Alright, to move things along, VUSSR is proud to select in the
Writer category, the greatest Russian writer, and, arguably, the greatest novelist period...
LEO TOLSTOY
Leo Tolstoy, or Count
Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (
Russian:
Лeв Никола́евич Толсто́й (
help·
info), Russian pronunciation:
[lʲev nʲɪkɐˈlaɪvʲɪtɕ tɐlˈstoj]; September 9 [
O.S. August 28] 1828 – November 20 [
O.S. November 7] 1910), was a
Russian writer whom many consider to be the world's greatest novelist.
[1][2] His masterpieces
War and Peace and
Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of
realist fiction.
[3]
Tolstoy's further talents as essayist, dramatist, and
educational reformer made him the most influential member of the aristocratic
Tolstoy family. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of
Jesus, centering on the
Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent
Christian anarchist and
pacifist. His ideas on
nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as
The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as
Mahatma Gandhi[4] and
Martin Luther King, Jr.[5]
His most famous works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as
Hadji Murad and
The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His contemporaries paid him lofty tributes.
Dostoevsky thought him the greatest of all living novelists, while
Flaubert exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" on reading a translation of
War and Peace.
Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature."
Tolstoy in military uniform, by Sergei Lvovich Levitsky, 1856
Later critics and novelists continue to bear testament to Tolstoy's art.
Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists.
James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!".
Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature". Such sentiments were shared by the likes of
Proust,
Faulkner and
Nabokov. The latter heaped superlatives upon
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and
Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of
War and Peace, and sharply criticized
Resurrection and
The Kreutzer Sonata.
Tolstoy's earliest works, the autobiographical novels
Childhood,
Boyhood, and
Youth (1852–1856), tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the chasm between himself and his peasants. Though he later rejected them as sentimental, a great deal of Tolstoy's own life is revealed. They retain their relevance as accounts of the universal story of growing up.
Tolstoy at his desk, 1870.
War and Peace is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of
Napoleon, from the court of
Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of
Austerlitz and
Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the
Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonski's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider
War and Peace to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written at that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the
realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life.
[13]War and Peace (which is to Tolstoy really an
epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that
Anna Karenina was his first true novel.
[14]
After
Anna Karenina, Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as
The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) and
What Is to Be Done? develop a radical
anarcho-
pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his
excommunication from the
Russian Orthodox Church in 1901.
[15] For all the praise showered on
Anna Karenina and
War and Peace, Tolstoy rejected the two works later in his life as something not as true of reality.
[16] Such an argument is supported in
The Death of Ivan Ilyich, whose main character continually battles with his family and servants, demanding honesty above the water and food needed to sustain him.