Ln thick renunciation of the highest circle. The best works of Tolstoy
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Twitter"Prince Andrey Bolkonsky" - Fatal wound. APOSTLE ANDREW - a disciple of Christ, preached the precepts of Christianity in Russia. The feat of the Tushin battery. Kuragin "Oh, vile, heartless breed." Salon Scherer Dreams of a heroic deed to earn people's love. If they kill you, me, the old man, will be hurt ... A problematic question. It is gratifying. V.E. Krasovsky.
"L. Tolstoy lessons" - Methodological tasks. Excursion to the village of Smolnevo. Curriculum items and student ages. L.N. Tolstoy and the Koloshin Decembrists. Terms of work on the project. Problematic issues. Topics for students' independent research. Protection of projects. Excursion to the village of Smolnevo. Extracurricular work: collection of materials, analysis, design.
"Literature Tolstoy" - Abolition of serfdom. Teacher of Russian language and literature ASOSH № 2 Mikheeva OV What historical events was Tolstoy a witness? 1871.1861.1853-1856. L. N. Tolstoy is a man, thinker, writer. 1904-1905. Death of A.S. Pushkin. 1877-1878. 1828-1849 Towards War and Peace. 1860-1870
"Love of Leo Tolstoy" - L. Tolstoy and S. Koloshin. First meeting. 1838 - 1839 Moscow. Sofia Pavlovna Koloshina 1828 - 1911 Feelings of L. Tolstoy for S. Koloshina were the "strongest love" of the writer. High society ball, where young lovers danced. Village Smolnevo. Parents are the owners of the village of Smolnevo, Pokrovsky district (now Kirzhachsky district).
"Writer Leo Tolstoy" - Tell us about your attitude to Vanya's act. Biography. For his valiant service, Lev Nikolaevich was awarded an order and two medals. The fundamental question: What is common between the tsar of animals and the great Russian writer? Literary preferences. What kind of warrior did Tolstoy show himself? Questions to the story Why do you think Vanya never ate plums?
"Tolstoy's Prisoner of the Caucasus" - Our goal. The story was written by a military officer. Leo Tolstoy Prisoner of the Caucasus. Our goal is simple and clear. The story behind the story. Riddle of the story. We are learning to read a book!
There are 26 presentations in total
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy I was nature ... Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy "First Memories" Tolstoy told us about Russian life almost as much as all the rest of our literature M. Gorky M. Gorky
“To live honestly, you have to struggle, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, and fight and lose forever. And calmness is spiritual meanness. " “In order to live honestly, one has to struggle, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and quit, and start again and quit again, and always struggle and lose. And calmness is spiritual meanness. "
Biography milestones Family nest. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the Yasnaya Polyana estate, Tula province, into an aristocratic noble family. The Tolstoy family existed in Russia for six hundred years. According to legend, they received their last name from the Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich Dark, who gave one of the writer's ancestors, Andrei Kharitonovich, the nickname Tolstoy. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the Yasnaya Polyana estate, Tula province, into an aristocratic noble family. The Tolstoy family existed in Russia for six hundred years. According to legend, they received their last name from the Grand Duke Vasily Vasilyevich Dark, who gave one of the writer's ancestors, Andrei Kharitonovich, the nickname Tolstoy.
1830 - the death of the mother 1836 - the family moved to Moscow 1837 - the death of the father 1841 - the move to Kazan 1844 - 47 - studies at the Kazan University, the Eastern Department of the Faculty of Philosophy, then the Faculty of Law 1847 - the beginning of keeping a diary Tolstoy - a student of Kazan University Childhood. Adolescence. Youth (1828 - 1849)
Diary entries 1847 (Tolstoy is 19 years old) March 17 ... I clearly saw that the disorderly life, which most of the secular people take for a consequence of youth, is nothing but a consequence of early depravity of the soul "April 17 ... I would be the unhappiest of people , if I had not found a goal for my life - a common and useful goal for year 1. The goal of every deed should be the happiness of others. 2. Be content with the present. 3. Look for occasions to do good. Correction rules: Fear idleness and disorder ... Fear lies and vanity ... Memorize and write down all useful information and thoughts ... Do not believe the thoughts born in a dispute ... Do not repeat other people's thoughts ...
The most amazing thing is that I did most of this program! Life Program (1849): 1. To study the entire course of legal sciences required for the final examination at the university 2. To study practical medicine and part of theoretical. 3. Learn French, Russian, German, English, Italian and Latin. 4. Study agriculture, both theoretical and practical. 5. Study history, geography and statistics. 6. Study mathematics, gymnasium course. 7. Write a thesis. 8. Achieve an average degree of excellence in music and painting. 9. Write the rules. 10. Get some knowledge in natural sciences. 11. Compile an essay from all the subjects that I will study. Daguerreotype portrait,
Yasnaya Polyana: the experience of an independent life (1849 - 1851) Agriculture Agriculture Self-education Self-education “No matter how hard I tried to find in my“ No matter how hard I tried to find in my soul at least some justification for our life, I could not see without irritation my , to my soul, at least some excuses for our life, I could not without irritation see neither my own, nor someone else's living room, nor a clean, masterly set table, nor a carriage, nor someone else's drawing room, nor a clean, masterly set table, nor a carriage, a well-fed coachman and horses, no shops, no well-fed coachman and horses, no shops, theaters, meetings. I could not help but theaters, meetings. I could not help but see hungry, cold and humiliated next to this ... I could not get rid of the thought that these two things were connected, see next to this hungry, cold and humiliated ... I could not get rid of the thought that these two things connected that one comes from the other. " Daguerreotype portrait
Military service. On the way to "War and Peace" (1851 - 1855) 1851 - Caucasus, war with the highlanders 1852 - "Contemporary", story "Childhood" 1852 - 63 - "Cossacks" 1854 - Danube army, Sevastopol, defense of the famous 4 bastions, " Adolescence "1954 - 55 -" Sevastopol Stories "by L. N. Tolstoy. Photo by S. L. Levitsky
Writer, public figure, teacher (1860 - 1870) 1857 - "Youth", travels in France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany 1857 - 59 - passion for "pure art" 1858 - end of cooperation with "Sovremennik" 1859 - 1862 - passion for teaching ("Yasnaya Polyana" magazine) 1863 - wedding with Sofya Andreevna Bers 1863 - 69 - work on the novel "War and Peace"
"I renounced the life of our circle ..." (1880 - 1890) 1870 - 77 - "Anna Karenina" 1879 - 82 - "Confession". A turning point in Tolstoy's worldview - the religious and philosophical compositions "What is my faith?", "The Kingdom of God is within us", "The connection and translation of the four Gospels" 1887 - 89 - the story "The Kreutzer Sonata" by Kramskoy. Portrait of Tolstoy., 1873
What do I believe in? I asked. And he sincerely replied that I believe in being kind: humble, forgive, love. I believe in this with all my being ...
People and meetings. Exodus (1900 - 1910) 1901 - "Determination of the Holy Synod" on excommunication "(newspaper" Tserkovnye vedomosti "1901 - 02 - Crimea, illness 1903 -" Thoughts of wise people for every day "," After the ball "1904 -" Think ! "(About the Russian-Japanese war) 1908 - work on the book" The Teachings of Christ Expounded for Children ", article" I Can't Be Silent! "(Against the death penalty) October 28, 1910 - leaving home November 7, 1910 - death at the station . Astapovo Ryazan-Ural railway Tolstoy and Chekhov. Crimea Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana
October 27, 1910. That evening he went to bed at 12 o'clock. At three o'clock I woke up because there was light in the office. He understood - they are looking for a will. “Day and night, all people, movements, words must be known ... be under control. Disgust, indignation ... growing, suffocating. I can't lie down and suddenly I accept the final desire to leave ... That evening he went to bed at 12 o'clock. At three o'clock I woke up because there was light in the office. He understood - they are looking for a will. “Day and night, all people, movements, words must be known ... be under control. Disgust, indignation ... growing, suffocating. I can't lie down and suddenly I accept the final desire to leave ... I am writing her a letter: "My departure will upset you ... Understand and believe me, I cannot act otherwise ... I can no longer live in those conditions of luxury in which I lived." I am writing her a letter: "My departure will upset you ... Understand and believe me, I cannot act otherwise ... I can no longer live in those conditions of luxury in which I lived." ... I finished my letter ... I went downstairs, woke up my family doctor, packed my things. Lev Nikolayevich himself went to the stable, ordered to pawn. Even though my eyes were gouged out at night, at first I got lost, lost my hat somewhere in the bushes and returned with my bare head, took an electric torch. He was in a hurry, helping the coachman to harness the horses. The coachman's hands trembled and sweat rolled off his face. At half past six, the cab drove out to the Yasenki station. They were in a hurry, they were afraid of being chased ... ... I finished the letter ... I went downstairs, woke up my family doctor, and packed my things. Lev Nikolayevich himself went to the stable and ordered the pawn. Even though my eyes were gouged out at night, at first I got lost, lost my hat somewhere in the bushes and returned with my bare head, took an electric torch. He was in a hurry, helping the coachman to harness the horses. The coachman's hands trembled and sweat rolled from his face. At half past six the cab drove out to the Yasenki station. We were in a hurry, afraid of being chased ...
Dialectics of the soul The theory of "non-resistance of evil to violence" "No matter how people try to free themselves from violence, one cannot free themselves from it: violence" Non-resistance to evil by violence is not a prescription, but an open, conscious law of life for each individual person and for all mankind - even for all living things. (1907, Diary) (1907, Diary)
The shore was a god, the direction was a legend, the oars were the freedom given to me to get up to the shore - to unite with God. So, the power of life renewed in me, and I began to live again.
XIII
My attitude to faith now and then was completely different. Before, life itself seemed to me full of meaning, and faith seemed to be an arbitrary statement of some absolutely unnecessary to me, unreasonable and unrelated to life provisions. I asked myself then, what is the meaning of these provisions, and, making sure that they do not have it, I threw them away. Now, on the contrary, I firmly knew that my life did not and could not have any meaning, and the provisions of faith not only did not seem to me unnecessary, but I was led by undoubted experience to the conviction that only these provisions of faith give meaning to life. Before, I looked at them as completely unnecessary gibberish, but now, if I did not understand them, I knew that they were meaningful, and I told myself that I had to learn to understand them.
I did the following reasoning. I told myself: the knowledge of faith follows, like all mankind with its reason, from the mysterious beginning. This beginning is God, the beginning of both the human body and his mind. As successively from God my body reached me, so my mind and my comprehension of life came to me, and therefore all those stages of development of this comprehension of life cannot be false. Everything that people truly believe in must be true; it can be expressed in various ways, but it cannot be a lie, and therefore if it seems to me to be a lie, then this only means that I do not understand it. Moreover, I told myself: the essence of all faith is that it gives life a meaning that is not destroyed by death. Naturally, in order for faith to be able to answer the question of a tsar dying in luxury, an old slave tortured to death, an unwise child, a wise old man, a crazy old woman, a young happy woman, a young man restless with passions, all people under the most varied conditions of life and education, - naturally, if there is one answer that answers the eternal one question of life: "why do I live, what will come out of my life?" - then this answer, although the same in its essence, should be infinitely diverse in its manifestations; and the more united, the truer, the deeper this answer, the more naturally the stranger and more ugly it must appear in its attempts to express, in accordance with the education and position of each. But these arguments, which justified for me the strangeness of the ritual side of faith, were nevertheless insufficient for me, in that only work of life for me, in faith, to allow myself to do things that I doubted. I wished with all the strength of my soul to be able to merge with the people, fulfilling the ritual side of their faith; but I couldn't do it. I felt that I would be lying to myself, laughing at what is sacred to me if I did it. But here new, our Russian theological works came to my aid.
According to the explanation of these theologians, the fundamental dogma of faith is the infallible church. From the recognition of this dogma follows, as a necessary consequence, the truth of everything confessed by the Church. The Church, as an assembly of believers united by love and therefore having true knowledge, became the basis of my faith. I told myself that divine truth cannot be available to one person, it is revealed only to the entire totality of people united by love. In order to comprehend the truth, one must not separate; and in order not to be divided, one must love and be reconciled with what one does not agree with. The truth will be revealed to love, and therefore if you do not obey the rites of the church, you violate love; and by breaking love, you are deprived of the opportunity to know the truth. I did not then see the sophistry in this reasoning. I did not see then that unity in love can give the greatest love, but I didn’t see the theological truth expressed in certain words in the Nicene symbol, nor did I see that love in no way can make a certain expression of truth obligatory for unity. I did not then see the error of this reasoning and thanks to it I got the opportunity to accept and perform all the rites of the Orthodox Church without understanding most of them. I then tried with all the strength of my soul to avoid all reasoning, contradictions and tried to explain, as reasonably as possible, those church positions that I encountered.
Life path and creative biography (with a summary of what was previously studied). Spiritual quest of the writer. Epic novel "War and Peace".
Stages of life and ideological and creative development of L. Tolstoy.
1.1828-1849 Childhood, adolescence. Youth: the origins of personality.
2.1849-1851 Yasnaya Polyana: an experience of independent living.
3.1851-1855 Military service. Towards War and Peace.
4.1860-1870 Writer, public figure, teacher.
5.1880-1890 "I renounced the life of our circle."
6.1900-1910 People and meetings. Exodus.
The best works of Tolstoy.
1. "War and Peace" (1864-1869)
2. "Anna Karenina" (1870-1877)
3. "The Power of Darkness" (1866)
4. "Kreutzer Sonata" (1889-1889)
5. "Resurrection" (1889-1899)
6. "Hadji Murat" (1896-1905)
7. Comedy "Fruits of Enlightenment" (1900)
8. Publicistic articles "I can not be silent", "Thou shalt not kill and others" (1908)
9. "After the Ball" (1903)
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy left a great artistic legacy, which is included in the treasury of not only Russian, but also world literature. A brilliant artist, a passionate moralist, he, perhaps, like no other Russian writer, was the conscience of the nation. Whatever aspects of life this outstanding man touches in his works, he painted with an unprecedented depth, humanly wise and simple. But Tolstoy entered the history of spiritual life not only as a great artist, but also as a kind of thinker. The nineteenth century, neither in Russia nor in Europe, knew another such mighty, passionate and ardent "seeker of truth." And this greatness of Tolstoy's personality was reflected both in his thoughts and in his whole life Childhood, adolescence, youth
In the Yasnaya Polyana estate, located fourteen miles from the ancient Russian city of Tula, on August 28 (September 11), 1828, the genius Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born.
The Tolstoy family belonged to the highest aristocratic nobility of Russia. Tolstoy's father, Count Nikolai Ilyich, is a dreamy young man, the only son of his parents, against the wishes of his relatives, he entered the military service for 17 years, and for a number of years he participated in many battles of the Patriotic War of 1812. Upon retirement, he married and settled on his wife's estate in Yasnaya Polyana, where he was engaged in farming. Tolstoy's mother, Maria Nikolaevna, is the only daughter of Prince N.S. Volkonsky, was an educated woman of her time. She spent most of her youth in Yasnaya Polyana on her father's estate. The spouses lived happily: Nikolai Ilyich treated his wife with great respect and was devoted to her; Maria Nikolaevna felt sincere affection for her husband as for the father of her children. And five of them were born to the Tolstoy: Nikolai, Dmitry, Sergey, Lev and Maria.
Maria Nikolaevna died shortly after the birth of her daughter Maria, when her youngest son Levushka was not even two years old. He did not remember her at all and, at the same time, in his soul he created a wonderful image of a mother who he loved all his life. “She seemed to me to be such a tall, pure, spiritual being that often in the middle period of my life, while fighting the temptations that overcame me, I prayed to her soul asking her to help me, and this prayer always helped me,” Tolstoy wrote already in mature age.
L.N.'s life was carefree and joyful. Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana in childhood. The inquisitive boy eagerly absorbed the impressions of the rich Yasnaya Polyana nature and the people around him. Lyovochka loved to read books as a child. He was fond of Pushkin's poems, Krylov's fables. Tolstoy retained his love for Pushkin throughout his life and called him his teacher.
Little Tolstoy was very sensitive. Lyovochka's childhood griefs aroused in him, on the one hand, a feeling of tenderness, on the other, a desire to unravel the secrets of life, and these aspirations remain in him for life.
From early childhood, Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, in addition to relatives and friends, was surrounded by courtyards (servants) and peasants. They had a great influence on Tolstoy; they brought him closer to the people, involuntarily forced him to think about the question of why life was arranged so unfairly that rich noblemen owned land and serfs, they themselves lived in idle luxury, and serfs had to work for the nobles, live in need and always obey their gentlemen.
Nikolai Ilyich decided to move the children to Moscow, there was more opportunity to educate them. Tolstoy was nine years old when he first left Yasnaya Polyana. Later L.N. Tolstoy often had to travel in carriages from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow and back. The impressions from these trips were so strong and vivid that they were vividly reflected in "Childhood", "Adolescence".
Soon after the family moved to Moscow, the father dies. Less than a year after the death of Nikolai Ilyich, Countess Pelageya Nikolaevna died, never able to come to terms with the loss of her son. The Tolstoy children became orphans. Guardianship was assigned over them. At first, their guardian was their closest relative, the kind and deeply religious Alexandra Ilinichna Osten-Saken; and after her death, which followed in 1841, another aunt, Pelageya Ilyinichna Yushkova, was a woman, albeit narrow-minded, but enjoyed great respect in the aristocratic circle, largely thanks to her husband Vladimir Ivanovich Yushkov. The Yushkovs lived in Kazan, where the children were sent. But the closest person for the Tolstoy children is Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya - a distant relative on the father's side. She was a rather poor, rather attractive woman who had dearly loved Nikolai Ilyich all her life. "Her main feature was love, but no matter how I wanted it to be different - love for one person - for my father," Lev Nikolayevich wrote about her. Only proceeding from this center, her love spread to all people. " ... T.A. Ergolskaya did not go to Kazan with the Tolstoy children.
In the spring of 1844, 16-year-old Tolstoy holds an exam at Kazan University for the Arab-Turkish department of the oriental faculty, with the intention of becoming a diplomat. Dressed in an overcoat with beavers, in white gloves and a cocked hat, Tolstoy appeared at Kazan University as a real gentleman. From this time his social life begins.
Tolstoy was fascinated by the exuberant, noisy social life. Both bright childhood dreams and vague dreams - everything drowned in this whirlpool of Kazan life. But the more he was among the noisy and idle society, the more often the young man Tolstoy remained lonely, he became more and more not to his liking this way of life.
Tolstoy's religious beliefs are also crumbling at this time. “From the age of sixteen I stopped taking up prayer and, on my own urge, stopped going to church and fasting,” he recalled in Confessions. Secular life tires him and does not satisfy him, he ponders more and more the false life of those around him, he begins to experience mental anxiety.
Having no inclination for diplomacy, Tolstoy, a year after entering the university, decided to transfer to the Faculty of Law, believing that legal sciences are more useful to society.
With great interest he listens at the university to lectures by Master of Civil Law D. Meyer, a supporter of Belinsky, a supporter of advanced ideas. Belinsky's ideas, his articles on literature penetrated the walls of Kazan University and had a beneficial effect on young people. Tolstoy enthusiastically read Russian fiction, he liked Pushkin, Gogol, from foreign literature - Goethe, Jean Jacques Rousseau. In books, Tolstoy seeks answers to his questions. Not limiting himself to reading this or that book, he keeps notes about what he read.
But legal sciences could not satisfy Tolstoy either. New and new questions arise before him, to which he could not get an answer at the university.
At the end of his stay at the University, Tolstoy switched from occasional notes in notebooks to systematic diary keeping. In his diaries, he sets out the rules of life, which he considers it necessary to follow: "1) What has been appointed to be fulfilled, do it, no matter what. 2) What you do, do it well. 3) Never consult a book if you have forgotten something, but try to remember yourself. " Along with drawing up the rules of life, Tolstoy ponders the question of the goal of human life. He defines the purpose of his life as follows: "... a conscious striving for the all-round development of everything that exists"
In 1847, while in his last year, Tolstoy left the university. The main thing that prompted him to do this, as he himself says about it, is the desire to devote himself to life in the village, the desire to do good and love him.
Upon Tolstoy's arrival at Yasnaya Polyana, a division took place between the brothers of his father's inheritance. 19-year-old Lev Nikolaevich, as the youngest of the brothers, got Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy, a young landlord, strives with all passion to improve his shaky economy. In the village, Tolstoy continues to keep his diary. A characteristic feature of the writer's diaries at this time is spontaneity, deep sincerity and truthfulness. In them he paid much attention to introspection, castigated his idle life, his shortcomings. But life in the countryside still could not fully satisfy the writer and fill his interests. At the beginning of 1849, Tolstoy left for Moscow, and then for Petersburg, where he plunged headlong into the "careless" life of a secular young man "without service, without occupation, without purpose." He was especially attracted by the "process of exterminating money" at the card table. To put an end to this lifestyle, Tolstoy decides to leave for the Caucasus. And in April 1851 he set off with his brother, officer Nikolai Nikolaevich, who was assigned there.
Caucasus. Sevastopol
L. Tolstoy's trip to the Caucasus was an impetus for the manifestation of the writer's creative powers, which accumulated even earlier. Impressions from the rich Caucasian nature, from noisy villages, from brave and proud people did not prevent the writer from working hard on himself. He is increasingly showing a desire for creativity. Now he does not part with his notebooks, writes down in them everything that he sees in the hut, in the forest, on the street, rewritten, rewrites, corrects. Observations of the life and life of the Cossacks formed the basis of one of the most poetic creations of Tolstoy - the story "The Cossacks".
In the Caucasus, Tolstoy wrote part of his trilogy - "Childhood", "Boyhood". In the trilogy there are characters whose prototypes are Tolstoy's relatives, people close to his family, his friends and teachers, but in the center of it stands Nikolenka Irteniev - an unusually impressionable child, internally very mobile, prone to introspection, but at the same time able to observe the life around him ... These features of Nikolenka are even more pronounced in his adolescence and youth. Tolstoy himself, in his memoirs written in old age, pointed out that the events in the life of his childhood friends and his own were reflected in Childhood.
Simultaneously with the work on the trilogy, Tolstoy was busy with the work, which in handwritten texts and diary entries bore the title "The Novel of a Russian Landowner". In it, Tolstoy intended to expound the "evil of Russian rule", which he saw in the existence in Russia of unlimited tsarist power and serfdom. The novel, on which Tolstoy worked with interruptions for about five years, was not finished, because Tolstoy could not find a solution to the main question facing him - how to combine the interests of the peasants with the interests of the landowner. In 1856, a significant portion of the novel was published, entitled "The Landowner's Morning".
Tolstoy's direct participation in hostilities in the Caucasus gave him material for stories on the theme of war and about military life. This was reflected mainly in the stories "Raid" and "Logging". Tolstoy showed the war from a side from which until then it had not been portrayed in literature. He is concerned not so much with the battle theme in itself, as with how people behave in a military situation, what properties of nature a person reveals in war.
The Caucasian period left a deep mark on Tolstoy's life, he considered him one of the best periods of his life - it was a period of spiritual revival and literary growth of the writer.
From the Caucasus, Tolstoy moved to Sevastopol. During the Crimean War, he, an artillery officer, fought on the famous 4th bastion, one of the most dangerous areas of the defense of Sevastopol. In these extreme conditions, Tolstoy showed himself at his best. He participated in all combat operations of his unit, skillfully commanded guns and more often than other officers was on duty at the battery. The officers respected him, and among the soldiers he enjoyed the reputation of a desperate brave man.
For his courage, second lieutenant of artillery Lev Tolstoy was awarded the Order of Anna and medals "For the Defense of Sevastopol" and "In Memory of the War of 1853-1856."
"Sevastopol Stories" is a further development of the young writer. This is the next stage in Tolstoy's depiction of the war. Here he was the first, in essence, to truthfully showed the war "not in the correct beautiful brilliant system, with music and drums, with fluttering banners and prancing generals", but "in its real expression - in blood, in suffering, in death."
The combat situation in Sevastopol, closeness with the soldiers cause the writer a lot of thoughts about his future life. He is no longer satisfied with a military career, he writes in his diary: "The military career is not mine and the sooner I get out of it in order to completely indulge in a literary one, the better."
In his diaries for 1854, Tolstoy devotes much attention to introspection; he talks about his spinelessness, then about laziness, irritability, considering them to be important vices. He comes to the conclusion that the higher you try to show yourself to people, the lower you become in their opinion. Despite the love and attention that the writer enjoyed among his relatives and friends, he felt in the Crimea, as well as in the Caucasus, a sense of loneliness.
Yasnaya Polyana school
Having achieved his resignation, in May 1856 Tolstoy returned to his beloved Yasnaya Polyana. Here he is somehow sad, but pleasant. But in order to broaden his horizons, to start a new life, which he thought all the time, Tolstoy went abroad in January 1857. He tries to use his stay there to gain knowledge. In Paris, Tolstoy met with Turgenev and Nekrasov. He met the French writer and traveler Prosper Mérimée. Abroad, Tolstoy wrote the story "From the Notes of Prince L. Nekhlyudov. Lucerne" and began the story "Albert". The plot of "Lucerne" and "Albert" was formed by the events in which the author took personal part. Depicting the disastrous fate of a street singer ("Lucerne") and a drunken violinist ("Albert") who was dying from the indifference of patrons of art, Tolstoy raised the question of the purpose of art, the bitter fate of its servants in a society dominated by selfishness, money-grubbing, careerism, and an idol money bag.
In August 1857 he returned to Russia, to Yasnaya Polyana. Another twenty-year-old boy Tolstoy was attracted by pedagogical activity, in 1849 he worked with the children of Yasnaya Polyana peasants. And ten years later, in 1859, he decided to return to her. In search of a way out of his restless anxiety, in the very wing where he studied music and reading, he opens a school. With curiosity and trepidation, the children came for the first time to the manor house of their future teacher. But it was enough for Tolstoy to ask the children a few questions, to tell what they would do at school and the fear was gone. The children themselves began to ask questions, examine the classrooms and listened to the first conversation of the writer, now their teachers.
Tolstoy plunged headlong into pedagogical work. And he felt the need for a broader understanding of the setting of public education, and not only in Russia, but also in other countries. In July 1860 Tolstoy went abroad for the second time. The main purpose of the travel was, as he wrote to his brother Sergei Nikolaevich from Paris: "... to find out the current state of schools abroad, so that no one in Russia would dare to point me to foreign lands in pedagogy, and to be at the level of everything that has been done in this area" ... (4, 47)
After the peasant reform (1861), endless disputes and misunderstandings took place between peasants and landowners. Many landowners did not want to give up their rights to the peasants, some did not want to give them the land, and such disputes had to be resolved by intermediaries. Upon arrival from abroad, Tolstoy was appointed as the conciliator for the Krapivensky district of the Tula province. But the writer also had a second business - his school. As soon as he arrived from abroad, he immediately began to study with his students, there were about 50 of them. At this time, he was already seeking recognition of his school and became a parish teacher. Tolstoy was passionately fond of schoolwork. The fame of the Yasnaya Polyana school spread not only in the Tula province, they knew about it in Moscow, St. Petersburg, even abroad. In addition to his Yasnaya Polyana school, Tolstoy then organized several schools in the surrounding villages. So, in October 1861, three schools were opened - Golovenkovskaya, Zhitovskaya and Lomintsevskaya, then in the area where Tolstoy was the mediator, the number of schools reached twenty-one.
Family life. "War and Peace"
No matter how much Tolstoy was fond of his school and intermediary activities, he could not stifle the artist-writer in himself, he was more drawn to the creation of works of art. Tolstoy developed an irresistible desire in artistic images to tell about Russian life, about what worries him, to express his sincere views, his ideas, his feelings, to tell about what he lived and experienced during this time. He is collecting material for the novel "The Decembrists", which he planned to write abroad, after meeting the Decembrist S.G. Volkonsky, who returned only from exile, writes the story "Polikushka", finishes the story "Cossacks", on which he worked with interruptions for about 10 years.
Despite the upsurge in literary work, it was more and more difficult for Tolstoy to live alone. In the summer of 1862, he felt particularly lonely. "I have no friends, no! I am alone. There were friends when I served mammon, and no, when I serve the truth."
He is sad and dreary, and more and more often continues to travel to Moscow and visit there in the family of the famous court doctor Andrei Evstafievich Bers, who had three daughters - Liza, Sonya and Tanya. Here Tolstoy experiences warmth and comfort. And he is irresistibly attracted to the middle daughter of the Berses, Sonya. He liked her for her simple disposition, her cordiality, her cheerfulness, her lively mind. Sofya Andreevna brought great animation and comfort to the life of Yasnaya Polyana. Now the writer has found peace of mind. He was content with his life. All his worries and doubts seemed to disappear. Tolstoy's life path became clearer. Surrounded by the attention of his wife, Tolstoy is completely immersed in literary work. New images take him deep into the history of our homeland - to the fields of the great battles of the Russian people. Tolstoy lives with his heroes and paints pictures of Russian social life during the Patriotic War of 1812.
In 1862 it was seven years after the fall of Sevastopol, Russia had not yet healed its wounds, the Russian people still deeply experienced their defeat and the fall of Sevastopol. It was necessary to inspire the people with faith in themselves, in their strengths, in their courage, show an example of the strength of the people, awaken their national consciousness, show the spiritual beauty of the Russian people, their heroic struggle for their independence. All this is reflected in the immortal epic War and Peace. Tolstoy began writing his novel War and Peace in 1863 and finished in 1869. Before embarking on the novel "War and Peace" Tolstoy studied letters, manuscripts, newspapers, books about the history of the Patriotic War of 1812, he was interested in the memories of his contemporaries, their stories about this time, he read the history of Alexander I. characters and their environment. And retiring in his office, Tolstoy painted images of the lovely Natasha Rostova, and the noble Andrei Bolkonsky, an independent and proud patriot, his father Vasily and the good-natured, honest Pierre Bezukhov and other heroes of the novel. Tolstoy's life during the period of his inspired work on the novel "War and Peace" passed more or less calmly. In the summer of 1863, the first-born Seryozha was born to the Tolstoy couple. A year later, their daughter Tanya was born.
70s. "Anna Karenina". Spiritual crisis
After long hard work, Tolstoy ends his brilliant epic - the novel War and Peace. It was possible to take a break from work, but the writer was already growing new desires, new needs, and he writes down: "The soul asked for something - I wanted something. What do I want?" he asked himself. He himself was not clear about his desires, but he felt the need to change his life, he felt a growing emotional anxiety, a desire to find something that is not in the environment. In this search for the eternally new, the whole brilliant passionate living nature of the writer is reflected. He wants to be reborn and be completely different.
He studies the dramas of Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe. Suddenly I began to study Greek. I again fired up the desire to work in the field of education. He was captured by the idea of \u200b\u200btraining teachers from among the people, he tried to open the "University in bast shoes", in the words of Sofia Andreevna. But he failed to do this due to lack of funds.
The books used to teach children were boring and incomprehensible, and Tolstoy had the idea to write a new ABC and books for reading for schools. He writes many small children's stories, fables, fairy tales and at the same time creates a large story "Prisoner of the Caucasus". Tolstoy worked on it very carefully, especially on the language of the story, achieving its simplicity and clarity, so that it could pass "through the censorship of janitors, cabbies, black cooks."
"Azbuka" was not very successful. Tolstoy soon set about creating great works of art.
Tolstoy takes a new idea - to portray the type of a married woman from high society, who has lost herself, pathetic, but not guilty. This image appeared in the writer's mind back in 1870. This was the idea behind the novel Anna Karenina. In "Anna Karenina" Tolstoy is the same great artist-psychologist, an extraordinary connoisseur of the human soul, from whose eyes the slightest movement will not hide. He showed us new human personalities and penetrated new psychological depths. Anna, Vronsky, Karenin, Levin, Kitty, Steve Oblonsky, his wife Dolly - all these images are wonderful artistic discoveries that only Tolstoy's growing talent could do. The novel "Anna Karenina", according to Dostoevsky, "perfection as a work of art, with which nothing similar from European literature in the present era can be compared."
After long and joyful years of life, the Tolstoy family suffered a heavy grief. In 1873, the writer's youngest son Petya died. In the summer of 1874, her beloved aunt Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya, who occupied an important place in the life of the writer, died.
Tolstoy was finishing his novel Anna Karenina at a time when more than ten years had passed after the abolition of serfdom and when the old order was rapidly changing in Russia, but the new one had not yet been established. When the landowners' land passed to the peasants, but they could not develop it, and therefore some of them left the land, went to the city to earn money, and only a small part of the peasants bought land from the ruined peasants. Tolstoy was haunted by thoughts about the fate of the peasants and the ruining landowner, about their relationship, and he painfully sought a way out of this historically created situation.
The writer continued to go for walks, disappear on the hunt, outwardly live as before, but anxiety and dissatisfaction with life grew in his soul. And in order to drown out these feelings in himself, Tolstoy is especially engaged in music, he plays the piano for 4-6 hours a day. While playing, he seemed to listen to himself, to his inner voice, to the new that was growing in his soul. Both in music and in hunting, he wanted to forget himself from the oppressive thoughts and sorrowful feelings. But the feeling of dissatisfaction was so strong that neither music, nor hunting, nor performing religious rites could calm him. In such cases, the writer tried to join the crowd of the people, where he found, as it seemed to him, a solution to the doubts that tormented him, he gained faith in himself and in life.
After long painful reflections, after intense searches, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that the class to which he belonged was incapable of being reborn, incapable of saving the fate of his beloved homeland, incapable of building a rational society in which everyone would be happy. He saw the impassable chasm between the two worlds - the world of exploiters who swam with the fat of high-ranking tsarist officials, and the world of the oppressed, living in hopeless poverty, and realized that all his ideals, all his hopes for the unity of classes were crumbling, that the landlords would never agree to unite with people.
The writer clearly saw that everyone was deceiving the people: the government, the landowners, the merchants, and the priests. The writer is seized with confusion and despair, he even thinks about suicide, just like his character Levin in the novel Anna Karenina. How to live? What to do next? The writer cannot live without faith in the future of his people, his country. Where to find a fulcrum, what to cling to? And Tolstoy now turns all his eyes to the working people. Tolstoy gets so used to the life of the common people that he himself begins to express his views, his interests, his worldview, that is, he finally leaves his class.
Tolstoy wrote about his spiritual revolution in "Confession", on which he began to work in early 1880. In it, summing up the results of his activities until the 80s, he also explained the reasons for the spiritual crisis. "I renounced the life of our circle, recognizing that this is not life, but only a semblance of life ..."
Religious writings also attract his attention. He reads the works of Archpriest Avvakum, the Gospel and others. In order to clarify religious issues, to understand the life of people and their way of life, Tolstoy in the spring of 1881 went on foot with his servant S.P. Arbuzov to the monastery - Optina Pustyn. He considers his journey to be very important and rewarding. It is important for him to see "... how the world of God lives, big, real, and not the one that we have arranged for ourselves and from which we do not leave, even though we have traveled around the world"
In Optina Hermitage, Tolstoy is disappointed in the elders. But on the other hand, he admires the common people more and more, admires their wisdom and kindness.
Neither road adversity, nor travel difficulties, nor age stopped the writer. He himself said that the road was terribly difficult and restless for him, but nevertheless he again and again left or went now to Optina Pustyn, now to Kiev, now to the Samara steppes, now to Moscow, now to Petersburg.
And he's looking for a mad storm
As if there is peace in the storms.
With these words, Sofya Andreevna Lermontova expressed her husband's endless desire for movement, the eternal search for something new.
While Tolstoy's family wanted a quiet life, he thirsted for knowledge, sought the truth, wanted to know how people live. In search of the truth, Tolstoy traveled to the Trinity-Sergius Lavra, talked there with high clergymen and came to the even greater conviction that the church with its servants protects the interests not of the people, but of its oppressors, the government. The confessors, according to Tolstoy, left the true path of serving people forever at the moment when they "consecrated the first tsar and assured him that he could help the faith with his name." Wanting to expose the lies, deception of the church and the state and give advice to people how to live, Tolstoy begins to write on religious and philosophical topics, he writes an article "Church and State", which causes discontent from those around him.
But the writer was attracted by the life of the peasants, the life of the village. Tolstoy talks with peasants for a long time, goes to huts, yards, visits peasant fields, meadows, works with them, tries to understand and comprehend their work, their moral foundations, their morals, understand and study their speech. During a conversation with peasants, Tolstoy writes down individual words, folk proverbs, sayings, apt folk expressions. The notebooks of 1879 served as Tolstoy's later materials for many of his works of art, mainly for folk stories.
80s. Moscow
The family of Lev Nikolaevich grew. He already had seven children. Older children grew up. It was necessary to educate them. And in the fall of 1881, the writer's family moved to Moscow. Soon after moving to Moscow, Lev Nikolaevich began to identify children. The eldest son Sergei studied at the university, Ilya and Lev were assigned to the private Polivanov gymnasium. For the eldest daughter Tatyana, the artist V.G. Perov was invited, and then she entered the school of painting and later studied with the artist N.N. Ge.
Lev Nikolaevich was dissatisfied with the move to Moscow, he was burdened and annoyed by the luxury of the rooms in which he settled. He was annoyed by the noise of the streets, the hustle and bustle of the city, he yearned, sought communication with the people and nature. To relieve himself of melancholy, he began to cross the Moscow River by boat and go to Vorobyovy Gory, and there he found a rest from city life in the middle of nature, met working people in the forest, drank happily, chopped wood with them and talked for a long time.
At the beginning of 1882, Tolstoy took an active part in the Moscow census, which was carried out over three days. After visiting Khitrov's market, where he saw hungry, dirty, half-naked people, after taking part in the census of Tolstoy, hatred for the ruling classes even more seizes, sympathy for all the oppressed and enslaved grows in him even more. He reflects his observations during the census in his works. He begins writing an angry, accusatory article, "So What Should We Do?" Tolstoy boldly threw fiery words of accusation to the world of masters, to the world of oppressors. Simultaneously with the work on the article, Tolstoy continues to work on folk stories.
Tolstoy, during the period of his Moscow life, turns with all passion to the philosophy of the peoples of the East. He enthusiastically reads the Chinese thinker Confucius, reads everything that concerns the life of the Chinese people, their way of life, religion. He reads with interest the Chinese thinker Lao Tzu, translates him into Russian, writes out individual thoughts.
L.N. had great love. Tolstoy to Indian folk wisdom, to folk poetry. The ideas and thoughts of the Eastern sages were in tune with Tolstoy.
But philosophy could not resolve all the doubts and painful questions facing the writer. Not finding answers to the tormenting questions in philosophy, he turns to economic literature, the writer reads Henry George's book on the nationalization of the land. Tolstoy thought that now it would be possible to resolve the complex peasant question of land. He tried to put George's theory into practice. And these attempts in life were reflected in the novel "Resurrection".
Since 1884, Tolstoy became a vegetarian, quit smoking, strive for even greater simplicity of life. More and more insistently and persistently the thought takes possession of him, but is it possible to leave this manor's estate, whether it is possible to settle in a peasant hut, to live together with the working people. But before this step Tolstoy was still far away, he was deeply rooted in the economy and was still closely connected with his family.
Helping the widow of Yasnaya Polyana with many children Kopylova to carry hay in the summer of 1886, L.N. Tolstoy bruised his leg and was bedridden for about three months. During his illness, Tolstoy recalled a case from a court case given to him by the Tula prosecutor Davydov for acquaintance.
The play "The Power of Darkness" was written by him rather quickly, already at the end of 1886 Tolstoy finished it. In his play, Tolstoy shows how money disfigures a person's life, pushing him to crimes. They destroy the foundations of the peasant family, corrupt people, trample on human feelings. They made both Matryona and Nikita criminals, basically good people. The play depicts vivid images of peasants who are in the "power of darkness", living in a "dark kingdom".
In the same year with The Power of Darkness, one of Tolstoy's wonderful stories, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, was published, written on the horror of the dying of a man whose whole being was filled with insignificant and pitiful vanity of life.
Tolstoy had hardly finished his play The Power of Darkness when he began writing a new play The Fruits of Enlightenment. This comedy is based on the opposition of two worlds - the world of the dispossessed, robbed men and the world of robbers, oppressors of the peasants. For a long time the tsarist government did not allow the comedy "The Fruits of Enlightenment" to be published and staged in theaters, but the play was passed from hand to hand and was staged on home and amateur stages. It was only in the fall of 1891 that the first production took place on the stage of the Alexandria Theater.
Plays by Tolstoy passed on the stage not only of Russian theaters, they were also staged on the stages of theaters in Paris, London, Berlin.
In the summer of 1887, the famous actor V.N. Andreev-Burlak, reciter-reciter. Burlak told Tolstoy a story about his wife's betrayal, which he heard from one of the passengers when he was traveling to Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy used this story as the basis for his new work, The Kreutzer Sonata. Tolstoy began work on it in 1887 and finished in 1889. The Kreutzer Sonata was a great success, but it was banned for publication and all attempts to obtain permission to print it remained in vain. And only in March 1891, Sofya Andreevna, having achieved a personal meeting with the tsar in St. Petersburg, received permission to publish the Kreutzer Sonata in the complete collected works of Tolstoy.
90s. "Resurrection"
An expression of passionate protest against the fundamental foundations of the autocratic system was Tolstoy's novel Resurrection, on which he worked for ten years with interruptions from 1889 to 1899. The material for the novel "Resurrection" was the trial of the "fallen" woman, the prostitute Rosalia, accused of stealing a hundred rubles from her drunken "guest" the merchant Smelkov and of poisoning him. She was found guilty and sentenced to hard labor. The novel "Resurrection" broadly embraces Russian life at the end of the 19th century, touches upon the most profound and complex problems of that time.
In 1890, in early spring, during the period of work on "Resurrection", in search of the truth, Lev Nikolaevich again went to Optina Pustyn. Tolstoy still wants to know the real faith. In Optina Pustyn, he talks with Elder Ambrose about different confessions, but even there he does not find an answer to the exciting questions. Tolstoy left the monastery unsatisfied. He did not find any truth there, he did not recognize any real faith, and the one that he saw there is the same deception, the same lie.
In Yasnaya Polyana, the seeker of human happiness is now more than ever worried about "idleness, fat". It is "hard, hard" for him. He is ashamed that he has to lead a dirty, vile life, so as not to violate "love", not to violate family life. Tolstoy continues to have many guests. Empty conversations with them arouse in him an aversion to an idle life, and he writes: "Guests are a disaster of our life." Only the arrival of N.N. Ge is "great joy" for Tolstoy.
The main reason for Tolstoy's dissatisfaction and anxiety was that he did not see a real joyful life around him. “I yearn very much about the inexpediency of life,” he writes in his diary. All his life Tolstoy was looking for happiness for the people. He believed that it should be here on earth, and not in heaven, as the ministers of the church assured. Tolstoy passionately wanted there to be no poor, destitute, hungry, prisons, executions, wars, murders and enmity between peoples. The writer treated all peoples with equal respect, for him the equality of all people is an axiom, without which he cannot think. "What is in the heart of one person lies in the consciousness of every other, and what lies in the consciousness of one people, then lies in the consciousness of every other," he wrote in a letter to Getz.
The writer believed that the people need to bring light. Tolstoy considered the introduction of knowledge and science into the consciousness of the working people an important matter and devoted much attention and energy to the creation and dissemination of literature that would satisfy the needs of the people. But if literature is to serve the people, then this service must be free of charge, this service must not be sold. And Lev Nikolaevich invites Sofya Andreevna to write a letter to the editorial board of Russkiye Vedomosti about his renunciation of copyright to his works. And so that everyone who wishes in Russia and abroad has the right to publish his works written since 1881 free of charge.
In 1891 - 1892 famine broke out in the central provinces of Russia. Tolstoy painfully experienced the disaster of the people. Tolstoy's activities in helping the hungry took on the broadest dimensions. He organizes canteens. In addition, he tries to draw public attention to the outbreak of the national disaster, writes an article "On Hunger". The government was terribly indignant about the publication of the article. And with the same indignation the government greeted Tolstoy's second article on the famine "A Terrible Question", and the "Conclusion to the last report on aid to the hungry" was even banned from printing in Russia, it was published in 1896 abroad.
These articles reflected the entire terrible reality of the starving villages and were filled with such a passionate pathos of denunciation, such anger towards the ruling class that even, against the will of the writer, it infected a significant part of Russian society with a deep hatred of the existing system.
Tolstoy considered the inevitable change in existing forms of life, the inevitable destruction of the existing system. Tolstoy severely denounced the hated autocratic system in his publicistic articles and in his immortal novel Resurrection.
But no matter how much the tsarist government hated Tolstoy for his articles, the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not dare to bring Tolstoy to justice, since the writer's popularity was great not only in Russia, but also abroad. Tolstoy's works, his ideas, his fame as an original, original, brilliant writer spread far beyond the borders of Russia. Scientists, writers, public figures came to him from abroad, correspondence was established with him. Came from Berlin Levenfeld. He wrote the first biography of Tolstoy in German.
Even in his youth, in his early works, Tolstoy preached the idea of \u200b\u200bself-improvement and now came to the conviction that the kingdom of prosperity must be created within the person himself. "The kingdom of God is within you", you need to improve your spirit, your consciousness, you need to free yourself from passions, from desires to arrange personal well-being, you need to create inner happiness, independent of external conditions, and develop a point of view on life so that no external conditions interfere a good and happy life - these are the foundations of Tolstoy's "teaching".
Considering that a person's life should be a kind of preaching about how to live, Tolstoy understood that his personal life did not always correspond to his expressed requirements for it, and this was one of the reasons for his restless state, his ever-growing dissatisfaction with life.
For a long time the writer was burdened by his position as an owner. Not wanting to remain them any longer, in July 1892 he signed a separate act, according to which all real estate, that is, land, forest, buildings, was transferred to his wife and children.
In February 1895, Tolstoy wrote the story "The Boss and Worker" and in January 1896 sent it to print. This story was eagerly awaited, because rumors had already spread that Tolstoy as an artist had dried up and could no longer write, and the story "The Owner and the Worker" testified to the exact opposite. The story was a great success, although it caused a lot of controversy.
The spring of 1895 was the most difficult in the life of the Tolstoy couple. The youngest, the thirteenth child, Vanechka, seven years old, dies, whose short life combined the late love of Lev Nikolaevich and Sophia Andreyevna.
From 1897 to 1898, Tolstoy worked on his famous treatise What is Art? In 1899 the novel "Resurrection" was completed and published in the magazine "Niva".
The last ten years of L.N. Tolstoy
And life, meanwhile, did not stand still. The twentieth century was already on the threshold. The world was changing literally before our eyes. Tolstoy foresaw that the coming century would bring with it the threat of global wars of unprecedented scale. Tolstoy expounded his visionary thoughts in passionate, denunciatory articles, and the whole world listened to his word. He listened, but there was no calmness in him. Yasnaya Polyana by that time had become not just a family abode, but a place of pilgrimage. An endless stream of visitors from all over the world was drawn to Tolstoy. "The whole world, the whole earth looks at him: from China, India, America - living quivering threads are stretched to him from everywhere, his soul is for everyone and forever," M. Gorky wrote about him. The life of the great old man was filled with work, talking, reading ...
After the novel "Resurrection" Tolstoy wants to write journalistic articles. But before proceeding with the articles, he wrote another play "The Living Corpse". He worked on it for more than six months. The main character of the Living Corpse, Fedya Protasov, is a living incarnation against the purely formal foundations of family life legalized by society and the state, which fasten the life of spouses together not with a feeling of mutual attraction, but with the bonds of legal coercion. The drama "The Living Corpse" was not completely finished by Tolstoy. It seemed to him that he was writing a frivolous thing, that he needed to portray the life of the people, but he forgot about it.
Tolstoy is preoccupied with the idea that it is necessary for everyone to refuse to serve and obey the state, which dooms the people to poverty, hunger and incredible suffering. In his articles, he sharply criticizes the tsarist officials, the church, the state, mercilessly exposes the perpetrators of the oppression of the working masses. He believes that there is only one remedy that can eliminate government violence, and that is "keeping people from participating in violence." People, in his opinion, must improve themselves spiritually, and then the kingdom of God will be established on earth, that is, the happy life of people.
The writer, using live, concrete examples in an accessible and vivid form, in his articles showed the powerlessness of the working people, their terrible life, and immediately painted pictures of the idle life of those responsible for the death and suffering of thousands of the people. These articles by Tolstoy filled the hearts of the people with love for the great writer, with such boldness throwing fiery words of truth, words, burning hearts of people into the dark kingdom of lies and deceit.
In 1901, the Holy Synod excommunicated Tolstoy from the church and anathematized him. The immediate turn to excommunication was the novel Resurrection, mainly its chapters, in which Tolstoy exposed hypocrisy, deception of the state church and ridiculed the then Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod K. Pobedonostsev in the image of Toporov. In all churches, at the direction of the Holy Synod, during services they cursed the name of Tolstoy as an apostate, trying to incite hatred of the writer among believers, using their religious feelings. But despite this, Tolstoy's popularity grew.
The excitement he experienced led Tolstoy to a painful state. In the spring of 1891, on the advice of doctors, Tolstoy went to the Crimea. In Crimea, during his illness, Tolstoy did not abandon his literary pursuits. He gradually began working on journalistic articles addressed to the working class. In Gaspra he was visited by A.P. Chekhov, A.M. Bitter. Tolstoy's illness was uneven. Now he felt better, then again he got worse. With the onset of the summer of 1902, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana.
In 1903, Tolstoy wrote the story "After the Ball", the theme of which was a real incident. The story uses the principle of artistic contrast: a bright, colorful picture of a merry ball in a noble assembly is replaced by a harsh scene of the agonizing punishment of a defenseless soldier. Simultaneously with the story, Tolstoy wrote three fairy tales. The motives of these tales are taken from The Thousand and One Nights. Fairy tales were not admitted by the censor: they appeared in print only in 1906.
In 1904, the Russo-Japanese War broke out. To the depths of his soul, Tolstoy was agitated by the new people's grief. He strongly condemns the governments that have unleashed a bloody massacre of peoples in their interests. At this time, he is writing an article "Think It Over". In it, Tolstoy called the Far Eastern War one of the most terrible atrocities that the tsarist government committed against the Russian people. Following the war of 1904, a revolution broke out in Russia. The working class and the peasantry rose up to fight the capitalists and landlords. Tolstoy's attitude to the 1905 revolution was contradictory, he hailed it as a social movement destroying the violence of the exploiters, their age-old oppression, but Tolstoy was against the violent overthrow of the capitalists, landowners, against the violent elimination of private property.
In 1908, Tolstoy wrote an unusually strong article "I Can't Be Silent", directed against the death penalty, against the government, executioners and robbers. After the suppression of the 1905 revolution, the tsarist government attacked the participants in the revolution with all its might. In many cities of Russia, executions of workers and peasants took place, gallows were erected, on which advanced people died, who raised their voice or hand against the oppressors. In his article, Tolstoy passed a harsh sentence both to the tsarist government and its officials for the atrocities committed in the country, he considered them to be the culprits of the murders and deaths of thousands of leading people of Russia.
Among the most significant works of Tolstoy of the last decade is the remarkable historical story "Hadji Murat". He worked on this story until the last days of his life. In the introduction to Hadji Murat, Tolstoy openly formulated the main idea of \u200b\u200bhis story: all living things must fight for life, to the last breath, to resist the forces that cripple, disfigure, and kill life. He took the Hadji Murat manuscript with him when he left Yasnaya Polyana for good, hoping to continue working on it, but the manuscript remained unfinished. The story was published after Tolstoy's death in 1912.
In the last months of his life, Tolstoy worked on the work "There are no Guilty People in the World," which has come down to us in three unfinished versions. Each of them contrasts the lives of the rich and the poor.
In the diaries and letters of Tolstoy, starting from the 80s, more and more confessions appeared about his discord with his wife and almost all children on the basis of opposing views on life, about his deep mental suffering caused by the fact that he, not daring to leave his wife and children, was forced to lead a "lordly life" that he hated. The roots of these disagreements went back to earlier years. In the very first months of family life, Tolstoy and his wife discovered that they look at many things differently, that each of them has his own tastes, habits, and neither one nor the other does not intend to abandon them. Tolstoy wanted to leave home for a long time, already thirty years, but all these years he did not dare to carry out his plan. All that was needed was a push.
Such an impetus was the fact that he saw Sofya Andreevna frantically going through papers in his office, trying to find an official testament to Lev Nikolaevich's refusal of copyright to his works, which was drawn up secretly from his family. It was too much. The patience was overflowing. And he left. Gone into the dark, into the unknown. He left on his last mournful path.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died on November 7 (20), 1910 at the deaf unknown Astapovo station of the Moscow-Kursk railway. The coffin with Tolstoy's body was transported to Yasnaya Polyana. They buried him, as he wanted, in the Yasnaya Polyana forest "Zakaz", on the edge of the ravine, where, according to legend, a "green stick" was buried, on which is written what should destroy all evil in people and give them great blessing ...