Page 59 - DENG104_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_I

Elective English–I

Notes The “Stories for the People” and Tolstoy’s two popular dramas have a unique place in the
context of “popular literature.” Just as they represent a synthesis of various elements on the
stylistic level, so too in the broader context they represent a synthesis of the various categories
of popular literature. They are “of the people” in their language, their devices, and often in
their sources. They are “about the people” in their emphasis on popular characters and settings
and the patent tone of sympathy with the lot of the narod. And of course, they were “for the
people,” written primarily for the improvement and appreciation of what Tolstoy was convinced
was the most discriminating of artistic audiences.
In the last thirty years of his life Tolstoy’s activity was threefold. He was an artist, producing
fictions in various genres and with various ends in view. He was also a religious thinker and
publicist, developing and explaining a philosophical system which was mainly ethical in its
emphasis. Finally, he was an aesthetician, elaborating a theory of universally comprehensible
art which, in effect, provided the theoretical framework within which the artist and the religious
thinker could cooperate. His writings for the people represent the unique confluence of these
three modes of activity: the moralism of the religious thinker was presented in a manner
which both pleased the artist and satisfied the requirements of the aesthetician.

5.3 Introduction to the Author

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian author, essayist and philosopher wrote the epic novel War
and Peace (1865-69), Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears subject to
laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from that connection appears to be
free. How should the past life of nations and of humanity be regarded—as the result of the
free, or as the result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for history.
Anonymously narrated, the novel is set during the Napoleonic wars, the era which forms the
backdrop of Tolstoy’s painstakingly detailed depiction of early 19th century Tsarist Russia
under Alexander I: her archetypes and anti-heroes. Through his masterful development of
characters Pierre, Andrew, Natasha, Nicholas, Mary and the rest, War and Peace examines the
absurdity, hypocrisy, and shallowness of war and aristocratic society. It all comes to a climax
during the Battle of Borodino. Initially Tolstoy’s friends including Ivan S. Turgenev and Gustave
Flaubert decided that the novel’s ‘formlessness’ weakened the overall potential for its success,
but they were soon proved wrong. Almost one hundred years after his death, in January of
2007, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1878) and War and Peace were placed on Time magazine’s ten
greatest novels of all time, first and third place respectively.

Childhood: Days of Idyll, Moscow and Kazan University

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was born on 28 August 1828 into a long line of Russian nobility. He
was the fourth child of Countess Maria Volkonsky (who Tolstoy does not remember, as she
died after giving birth to his sister Mariya in 1830) and Count Nicolay Ilyich Tolstoy (1797-1837)
a Lieutenant Colonel who was awarded the order of St. Vladimir for his service. At the age
of sixteen he had fathered a son with a servant girl, Leo’s half-brother Mishenka. When Count
Tolstoy resigned from his last post with the Military Orphanage, a marriage was arranged
between him and Maria Volkonsky. After her death the Count’s distant cousin Tatyana Aleksandrovna
Yergolskaya ‘Aunt Tatyana’, who already lived with them helped him in running the household,
raising the children and overseeing their tutoring. Leo’s paternal grandfather Count Ilya Andreyevich
Tolstoy (d.1820) had been an overly generous and trusting man; by the time Leo was born the
Tolstoy fortunes had dwindled and the newlyweds settled at the Volkonsky family estate
‘Yasnaya Polyana’ (meaning ‘Clear Glade’) located in Tula Region, Shchekino District of central
Russia. Leo’s maternal great grandfather Prince Nikolas Sergeyevich Volkonsky had established

54 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY