Lav Nikolajevi Tolstoj

Lav Nikolajevi Tolstoj (rus. ) Jasnaja Poljana, pokrajina Tula, 9. rujna 1828. - Astapovo, 7. studenog 1910.), ruski grof, knjievnik i mislilac, jedan od najveih svjetskih romanopisaca. Tolstoj je bio zagovorni k slobodnjakog kranskog anarhizma koji se, po njegovim rijeima, temeljio na onome to je rekao Isus Krist umjesto na crkvenim naukama, stoga je i poricao Isusovo boanstvo, roenje o d Djevice i uskrsnue. Tolstoj je takoer bio uvjereni pacifist ivegetarijanac.

ivotopis
Lav Nikolajevi Tolstoj roen je u mjestu Jasna Poljana u pokrajini Tula kao etvrto od petero djece. Njegova obitelj bila je plemikog porijekla. Naime, titulu grofa njegovim precima dodjelio je u 18. stoljeu osobno Petar Veliki. Tolstojevi roditelji umrli su dok je jo bio dijete pa su ga stoga odgojili i za njega se brinuli roaci. Moda i zbog toga njegov ivot obiljeen je brojnim ljubavnim vezama stoga emo u ovoj biografiji najveu panju posvetiti upravo tom aspektu njegovog ivota. Polazei u prikaz njegovog sentimentalnog ivota kronolokim redom zapaamo da je ve u svojoj osmoj godini vatren i osjetljiv, upoznao njenost i gorinu ljubavi. Bila je to ljupka devetogodinja Sonjeka Koloin. Pored nje, plavue barunastih oiju, osjeao je duboku radost i savrenu sreu. Kad je bio daleko od nje dovoljna mu je bila i sama pomisao na nju pa da mu se oi napune suzama. Kasnije je osjetio ljubav prema maloj Ljubovi Isljenjevoj koja j e stanovala u susjedstvu. Divio joj se mnogo, ali je bio strano ljubomoran kada je ona poklanjala svoju panju drugome. Jednog dana, vidjevi je kako s balkona razgovara s nekim dekom u bijesu ju je udario tako snano da je pala s balkona. Zbog toga je Ljubova epala vie godina. Ono to je zanimljivo jeste da e mu ona kasnije postati punica. U svojoj 18. godini poinje mnogo patiti zbog svoje runoe - irokog nosa, debelih usana i sivih malih oiju. U prisustvu ena postaje stidljiv i zbunjen. Ali aristokratsko porijeklo i mogunost kretanja po mondenskim skupovima davalo mu je privilegije da upozna enski svijet poput Don Juana. U to vrijeme esto je zamiljao da je zaljubljen, bilo je dovoljno samo da sretne neku enu. Prvo je bio zaljubljen u Aleksandru, sestru svoga prijatelja, zatim u jednu udanu enu, pa nakon toga u nasmijanu Zinaidu, prijateljicu svoje sestre Marije. Mada je bio osjetljiv prema ljepoti Zinaide cijenio je njenu blistavu inteligenciju, humor i sklonost ka poeziji. Najvie je volio s njom voditi duge i beskrajno strasne razgovore. Meutim stvarnost nije bila tako uzviena. Razdiran snanom i vatrenom senzualnou prepustio se porocima. Udvarao se damama, spavao sa sobaricama. Tako je zavolio mladu i lijepu esnatestogodinju slukinju. Naslutivi tu avanturu njegova tetka je otjerala tu malu ljuba vnicu, koja je propala i ubrzo umrla traginom smru. Obuzdavi svoja ula pisao je u svom dnevniku: Treba gledati na drutvo ena, kao na neprijatan dio drutvenog ivota i drati se to dalje od njih. Tko nam u stvari otkriva senzualnost, neosjetljivost, lakomislenost i mnoge druge poroke ako ne ene. Nije dugo trajao taj njegov povueni ivot. esto ga je prekidao periodima vesele razuzdanosti i neurednim ivotom, odlazei na partije zadovoljstva kod svog brata Sergeja, ija je kua uvijek bila puna lije pih Ciganki. I tako polako otkriva porok po porok. Prvo alkohol, a zatim kocku na kojoj e izubiti veliki dio posjeda i nekoliko kua. Ona e ga drati godinama. Boravei zimi u Moskvi i Petrogradu najee je zavravao svoje veeri kod Cigana, s prijateljima i djedom svoje budue ene. Naputajui balove i armantne djevojke, odlazio je u krme po predgraima Petrograda. Krme pune Ciganki, ampanjca, svaa, polupanih aa, glazbe, pjesme bile su za Tolstoja nezaboravne.

Tu upoznaje voljenu Kau - inae pjevaicu koja mu se nije skidala s krila. Ako se moe vjerovati njegovom dnevniku samo dva dana poslije njegove zakletve kako vie nee ii k enama, nije mogao odoliti. 20. XII. 1850; lo dan; bio sam kod Cigana. 28... kod Cigana; 29. zaista ivim kao pravi gad... Uveer piem pravila ivota, a zatim odlazim kod Cigana! Vrativi se balovima i mondenskim skupovima, uobraava da je zaljubljen u jednu enu iz visokog drutva, i to u kneginju erbotovu. Iz tog vjerovanja, neto kasnije, nastati e Pria jueranjeg dana. U vrijeme dok je bio na Kavkazu artiljerac, stari Kozak Jepuka, pijanica kod koga je stanovao, nalazi mu njenu divlja - tatarske djevojke, za koje se poeo veoma interesirati. Svakodnevno ih poziva u svoj ator. Volio je ar tih kosookih divljakua, njihove svijetle oi, tanke vitke lanke, struk. Tako je sreo Marenjku, ljepu i poteniju od prethodnih. Ona je postala Marija u njegovom romanu Kozaci. Toliko se zagrijao da je odustao od svog najomiljenijeg hobija - lova, samo kako bi mogao s njom dugo etati. Iako je bio zaljubljen nije pomiljao ovu kavakasku idilu uresiti brakom. Kako je esto premjetan tako se raaju mnogobrojne avanture s lijepim goama po toplicama u tim krajevima. U toku ljetnog boravka u Pjatigorsku upoznaje Teodorinu koja se u njega zaljubljuje. Ona me strano uzbuuje, zapisao je. Romansa zapoeta prije est tjedana zavrila je kao i mnoge prije nje. Vrativi se u Moskvu preputa se mnogobrojnim zadovoljstvima glavnog grada. Jedan njegov suborac, zapisao je: Nestajao bi na jedan ili dva dana, a zatim bi se vratio kao zabludjeli sin, namrgoen, oslabio, pokajniki. Priao bi sve: kako je banio, kockao, vodio ljubav... Ukratko udan tip... Bilo je dana kada se predavao manje bezazlenim razonodama i odlazio u javne kue. Poslije jedne takve noi u orgijanju uz lou glazbu, sir, rakiju, dernjavu i djevojke, postavio je sebi pravilo (po tko zna koji put): da nikad vie nee prekoraiti prag krme ili javne kue. Jednog dana posjetio je svoju prijateljicu iz djetinstva, Lju bovu Isljenjevu, koju je prije 20-ak godina u napadu ljubomore bacio s balkona. Bila je udana i imala je tri prekrasne kerke. Kako je volio djecu igrao se s njene tri djevojice: Veerali smo kod Ljuboke, sada, Bersove. Djeca su nas posluivala za stolom. Kako su te djevojice ljupke, vesele! A zatim smo se etali i igrali preskakanja. est godina kasnije jedna od tih ljupkih djevojica, desetogodinja Sonja, postae njegova supruga. U Moskvi je imao jedan drugi susret. Flertovao je sa sestrom svog prijatelja, Aleksandrom. Bila je udana i postala kneginja Aleksandra Obelenska. Susret s njom ostavio je snaan dojam. Nastavili su flert, ali sada ve mnogo strasnije. Vrativi se u svoje rodno mjesto Jasnu Poljanu raa se idila koja e dugo potrajati, s Valerijom prvom susjedom. Imao je ozbiljne namjere oeniti se s njom. Sve to nije mu smetalo da nekoj od bezbrojnih seljanki na njegovom posjedu da znak da doe u sjeno, jer ga je vie nego ikad muila pohotljivost. I s Valerijom je prekinuo, ne ba elegantno - jednim pismom i bijegom u Pariz. Tamo posjeuje pripadnike, tada mnogobrojne, ruske kolonije gdje upoznaje mladu kneginju Livov. Jedno vrijeme zanosi se enidbom s njom. Ali redaju se poznanstva: gospoica Fitz -James, ije su ga noge obarale; pa jedna umiljata dama s velikim grudima... Volio je lutati ulicama Pariza gdje je jednom prilikom sreo enu koja ga je do te mjere uzbudila da ju je pratio satima. U enevi upoznaje kerke svog roenog djeda, Elizabetu i Aleksandru Tolstoj. Aleksandra, stara 39 godina imala je lijepe oi, topao glas, profinjen ukus, izvanrednu utivost i takt dvorskih ljudi; ukratko sve osobine koje je Tolstoj cijenio. Bila je u prisnoj vezi s Dostojevskim i Turgenjevim. Ovo prijateljstvo ubrzo se pretvorilo u jednu jaku sentimentalnu vezu. U to vrijeme, po engleskom receptu, bilo je normalno da se netko zabav lja s roenom tetkom. Pored nje je, kad god bi to bilo potrebno, zaboravljao lakomislenu Valeriju.

Ah kad bi Aleksandra bila deset godina mlaa, sigurno bih se oenio. - zapisao je u svoj dnevnik. Dosta dugo ostati e prijatelji i eto e se dopisivati. U enevi je imao krae sentimentalne veze s izvjesnom Engleskinjom Dorom i jednom bucmastom i veselom slukinjom. Mondenska i seoska zadovoljstva ipak nisu mogla prikriti prazninu njegova ivota. Sve ee je bio opsjednut mislima o enidbi. Nakon dugih i estih odlazaka kod nekadaanje ljubavi iz djetinstva - Ljubuke, Tolstoj, sada ve ozbiljan grof u srednjim godinama, s ugledom ve poznatog pisca oarava njene ve odrasle kerke. Sve su bile lijepe. Najstarija, pravilnih crta lica, hladne ljepote, samouvjerena, inteligentna i zainteresirana za knjievnost zvala se Liza. Sonja je bila bez sumnje najljepa i veoma nadarena za umjetnost. Najmlaa Tanja, jo je bila na granici djetinjstva i ozbiljnosti. U prvo vrijeme, panju je poklanjao Lizi, tako da su i ona i njeni roditelji bili uvjereni da Tolstoj dolazi zbog nje. Kasnije je Tolstoj otkrio svoje simpatije prema Sofiji. Tako e doi i do prosidbe. Saznavi da grof trai Sofijinu ruku Liza je briznula u pla i bijesno je savjetovala sestri da ga odbije. Ne sluajui je Sofija, sve sretna, ipak je pristala. Na Sofijinim zarukama Liza je teka srca zagrlila svog, budueg ogora. Pred vjenanje, na Sofijino inzistiranje da pogleda njegov dnevnik Tolstoj je bez ikakvog otpora pristao. Mlada i naivna, ne poznavajui ivot, pod perom tog ovjeka od 35 godina koji e za koji dan postati njen suprug otkriva najbrutalniju i najgrublju stranu njegovog ivota. Najvie ju je pogodilo to je njen zarunik daleko od olienja junaka iz legende koju je ona sebi stvorila, tijekom posljednja tjedna prije braka doivljavao s nekom seljankom vraje seksualne strasti. Njena ljutnja prerasla je u neizvjesnost kada se na dan vjenanja mladoenja nije pojavljivao. Sa zakanjenjom od nekoliko sati stigao je i brak je sklopljen. Moe se rei da je u to vrijeme njihova ljubav bila jaka i obostrana. Meutim jedna tako snana ljubav morala je platiti svoj danak ljubomori. Sofija je neprekidno mislila na ene koje je Lav volio ili poznavao prije nje. Naroito je mrzila Aksinju, kojoj je dao jednog sina, tu prostu i debelu seljanku, tri godine ljubavnicu njenog mua. Jednog dana ju je prepoznala meu seljankama koje su bile pozvane da izmjene pod u kui. Krv joj je uzavrela i nastale su scene koje je Tolstoj mrzio iz dna due. Pomisao na muevljevu nevjeru s Aksinjom, ili nekom drugom seljankom, proganjala ju je. Preruavala se u seljanku, navukla maramu na oi i ila za njim cestom kako bi vidjela da li e je pozvati da poe s njim u umarak. Sofijina mlaa sestra Tanja esto je dolazila na njihovo imanje. U to vrijeme, koje se moe nazvati vremenom Tolstojeva stvaralatva,Tanja je imala velikog utjecaja. Pisac je volio dugo priati s ljupkom Tanjom. Sluajui je pisac je mislio na Natau Rostovu iz njegovog budueg romana Rat i mir. Biljeio je njena osjeanja, pokrete, kratku prolost. Kad je Sergej, stariji Tolstojev brat ponudio ruku Tanji, Sofija se naroito radovala jer je bila ljubomorna na svoju sestru ije je drutvo njen mu i previe volio. U to vrijeme imao je jednu armantnu sekretar icu koja mu je mnogo pomagala u njegovu radu, ali na Sofijino inzsitiranje da je otpusti Tolstoj je popustio kako se ne bi prepirao. Koliko god je Sofija bila ljubomorna, Tolstoj je bio jo vie. Ona jo uvijek relativno mlada, srela je nekadanjeg oboava telja - mladog porunika Polivanova, koji je bio veoma nestrpljiv. Erupcija bolesne Tolstojeve ljubomore dostigla je kulminaciju, ljubomora se graniila sa sujetom. Kako su godine njihova braka prolazile oni su se sve vie meusobno udaljavali. Oboje su se osjeali odvojenim i usamljenim. Tolstoj joj nije imao to prebaciti ali je sve manje traio njeno drutvo. U to vrijeme hvat a ga manija bjeanja od svoje supruge. Sofija, sada ve u godinama, majka trinaestoro djece, biva sve nervoznija. Pored ove histerine ene Tolstoj e ipak ostati samo zahvaljujui djeci. Ipak pred kraj ivota pobjei e od nje i zavriti na nekoj maloj ruskoj seoskoj eljnikoj stanici Astopov, svoj veoma buran ivot 7. studenog 1910. godine zbog upale plua. Sofija e tada primiti telegram u kojem e pisati samo: Umro Tolstoj. U bivemSovjetskom Savezu objavljena zbirka njegovih djela sadri 90 svezaka.

Izvod iz bibliografije
Djetinjstvo (1852.) Djeatvo (1854.) Mladost (1856.) Sevastopoljske pripovijetke (1855. - 1856.) Obiteljska srea (1859.) Kozaci (1863.) Polikuka (1863.) Rat i mir (1864. - 1869.) Otac Sergije (1890. - 1898.) Ana Karenjina (1873. - 1877.) Smrt Ivana Iljia (1884. - 1886.) Vlast tame (1886.) Plodovi prosvjete (1886. - 1889.) Kreutzerova sonata (1888.) Gospodar i sluga (1895.) Uskrsnue (1889. - 1899.) ivi le (1900.) Hadi Murat (1896. - 1904.) Krug itanja (1903.)

Fiction[edit source | editbeta]

Novels[edit source | editbeta]

Childhood ( [Detstvo], 1852) - Volume 1 of 'Autobiographical Trilogy' Boyhood ( [Otrochestvo], 1854) - Volume 2 of 'Autobiographical Trilogy' Youth ( [Yunost'], 1856) - Volume 3 of 'Autobiographical Trilogy' The Cossacks ( [Kazaki], 1863) War and Peace ( [Voyna i mir], 1869) Anna Karenina ( [Anna Karenina], 1877) Resurrection ( [Voskresenie], 1899)

Novellas[edit source | editbeta]

Family Happiness ( The Kreutzer Sonata ( [Semeynoe schast`e], 1859) [Smert' Ivana Il'icha], 1886) [Kreitserova Sonata], 1889)

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (

The Forged Coupon ( [Fal'shivyi kupon], 1911) Hadji Murat ( - [Khadzhi-Murat], 1912)

Short stories[edit source | editbeta]

"The Raid" (" " ["Nabeg"], 1852) "The Wood-Felling" (" " ["Rubka lesa"], 1855) "Sevastopol Sketches" (" " ["Sevastopolskie rasskazy"], 18551856)

"Sevastopol in December 1854" (1855) "Sevastopol in May 1855" (1855) "Sevastopol in August 1855" (1856)

"A Billiard-Marker's Notes" (" " ["Zapiski markera"], 1855) "The Snowstorm" ("" ["Metel"], 1856) "Two Hussars" (" " ["Dva gusara"], 1856)

"A Landlord's Morning" (1856) "Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment" (1856) "Lucerne" (" " ["Lyutsern"], 1857) "Albert" ("" ["Al'bert"], 1858) "Three Deaths" (" " ["Tri smerti"], 1859) "The Porcelain Doll" (1863) "Polikshka" (" " ["Polikushka"], 1863) "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" (" "The Prisoner in the Caucasus" (" "The Bear-Hunt" (1872) "What Men Live By" (" " ["Chem lyudi zhivy"], 1881) "Memoirs of a Madman" (1884) , " ["Bog pravdu vidit, da ne skoro skazhet"], 1872)

" ["Kavkazskii plennik"], 1872)

"Quench the Spark" (" , " ["Upustish ogon', ne potushish"], 1885) "Two Old Men" (1885) "Where Love Is, God Is" (" , " ["Gde lyubov'], 1885) "Ivan the Fool" (" " ["Skazka ob Ivanedurake"], 1885)

"Evil Allures, But Good Endures" (1885) "Wisdom of Children" (1885) "Ilys" (1885) "The Three Hermits" (1886) "Promoting a Devil" (1886) "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (" " ["Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno"], 1886) "The Grain" (1886) "The Godson" (1886) "Repentance" (1886) "Croesus and Fate" (1886) "Kholstomer" ("" ["Kholstomer"], 1888) "A Lost Opportunity" (1889) "The Empty Drum" (1891) "Franoise" (1892) "A Talk Among Leisured People" (1893) "Walk in the Light While There is Light" (1893) "The Coffee-House of Surrat" (1893) "Master and Man" (" " ["Khozyain and rabotnik"], 1895) "Too Dear! " (" " ["Dorogo stoit"], 1897) "Father Sergius" (" " ["Otetz Sergij"], 1898) "Esarhaddon, King of Assyria" (1903) "Work, Death, and Sickness" (1903) "Three Questions" (" " ["Tri voprosa"], 1903) "After the Ball" (1903) "Feodor Kuzmich" (1905) "Alyosha the Pot" (" " ["Alyosha Gorshok"], 1905) "What For?" (1906) "The Devil" (" " ["Dyavol"], 1889)

Plays[edit source | editbeta]

The Power of Darkness ( [Vlast' t'my], 1886) The First Distiller (1886) The Fruits of Enlightenment ( [Plody prosvesheniya], 1891) The Living Corpse ( [Zhivoi trup], 1900) The Cause of it All (1910) The Light Shines in Darkness

Non-fiction[edit source | editbeta]

Philosophical works[edit source | editbeta]

A Confession (1879) A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology (1880) The Gospel in Brief, or A Short Exposition of the Gospel (1881) The Four Gospel Unified and Translated (1881) Church and State (1882) What I Believe (also called My Religion) (1884) What Is to Be Done? (also translated as What Then Must We Do?) (1886) On Life (1887) The Love of God and of one's Neighbour (1889) Timothy Bondareff (1890) Why Do Men Intoxicate Themselves? (1890) The First Step: on vegetarianism (1892) The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893) Non-Activity (1893) The Meaning of Refusal of Military Service (1893) Reason and Religion (1894) Religion and Morality (1894) Christianity and Patriotism (1894) Non-Resistance: letter to Ernest H. Crospy (1896) How to Read the Gospels (1896) The Deception of the Church (1896) Letter to the Liberals (1898) Christian Teaching (1898) On Suicide (1900) Thou Shalt Not Kill (1900) Reply to the Holy Synod (1901) The Only Way (1901) On Religious Toleration (1901 What Is Religion? (1902) To the Orthodox Clergy (1903) Thoughts of Wise Men (compilation; 1904) The Only Need (1905) The Grate Sin (1905) A Cycle of Reading (compilation; 1906) Do Not Kill (1906) Love Each Other (1906) An Appeal to Youth (1907) The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908) complete text The Only Command (1909) A Calendar of Wisdom ( [Put' Zhizni]; compilation; 1909)

Works on art and literature[edit source | editbeta]

What Is Art? (1897) Art and Not Art (1897)

Shakespeare and the Drama (1909)

Pedagogical works[edit source | editbeta]

Articles from Tolstoy's journal on education, "Yasnaya Polyana" (1861-1862) A Primer (1872) On Popular Instruction (1874) A New Primer (1875)

"What Is Art?" (excerpts)

by Leo Tolstoy
Editor's Note: This essay (originally published in 1896) and the translation by Alymer Maude (first published in 1899) are in the public domain and may be freely reproduced. About the Author: Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), although best known for his literary works, also wrote various essays on art, history, and religion. The discussion questions, bibliographic references, and hyperlinks have been added by Julie Van Camp. (Copyright Julie C. Van Camp 1997) They too may be freely reproduced, so long as this complete citation is included with any such reproductions. Paragraph numbering below has been added to facilitate class discussion. It was not included in the original text. [DISCUSSION QUESTIONS] CHAPTER FIVE (excerpts). . . #1. In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man. #2. Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression. #3. Speech, transmitting the thoughts and experiences of men, serves as a means of union among them, and art acts in a similar manner. The peculiarity of this latter means of intercourse, distinguishing it from intercourse by means of words, consists in this, that whereas by words a man transmits his thoughts to another, by means of art he transmits his feelings. #4. The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. To take the simplest example; one man laughs, and another who hears becomes merry; or a man weeps, and another who hears feels sorrow. A man is excited or irritated, and another man seeing him comes to a similar state of mind. By his movements or by the sounds of his voice, a man expresses courage and determination or sadness and calmness, and this state of mind passes on to others. A man suffers, expressing his sufferings by groans and spasms, and this suffering transmits itself to other people; a man expresses his feeling of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to certain objects, persons, or phenomena, and others are infected by the same feelings of admiration, devotion, fear, respect, or love to the same objects, persons, and phenomena.

#5. And it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man's expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based. #6. If a man infects another or others directly, immediately, by his appearance or by the sounds he gives vent to at the very time he experiences the feeling; if he causes another man to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning, or to laugh or cry when he himself is obliged to laugh or cry, or to suffer when he himself is suffering - that does not amount to art. #7. Art begins when one person, with the object of joining another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer. #8. The feelings with which the artist infects others may be most various - very strong or very weak, very important or very insignificant, very bad or very good: feelings of love for one's own country, self-devotion and submission to fate or to God expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers described in a novel, feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a picture, courage expressed in a triumphal march, merriment evoked by a dance, humor evoked by a funny story, the feeling of quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful arabesque - it is all art. #9. If only the spectators or auditors are infected by the feelings which the author has felt, it is art. #10. To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art. #11. Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them. #12. Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man's emotions by external signs; it is not the

production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity. #13. As, thanks to man's capacity to express thoughts by words, every man may know all that has been done for him in the realms of thought by all humanity before his day, and can in the present, thanks to this capacity to understand the thoughts of others, become a sharer in their activity and can himself hand on to his contemporaries and descendants the thoughts he has assimilated from others, as well as those which have arisen within himself; so, thanks to man's capacity to be infected with the feelings of others by means of art, all that is being lived through by his contemporaries is accessible to him, as well as the feelings experienced by men thousands of years ago, and he has also the possibility of transmitting his own feelings to others. #14. If people lacked this capacity to receive the thoughts conceived by the men who preceded them and to pass on to others their own thoughts, men would be like wild beasts, or like Kaspar Houser. #15. And if men lacked this other capacity of being infected by art, people might be almost more savage still, and, above all, more separated from, and more hostile to, one another. #16. And therefore the activity of art is a most important one, as important as the activity of speech itself and as generally diffused. #17. We are accustomed to understand art to be only what we hear and see in theaters, concerts, and exhibitions, together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . . But all this is but the smallest part of the art by which we communicate with each other in life. All human life is filled with works of art of every kind - from cradlesong, jest, mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal processions. It is all artistic activity. So that by art, in the limited sense of the word, we do not mean all human activity transmitting feelings, but only that part which we for some reason select from it and to which we attach special importance. #18. This special importance has always been given by all men to that part of this activity which transmits feelings flowing from their religious perception, and this small part of art they have specifically called art, attaching to it the full meaning of the word. #19. That was how man of old -- Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle - looked on art. Thus did the Hebrew prophets and the ancient Christians regard art; thus it was, and still is, understood by the Mohammedans, and thus it still is understood by religious folk among our own peasantry. #20. Some teachers of mankind - as Plato in his Republic and people such as the primitive Christians, the strict Mohammedans, and the Buddhists -- have gone so far as to repudiate all art. #21. People viewing art in this way (in contradiction to the prevalent view of today which regards any art as good if only it affords pleasure) considered, and consider, that art (as contrasted with speech, which need not be listened to) is so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art.

#22. Evidently such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied - one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. But not less wrong are the people of civilized European society of our class and day in favoring any art if it but serves beauty, i.e., gives people pleasure. #23. Formerly people feared lest among the works of art there might chance to be some causing corruption, and they prohibited art altogether. Now they only fear lest they should be deprived of any enjoyment art can afford, and patronize any art. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are far more harmful. CHAPTER FIFTEEN #24. Art, in our society, has been so perverted that not only has bad art come to be considered good, but even the very perception of what art really is has been lost. In order to be able to speak about the art of our society, it is, therefore, first of all necessary to distinguish art from counterfeit art. #25. There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real art from its counterfeit, namely, the infectiousness of art. If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint on reading, hearing, or seeing another man's work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it). #26. It is true that this indication is an internal one, and that there are people who have forgotten what the action of real art is, who expect something else form art (in our society the great majority are in this state), and that therefore such people may mistake for this aesthetic feeling the feeling of diversion and a certain excitement which they receive from counterfeits of art. But though it is impossible to undeceive these people, just as it is impossible to convince a man suffering from "Daltonism" [a type of color blindness] that green is not red, yet, for all that, this indication remains perfectly definite to those whose feeling for art is neither perverted nor atrophied, and it clearly distinguishes the feeling produced by art from all other feelings. #27. The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else's - as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist - not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art. #28. If a man is infected by the author's condition of soul, if he feels this emotion and this union with others, then the object which has effected this is art; but if there be no such infection, if there be not this union with the author and with others who are moved by the same work - then it is not

art. And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence in art. #29. The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from its subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feelings it transmits. #30. And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions: 1. On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted; 2. on the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted; 3. on the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits. #31. The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he is transferred, the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it. #32. The clearness of expression assists infection because the receiver, who mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the more clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he has long known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression. #33. But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator, hearer, or reader feels that the artist is infected by his own production, and writes, sings, or plays for himself, and not merely to act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the receiver; and contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for his own satisfaction - does not himself feel what he wishes to express - but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any infection but actually repel. #34. I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may be all summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e., that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else; and the more individual it is - the more the artist has drawn it from the depths of his nature - the more sympathetic and sincere will it be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit. #35. Therefore this third condition - sincerity - is the most important of the three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity. #36. Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits, and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its subject matter.

#37. The absence of any one of these conditions excludes a work form the category of art and relegates it to that of art's counterfeits. If the work does not transmit the artist's peculiarity of feeling and is therefore not individual, if it is unintelligibly expressed, or if it has not proceeded from the author's inner need for expression - it is not a work of art. If all these conditions are present, even in the smallest degree, then the work, even if a weak one, is yet a work of art. #38. The presence in various degrees of these three conditions - individuality, clearness, and sincerity - decides the merit of a work of art as art, apart from subject matter. All works of art take rank of merit according to the degree in which they fulfill the first, the second, and the third of these conditions. In one the individuality of the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and clearness but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and combinations. #39. Thus is art divided from that which is not art, and thus is the quality of art as art decided, independently of its subject matter, i.e., apart from whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad. #40. But how are we to define good and bad art with reference to its subject matter?

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: , pronounced [l ef n k la v t t l stoj] ( listen); 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a ferventChristian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi[1] and Martin Luther King, Jr.[2]

Life and career

Tolstoy was born in Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate in the Tula region of Russia. The Tolstoyswere a well-known family of old Russian nobility. He was the fourth of five children of Count Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the Patriotic War of 1812, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya (Volkonskaya). Tolstoy's parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying law and oriental languages at Kazan University. His [3] teachers described him as "both unable and unwilling to learn." Tolstoy left university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent much of his time in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. In 1851, after running up heavy gambling debts, he went with his older brother to the Caucasus and joined the army. It was about this time that he started writing. His conversion from a dissolute and privileged society author to the non-violent and spiritual anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around Europe in 1857 and 1860 61. Others who followed the same path were Alexander Herzen,Mikhail Bakunin, and Peter Kropotkin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the rest of his life. Writing in a letter to his friendVasily Botkin: "The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its [4] citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere." His European trip in 186061 shaped both his political and literary development when he met Victor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after reading Hugo's newly finished Les Miserables. The similar evocation of battle scenes in Hugo's novel and Tolstoy's War and Peaceindicates this influence. Tolstoy's political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, then living in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. Apart from reviewing Proudhon's forthcoming publication, La Guerre et la Paix (War and Peace in French), whose title Tolstoy would borrow for his masterpiece, the two men discussed education, as Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks: "If I recount this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only man who understood the significance of education and of the printing press in our time." Fired by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded thirteen schools for his serfs' children, based on [5] the principles Tolstoy described in his 1862 essay "The School at Yasnaya Polyana". Tolstoy's educational experiments were short-lived, partly due to harassment by the Tsarist secret police. However, as a direct forerunner to A. S. [6] Neill's Summerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana can justifiably be claimed the first example of a coherent theory of democratic education.

Death
Tolstoy died in 1910, at the age of 82. He died of pneumonia at Astapovo train station, after falling ill when he left home in the middle of the winter, and in the dead of night. His death came only days after he had finally gathered the nerve to [8] secretly leave home, and to separate from his wife, meanwhile renouncing his aristocratic lifestyle. His night-time departure was an apparent attempt to escape unannounced from the jealous tirades of his wife Sonia, who was outspokenly opposed to many of his teachings and who in recent years had grown envious of the attention which it seemed to her, Tolstoy had lavished upon his Tolstoyan "disciples".
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Just prior to his death his health had been a concern of his family who had been actively engaged in his healthcare on a daily basis. In his last few days before passing he had been speaking and writing of his own death, and in fact he did contract his final illness only a few days afterwards at a train station after approximately a day's rail journey towards the [9] South. The station master took Tolstoy to his apartment, where his personal doctors were called to the scene. He was given injections of morphine and camphor. The police tried to limit access to his funeral procession, but thousands of peasants lined the streets at his funeral. Still, some peasants were heard to say that, other than knowing that "some nobleman had died," they knew little else about [10] Tolstoy.

Personal life
On September 23, 1862, Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, who was 16 years his junior and the daughter of a [11] court physician. She was called Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofya, by her family and friends. They had thirteen [12] children: Count Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy (July 10, 1863 December 23, 1947) Countess Tatyana Lvovna Tolstaya (October 4, 1864 September 21, 1950), wife of Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (May 22, 1866 December 11, 1933), writer Count Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (June 1, 1869 October 18, 1945), writer and sculptor Countess Maria Lvovna Tolstaya (18711906), wife of Nikolai Leonidovich Obolensky Count Peter Lvovich Tolstoy (18721873), died in infancy Count Nikolai Lvovich Tolstoy (18741875), died in infancy Countess Varvara Lvovna Tolstaya (18751875), died in infancy Count Andrei Lvovich Tolstoy (18771916), served in the Russo-Japanese War Count Michael Lvovich Tolstoy (18791944) Count Alexei Lvovich Tolstoy (18811886) Countess Alexandra Lvovna Tolstaya (July 18, 1884 September 26, 1979) Count Ivan Lvovich Tolstoy (18881895)

The marriage was marked from the outset by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the fact that one of the serfs on his estate had borne [11] him a son. Even so, their early married life was ostensibly happy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom to compose War [11] and Peace and Anna Karenina with Sonya acting as his secretary, proof-reader and financial manager. However, their latter life together has been described by A. N. Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history. Tolstoy's relationship with his wife deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and earned wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works. The Tolstoy family left Russia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, and Leo Tolstoy's descendants today live in Sweden, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and the United States. Among them are Swedish singer Viktoria Tolstoy and Swedish landowner Christopher Paus, Herresta.

Novels and fictional works

Tolstoy is one of the giants of Russian literature; his works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina and novellas such as Hadji Murad and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His contemporaries paid him lofty tributes. Fyodor Dostoyevsky thought him the greatest of all living novelists. Gustave Flaubert, on reading a translation of War and Peace, exclaimed, "What an artist and what a psychologist!" Anton Chekhov, who often visited Tolstoy at his country estate, wrote, "When literature possesses a Tolstoy, it is easy and pleasant to be a writer; even when you know you have achieved nothing yourself and are still achieving nothing, this is not as terrible as it might otherwise be, because Tolstoy achieves for everyone. What he does serves to justify all the hopes and aspirations invested in literature."

Later critics and novelists continue to bear testament to Tolstoy's art. Virginia Woolf declared him the greatest of all novelists. James Joyce noted that, "He is never dull, never stupid, never tired, never pedantic, never theatrical!". Thomas Mann wrote of Tolstoy's seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature". Such sentiments were shared by the likes of Proust, Faulkner and Nabokov. The latter heaped superlatives upon The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Anna Karenina; he questioned, however, the reputation of War and Peace, and sharply criticized Resurrection and The Kreutzer Sonata. Tolstoy's earliest works, the autobiographical novels Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (18521856), tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the chasm between himself and his peasants. Though he later rejected them as sentimental, a great deal of Tolstoy's own life is revealed. They retain their relevance as accounts of the universal story of growing up. Tolstoy served as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War, recounted in his Sevastapol Sketches. His experiences in battle helped stir his subsequent pacifismand gave him material for realistic depiction of the [13] horrors of war in his later work. His fiction consistently attempts to convey realistically the Russian society in which he lived. The Cossacks (1863) describes the Cossack life and people through a story of a Russian aristocrat in love with a Cossack girl. Anna Karenina (1877) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives. Tolstoy not only drew from his own life experiences but also created characters in his own image, such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei in War and Peace, Levin in Anna Karenina and to some extent, Prince Nekhlyudov in Resurrection. War and Peace is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its dramatic breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical with others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. Tolstoy's original idea for the novel was to investigate the causes of the Decembrist revolt, to which it refers only in the last chapters, from which can be deduced that Andrei Bolkonski's son will become one of the Decembrists. The novel explores Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider War and Peace to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written at that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in [15] nineteenth-century life. War and Peace (which is to Tolstoy really an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy [16] thought that Anna Karenina was his first true novel. After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) and What Is to Be Done? develop a radical anarcho-pacifistChristian philosophy which led to [17] his excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1901. For all the praise showered on Anna [18] Karenina and War and Peace, Tolstoy rejected the two works later in his life as something not as true of reality.
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Religious and political beliefs

After reading Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Tolstoy gradually became converted to the ascetic morality upheld in that work as the proper spiritual path for the upper classes: "Do you know what this summer has meant for me? Constant raptures over Schopenhauer and a whole series of spiritual delights which I've never experienced [19] before. ... no student has ever studied so much on his course, and learned so much, as I have this summer" In Chapter VI of A Confession, Tolstoy quoted the final paragraph of Schopenhauer's work. It explained how the nothingness that results from complete denial of self is only a relative nothingness, and is not to be feared. The novelist was struck by the description of Christian, Buddhist, and Hindu ascetic renunciation as being the path to holiness. After reading passages such as the following, which abound in Schopenhauer's ethical chapters, the Russian nobleman chose poverty and formal denial of the will:

But this very necessity of involuntary suffering (by poor people) for eternal salvation is also expressed by that utterance of the Savior (Matthew 19:24): "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore those who were greatly in earnest about their eternal salvation, chose voluntary poverty when fate had denied this to them and they had been born in wealth. Thus Buddha Sakyamuni was born a prince, but voluntarily took to the mendicant's staff; and Francis of Assisi, the founder of the mendicant orders who, as a youngster at a ball, where the daughters of all the notabilities were sitting together, was asked: "Now Francis, will you not soon make your choice from these beauties?" and who replied: "I have made a far more beautiful choice!" "Whom?" " La povert (poverty)": whereupon he abandoned every thing shortly afterwards and wandered through the land as a mendicant.
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In 1884, Tolstoy wrote a book called "What I Believe," in which he openly confessed his Christian beliefs. He affirmed his belief in Jesus Christ'steachings and was particularly influenced by the Sermon on the Mount, and the injunction to turn the other cheek, which he understood as a "commandment of non-resistance to evil by force" and a doctrine of pacifism and nonviolence. In his work The Kingdom Of God Is Within You, he explains that he considered mistaken the Church's doctrine because they had made a "perversion" of Christ's teachings. Tolstoy also received letters from American quakers who introduced him to the nonviolence writings of Quaker Christians such as George Fox, William Penn,Jonathan Dymond. Tolstoy believed being a Christian required him to be a pacifist; the consequences of being a pacifist, and the apparently inevitable waging of war by government, are the reason why he is considered a philosophical anarchist. Later, various versions of "Tolstoy's Bible" would be published, indicating the passages Tolstoy most relied on, [21] specifically, the reported words of Jesus himself. Tolstoy believed that a true Christian could find lasting happiness by striving for inner self-perfection through following the Great Commandment of loving one's neighbor and God rather than looking outward to the Church or state for guidance. His belief in nonresistance (nonviolence) when faced by conflict is another distinct attribute of his philosophy based on Christ's teachings. By directly influencing Mahatma Gandhi with this idea through his work The Kingdom of God Is Within You (full text of English translation available on Wikisource), Tolstoy has had a huge influence on the nonviolent resistance movement to this day. He believed that the aristocracy were a burden on the poor, and that the only solution to [citation needed] [22] how we live together is through anarchism. He also opposed private property and the institution of marriage and valued the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence (discussed in Father Sergius and his preface to The Kreutzer Sonata), ideals also held by the young Gandhi. Tolstoy's later work derives a passion and verve from the depth of his [23] austere moral views. The sequence of the temptation of Sergius in Father Sergius, for example, is among his later triumphs. Gorky relates how Tolstoy once read this passage before himself and Chekhov and that Tolstoy was moved to tears by the end of the reading. Other later passages of rare power include the crises of self-faced by the protagonists of The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man, where the main character in the former or the reader in the latter is made aware of the foolishness of the protagonists' lives. Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of Christian anarchist thought. The Tolstoyans were a small Christian anarchist group formed by Tolstoy's companion, Vladimir Chertkov (18541936), to spread Tolstoy's religious teachings. Prince Peter Kropotkin wrote of Tolstoy in the article on anarchism in the 1911 Encyclopdia Britannica: Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God Is Within You) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than
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a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.
[25]

During the Boxer Rebellion in China, Tolstoy praised the Boxers. He was harshly critical of the atrocities committed by the Russians, Germans, and other western troops. He accused them of engaging in slaughter when he heard about the lootings, rapes, and murders, in what he saw as Christian brutality. Tolstoy also named the two monarchs most [26][27] responsible for the atrocities; Nicholas II of Russia and Wilhelm II of Germany. Tolstoy also read the works of [28][29] Chinese thinker and philosopher, Confucius. Film footage of Tolstoy's 80th birthday at Yasnaya Polyana. Footage shows his wife Sofya (picking flowers in the garden), daughter Aleksandra (sitting in the carriage in the white blouse), his aide and confidante, V. Chertkov (bald man with the beard and mustache) and students. Filmed byAleksandr Osipovich Drankov, 1908. In hundreds of essays over the last twenty years of his life, Tolstoy reiterated the anarchist critique of the state and recommended books by Kropotkin and Proudhon to his readers, whilst rejecting anarchism's espousal of violent revolutionary means. In the 1900 essay, "On Anarchy", he wrote; "The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental power ... There can be only one permanent revolutiona moral one: the regeneration of the inner man." Despite his misgivings about anarchist violence, Tolstoy took risks to circulate the prohibited publications of anarchist thinkers in Russia, and [30] corrected the proofs of Kropotkin's "Words of a Rebel", illegally published in St Petersburg in 1906. Tolstoy was enthused by the economic thinking of Henry George, incorporating it approvingly into later works such [31] as Resurrection, the book that played a major factor in his excommunication. In 1908, Tolstoy wrote A Letter to a Hindoo outlining his belief in non-violence as a means for India to gain independence from British colonial rule. In 1909, a copy of the letter fell into the hands of Mohandas Gandhi who was working as a lawyer in South Africa at the time and in the beginnings of becoming an activist. Tolstoy's letter was significant for Gandhi who wrote to the famous writer seeking proof that he was the real author, leading to further [33] correspondence between them. Reading Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God Is Within You also convinced Gandhi to avoid violence and espouse nonviolent resistance, a debt Gandhi acknowledged in his autobiography, calling Tolstoy "the greatest apostle of non-violence that the present age has produced". The correspondence between Tolstoy and Gandhi would only last a year, from October 1909 until Tolstoy's death in November 1910, but led Gandhi to give the name, the [34] Tolstoy Colony, to his second ashram in South Africa. Besides non-violent resistance, the two men shared a common [35] belief in the merits of vegetarianism, the subject of several of Tolstoy's essays. Tolstoy also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. Tolstoy was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their [36] weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors in migrating to Canada. In 1904, during the RussoJapanese War, Tolstoy condemned the war and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.
[32]

In films
A 2009 film about Tolstoy's final year, The Last Station, based on the novel by Jay Parini, was made by director Michael Hoffman with Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy and Helen Mirren as Sofya Tolstoya. Both performers were nominated for Oscars for their roles. There have been other films about the writer, including Departure of a Grand Old Man, made in

1912 just two years after his death, How Fine, How Fresh the Roses Were (1913), and Leo Tolstoy, directed by and starring Sergei Gerasimov in 1984. There is also a famous lost film of Tolstoy made a decade before he died. In 1901, the American travel lecturer Burton Holmes visited Yasnaya Polyana with Albert J. Beveridge, the U.S. senator and historian. As the three men conversed, Holmes filmed Tolstoy with his 60-mm movie camera. Afterwards, Beveridge's advisers succeeded in having the film destroyed, fearing that documentary evidence of a meeting with the Russian author might hurt Beveridge's chances of running for the U.S. presidency.