Also known as Leo Tolstoy. Born: At Iasnaia Poliana, near Tula, Russia, 28 August 1828. Education: Educated at home, in Moscow,1837-41, and in Kazan, 1841-44; Kazan University, 1844-47, no degree. Family: Married Sof’ia Andreevna Bers in 1862; 13 children (three died in infancy); also had one illegitimate son. Career: Landowner on his inherited estate, 1847-48; in Moscow, 1848-51; visited his brother’s military unit in Caucasus, and joined artillery battery as noncommissioned officer, 1851-54, then transferred to a unit near Bucharest, 1854, and, as sub-lieutenant, in Sevastopol, 1854-55: resigned as lieutenant, 1855; travelled to France, Switzerland, and Germany; landowner on his Iasnaia estate: set up school, and edited the school journal Iasnaia Poliana, 1862-63 (and member of local educational committee, 1870s); disseminated his social and religious views widely in last decades of his life; excommunicated from Orthodox Church in 1901 because of these views. As a result of censorship, many of his works were first published abroad. Died: 7 November 1910.
Publications
Collections
Complete Works, edited and translated by Leo Weiner. 24 vols., 1904-05.
Polnoe sobranie sochinenii [Complete Works], edited by V. Chertkov and others. 90 vols., 1928-58; reprinted 1992. Centenary Edition (in English), edited by Aylmer Maude, translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude. 21 vols., 1928-37.
Izbrannyepovesti i rasskazy [Selected Novels and Stories]. 1945-50.
Sobranie khudozhestvennykh proizvedenii [Collected Artistic Works],edited by N.K. Gudzii. 1948.
Sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works], edited by N.N. Akopova. 20 vols., 1960-65.
Izbrannyeproizvedeniia [Selected Works], edited by M. Kondrat’ev. 2 vols., 1964.
The Portable Tolstoy, translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude, and George L. Kline. 1978.
Sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works], edited by M.B. Khrapchenko.22 vols., 1978-86.
Sobranie sochinenii [Collected Works], edited by S.A. Makashina. 12 vols., 1980-87.
Dramaticheskie proizvedenie, 1864-1910 [Dramatical Works 1864-1910]. 1983.
Izbrannye proizvedeniia [Selected Works], edited by K.N. Lomunov. 1986.
Izbrannye sochineniia [Selected Works], edited by G.I. Belen’kii. 3 vols., 1988.
P’esy [Plays]. 1988.
Izbrannye filosofskie proizvedeniia [Selected Philosophical Works],edited by N.P. Semykin. 1992.
How Much Land Does a Man Need?: and Other Stories, translated by Ronald Wilks. 1993.
Tolstoy: Plays, translated by Marvin Kantor with Tanya Tulchinsky. 1994.
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude and J.D. Duff. 1997.
An Anthology of Tolstoy’s Spiritual Economics by Kenneth C. Wenzer. 1997.
Divine and Human, and Other Stories, translated by Gordon Spence. 2000.
Fiction
Sevastopolskie rasskazy. 1855-56; as Sevastopol, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1887; as The Sebastopol Sketches, translated by David McDuff, 1986.
Semeinoe schast’e. 1859; translated as Katia, 1887; as Family Happiness, translated by Nathan Haskell Dole, 1888; as My Husband and I, 1888; as The Romance of Marriage, translated by Alexina Loranger, 1890.
Kazaki. 1863; as The Cossacks, translated by Eugene Schuyler, 1878.
Voina i mir. 1863-69; as War and Peace, translated by Clara Bell, 1886; numerous subsequent translations including by Louise and Aylmer Maude, 3 vols., 1922-23, Constance Garnett, 1925, Rosemary Edmonds, 1957, and Helen Edmundson, 1996.
Anna Karenina. 1875-77; as Anna Karenina, translated by Nathan Haskell Dole, 1886; numerous subsequent translations including by Constance Garnett, 1901, Rosemary Edmonds, 1954, Joel Carmichael, 1960, and Margaret Wettlin, 1978; Helen Edmundson, 1994.
Kreitserova sonata. 1891; as The Kreutzer Sonata, translated by Benjamin R. Tucker, 1890.
Khoziain i rabotnik. 1895; as Master and Man, translated by S. Rapoport and John C. Kenworthy, 1895; also translated by A. Hulme, 1897.
Voskresenie. 1899; as Resurrection, translated by Vera Traill, 1899; also translated by Louise Maude, 1899.
Khadzhi-Murat. 1904; as Hadji Murat, translated by Paul Foote, in Master and Man and Other Stories, 1977.
Rasskazy o zhivotnykh [Stories about Animals]. 1932.
Dlia samykh malen’kikh [For the Smallest]. 1936.
Akula: rasskazy [Akula: Stories]. 1938.
Dva tovarishcha [Two Comrades]. 1940.
Voennye rasskazy [Military Stories]. 1944.
Bul’ka. 1947.
Rasskazy dlia detei [Stories for Children]. 1948.
Dva gusara—Metel’ [Two Hussars—A Storm]. 1948.
Devochka i griby [A Little Girl and Mushrooms]. 1957.
Rasskazy oprirode [Stories about Nature]. 1961.
Smert’ Ivana Il’icha, edited by Michael Beresford. 1966; as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, translated by Rosemary Edmonds, 1960; also translated by Lynn Solotaroff, 1981; as The Death of Ivan Illych, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, in The Raid and Other Stories, 1982.
Master and Man and Other Stories (includes Father Sergius; Master and Man; Hadji Murat), translated by Paul Foote. 1977.
Basni, skazki, rasskazy; Kavkazskiiplennik [Fables, Tales, Stories; A Captive in the Caucusus]. 1978.
Povesti i rasskazy [The Stories]. 1978.
The Raid and Other Stories (includes ”The Raid”; ”Sevastopol in May 1855”; ”Two Hussars”; ”Albert”; ”What Men Live By”; ”Master and Man”; ”How Much Does a Man Need?”; ”The Death of Ivan Illych”; ”The Three Hermits”), translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. 1982.
Tolstoy’s Short Fiction: Revised Translations, Backgrounds and Sources, Criticism, edited and revised translations by Michael R. Katz. 1991.
How Much Land Do You Need? and Other Stories, translated by Ronald Wilks. 1993.
Plays
Nigilist (produced 1863). In Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 1928; as The Nihilists, in Stories and Dramas, 1926.
Pervyi vinokur; ili, kak chertenok Kraiushku zasluzhil (produced 1886). 1886(?); as The First Distiller, in Plays, 1903; also translated by Nathan Haskell Dole, in Dramatic Works, 1923.
Vlast’ t’my (produced 1888). 1887; as The Dominion of Darkness, 1888; as The Power of Darkness, translated by G.R. Noyes and George Z. Patrick, in Plays, 1903.
Plody prosveshcheniia (produced 1889). 1889; as The Fruits of Enlightenment, translated by E.J. Dillon, 1891; also translated by Michael Frayn, 1979; as The Fruits of Culture, translated by Dillon, 1891.
Zhivoi trup (produced 1911). 1911(?); as The Living Corpse, translated by Mrs. E.M. Evarts, 1912; as The Live Corpse, translated by Louise Maude, 1919; also translated by Nathan Haskell Dole, in Dramatic Works, 1923.
Other
Detstvo, Otrochestvo, Iunost’. 3 vols., 1852-57; as Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1886; also translated by Rosemary Edmonds, 1962, and by C.J. Hogarth, 1991; as Childhood, Adolescence and Youth, translated by Constantine Popoff, 1890; as Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, translated by Fainna Solasko, 1981.
Azbuka [An ABC Book]. 1872; revised edition, 1875.
Ispoved’. 1884; edited by A.D.P. Briggs, 1994; as A Confession, 1885; also translated by Jane Kentish, in A Confession and Other Religious Writings, 1987.
V chem moia vera? 1884; as My Religion, translated by Huntington Smith, 1885; as What I Believe, translated by Constantine Popoff, 1885.
In Pursuit of Happiness (essays), translated by Mrs. Aline Delano. 1887.
Tak chtozhe nam delat’? 1902; as What to Do?, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1887; uncensored edition, 1888.
The Long Exile and Other Stories for Children, translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. 1888.
O zhizni. 1888; uncensored edition, 1891; as Life, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood, 1888; as On Life, translated by Mabel and Agnes Cook, 1902.
The Physiology of War, translated by Huntington Smith. 1889.
Gospel Stories, translated by Nathan Haskell Dole. 1890.
Kritika dogmaticheskogo bogosloviia [An Examination of Dogmatic Theology]. 1891.
Soedinenie i perevod chetyrekh evangelii. 3 vols., 1892-94; as The Four Gospels Harmonized and Translated, 1895-96; shortened version, 1890; as The Gospel in Brief, 1896; also translated by Isabel Hapgood, 1997.
Tsarstvo Bozhe vnutri vas. 2 vols., 1893-94; as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, translated by Constance Garnett, 2 vols., 1894.
Pis’ma o Genre Dzhorzhe [Letters on Henry George]. 1897.
Kristianskoe uchenie. 1898; as The Christian Teaching, translated by Vladimir Tchertkoff, 1898.
Chto takoe iskusstvo? 1898; as What Is Art?, translated by Charles Johnston, 1898; translated by Aylmer Maude, 1930; also translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhansky, 1995.
Rabstvo nashego vremeni. 1900; as The Slavery of Our Times, translated by Aylmer Maude, 1900.
Essays and Letters, translated by Aylmer Maude. 1903.
Christianity and Patriotism, translated by Paul Borger and others. 1905; also translated by Constance Garnett, 1922.
End of the Age; The Crisis in Russia, translated by V. Tchertkhoff and I.F. Mayo. 1906.
The Russian Revolution, translated by Aylmer Maude. 1907.
The Hanging Czar, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude. 1908.
Social Evils and Their Remedy, edited by Helen Chrouschoff Matheson. 1915.
Tolstoy on Art, translated by Aylmer Maude. 1924.
Sevastopol’skie ocherki [Sevastopol Essays]. 1932.
On Life and Essays on Religion, translated by Aylmer Maude. 1934.
Dnevniki i zapisnye knizhki 1910 goda [Diaries and Notebooks of 1910]. 1935.
The Kingdom of God and Peace Essays, translated by Aylmer Maude. 1936.
Rukopisi, perepiska i dokumenty [Manuscripts, Correspondence and Documents]. 1937.
Recollections and Essays, translated by Aylmer Maude. 1937.
Russkaia kniga dlia chteniia [A Russian Book for Reading]. 1946.
Pedagogicheskie sochineniia [Pedagogical Works]. 1948.
Essays from Tula, translated by Evgeny Lamport. 1948.
Proizvedeniia o Kavkaze [Works about the Caucusus]. 1950.
Za chto? [What For?]. 1957.
Perepiska s russkimi pisateliami [Correspondence with Russian Writers]. 1962.
Stat’i i materialy [Articles and Materials]. 1966.
Neizbezhnyi perevorot; as The Inevitable Revolution, translated by Ronald Sampson. 1975.
Letters, edited by R.F. Christian. 2 vols., 1978.
Novaia azbuka [A New ABC Book]. 1978; as Stories for My Children, translated by James Riordan, 1988.
Tolstoy on Education: Tolstoy’s Educational Writings 1861-62, edited by Alan Pinch and Michael Armstrong, translated by Pinch. 1982.
Ne mogu molchat’ [I Cannot Be Silent]. 1985.
Diaries, edited and translated by R.F. Christian. 2 vols., 1985.
The Lion and the Puppy and Other Stories (for children). 1986.
A Confession and Other Religious Writings, translated by Jane Kentish. 1987.
The Lion and the Honeycomb: The Religious Writings of Tolstoy, edited by A.N. Wilson, translated by Robert Chandler. 1987.
Schast’e, kotoroe menia ozhidaet. . . [Happiness Which Awaits Me ... ] (stories, diaries, and letters). 1988.
Dnevnik molodosti L.N. Tolstogo [The Diary of the Young L.N. Tolstoi]. 1988.
Pora opomnit’sia! [It's Time to Remember!]. 1989.
I Cannot Be Silent: Selection from Tolstoy’s Non-Fiction, edited by W. Gareth Jones. 1989.
Perepiska L.N. Tolstogo s sestroi i brat’iami [Tolstoi's Correspondence with His Sister and Brothers]. 1990.
Ia veriu [I Believe]. 1990.
Uchenie Khrista, izlozhennoe dlia detei [The Teachings of Jesus for Children]. 1990.
Evangelii dlia detei [The Gospels for Children]. 1991.
Krug chteniia [A Circle of Reading]. 2 vols., 1991; as A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, translated by Peter Sekirin, 1997.
Mysli mudrykh liudei na kazhdyi den’ [The Everyday Thoughts of Ordinary People]. 1991.
Evangelii Tolstogo [Tolstoi's Gospels]. 1992.
Leo Tolstoy—Peter Verigin: Correspondence, translated by John Woodsworth. 1995..
Critical Studies:
The Life of Tolstoy by Aylmer Maude, 2 vols., 1930; Leo Tolstoy, 1946, Introduction to Tolstoy’s Writings, 1968, and Tolstoy, 1973, all by Ernest H. Simmons; The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History by Isaiah Berlin, 1953; Tolstoy or Dostoevsky by George Steiner, 1959; Tolstoy’s ”War and Peace,” 1962, and Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction, 1969, both by R.F. Christian; Tolstoy and the Novel by John Bayley, 1966; Leo Tolstoy: A Collection of Critical Essays edited by Ralph E. Matlaw, 1967; Tolstoy by Henri Troyat, translated by Nancy Leroux, 1970; Leo Tolstoy: A Critical Anthology edited by Henry Gifford, 1971, and Tolstoy by Gifford, 1982; Tolstoy and Chekhov by Logan Spiers, 1971; The Young Tolstoi, translated by Gary Kern, 1972, Tolstoi in the Sixties, translated by Duffield White, 1982, and Tolstoi in the Seventies, translated by Albert Kaspin, 1982, all by Boris Eikhenbaum; Tolstoy: The Making of a Novelist by Edward Crankshaw, 1974; Tolstoy: The Comprehensive Vision by E.B. Greenwood, 1975; The Architecture of Anna Karenina by E. Stenbock-Fermor, 1975; Tolstoy: A Life of My Father by Aleksandra Tolstaia, 1975; Tolstoy, the Rebel by Leo Hecht, 1976; Tolstoy by T.G.S. Cain, 1977; From Achilles to Christ: The Myth of the Hero in Tolstoy’s War and Peace by Laura Jepsen, 1978; New Essays on Tolstoy by Malcolm Jones, 1978; Tolstoy: The Critical Heritage edited by A.V. Knowles, 1978; Tolstoy’s Major Fiction, 1978, and Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy: Life, Work, and Criticism, 1985, both by Edward Wasiolek, and Critical Essays on Tolstoy edited by Wasiolek, 1986; Lev Tolstoy by Viktor Shklovskii (in English), 1978; Tolstoy in London by Victor Lucas, 1979; Tolstoy in Pre-Revolutionary Russian Criticism by Boris Sorokin, 1979; The Structure of Anna Karenina by Sydney Schultze, 1982; Tolstoy and the Russians: Reflections on a Relationship by Alexander Fodor, 1984; Tolstoy’s What Is Art? by T.J. Diffey, 1985; Leo Tolstoy edited by Harold Bloom, 1986; Leo Tolstoy by William W. Rowe, 1986; Lev andSonya by Louise Smolunchowski, 1987; Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina by Anthony Thorlby, 1987; The Unsaid Anna Karenina by Judith M. Armstrong, 1988; Essays on L.N. Tolstoj’s Dramatic Art by Andrew Donskov, 1988; Hidden in Plain View: Narrative and Creative Potentials in War and Peace by Gary Saul Marson, 1988; Tolstoy: A Biography by A.N. Wilson, 1988; Reflecting on Anna Karenina by Mary Evans, 1989; Tolstoy, Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology by Richard F. Gustafson, 1989; Narrative and Anti-Narrative Structures in Lev Tolstoj’s Early Works by Eric de Haard, 1989; In the Shade of the Giant: Essays on Tolstoy edited by Hugh McLean, 1989; Essays on Leo Tolstoy edited by T.R. Sharma, 1989; The Influence of Tolstoy on Readers of His Works by Gareth Williams, 1991; Tolstoy, the Philosopher by David Redfearn, 1992; Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847-1900 by Donna Trussing Orwin, 1993; A Karenina Companion by C.J.G. Turner, 1993; Tolstoy’s Pierre Bezukhov: A Psychoanalytic Study by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, 1993; A Signature on a Portrait: Highlights of Tolstoy’s Thought by Michael L. Levin, 1994; Love and Hatred: The Troubled Marriage of Leo and Sonya Tolstoy, 1994; Tolstoi and Britain, edited by W. Gareth Jones, 1995; Tolstoy’s Childhood by Gareth Williams, 1995; Anna Karenina: Backrounds and Sources Criticism, translation revised by George Gibian, 1995; Tolstoy and the Genesis of ”War and Peace" by Kathryn B. Feuer, 1996; L.N. Tolstoy and D.H. Lawrence: Cross-Currents and Influence by Dorthe G.A. Engelhardt, 1996; Tolstoy, Woman, and Death: A Study of War and Peace and Anna Karenina by David Holbrook, 1997; Leo Tolstoy by John Bayley, 1997; Leo Tolstoy by Dragan Milivojevic, 1998; Tolstoy’s Phoenix: From Method to Meaning in War and Peace by George R. Clay, 1998; Tolstoy on the Couch: Misogyny, Masochism, and the Absent Mother by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere, 1998; Creating and Recovering Experience: Repetition in Tolstoy by Natasha Sankovitch, 1998; Saviour or Superman?: Old and New Essays on Tolstoy and Dostoevsky by Frank Seeley, 1999; Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilich: A Critical Companion, edited by Gary R. Jahn, 1999; Tolstoy on Aesthetics: What Is Art? by H.O. Mounce, 2001.
The name of Lev Tolstoi is indissolubly linked to Russian literature and the great tradition of the prose novel. Yet these associations, if taken alone, diminish the standing of this unique figure. Tolstoi, the creed of Tolstoianism, and the legend of the man were among the principal intellectual and spiritual influences in Russia during the last four decades of the 19th century.
From the beginning Tolstoi’s literature was never just fiction. His experiences of childhood and youth, military adventure and war, education and landowning, foreign travel, courtship and marriage, history and philosophy, religion and art, the fear of death and the love of life are transformed into a uniquely personal body of literature. Tolstoi’s search for moral codes and values, the discipline to hold himself to them and a new, simple, ”real” vision of the Christian faith, all this is played out as a national and even cosmic experience on the broad Russian canvas of his writings. This striving for a presumed ”truth,” the whole, unified system of being he desired is pursued through works dominated almost exclusively by the only two social groups he really knew, the aristocracy to which he belonged and the peasantry who belonged to him, and his kind. Rarely do the inconveniently modern faces of the middle classes and the urban poor, so illuminated by Dostoevskii, intrude into Tolstoi’s attempt to recapture a ”natural” world.
Tolstoi’s early series of autobiographical works, Detstvo, Otrochestvo, Iunost’ (Childhood, Boyhood, Youth), establishes his interest in the loss and retrieval of innocence and the life of the family. Other essential lines of development are laid down by his military stories, including his Caucasian tales, such as ”Nabeg” (”The Raid”) and ”ubka lesa” (”The Wood Felling”), and the grimmer Sevastopolskie rasskazy (The Sebastopol Sketches). The tensions and contradictions within Tolstoi’s practice and beliefs are revealed in the interplay between spontaneous comradeship and conflict on the one hand, and loneliness, sadness, and death on the other. The Caucasian stories also initiate that Rousseauesque confrontation between ”civilized” men (the Russian military) and the natural men (the Caucasian tribespeople) which Tolstoi was to continue in Kazaki (The Cossacks) and Khadzhi-Murat (Hadji Murat) and which manifested itself elsewhere in his work in the oppositions between town and country, Petersburg and Moscow, Europe and Russia, the rulers and the people, Church dogma and popular faith. In the distinctly unromantic Sebastopol Tolstoi grasps the bitterness of war with pitiless documentary detail: here war is folly, an insane, drab routine of destruction and butchery, and death no gallant moment, but an inexorable process of disintegration through violence and fear.
Between 1856 and 1863 Tolstoi’s educational work on his estate at Iasnaia Poliana, his European travels, his courtships and marriage provided the rest of the background for Voina i mir (War and Peace). This is Tolstoi’s extraordinary attempt to capture the wholeness of life in his ”comprehensive vision” of the fates of the Rostov and Bolkonskii families and the Russia which they represent, in the period of the Napoleonic Wars. In the fiction, the historical documentary, and the philosophy of history that is War and Peace Tolstoi pursues his truth: the truth of real life for Natasha Rostov, the truth of the meaning of life for the ”God-seekers” Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonskii, the truth of traditional Russia and the truth of historical reality, in which ”great men” are found to be merely appearances and history is seen to move under the impetus of an impossibly complex network of causes.
Whereas in War and Peace the newly married Tolstoi had seen the constancy of the family as a unifying force in society and the gradual willing surrender of the individual’s freedom to that greater whole as the true course, the unfolding of Anna Karenina reflects very different experiences. Heroic, historical Russia gives way to the contemporary scene. The family, important though it is as an abstract concept, remains just that: everywhere it is incomplete, displaced, or disrupted. The society of Anna Karenina is one of alienated and restless individuals, frustrated by and yet dependent on the conventions of a duplicitous society. The ordeal of the doomed Anna, who forsakes a sterile marriage for the transient happiness of a passionate liaison, is paralleled by the attempts of Levin, Tolstoi’s autobiographical representative, to find both happiness and meaning within the bounds of lawful existence. While Anna gradually loses self-mastery, Levin gradually acquires it. Anna’s surrender to the flesh, her disruption of her family and the fated course of her life, and, finally, her desire to retain the good opinion of society draw her down to death; while Levin’s gradual submission to the natural rhythms of life, his creation of a family, and his measured disregard for the opinion of society raise him to life.
In his remaining years Tolstoi sought certainties with a furious, self-imposed rigour. To do so, he purged himself, rejected his past, sundered his family, and gave himself away to his Tolstoian followers and a demanding humanity. The route towards the demystification of Christianity, its reduction to simple, childlike yet meaningful precepts such as those revealed to Pierre Bezukhov and Levin, is described in Ispoved’ (A Confession). While Tolstoi’s devotion to life as the medium of discovery is evinced in his quietly appalling picture of illness and death in Smert’ Ivana Il’icha (The Death of Ivan Ilyich), his desire for a moral revolution in sexual relations results in works such as ”Otets Sergii” (”Father Serge”), ”D’iavol” (”The Devil”), and Kreitserova sonata (The Kreutzer Sonata). Two fictional evocations of moral transformation, the short novel Khoziain i rabotnik (Master and Man) and the novel Voskresenie (Resurrection), together with two daunting dramas of good and evil, Vlast’ t’my (The Dominion of Darkness) and Plodyprosveshcheniia (The Fruits of Enlightenment), are also of note in this period, which is otherwise characterized by the extensive essay Chto takoe iskusstvo? (What Is Art?), an articulate rejection of all art that is not accessible to the people and of positive moral purpose.
Even as Tolstoi devoted himself to the Tolstoian cause, scriptural revision, and the writing of simple fables, he could not exorcize his artistic gift. That gift is fundamentally simple. It is that of the preeminent realist, the ability to articulate for us our unformed feelings and perceptions of life with such accuracy and reality that we are held entranced. At the same time, this realism, whether in the fleeting detail of a character’s facial expression or the abiding evocation of a natural scene, is never an end in itself for Tolstoi. Harnessed to sweeping narrative command and relentless moral scrutiny, it promotes the natural, positive movement of life entailed in Tolstoi’s reflection that ”Pitiful are those who do not seek, or who think that they have found.”
