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.
