TOLSTOI 



5831 



TOLSTOI 



dissipation, and in 1851 he entered the Russian 

 army and served bravely against the Circassians 

 on the Western borders of his country. In the 

 midst of such conditions he began to write. 

 His first accepted story was a simple but sincere 

 account entitled 

 Childhood, and 

 was soon fol- 

 lowed by Boy- 

 hood and Youth. 

 These dealt with 

 the scenes and in- 

 cidents about his 

 own home, but 

 also showed 

 clearly the influ- 

 ences of Rousseau 

 in their belief in 

 nature and in an 

 education derived 

 largely from na- 

 ture. 



He next served 

 in the Crimean 

 War, and while at 

 Sebastopol wrote 

 his famous Tales 

 from Sebastopol. 

 Weary of war and 

 seeing absolutely 

 no glory in blood- 

 shed, the young 

 man returned ant garb 

 home. He found that his magazine stories had 

 made a name for him among Russian authors, 

 but his views on society, religion, war and poli- 

 tics were so different from those held by other 

 writers that he could not at that time name an 

 intimate friend in all Russia. 



Demanded Freedom for Serfs. In 1855 the 

 question of freedom for the serfs arose, and 

 Tolstoi threw his whole soul into the battle for 

 the rights of those enslaved laborers. Between 

 1857 and 1861 ho visited Germany, France and 

 England to see how common workmen fared 

 in those countries, and returned home pro- 

 foundly impressed with the belief that Russian 

 social conditions were wrong. He freed his own 

 serfs, and opened a school where the idea of 

 compulsion was never allowed. This rich no- 

 bleman and famous author became a humble 

 teacher himself, and for nearly two years taught 

 singing and drawing. The institution closed 

 because of the secret animosity of the govern- 

 ment, and Tolstoi turned once more to his 

 farm for consolation. In bitterness of heart 



COUNT TOLSTOI 

 The Russian sage in peas- 



against military and civil oppression he wrote 

 two violent stories, Three Deaths and The Cos- 

 sacks. 



His marriage in 1862 seems to have brought 

 more peace of mind^ and concentration, and 

 soon afterwards he began his greatest novels, 

 War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The first, 

 one of the masterpieces of the world's litera- 

 ture, deals with Russia between 1805 and 1815, 

 and is a powerful but gloomy picture of the suf- 

 ferings of the common workman. 'During his 

 thirty-fifth year his anxiety for the welfare of 

 his fellow men increased. His Death of Ivan 

 and The Power of Darkness reveal the change, 

 for in those books his sympathy for suffering 

 humanity is almost beyond his power of ex- 

 pression. Then came his rebellion against the 

 Greek Catholic Church, as shown in My Con-: 

 fession and My Religion. It appeared as 

 though he was in revolt against religion, society, 

 and civilization itself; but it was clearly only 

 the longing of a noble heart to right wrongs. 



Entered upon Simplicity of Life. In 1880 

 Tolstoi renounced a life of ease, for ten years 

 labored all day in the fields as an ordinary 

 workman, ate no meat, gave up tobacco, al- 

 lowed his hunting gun to rust and lived what 

 he called the life of simplicity. One night in 

 1888 he announced to his family that the next 

 day he would divide all his property among the 

 poor and live a life of poverty ; only after hours 

 of pleading did his family persuade him to turn 

 the entire estate over to his wife. Henceforth 

 he never had a penny of his own. He refused 

 money for his writing, earned his living by 

 farming and making shoes, and associated al- 

 most entirely with the peasants. He adopted 

 the policy of nonresistance, and declared that 

 Christ had ordered such peaceful methods. 

 Under those conditions he wrote such master- 

 pieces as The Kreutzer Sonata, one of the most 

 vivid pictures of sordid life in all literature, 

 Master and Man, What Is Religion? and The 

 Resurrection. 



In 1901 he was excommunicated by the Greek 

 Catholic Church because of his teachings, and 

 when he died in a hut at Astapovo, where he 

 had gone to avoid admirers, he was refused a 

 funeral ceremony and a grave in a regular 

 cemetery. Two questions which he ever sought 

 to answer Why* do I live? and How should I 

 Hvef form the basis of most of his writings, 

 and in his efforts to solve these problems he 

 produced literature that will always have a 

 deep influence because of its sincerity, thought- 

 fulness, sympathy and stern justice. M.R.T. 



