "apostate", "lordly arrogance", "malicious liar", "diabolical word", "rotten idol", "evil serpent", " flattering fox”, “laughs at the title of an Orthodox peasant, mockingly copying it”. Tolstoy by that time began to dress in a Russian shirt, in boots, but the fact is that Sofya Andreevna bought him a shirt made of the best linen, and his boots were of the best brand, and this, from the point of view of John of Kronstadt, is a parody of a real peasant clothes. Here is another from John of Kronstadt: “Oh, how terrible you are, Leo Tolstoy, the offspring of a viper!” Or just "pig". Horror! “You (that is, Tolstoy), according to the scriptures, should hang a stone around your neck and lower it into the depths of the sea. You should not have a place on earth!” - wrote John of Kronstadt. Serovo.

And here is what he wrote about. John of Kronstadt a few months before his death - TO Ronstadt died in 1908, and Tolstoy in 1910. So, he writes: “Lord, do not allow Leo Tolstoy, a heretic who has surpassed all heretics, to reach before the holiday of Christmas Holy Mother of God, which he blasphemed terribly and blasphemes. Take him from the earth - this stinking corpse, with its pride, has tarnished the whole earth. But I don’t know how to understand this - after all, this is how Tolstoy got it with his quests, that he loudly wishes the death of this heretic.

Tolstoy reacted rather quickly to his excommunication. First, he was very sorry that there were no words about anathematization and excommunication, he really wanted to suffer, so to speak. And then what? Neither fish nor fowl. He wrote a response to the definition of the Synod, where he is very clear. Listen: “The fact that I renounced the Church, which calls itself Orthodox, is absolutely fair. I am convinced that the teaching of the Church is theoretically an insidious, harmful lie, but in practice it is a collection of the grossest superstitions and sorcery, which completely hides the whole meaning of Christian teaching. And the true meaning of the Christian teaching Tolstoy clarified in his works: “I really renounced the Church, stopped performing its rites and wrote in my will to my relatives that when I die, they would not allow church ministers to see me and my dead body would be removed as soon as possible, without any spells and prayers over it, as they remove any nasty and unnecessary thing, so that it does not interfere with the living. The fact that I reject the incomprehensible trinity and the fable about the fall of the first man, the story of God, born of the Virgin, redeeming the human race, it is completely fair. That's it, you understand?

Not so long ago, just on the centenary of this work of the Synod, and the descendants of Tolstoy often gathered in Yasnaya Polyana. They have such a tradition: every even year they come to Yasnaya Polyana (or odd year), a lot of them came, more than 200 people. And in 2001, on the centenary of excommunication, these descendants of Tolstoy turned to our patriarch, Alexei II, with a request to make this excommunication as if non-existent, cancel it. But the patriarch did not. I think that, indeed, after such statements, he could not do it in any way.

As for Tolstoy's social views, it seems to me that they should not even be taken seriously, but some of his thoughts, nevertheless, are remarkable in their own way and deserve to be noted. You know that Tolstoy was against civilization in general: he was against telephones, steamboats, steam locomotives—people don't need all that. But, if you look closely, Tolstoy still denies not every civilization, he denies, as they say, bourgeois civilization, which arose along with capitalism. But he by no means denies peasant civilization.

The state, according to Tolstoy, is violence, it should not exist. In general, one of the most important religious ideas of Tolstoy is the rejection of violence, in any form, he could not bear it even to a small extent. And what is the state, from the point of view of Tolstoy? This is the first rapist. It constantly publishes some kind of prohibitive laws, puts people in prisons, wages wars, which are the greatest evil for mankind and are the apotheosis of violence. Therefore, the state should simply be eliminated. Ordinary peasants do not need it, they only need to calmly work in their field and, in fact, that's all. This, of course, is typically anarchist views, but Tolstoy calls himself stateless, he has a lot of journalism on this subject. Naturally, we could not publish it here.

In this regard, Tolstoy develops the theory of non-resistance. Yes, there is a lot of evil in life, but it is impossible to defeat evil with other evil. Therefore, it is by no means possible to respond to evil with violence, that is, with the same evil. But what about? And you need to accept the status of non-resistance, that is, do not protest by force, but simply refuse: refuse to serve the state, from military service, and so on and so forth.

In general, it must be said that, in my opinion, Tolstoy's deep misfortune is that he did not at all feel the fall of man. Well, I didn’t feel it cleanly either in myself or in others. He believed that there is a dark room in which you are now, and next to it is a bright room, well, what's stopping you from moving from a dark room to a light one? For some reason, he himself believed that he could transfer or had already transferred, I don’t know.

Tolstoy has, in my opinion, and valuable - this is his rejection of private property. He was firm and constant in this, he wrote: “Money, property is not a Christian matter. It comes from the authorities – give the authorities back.” According to the Gospel, there is no property, those who have it have grief, that is, those are bad, and “therefore, no matter what position a Christian is in, he can do nothing else in relation to private property but not to participate in in violence committed in the name of property." He had a very interesting correspondence with Stolypin, it is somewhere on the level of 1906-1907. Stolypin writes to Tolstoy: “You consider evil what I consider good for Russia,” that is, property. “Nature has invested in man some innate instincts, and one of the most strong feelings of this order is a sense of ownership. This is Stolypin's opinion, which he clearly formulated and acted in accordance with it. Tolstoy answers him: “Why, why are you ruining yourself by continuing the erroneous activity you started, which can lead to nothing but a deterioration in the situation of the general and yours? You made two mistakes: first, you began to fight violence with violence, these are the well-known, so to speak, “Stolypin ties”, when after the revolution he hanged the revolutionaries. And the second mistake is the apologetics of private property. Stolypin wanted to pacify everyone precisely by planting property. By the way, Tolstoy interprets the parable of the unfaithful steward, in my opinion, quite correctly in this sense, as a parable against private property.

Tolstoy said many times that everything is very simple, that if you follow my advice, “if all people,” as he put it, “followed this Tolstoyism, then there would be simply paradise on earth, there would be no revolutions, no wars, people would live in harmony. In general, everything would be fine.

Of course, Tolstoy's religious preaching offended many, but in comparison with the entire population of Russia, this, of course, was a drop in the ocean. And Lev Nikolaevich could not even convince his family of Tolstoyism, such an embarrassment, although he tried very hard. First of all, he could not convince his wife of Tolstoyism. She loved him very much, tried to help him, but remained a traditional Christian. She went to church, confessed, quarreled with Tolstoy, there were fierce arguments, but, of course, she could never outguess him. She was in a very difficult position, in my opinion. On the one hand, she is Tolstoy's wife and seems to have to protect him, like any normal wife, which she did: she wrote to Nicholas II, wrote to Anthony Vadkovsky, who was first present in the Synod, so that excommunication would be removed from Tolstoy. And at the same time, remaining a traditional Christian, she could not accept his teachings. Tolstoy really wanted a spiritual connection with his wife, but nothing worked. As a result, their very good, wonderful relationship went downhill. There were also problems of property, which Sofya Andreevna, it must be said, loved very much, but Lev Nikolayevich changed: if in his young period he tore 500 rubles from a sheet, then after that he sent an announcement to the newspapers that he allowed all publishers to print their works free of charge (True, since 1881, this is already after Anna Karenina), print his religious writings. Sofya Andreevna was terribly dissatisfied with this: so there is no money, but here they are floating away, all this could be realized.

Tolstoy's children were also skeptical of their father's ideas. They often sat in Yasnaya Polyana next to Tolstoy, at one large table, and Lev Nikolayevich also often began to preach his ideas. And those, it means, in a fist chuckle, averted their eyes, as they noticed the guest of Tolstoy (Chertkov). Nature rests on the children of a genius: alas, this happened not only to the children of Dostoevsky, but also to the children of Tolstoy. In general, all the children of Tolstoy, in the end, found some place in life. The elder, by the way, remained in Russia, became a professor at the Moscow Conservatory, he was capable of music. Others left after the revolution (or even before the revolution), somewhere in America, in Europe they were somersaulting. They produced offspring. Recently there were 200 people in Moscow - it's all from the sons.

Daughters of Tolstoy - about them a little different conversation. The eldest, the first in the family, Tatyana, loved Tolstoy very much, but she was not a sweatshirt. The middle one - Masha - according to reviews was just an angel, a man of love. She idolized her father, in fact, became his secretary. But she died rather quickly, the Lord took her away. And the youngest - Alexandra, whose fate is generally very difficult, I will talk about her a little later.

I won't talk about the story of Tolstoy's will - it's so confusing. In the end, it turned out that Tolstoy transferred all the rights to publish his works to the younger one, Alexandra, but wrote some addition that, they say, there is such a good person - Vladimir Grigorievich Chertkov, and that “my works should be published after Chertkov edit them." Actually, both of these fragments acquired legal force, the courts began there, and instantly a conflict began between Alexandra and Chertkov, each began to pull the blanket over himself. But Chertkov turned out to be stronger, he, in the end, remained in Russia. Of course, he was a unique person, he somehow managed to make friends with the Bolsheviks, and, in the end, the Soviet government decided to publish the complete works of Tolstoy, these 90 volumes, and Chertkov, who died only in 1936, turned out to be the editor of the vast majority of them. year. Only the last two or three volumes were published without Chertkov. Sofya Andreevna was, of course, dissatisfied with this - this is still very mildly said. She kept looking for these wills of Tolstoy in order to read them and destroy them, but she could not find them, because Tolstoy signed the will secretly, in the forest, they rode out on horseback to sign.

And the last chord, perhaps the most important in Tolstoy's life, is his departure. Relations in the family became extremely unbearable, and besides, Tolstoy felt that he was not living in Tolstoy's way. He wore fine clothes, lived in a good house, he had servants - all this weighed on him. Well, how can it be - I consider something completely different to be true, but for some reason I do not live like that. And one day, it was autumn, Tolstoy, taking with him only one doctor, Makovitsky (and Tolstoy was actually very afraid of death), left for Optina Pustyn at night. He was there for several days, even intending to get into the cell of Elder Joseph of Optina, but at the last moment he turned back. Then he left for Shamordino, where his sister Maria Nikolaevna was a monk. He told her that he would like to stay in Optina. But Alexandra Lvovna suddenly arrived - she was an ardent sweatshirt at that time, which is why Tolstoy wrote her an edition of all his works - they had a cool talk, and after a couple of hours she took him away from Shamordino, put him on a train that went to Rostov-na - Don.

What were the plans - it is not clear. Apparently, she wanted to arrange him in some kind of Tolstoy community, which by that time already existed in Russia for quite some time. in large numbers. The train was terribly hot, stuffy, Tolstoy went out into the vestibule to breathe - and immediately caught pneumonia. He was put off - Alexander with Dr. Makovitsky - at the Astapovo station, which is now called "Leo Tolstoy". An amazing coincidence: the head of the station was a Tolstoyan named Ozolin. He immediately gave Tolstoy his house, where the sick Tolstoy was laid. A few days later the people found out that Tolstoy was there, people began to gather to inquire, Tolstoy's fans began to pull themselves up, Chertkov arrived, all his sons arrived, and finally Sofya Andreevna arrived, Tolstoy did not allow her to enter him. The elder Barsanuphius of Optina arrived with a special mission. The fact is that the fact that Tolstoy was in Optina, as if he wanted to talk with the elders, - this reached the episcopal authorities, to the Synod, and the Synod issued a secret order that if Tolstoy repents before his death, then the excommunication should be removed from him. And with this mission, Varsonofy Optinsky went to the Astapovo station. He tearfully asked for an audience with Tolstoy. And Tolstoy, it cannot be said that he was already at death at that time, he was in his right mind, he lost consciousness only two hours before his death, but his relatives stood at attention, both Chertkov and Alexandra. So Barsanuphius was not allowed in, although he tried several times to break through to Tolstoy. Tolstoy got worse, and on December 7, 1910, he died without confession.

That's all about Tolstoy in a nutshell.

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy- an outstanding Russian prose writer, playwright and public figure. Born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the estate of Yasnaya Polyana, Tula region. On his mother's side, the writer belonged to the eminent family of the princes Volkonsky, and on his father's side, to the ancient family of Counts Tolstoy. Great-great-grandfather, great-grandfather, grandfather and father of Leo Tolstoy were military men. Representatives ancient family Tolstoy, even under Ivan the Terrible, served as governors in many cities of Russia.

The writer's grandfather on his mother's side, "a descendant of Rurik", Prince Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky, was enrolled in military service from the age of seven. He was a participant in the Russian-Turkish war and retired with the rank of General-Anshef. The writer's paternal grandfather - Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy - served in the Navy, and then in the Life Guards Preobrazhensky Regiment. The writer's father, Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, voluntarily entered military service at the age of seventeen. He participated in Patriotic war 1812, was captured by the French and was released by Russian troops who entered Paris after the defeat of Napoleon's army. On the maternal side, Tolstoy was related to the Pushkins. Their common ancestor was the boyar I.M. Golovin, an associate of Peter I, who studied shipbuilding with him. One of his daughters is the great-grandmother of the poet, the other is the great-grandmother of Tolstoy's mother. Thus, Pushkin was Tolstoy's fourth cousin.

Writer's childhood took place in Yasnaya Polyana - an old family estate. Tolstoy's interest in history and literature arose in his childhood: living in the countryside, he saw how the life of the working people proceeded, from him he heard many folk tales, epics, songs, legends. The life of the people, their work, interests and views, oral creativity- everything living and wise - was revealed to Tolstoy by Yasnaya Polyana.

Maria Nikolaevna Tolstaya, the writer's mother, was kind and sympathetic person, an intelligent and educated woman: she knew French, German, English and Italian She played the piano and took up painting. Tolstoy was not even two years old when his mother died. The writer did not remember her, but he heard so much about her from those around him that he clearly and vividly imagined her appearance and character.

Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, their father, the children loved and appreciated for humane attitude to the fortresses. In addition to doing housework and children, he read a lot. During his life, Nikolai Ilyich collected a rich library, consisting of books of French classics rare for those times, historical and natural history works. It was he who first noticed the tendency of his younger son to the living perception of the artistic word.

When Tolstoy was in his ninth year, his father took him to Moscow for the first time. The first impressions of the Moscow life of Lev Nikolaevich served as the basis for many paintings, scenes and episodes of the hero’s life in Moscow Tolstoy's trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence" and "Youth". Young Tolstoy saw not only the open side of life big city but also some hidden, shady sides. With his first stay in Moscow, the writer connected the end of the earliest period of his life, childhood, and the transition to adolescence. The first period of Tolstoy's life in Moscow did not last long. In the summer of 1837, having gone on business to Tula, his father died suddenly. Soon after the death of his father, Tolstoy, his sister and brothers had to endure a new misfortune: the grandmother died, whom all relatives considered the head of the family. Sudden death her son was a terrible blow to her and less than a year later carried her to the grave. A few years later, the first guardian of the orphaned Tolstoy children, the father's sister, Alexandra Ilyinichna Osten-Saken, died. Ten-year-old Leo, his three brothers and sister were taken to Kazan, where their new guardian, aunt Pelageya Ilyinichna Yushkova, lived.

Tolstoy wrote about his second guardian as a woman "kind and very pious", but at the same time very "frivolous and vain". According to the memoirs of contemporaries, Pelageya Ilyinichna did not enjoy authority among Tolstoy and his brothers, therefore moving to Kazan is considered to be a new stage in the life of the writer: education ended, a period of independent life began.

Tolstoy lived in Kazan for more than six years. It was the time of formation of his character and choice of life path. Living with his brothers and sister at Pelageya Ilyinichna, young Tolstoy spent two years preparing to enter Kazan University. Having decided to enter the eastern department of the university, he paid special attention to preparing for exams in foreign languages. At the exams in mathematics and Russian literature, Tolstoy received fours, and in foreign languages ​​- fives. At the exams in history and geography, Lev Nikolaevich failed - he received unsatisfactory marks.

Failure on entrance exams served as a serious lesson for Tolstoy. He devoted the whole summer to a thorough study of history and geography, passed additional exams on them, and in September 1844 he was enrolled in the first year of the eastern department of the philosophical faculty of Kazan University in the category of Arabic-Turkish literature. However, the study of languages ​​did not captivate Tolstoy, and after a summer vacation in Yasnaya Polyana, he transferred from the Oriental Faculty to the Faculty of Law.

But even in the future, university studies did not arouse Lev Nikolayevich's interest in the sciences being studied. Most of the time he studied philosophy on his own, compiled the "Rules of Life" and carefully made entries in his diary. By the end of the third year of studies, Tolstoy was finally convinced that the then university order only interfered with independent creative work, and he decided to leave the university. However, he needed a university degree to qualify for employment. And in order to get a diploma, Tolstoy passed the university exams externally, having spent two years of his life in the countryside preparing for them. Having received university documents at the end of April 1847, the former student Tolstoy left Kazan.

After leaving the university, Tolstoy again went to Yasnaya Polyana, and then to Moscow. Here, at the end of 1850, he took up literary creativity. At this time, he decided to write two stories, but he did not finish either of them. In the spring of 1851, Lev Nikolaevich, together with his older brother, Nikolai Nikolaevich, who served in the army as an artillery officer, arrived in the Caucasus. Here Tolstoy lived for almost three years, being mainly in the village of Starogladkovskaya, located on the left bank of the Terek. From here he traveled to Kizlyar, Tiflis, Vladikavkaz, visited many villages and villages.

started in the Caucasus Tolstoy's military service. He took part in the combat operations of the Russian troops. Tolstoy's impressions and observations are reflected in his stories "Raid", "Cutting the Forest", "Degraded", in the story "Cossacks". Later, turning to the memories of this period of life, Tolstoy created the story "Hadji Murad". In March 1854, Tolstoy arrived in Bucharest, where the office of the chief of artillery troops was located. From here, as a staff officer, he made trips to Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia.

In the spring and summer of 1854, the writer took part in the siege of the Turkish fortress of Silistria. However, the main place of hostilities at that time was the Crimean peninsula. Here, Russian troops led by V.A. Kornilov and P.S. Nakhimov heroically defended Sevastopol for eleven months, besieged by Turkish and Anglo-French troops. Participation in Crimean War- an important stage in the life of Tolstoy. Here he closely recognized ordinary Russian soldiers, sailors, residents of Sevastopol, sought to understand the source of the heroism of the defenders of the city, to understand the special character traits inherent in the defender of the Fatherland. Tolstoy himself showed bravery and courage in the defense of Sevastopol.

In November 1855 Tolstoy left Sevastopol for St. Petersburg. By this time, he had already earned recognition in advanced literary circles. During this period attention public life Russia was centered around the issue of serfdom. Tolstoy's stories of this time ("The Morning of the Landowner", "Polikushka", etc.) are also devoted to this problem.

In 1857 the writer made overseas travel. He traveled to France, Switzerland, Italy and Germany. Traveling to different cities, the writer got acquainted with the culture and social system of Western European countries with great interest. Much of what he saw later reflected in his work. In 1860 Tolstoy made another trip abroad. The year before, he opened a school for children in Yasnaya Polyana. Traveling through the cities of Germany, France, Switzerland, England and Belgium, the writer visited schools and studied the features of public education. In most of the schools that Tolstoy visited, caning discipline was in effect and corporal punishment was used. Returning to Russia and visiting a number of schools, Tolstoy discovered that many teaching methods that were in force in Western European countries, in particular in Germany, also penetrated into Russian schools. At this time, Lev Nikolaevich wrote a number of articles in which he criticized the system of public education both in Russia and in Western European countries.

Arriving at home after a trip abroad, Tolstoy devoted himself to work at school and the publication of the pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana. The school, founded by the writer, was located not far from his house - in an outbuilding that has survived to our time. In the early 1970s, Tolstoy compiled and published a number of textbooks for elementary school: "ABC", "Arithmetic", four "Books for reading". More than one generation of children have learned from these books. Stories from them are read with enthusiasm by children in our time.

In 1862, when Tolstoy was away, landowners arrived in Yasnaya Polyana and searched the writer's house. In 1861, the tsar's manifesto announced the abolition of serfdom. During the reform, disputes broke out between the landowners and peasants, the settlement of which was entrusted to the so-called peace mediators. Tolstoy was appointed mediator in the Krapivensky district of the Tula province. Dealing with controversial cases between nobles and peasants, the writer most often took a position in favor of the peasantry, which caused discontent among the nobles. This was the reason for the search. Because of this, Tolstoy had to stop the activities of the mediator, close the school in Yasnaya Polyana and refuse to publish a pedagogical journal.

In 1862 Tolstoy married Sofya Andreevna Bers, daughter of a Moscow doctor. Arriving with her husband in Yasnaya Polyana, Sofya Andreevna tried with all her might to create such an environment on the estate in which nothing would distract the writer from hard work. In the 60s, Tolstoy led a solitary life, devoting himself entirely to work on War and Peace.

At the end of the epic War and Peace, Tolstoy decided to write a new work - a novel about the era of Peter I. However, social events in Russia, caused by the abolition of serfdom, so captured the writer that he left work on historical novel and set about creating a new work, which reflected the post-reform life of Russia. This is how the novel "Anna Karenina" appeared, which Tolstoy devoted four years to work on.

In the early 1980s, Tolstoy moved with his family to Moscow to educate his growing children. Here the writer, well acquainted with rural poverty, became a witness to urban poverty. In the early 90s of the XIX century, almost half of the central provinces of the country were gripped by famine, and Tolstoy joined the fight against the people's disaster. Thanks to his call, the collection of donations, the purchase and delivery of food to the villages was launched. At this time, under the leadership of Tolstoy, about two hundred free canteens for the starving population were opened in the villages of the Tula and Ryazan provinces. A number of articles written by Tolstoy on the famine belong to the same period, in which the writer truthfully depicted the plight of the people and condemned the policy of the ruling classes.

In the mid-1980s Tolstoy wrote Drama "Power of Darkness", which depicts the death of the old foundations of patriarchal-peasant Russia, and the story "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", dedicated to the fate of a man who only before his death realized the emptiness and meaninglessness of his life. In 1890, Tolstoy wrote the comedy The Fruits of Enlightenment, which shows the true state of the peasantry after the abolition of serfdom. Created in the early 1990s novel "Sunday", on which the writer worked intermittently for ten years. In all the works relating to this period of creativity, Tolstoy openly shows whom he sympathizes with and whom he condemns; depicts the hypocrisy and insignificance of the "masters of life."

The novel "Sunday" more than other works of Tolstoy was subjected to censorship. Most of the novel's chapters have been released or cut. The ruling circles launched an active policy against the writer. Fearing popular indignation, the authorities did not dare to use open repressions against Tolstoy. With the consent of the king and at the insistence of the chief prosecutor Holy Synod Pobedonostsev's synod adopted a resolution on excommunication of Tolstoy from the church. The writer was put under police surveillance. The world community was outraged by the persecution of Lev Nikolaevich. The peasantry, the progressive intelligentsia and the common people were on the side of the writer, they sought to express their respect and support to him. The love and sympathy of the people served as a reliable support for the writer in the years when the reaction sought to silence him.

However, despite all the efforts of reactionary circles, every year Tolstoy denounced the noble-bourgeois society more and more sharply and boldly, and openly opposed the autocracy. Works from this period "After the Ball", "For what?", "Hadji Murad", "The Living Corpse") are imbued with a deep hatred for royal power, a limited and ambitious ruler. In publicistic articles relating to this time, the writer sharply condemned the instigators of wars, called for a peaceful resolution of all disputes and conflicts.

In 1901-1902 Tolstoy suffered a serious illness. At the insistence of doctors, the writer had to go to the Crimea, where he spent more than six months.

In the Crimea, he met with writers, artists, artists: Chekhov, Korolenko, Gorky, Chaliapin, and others. When Tolstoy returned home, hundreds of ordinary people warmly greeted him at the stations. In the autumn of 1909, the writer made his last trip to Moscow.

Tolstoy's diaries and letters of the last decades of his life reflected the difficult experiences that were caused by the discord between the writer and his family. Tolstoy wanted to transfer the land that belonged to him to the peasants and wanted his works to be freely and free of charge published by anyone who wanted to. The writer's family opposed this, not wanting to give up either the rights to the land or the rights to works. The old landlord way of life, preserved in Yasnaya Polyana, weighed heavily on Tolstoy.

In the summer of 1881, Tolstoy made his first attempt to leave Yasnaya Polyana, but a feeling of pity for his wife and children forced him to return. Several more attempts by the writer to leave his native estate ended with the same result. On October 28, 1910, secretly from his family, he left Yasnaya Polyana forever, deciding to go south and spend the rest of his life in a peasant's hut, among the simple Russian people. However, on the way, Tolstoy fell seriously ill and was forced to leave the train at the small Astapovo station. The great writer spent the last seven days of his life in the house of the head of the station. The news of the death of one of eminent thinkers, a remarkable writer, a great humanist, deeply struck the hearts of all the progressive people of this time. Tolstoy's creative heritage is of great importance for world literature. Over the years, interest in the writer's work does not weaken, but, on the contrary, grows. As A. Frans rightly noted: “With his life he proclaims sincerity, directness, determination, firmness, calm and constant heroism, he teaches that one must be truthful and one must be strong ... Precisely because he was full of strength, he always was true!

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - the great Russian writer, by origin - a count from the famous noble family. He was born on August 28, 1828 in the Yasnaya Polyana estate located in the Tula province, and died on October 7, 1910 at the Astapovo station.

Writer's childhood

Lev Nikolaevich was a representative of a large noble family, the fourth child in it. His mother, Princess Volkonskaya, died early. At this time, Tolstoy was not yet two years old, but he formed an idea of ​​\u200b\u200bhis parent from the stories of various family members. In the novel "War and Peace" the image of the mother is represented by Princess Marya Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya.

Biography of Leo Tolstoy in the early years is marked by another death. Because of her, the boy was left an orphan. The father of Leo Tolstoy, a participant in the war of 1812, like his mother, died early. This happened in 1837. At that time the boy was only nine years old. The brothers of Leo Tolstoy, he and his sister were transferred to the upbringing of T. A. Ergolskaya, distant relative which had a huge influence on the future writer. Childhood memories have always been the happiest for Lev Nikolayevich: family traditions and impressions from life in the estate became rich material for his works, reflected, in particular, in the autobiographical story "Childhood".

Studying at Kazan University

The biography of Leo Tolstoy in his youth was marked by such an important event as studying at the university. When the future writer was thirteen years old, his family moved to Kazan, to the house of the children's guardian, a relative of Lev Nikolaevich P.I. Yushkova. In 1844 future writer was enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy of Kazan University, after which he transferred to the Faculty of Law, where he studied for about two years: the young man did not arouse keen interest in studying, so he indulged in various secular entertainments with passion. Having filed a letter of resignation in the spring of 1847, due to poor health and "domestic circumstances", Lev Nikolayevich left for Yasnaya Polyana with the intention of studying the full course of legal sciences and taking an external exam, as well as learning languages, "practical medicine", history, rural economy, geographical statistics, painting, music and writing a dissertation.

Youth years

In the autumn of 1847, Tolstoy left for Moscow, and then for St. Petersburg in order to pass the candidate's exams at the university. During this period, his lifestyle often changed: he studied various subjects all day long, then he devoted himself to music, but wanted to start a career as an official, then he dreamed of becoming a cadet in a regiment. Religious moods that reached asceticism alternated with cards, carousing, trips to the gypsies. The biography of Leo Tolstoy in his youth is colored by the struggle with himself and introspection, reflected in the diary that the writer kept throughout his life. In the same period, interest in literature arose, the first artistic sketches appeared.

Participation in the war

In 1851, Nikolai, the elder brother of Lev Nikolaevich, an officer, persuaded Tolstoy to go to the Caucasus with him. Lev Nikolayevich lived for almost three years on the banks of the Terek, Cossack village, leaving for Vladikavkaz, Tiflis, Kizlyar, participating in hostilities (as a volunteer, and then was recruited). The patriarchal simplicity of the life of the Cossacks and the Caucasian nature struck the writer with their contrast with the painful reflection of representatives of an educated society and the life of the noble circle, they provided extensive material for the story "Cossacks", written in the period from 1852 to 1863 on autobiographical material. The stories "Raid" (1853) and "Cutting down the forest" (1855) also reflected his Caucasian impressions. They left a mark in his story "Hadji Murad", written in the period from 1896 to 1904, published in 1912.

Returning to his homeland, Lev Nikolaevich wrote in his diary that he fell in love with this wild land, in which "war and freedom" are combined, things that are so opposite in their essence. Tolstoy in the Caucasus began to create his story "Childhood" and anonymously sent it to the journal "Contemporary". This work appeared on its pages in 1852 under the initials L. N. and, along with the later "Boyhood" (1852-1854) and "Youth" (1855-1857), made up the famous autobiographical trilogy. The creative debut immediately brought real recognition to Tolstoy.

Crimean campaign

In 1854, the writer went to Bucharest, to the Danube army, where the work and biography of Leo Tolstoy received further development. However, soon the boring staff life forced him to transfer to the besieged Sevastopol, to the Crimean army, where he was a battery commander, having shown courage (he was awarded medals and the Order of St. Anna). Lev Nikolaevich during this period was captured by new literary plans and impressions. He began to write "Sevastopol stories", which were a great success. Some ideas that arose even at that time make it possible to guess in the artillery officer Tolstoy the Preacher late years: he dreamed of a new "religion of Christ", cleansed of mystery and faith, a "practical religion".

Petersburg and abroad

Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich arrived in St. Petersburg in November 1855 and immediately became a member of the Sovremennik circle (which included N. A. Nekrasov, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and others). He took part in the creation of the Literary Fund at that time, and at the same time became involved in the conflicts and disputes of writers, but he felt like a stranger in this environment, which he conveyed in "Confession" (1879-1882). Having retired, in the fall of 1856 the writer left for Yasnaya Polyana, and then, at the beginning of the next, in 1857, he went abroad, visiting Italy, France, Switzerland (impressions from visiting this country are described in the story "Lucerne"), and also visited Germany. In the same year, in the autumn, Tolstoy Lev Nikolaevich returned first to Moscow, and then to Yasnaya Polyana.

Opening of a public school

Tolstoy in 1859 opened a school for the children of peasants in the village, and also helped set up more than twenty such educational institutions in the Krasnaya Polyana region. In order to get acquainted with the European experience in this area and apply it in practice, the writer Leo Tolstoy again went abroad, visited London (where he met with A. I. Herzen), Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium. However, European schools somewhat disappoint him, and he decides to create his own pedagogical system based on the freedom of the individual, publishes study guides and works on pedagogy, applies them in practice.

"War and Peace"

In September 1862, Lev Nikolayevich married Sofya Andreevna Bers, the 18-year-old daughter of a doctor, and immediately after the wedding he left Moscow for Yasnaya Polyana, where he devoted himself entirely to household chores and family life. However, already in 1863, he was again captured by a literary plan, this time creating a novel about the war, which was supposed to reflect Russian history. Leo Tolstoy was interested in the period of our country's struggle with Napoleon in the early 19th century.

In 1865, the first part of the work "War and Peace" was published in the Russian Messenger. The novel immediately drew a lot of responses. The subsequent parts provoked heated debates, in particular, the fatalistic philosophy of history developed by Tolstoy.

"Anna Karenina"

This work was created in the period from 1873 to 1877. Living in Yasnaya Polyana, continuing to educate peasant children and publish his pedagogical views, Lev Nikolaevich in the 70s worked on a work about the life of contemporary high society, building his novel on the contrast of two storylines: the family drama of Anna Karenina and the domestic idyll of Konstantin Levin, close and psychological drawing, and by convictions, and by the way of life to the writer himself.

Tolstoy strove for the outward non-judgmental tone of his work, thereby paving the way for the new style of the 80s, in particular, folk tales. The truth of peasant life and the meaning of the existence of representatives of the "educated class" - this is the circle of questions that interested the writer. "Family thought" (according to Tolstoy, the main one in the novel) is translated into a social channel in his creation, and Levin's self-disclosures, numerous and merciless, his thoughts about suicide are an illustration of what he experienced in the 1880s spiritual crisis author, matured while working on this novel.

1880s

In the 1880s, the work of Leo Tolstoy underwent a transformation. The upheaval in the mind of the writer was also reflected in his works, primarily in the experiences of the characters, in that spiritual insight that changes their lives. Such heroes occupy a central place in such works as "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (years of creation - 1884-1886), "Kreutzer Sonata" (a story written in 1887-1889), "Father Sergius" (1890-1898), drama "The Living Corpse" (left unfinished, begun in 1900), as well as the story "After the Ball" (1903).

Publicism of Tolstoy

Tolstoy's journalism reflects his spiritual drama: depicting pictures of the idleness of the intelligentsia and social inequality, Lev Nikolayevich posed questions of faith and life to society and himself, criticized the institutions of the state, reaching the denial of art, science, marriage, court, achievements of civilization.

The new worldview is presented in "Confession" (1884), in the articles "So what shall we do?", "On the famine", "What is art?", "I can't be silent" and others. The ethical ideas of Christianity are understood in these works as the foundation of the brotherhood of man.

Within the framework of the new worldview and humanistic idea of ​​the teachings of Christ, Lev Nikolayevich opposed, in particular, the dogma of the church and criticized its rapprochement with the state, which led to the fact that he was officially excommunicated from the church in 1901. This caused a huge uproar.

Novel "Sunday"

Mine last novel Tolstoy wrote between 1889 and 1899. It embodies the whole range of problems that worried the writer during the years of the spiritual turning point. Dmitry Nekhlyudov, the main character, is a person who is internally close to Tolstoy, who goes through the path of moral purification in the work, eventually leading him to comprehend the need for active goodness. The novel is built on a system of evaluative oppositions that reveal the unreasonableness of the structure of society (the falsity of the social world and the beauty of nature, the falsity of the educated population and the truth of the peasant world).

last years of life

The life of Leo Tolstoy in recent years was not easy. The spiritual break turned into a break with his environment and family discord. The refusal to own private property, for example, caused dissatisfaction among the writer's family members, especially his wife. The personal drama experienced by Lev Nikolayevich was reflected in his diary entries.

In the autumn of 1910, at night, secretly from everyone, 82-year-old Leo Tolstoy, whose dates of life were presented in this article, accompanied only by his attending physician D.P. Makovitsky, left the estate. The journey turned out to be unbearable for him: on the way, the writer fell ill and was forced to disembark at the Astapovo railway station. In the house that belonged to her boss, Lev Nikolaevich spent the last week of his life. Reports about his health at that time were followed by the whole country. Tolstoy was buried in Yasnaya Polyana, his death caused a huge public outcry.

Many contemporaries arrived to say goodbye to this great Russian writer.