Website about Leo Tolstoy
-
What is The Death of Ivan Ilyich about?21.12.2022
A chronicle of the illness and death of a judicial official, preceded by the story of his life. A one-of-a-kind work about how one experiences the approaching end, what psychological tricks one uses to dodge the realization of its inevitability, and how one finally becomes aware of death – the most important thing in life that completely changes one’s understanding of life itself.
Read more -
Leo Tolstoy’s triple-entry bookkeeping20.12.2022
As a young man, Leo Tolstoy used to drink and gamble away at cards, remembering, however, to keep a “journal for weaknesses” in which he berated himself for his youthfulness and wasted life. Then he would go to another game of corkscrew.
Read more -
Leo Tolstoy’s hobbies20.12.2022
Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy’s home in the Tula region, some 200 km south of Moscow, attracted pilgrims even when the author was still alive. An advocate of fantastic inventions and new experiences, Tolstoy turned his estate into a temple to all things modern. But the writer is still a trendsetter in the truest sense of the word.
Read more -
The significance and influence of Leo Tolstoy’s work20.12.2022
The nature of perception and interpretation of Tolstoy’s work, as well as the nature of his impact on individual artists and the literary process, is largely determined by the characteristics of each country, its historical and artistic development. Thus, French writers perceived him primarily as an artist who opposed naturalism and was able to combine a truthful depiction of life with spirituality and high moral purity. English writers have relied on his work in the fight against the traditional “Victorian” sanctimony, they saw in it an example of high artistic courage. In the United States Leo Tolstoy became a mainstay for writers who asserted acute social themes in art. In Germany, his anti-militarist speeches became the most important, German writers studied his experience of realistic depiction of war. Writers of the Slavic nations were impressed by his sympathy for the “small” oppressed nations and the national-heroic themes of his works.
Read more -
Leo Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis and preaching20.12.2022
In his work “The Confession” Tolstoy wrote that from the end of the 1870s he often became tormented by insoluble questions: “Well, okay, you will have 6,000 acres in Samara province – 300 head of horses, and then?”; in the literary sphere: “Well, okay, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, all writers in the world – and so on! Starting to think about raising children, he asked himself: “what for?”; speculating “on how the people might attain prosperity,” he “suddenly said to himself: what business is it to me?” He “felt that what he was standing on had faltered, that what he was living on was no longer there”.
Read more -
Leo Tolstoy’s pedagogical teachings20.12.2022
Tolstoy’s moral and religious doctrine was based on the idea of non-resistance to evil by violence, the desire to spread good in the world by every man. He proposed the idea of moral revolution, based on the thesis of free self-improvement of personality. He proved that spiritual non-violent upheaval may take place in a human being with the speed of revolutionary upheaval. The task of pedagogical science, he argued, should be to study the conditions of coincidence between teacher and pupil on the way to a common goal, and those conditions that might hinder such a coincidence.
Read more -
Leo Tolstoy’s travels in Europe20.12.2022
In St Petersburg Tolstoy was welcomed in the salons of the upper classes and in literary circles. He became the closest of friends with Turgenev, with whom he shared a flat for some time. Turgenev introduced him to the Sovremennik circle, and Tolstoy then established friendships with such famous writers as Nekrasov, Goncharov, Panayev, Grigorovich, Druzhinin, Sollogub.
Read more -
Friends and loved ones of Leo Tolstoy20.12.2022
The subject of Tolstoy’s surroundings is not only interesting in itself, but also extremely important for a deeper understanding of the great writer’s personality. Leo Tolstoy’s surroundings are organically part of his biography and work, and our understanding of his legacy depends to a large extent on our knowledge of the environment in which he lived and worked.
Read more -
What is Tolstoy’s Hajji Murat about?20.12.2022
“Hajji Murat is the story of an Avar field commander who goes over to the side of the Russians during the Caucasian War. With their help he expects to rescue his family, captured by Imam Shamil, but he soon becomes a prisoner of the imperial administration, decides to escape and dies in a shoot-out. “Khadzhi-Murat” is one of Tolstoy’s last works, the writer’s concluding statement on personal freedom and what suppresses it. It is a ruthless characterization of Russian colonial policy that relies on documented facts. It is also a triumph of the artistic method which allows the author to describe, with equal depth, military clashes and secular encounters, soldiers and leaders, Russians and Highlanders, life and death.
Read more -
What is After the Ball about?20.12.2022
In ‘After the Ball’ Leo Tolstoy wanted to make it clear to readers that only the man himself is the creator of his future. The final choice – to go the way of good or evil – always rests on his shoulders.
Read more