Tolstoy: An Examined Life
Associate Professor Shannon Gramse
Opportunities for Lifelong Education (OLÉ!)
University of Alaska Anchorage
September - October, 2016
“Yesterday a conversation about divinity and faith suggested to me a great, a
stupendous idea to the realization of which I feel capable of dedicating my
whole life. This is the idea—the founding of a new religion corresponding to
the development of mankind: the religion of Christ, but purged of all dogma
and mystery, a practical religion, not promising future bliss but realizing bliss
on earth. I understand that to bring this idea to fulfillment the conscientious
labor of generations towards this end will be necessary.”
-Leo Tolstoy, Diary (1855)
“And just as I believed then, that there is a little green stick, on which is written the
secret that will destroy all evil in people, and give them great blessings, so now I believe
that such a truth exists and that it will be revealed to people and will give them what it
promises.”
--Leo Tolstoy, Recollections (1902)
Yasnaya Polyana
Yasnaya
Polyana
(“clear glade”),
4,000 acres,
120 miles
south of
Moscow
Ilya Repin painting of Tolstoy plowing at Yasnaya Polyana,
1889
Tolstoy’s grave at Yasnaya Polyana
Tolstoy Chronology
1828
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy born August 28 at Yasnaya Polyana, youngest of
four brothers
1830
Death of his mother shortly after giving birth to a daughter, Maria
1836
Death of his father from stroke
1841
Death of Tolstoy children’s guardian—an aunt
1842
Starts to read Rousseau
1844
Enters Kazan University
1847
Inherits Yasnaya Polyana, leaves Kazan University, begins social reforms for
Yasnaya Polyana’s peasants
1848
Moves to Moscow, struggles with alcohol, gambling, venereal disease
1849
First serious attempts at writing, volunteers for the army, goes to Chechnya
1848: Man about Moscow,
hedonist, addict…
1852
Childhood published, first of planned four-part semiautobiographical work,
Four Periods Growth, author identified only as L.N.
1853
Fighting in the Caucasus, writes Boyhood and stories of army life, censored
version of “The Raid” attracts popular and critical acclaim
1854
Promoted to ensign, transferred to Crimean War, fights with artillery brigade
1856
Death of brother Dimitri, steady output of successful short fiction under full
name (“Sevastapol Sketches,” “The Wood-Felling,” “The Snow Storm,” etc.,
resigns army and returns to Yasnaya Polyana
1857
Visits France and Switzerland, studies European education
1859
Opens school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana
1860
Death of brother Nikolai (like Levin’s brother Nikolai in Anna Karenina)
1862
Marries Sophia Andreyevna, creates educational journal called Yasnaya
Polyana, first police raid on house
1863
First of 13 children is born, publishes The Cossacks (“part four” of Childhood,
Boyhood, and Youth)
1854: Newly promoted
officer headed to
Crimean War
1855: “Valley of the Shadow of Death” by Robert Fenton
1862: Marries Sophia Andreyevna
1863-1869 War and Peace
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Written “under the best conditions of life”
1200 pages, four volumes plus two epilogues and an appendix
Published serially in magazines, 1865-1869, hugely popular
Genre-buster: “What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, even
less is it a poem, and still less an historical chronicle.
War and Peace is what the author wished and was able to
express in the form in which it is expressed.” (1886: “Some
Words about War and Peace”)
Epic scope, cast of thousands, mixes fictional and historical characters, a “loose baggy
monster” (Henry James) built around complex juxtapositions
Focuses on Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia and intersecting fates of the
aristocratic Bezukhov, Bolkonsky, and Rostov families
Illustrates life’s “labyrinth of linkages,” the deep interconnectedness of everyone and
everything, with all its beauty, tragedy, spiritual import
Rich with ideas about history, which is shaped less by “great men” than by countless
small actors
Pierre Bezukhov (“Peter Earless”) is primary Tolstoy semiautobiographical stand-in
1872
Publishes ABC primer and Tales for Children, including “God Sees the Truth, But
Waits.”
1873-1877 Anna Karenina
• Deepening spiritual concerns and interests in education
delayed novel’s production: “I cannot tear myself away
from living creatures to bother about imaginary ones.”
• Over 800 pages, eight parts, also published serially, also
enormously popular
• Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first novel
• Like War and Peace, A.K. also distinguished by incredible
detail and psychological realism (though focused here on
family intimacies, morality, and metaphysics—as set against
contemporary Russian social and political issues of the 1870s)
• Essentially the story of two contrasting, interwoven marriages, one successful and the
other tragic
• Epigram: “Vengeance is mine; I will repay” (Romans 12:19)
• Famous opening line: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in
its own way.”
• Konstantin Levin is primary Tolstoy (semi)autobiographical stand-in
• Levin’s spiritual quest and ultimate epiphany clearly foreshadows Confession:
“Without knowing what I am and why I’m here, it is impossible for me to live. And I
cannot know that, therefore I cannot live, Levin would say to himself…”
1879
Begins writing Confession
1881
Publishes “What Men Live By” in children’s journal, first fiction since Anna
Karenina
1882
Confession banned in Russia (Published 1884 in Switzerland and not until 1906
in Russia), police spying intensifies, participates in Moscow census, increasing
concern for urban poverty
1883
Writes What I Believe, also banned
1885
Gives up alcohol, tobacco, meat, hunting, writes many “stories for the people,”
studies shoemaking, Eastern philosophy
1886
Publishes The Death of Ivan Ilych and “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”,
denounced as heretic, son Alexis dies at 4 ½
1889
Resurrection published, third and final full-length novel
1891
Renounces copyright and private property, tries to give Yasnaya Polyana to
peasants over family objections, engages in famine relief work
1890s
Publishes The Kingdom of God is Within You and many other religious and
socio-political texts, becomes international celebrity, inspires “Tolstoyans”
1895: At Yasnaya Polyana
1898
Finishes “What is Art?”
1901
Excommunicated by Russian Orthodox Church
1905
Writes “I Cannot Be Silent” to protest execution of 1905 revolutionaries
1910
Bitter family fights over copyrights and his will continue, leaves home in the
middle of the night, dies of pneumonia days later at Astapovo train station on
November 7, aged 82. Buried without religious rites at Yasnaya Polyana.
1908: At work
1908: First color portrait in Russia
Chronology of Course Texts
1872
“God Sees the Truth, But Waits”
1881
“What Men Live By”
1882
Confession
1885
“Two Old Men”
1886
The Death of Ivan Ilych and “How Much Land Does a Man Need?”
1903
“Work, Death, and Sickness”
“The artist of the future will understand that to compose a fairy tale, a little song which will touch a
lullaby or a riddle which will entertain, a jest which will amuse, or to draw a sketch such as will
delight dozens of generations or millions of children and adults, is incomparably more important and
more fruitful than to compose a novel, or a symphony, or paint a picture, of the kind which diverts
some members of the wealthy classes for a short time and is then forever forgotten. The region of
this art of the simplest feelings accessible to all is enormous, and it is as yet almost untouched.”
-Leo Tolstoy, “What is Art (1898)
“Work, Death, and Sickness” (1903)
The Anglo-Russian,
January 1904