From: book_discussion_team@yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2009 08:56:39 -0700 (PDT)
"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love"
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Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 to a well known family of Old Russian nobility. His mother, Princess Marie Volkonsky died when he was an infant child, while his father Count Nicolas Tolstoy an army officer and a gentle easy going man died when his son was sill a young boy. As a child, Tolstoy was a voracious reader, living in a family home with a library that contained over twenty thousand books in over thirty languages and as a young man he read widely fiction and philosophy.
At the age of 16 he entered the University of Kazan to study Turco-Arabic literature and also attempted to study law, but he never completed his studies as he couldn't respond to the conventional system of learning at the university where his teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn". But during this time he began in earnest studying the literary works of English, Russian and French authors including Charles Dickens, Gogol, Jean Jacque Rousseau, Voltaire and others.
After leaving his studies he spent several years of his youth agonizing over what to do with his life, drinking, associating with people of ill repute, getting addicted to gambling and running into huge debts. The turning point however came, when he accompanied in 1851 his elder brother Nikolay whom he greatly admired to the Caucasus, and joined an artillery regiment. His literary career began shortly after with the publishing of the autobiographical trilogy Childhood (1852), Boyhood (1854), and Youth (1857). He also severed in the Crimean War and his experiences in battle not only gave him material for realistic depiction of war's horrors in his later works such as Sevastopol Sketches (1855-1856) and then War and Peace (1865-1869) but also helped stir his subsequent pacifism and loathing of wars.
Leo Tolstoy did not see the aim of art in general and fiction in particular as merely to produce beauty, or to provide pleasure, enjoyment, or entertainment, but rather as a means of communication, and as an important means of expression of any experience, or of any aspect of the human condition. As a writer of the realist school he considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life and used ordinary events and characters to examine war, religion, feminism, and other topics. War and Peace examines the absurdity, hypocrisy, and shallowness of war and aristocratic society, while Anna Karenina? (1875-1877) is a story of a tormented adulterous who is trapped by the conventions and falsities of society. These two masterpieces are considered among the greatest novels of all time.
Most of his work wrestles with life's most profound questions with much attention to the everyday details of life and deep insight into human nature leading one critic to say that a work by Tolstoy" is not a piece of art but a piece of life: his novels read as if life were writing directly, without mediation". Moreover, Tolstoy saw that good art should be intelligible and comprehensible to everyone and can communicate its meaning to most people. Thus all his work is characterized by uncomplicated style and careful construction.
Later on in life Tolstoy went through a religious crisis and suffered the most intense bout of self-doubt and spiritual introspection. He rejected his two great novels as something not as true of reality and embraced an anarchist-Christian pacifist doctrine of non-resistance and gave up meat, tobacco, alcohol and preached chastity. He expressed his ideas in works of non-fiction and fiction alike foremost of which was? ?The Kingdom of God is Within You(1893) and The Death of Ivan Ilyitch (1886) considered one of the greatest novellas in Russian literature. ?He strongly criticized the state, the church, private property and saw the aristocracy as a burden on the poor and called for the collective ownership of land. His ideas of nonresistance or nonviolence greatly influenced Mahtma Ghandi with whom Tolstoy held an intense correspondence.Tolstoy is seen to have had huge influence on the nonviolent resistance movement to this day.?
By the turn of the century, Tolstoy was universally loved and respected by all classes of people except the very wealthy and powerful. In part to curb some of his influence, the Russian Orthodox excommunicated him in March 1901. He was also denounced by the state as an anarchist in 1891 and he increasingly had to publish his works abroad because of censorship.
Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy took a decision he had been struggling with for decades. He abandoned his home, his family and his wealth in the middle of winter to live the life of an ascetic in a hut in the woods and concentrate on spiritual matters. However, he fell ill during his journey and died of pneumonia in 1910. Although the police tried to limit his funeral, thousands of peasants were there to bid him farewell.
Tolstoy has been praised as being the greatest novelist in world literature.
The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity
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Nadia
Book Discussion Team
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy#Early_life
http://www.gradesaver.com/author/leo-tolstoy/
http://www.booksfactory.com/writers/tolstoi.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/tolstoy.html
http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/
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"All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love" Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 to a well known family of Old Russian nobility. His mother, Princess Marie Volkonsky died when he was an infant child, while his father Count Nicolas Tolstoy an army officer and a gentle easy going man died when his son was sill a young boy. As a child, Tolstoy was a voracious reader, living in a family home with a library that contained over twenty thousand books in over thirty languages and as a young man he read widely fiction and philosophy. At the age of 16 he entered the After leaving his studies he spent several years of his youth agonizing over what to do with his life, drinking, associating with people of ill repute, getting addicted to gambling and running into huge debts. The turning point however came, when he accompanied in 1851 his elder brother Nikolay whom he greatly admired to the Leo Tolstoy did not see the aim of art in general and fiction in particular as merely to produce beauty, or to provide pleasure, enjoyment, or entertainment, but rather as a means of communication, and as an important means of expression of any experience, or of any aspect of the human condition. As a writer of the realist school he considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life and used ordinary events and characters to examine war, religion, feminism, and other topics. War and Peace examines the absurdity, hypocrisy, and shallowness of war Most of his work wrestles with life's most profound questions with much attention to the everyday details of life and deep insight into human nature leading one critic to say that a work by Tolstoy" is not a piece of art but a piece of life: his novels read as if life were writing directly, without mediation". Moreover, Tolstoy saw that good art should be intelligible and comprehensible to everyone and can communicate its meaning to most people. Thus all his work is characterized by uncomplicated style and careful construction. Later on in life Tolstoy went through a religious crisis and suffered the most intense bout of self-doubt and spiritual introspection. He rejected his two great novels as something not as true of reality and embraced an anarchist-Christian pacifist doctrine of non-resistance and gave up meat, tobacco, alcohol and preached chastity. He expressed his ideas in works of non-fiction and fiction alike foremost of which was The By the turn of the century, Tolstoy was universally loved and respected by all classes of people except the very wealthy and powerful. In part to curb some of his influence, the Russian Orthodox excommunicated him in March 1901. He was also denounced by the state as an anarchist in 1891 and he increasingly had to publish his works abroad because of censorship. Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy took a decision he had been struggling with for decades. He abandoned his home, his family and his wealth in the middle of winter to live the life of an ascetic in a hut in the woods and concentrate on spiritual matters. However, he fell ill during his journey and died of pneumonia in 1910. Although the police tried to limit his funeral, thousands of peasants were there to bid him farewell. Tolstoy has been praised as being the greatest novelist in world literature. The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity Tolstoy Nadia Book Discussion Team Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy#Early_life http://www.gradesaver.com/author/leo-tolstoy/ http://www.booksfactory.com/writers/tolstoi.htm http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/tolstoy.html http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/ |