Who is tolstoy

The couple had thirteen children, of which, five died at an early age. Their early married life was filled with contentment. Tolstoy began writing his masterpiece, War and Peace in The six volumes of the work were published between and With characters fetched from history and others created by Tolstoy, this great novel takes on exploring the theory of history and the insignificance of noted figures such as Alexander and Napoleon. Among his earliest publications are autobiographical works such as Childhood, Boyhood and Youth Tolstoy was a master of writing about the Russian society, evidence of which is displayed in The Cossacks He had requested transfer to this area, a sight of one of the bloodiest battles of the Crimean War —; when Russia battled England and France over land.

As he directed fire from the Fourth Bastion, the hottest area in the conflict for a long while, Tolstoy managed to write Youth, the second part of his autobiographical trilogy. He also wrote the three Sevastopol Tales at this time, revealing the distinctive Tolstoyan vision of war as a place of unparalleled confusion and heroism, a special space where men, viewed from the author's neutral, godlike point of view, were at their best and worst. When the city fell, Tolstoy was asked to make a study of the artillery action during the final assault and to report with it to the authorities in St.

Petersburg, Russia. His reception in the capital was a triumphant success. Because of his name, he was welcomed into the most brilliant society. Because of his stories, he was treated as a celebrity by the cream of literary society. Daughter of a prominent Moscow doctor, Bers was beautiful, intelligent, and, as the years would show, strong-willed. The first decade of their marriage brought Tolstoy the greatest happiness; never before or after was his creative life so rich or his personal life so full.

In June his wife had the first of their thirteen children. His new novel created a fantastic out-pouring of popular and critical reaction. Tolstoy's War and Peace represents a high point in the history of world literature, but it was also the peak of Tolstoy's personal life. His characters represent almost everyone he had ever met, including all of his relations on both sides of his family.

Balls and battles, birth and death, all were described in amazing detail. In this book the European realistic novel, with its attention to social structures, exact description, and psychological rendering, found its most complete expression. From to Tolstoy worked on the second of his masterworks, Anna Karenina, which also created a sensation upon its publication. The concluding section of the novel was written during another of Russia's seemingly endless wars with Turkey.

The novel was based partly on events that had occurred on a neighboring estate, where a nobleman's rejected mistress had thrown herself under a train. It again contained great chunks of disguised biography, especially in the scenes describing the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin. Tolstoy's family continued to grow, and his royalties money earned from sales were making him an extremely rich man.

The ethical quest that had begun when Tolstoy was a child and that had tormented him throughout his younger years now drove him to abandon all else in order to seek an ultimate meaning in life. But he found no answer. In Tolstoy met V. Chertkov, a wealthy guard officer who soon became the moving force behind an attempt to start a movement in Tolstoy's name.

In the next few years a new publication was founded the Mediator in order to spread Tolstoy's word in tract pamphlets and fiction, as well as to make good reading available to the poor. In six years almost twenty million copies were distributed. I did feel that he was happier writing about the haves than the have-nots, but he is a true general among novelists, marshalling his forces and always in control of the battlefield.

So I knew more about his life than about his novels. He has always seemed to me like a character from fiction himself — a tragic, complex personality. I get the feeling I will return to his novels as I get older, and will take more from them. I can still remember the first time I read War and Peace. I was 20, a student, and already had dreams of becoming a writer. I read it at a single sitting — about a week, including bleary breaks for eating and sleeping.

There were times when the tears were pouring out of my eyes so much I couldn't focus on the tiny print. I felt proud to belong to the same culture Ukrainian and Russian are very similar , but having Tolstoy as a model made it much harder to even dare put pen to paper. Anna Karenina, which I loved too, was more manageable, if only because it is shorter and the narrative more focussed on an individual, but my all-time favourite is Resurrection.

Its themes of social injustice and personal redemption resonated in the 70s, when I first read it. This, I thought, is what all books should be like: serious, committed and passionate. Maybe that is one of the reasons it took me so long to become an author. It is only when I gave up trying to emulate Tolstoy that I was able to discover my own voice as a writer.

All novelists of any stature have this in common: they are engrossed by the apparent accidentality of life. Serge was very near proposing, but did not. The author saw it all happening so — saw it, and therefore relates it. And indeed when we read Tolstoy, it feels easy. This is life itself. It barely feels like artistry.

But it takes genius to make art so closely resemble life. In Tolstoy's case this genius is the more remarkable for being at odds with other impulses in him — the impulse to preach, to teach, to reform: the impulse, in other words, not to be an artist at all.

Anna Karenina set out to be a tract against adultery in high society; "Vengeance is mine and I will repay," is the epigram on the novel's title page. The voice of God. But Anna becomes a tragic heroine as a consequence of Tolstoy's "seeing" rather than judging her and relating what he sees. The novelist shuts out the moralist. To "see" Anna is to comprehend her.