Leo Tolstoy, A Writer Who Comes from A Noble Family

 By A. Zamroni Sw.

Leo Tolstoy (https://wwwsteemit.com)

The man whose birth name Prince Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is commonly referred to as Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana, Russian Empire, on September 9, 1828 and died in Astapovo on November 20, 1910. Tolstoy was the fourth of five children.

Tolstoy's parents died when he was young so he was raised by his relatives. Tolstoy studied law and oriental languages ​​at Kazan University. It seems that he was not so at home with the academic world that he left college before graduating. His lecturers described him as "unable and unwilling to learn."

Tolstoy actually came from a wealthy Russian aristocratic family. However, ironically, Tolstoy felt that he was not entitled to inheritance. He was well known among the peasants for his generosity. He also often provides assistance to homeless people and beggars.

In 1862 Tolstoy married Sofia Andreevna Bers. Tolstoy's marriage to a woman who is 16 years younger, produced 13 children. He spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Petersburg. After falling into huge debt for gambling, Tolstoy accompanied his brother to the Caucasus and later into the Russian army. It was during this time that he began writing literature.

Tolstoy became great, respected, respected, admired, and idolized by many people for his literary works. He writes essays, short stories, drama scripts and novels. Together with Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy is considered the greatest Russian writer to date. Wikipedia calls him a literary, social reformer, pacifist, Christian anarchist and vegetarian.

Tolstoy's name stuck out in the world of Russian literature and the world mainly because of his two masterpiece novels, namely War and Peace  (1865-1869) and Anna Karenina  (1875-1877). Both books are judged by Wikipedia to be at the top of realistic fiction in terms of their scope, breadth, and realistic depiction of Russian life. Tolstoy's other works include The Assault  (1852), Childhood  (1854), The Tales of Sevastopol  (1855–1856), Family Happiness  (1859), The Blank Men  (1863), The Captivity of the Caucasus  (1872) , Father Sergius  (1873), Death of Ivan Ilyich  (1886), The Power of Darkness  (1886), The Fruits of Culture  (1889), Sonata Kreutzer  (1889), The Kingdom of God Is Within You  (1894), Letter to Liberals  (1898 ), Undead  (1911), and Hadji Murad  (1912).

Because of the excellence and excellence of his works (especially his novels), Tolstoy was admired and respected by fellow writers of his time. Fellow Russian writer Dostoyevsky considered Tolstoy the greatest novelist of all novelists living at that time. Another Russian scientist, Anton Chekhov, praised Tolstoy, saying, “... even if we don't achieve anything ourselves, it will not be a problem because Tolstoy is doing well for all of us.” Virginia Woolf considered Tolstoy the greatest of all novelists. The French writer, Gustave Flaubert, considered Tolstoy a great artist and psychologist. As for Thomas Mann, William Faulkner, and Marcel Proust, they have a relatively similar feeling that Tolstoy's works are so close to nature.

Tolstoy had his own unique experience with Dostoyevsky. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, both by the Russian public and by the world's literary enthusiasts and critics, are considered Russia's greatest writers and they both also lived in the same period or era, but they never met face to face. Both of them praise each other and the works of the two influence each other. Tolstoy is said to have wept at the news of Dostoyevsky's death.

Tolstoy not only exerted a large and wide influence in the literary world, but also among humanitarian activists. Through his work, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, Tolstoy expressed his bright ideas about nonviolent resistance. Tolstoy's ideas later became known to have influenced prominent human figures of the 20th century, such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Here are some other unique facts about Leo Tolstoy's life.

•    Her last marriage was described by A.N. Wilson as one of the most unhappy marriages in literary history.

•    War and Peace  is generally considered to be one of the greatest and phenomenal novels ever written. The scope of the story is so wide, but the integrity is preserved. It contains 580 characters, many of them historical and others fictional.

•    War and Peace  have been considered by the public and critics as a great and phenomenal novel, but Tolstoy himself did not consider War and Peace  as a novel.

•    Apart from being a writer, Tolstoy was also a member of an artillery regiment with the rank of second lieutenant who took part in the Crimean War.

•    Tolstoy died in 1910 of pneumonia. He breathed his last at a train station at the age of 82 - it happened after he left his home in the middle of a chilly winter.

•    Starting with a letter he wrote and sent to an Indian newspaper (it is entitled "Letter to a Hindu"), Tolstoy was involved in lengthy correspondence with Mahatma Gandhi. Tolstoy's ideas through this correspondence greatly influenced Gandhi in developing the concept of nonviolent resistance.

•    Some of his novels, such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich  (1886) and So What We Should Do developed the anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy that led to him being excommunicated from the Orthodox Church in 1901.