Tolstoy (1988, this
edition 2012) is another massive biography by A. N. Wilson – 572 pages.
Born in a period of
peace, flanked by two wars – the Decembrist revolt of 1825 and the 1917 Russian
revolution – Leo Tolstoy’s national epic is War
and Peace. Gleaned from his diaries, and the diaries of his wife, Wilson
details the life of the writer and the thinker, whose art grew from three
‘uneasy and irresolvable’ relationships – with women, with Russia, and with
God.
The biography
commences with the death of his mother at 40 when Count Lev (Leo) Nikolayevich
Tolstoy (1828-1910) was barely two years old, and the death of his father at 42
when Leo was nine. The last of four sons (the Ant Brothers) with his sister
Marya the youngest, they lived with their aunt. His aunt, his home town of Yasnaya
Polyana (200 kilometres – 120 miles – south of Moscow), and his wife and
children were his ‘constants’ as he attempts ‘to reconstruct his mother’s
existence.’ From 1841-1847 he also lived at the borderlands of Europe and
Asiatic Russia, which influenced his approach to literature, life, and living.
Tolstoy was a prolific
reader of British, French, and German literature. Wilson claims that ‘we do
have incontrovertible evidence that A
Sentimental Journey through France and Italy [Laurence Sterne, 1768] was
what started Tolstoy off as a writer.’ The reason ‘stemmed from its usability
as a blueprint for Romantic egotists’ and it ‘is attractively short.’ Tolstoy
sent his first story, Childhood, to
the editor of a serial, when he lived in Tiflis (Tbilisi, Georgia) before he
spent a year in the Crimean War (1854-55). From 1857 to 1862 he traveled
overseas – the only time he left Russia. In London in 1861 he met French writer
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, who had just finished a book called War and Peace.
Marrying at 34 to
Sofya, who was 18, he fathered 13 children in the first 26 years of their
marriage (three died before they turned two years of age). But it was Sofya’s
younger sister, Tatyana, who was said to provide ‘the inexpressive liveliness’ for
Tolstoy to begin War and Peace. It
was Sofya’s insistence on archiving all of his drafts in the Rumyantsev Museum
in Moscow that enabled historians to recreate the evolution of this
masterpiece.
Although his diary
ceased during his greatest works – War
and Peace (1869), and Anna Karenina
(1877) – there was a ‘diary-war with his wife
in which each wrote rude remarks meant for the other’s perusal,’ leading
to ‘important channels of literary energy … the phase before he started writing
fiction.’ It was a war and peace approach to marriage.
He was predominantly
influenced by events in real life, which he changed to suit the story. At the
age of 32, two of his brothers were dead, Dmitry at 29 (Leo was 28) and Nikolay
at 37 (Leo was 32). The death of Dmitry influenced his writing of the death of
Levin in Anna Karenina, which Wilson
says ‘is one of the very greatest scenes in Tolstoy … because it was not like that at the time … the crucial
theme of those particular chapters in Anna
Karenina is not feeling, but lack of feeling.’
Wilson describes War and Peace as ‘unforgettable and
endlessly rereadable not because of the accuracy and thoroughness of its
historical research, but because each character [580 of them] in turn is
imagined with all the integrity of Tolstoy’s being. He is each character, in turn, acting them with all the vigour of his
family at charades.’
It was from Tolstoy
that Mahatma Gandhi was inspired by the idea of passive resistance, after
reading The Kingdom of God is Within You
(1894), a work of non-fiction and ‘an infinitely sad book to read.’ Gandhi then
wrote to Tolstoy in the last year of Tolstoy’s life.
The best three
chapters of this biography are the last ones, from 1900, with Tolstoy in the
last ten years of his life. The chapter, Sad Steps, is the death of his oldest
brother by five years, Sergey, in 1904, ‘hideously, of cancer of the face and
tongue.’ The last of his brothers died four days after Tolstoy visited him. It
was his inspiration for Reminiscences
(1907). He also wrote ‘fifteen thousand words of nonsense about
Shakespeare’ – which stated that William Shakespeare could not portray human
characters at all.
By 1910 six of his 13
children had died. His relationship with his wife and family were fraught with
difficulties, in which the family was divided into two camps – with their
father or with their mother. He secretly ‘escaped’ his family, and fled by
train, only to have them, the press, church members, fans, and everyone
following after him, to his death-bed at Astapovo train station at the age of
82: ‘It is one of the most extraordinary demonstrations of public sympathy in
the history of the world.’
The difference between
Wilson’s work and other biographies is that he obsessively links Tolstoy and
his works with his life, matching scenes with diary extracts. He also contrasts
Tolstoy’s literacy works with the timing of the works of other Russian authors
– particularly Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Maxim Gorky, and Anton Checkov
– and Tolstoy’s own reading list. Wilson presents both the literary genius and
his ‘contradictions and paradoxes’ in a ‘warts-and-all’ expose – of which there
are many. Wilson states that ‘Tolstoy has … an abiding capacity to irritate his
reader … to disturb, to unsettle, to upset.’ While the focus is on Tolstoy, his
marriage is inextricable to the development of his manuscripts in what Wilson
describes as ‘one of the most impressive partnerships in literary history.’
MARTINA NICOLLS is an international
aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of
Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet
(2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
Comments
Post a Comment