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What are some interesting facts about Leo Tolstoy?
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Dec 10, 2022 · 25 interesting facts about Leo Tolstoy. 10.12.2022. An acknowledged pillar of Russian literature, Leo Tolstoy is known throughout the civilised world. There have been so few figures of such magnitude in world history that they can be counted on the fingers of one hand.
- Overview
- Early years
Russian author Leo Tolstoy is considered a master of realistic fiction and one of the world’s greatest novelists, especially known for Anna Karenina and War and Peace. Oscillating between skepticism and dogmatism, he explored the most diverse approaches to human experience. His works have been praised as pieces of life, not pieces of art.
What was Leo Tolstoy’s childhood like?
Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828, the scion of aristocrats. His mother died before he was two years old, and his father passed away in 1837. After two other guardians died, Tolstoy lived with an aunt in Kazan, Russia. According to Tolstoy, his cousin Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya had the greatest influence on his childhood.
How did Leo Tolstoy die?
Upset by an unhappy marriage and by the contradiction between his life and his principles, Leo Tolstoy left his family’s estate in 1910. Despite his stealth, the press began reporting on his movements. He soon contracted pneumonia and died of heart failure at a railroad station in Astapovo, Russia. He was 82.
What are Leo Tolstoy’s achievements?
The scion of prominent aristocrats, Tolstoy was born at the family estate, about 130 miles (210 kilometres) south of Moscow, where he was to live the better part of his life and write his most-important works. His mother, Mariya Nikolayevna, née Princess Volkonskaya, died before he was two years old, and his father Nikolay Ilich, Graf (count) Tolstoy, followed her in 1837. His grandmother died 11 months later, and then his next guardian, his aunt Aleksandra, in 1841. Tolstoy and his four siblings were then transferred to the care of another aunt in Kazan, in western Russia. Tolstoy remembered a cousin who lived at Yasnaya Polyana, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya (“Aunt Toinette,” as he called her), as the greatest influence on his childhood, and later, as a young man, Tolstoy wrote some of his most-touching letters to her. Despite the constant presence of death, Tolstoy remembered his childhood in idyllic terms. His first published work, Detstvo (1852; Childhood), was a fictionalized and nostalgic account of his early years.
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Educated at home by tutors, Tolstoy enrolled in the University of Kazan in 1844 as a student of Oriental languages. His poor record soon forced him to transfer to the less-demanding law faculty, where he wrote a comparison of the French political philosopher Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws and Catherine the Great’s nakaz (instructions for a law code). Interested in literature and ethics, he was drawn to the works of the English novelists Laurence Sterne and Charles Dickens and, especially, to the writings of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau; in place of a cross, he wore a medallion with a portrait of Rousseau. But he spent most of his time trying to be comme il faut (socially correct), drinking, gambling, and engaging in debauchery. After leaving the university in 1847 without a degree, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he planned to educate himself, to manage his estate, and to improve the lot of his serfs. Despite frequent resolutions to change his ways, he continued his loose life during stays in Tula, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. In 1851 he joined his older brother Nikolay, an army officer, in the Caucasus and then entered the army himself. He took part in campaigns against the native peoples and, soon after, in the Crimean War (1853–56).
In 1847 Tolstoy began keeping a diary, which became his laboratory for experiments in self-analysis and, later, for his fiction. With some interruptions, Tolstoy kept his diaries throughout his life, and he is therefore one of the most copiously documented writers who ever lived. Reflecting the life he was leading, his first diary begins by confiding that he may have contracted a venereal disease. The early diaries record a fascination with rule-making, as Tolstoy composed rules for diverse aspects of social and moral behaviour. They also record the writer’s repeated failure to honour these rules, his attempts to formulate new ones designed to ensure obedience to old ones, and his frequent acts of self-castigation. Tolstoy’s later belief that life is too complex and disordered ever to conform to rules or philosophical systems perhaps derives from these futile attempts at self-regulation.
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- Gary Saul Morson
- People who met with Tolstoy thought he could read their minds. Many people viewed Tolstoy not just as a man nor a human being but as a living symbol. When people met him, they reported that it was as if he understood their unspoken thoughts.
- He quit the university. When he was young, he was educated at home by tutors. An interesting fact about Leo Tolstoy is that he then enrolled in the University of Kazan to study Oriental languages but quit after realizing how hard it was.
- Leo Tolstoy kept diaries throughout his entire life. He started his first diary in 1847 and continued writing in them until his last days. His wife kept diaries too.
- He had 13 children. Tolstoy married Sofya Andreyevna Bers, who was the daughter of a prominent Moscow physician. Together, they had 13 children, an interesting fact about Leo Tolstoy.
- He had aristocratic blood. Leo Tolstoy was the son of a line of aristocrats. He was born on August 28th 1828, and has been called the greatest author of all time – by many!
- However, his parents died young. Tragically, Tolstoy became an orphan at only 14 years old when his parents had both died. On the death of his mother from cholera in 1854, Tolstoy was raised by relatives.
- He raised a large family of his own. Leo Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna in 1862 – together they had a total of 13 children!
- He was a man of the people! Tolstoy lived with his wife in Moscow where they had many friends amongst the elite! Portraits of the time illustrate him in fine attire, sometimes with a walking stick and always with an imposing appearance – and often seen with a flourishing white beard.
Feb 26, 2024 · 1. Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), who is most famous for his magnum opus, War and Peace (1867), monastically journaled about life. From the time he was a teenager, he penned his daily routine, which included waking by 10 am, as well as his moral failures, such as his routine brothel visits or gambling problems. 2. Tolstoy.
Apr 24, 2020 · Find out more about Leo Tolstoy, the author behind classics like 'War and Peace' and 'Anna Karenina.'.
Aug 13, 2023 · 6-10 Interesting Facts About Leo Tolstoy. 6. Tolstoy once challenged Ivan Turgenev to a duel but later apologized. 7. He was influenced by Indian Mystic Swami Vivekananda. 8. In 1861, he established a remarkable network of 13 schools in Yasnaya Polyana, offering education to the children of Russia’s newly emancipated peasants. 9.
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