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Unit 5: The Spark Neglected Burns the House by Leo Tolstoy

it in the early 1800s; upon his death his daughter Countess Volkonsky inherited it. It is now Notes
preserved as a State Memorial and National Preserve.
From Leo’s Introduction to biographer Paul Birukoff’s Leo Tolstoy: Childhood and Early Manhood
(1906) we gather the very clear and fond memories he has of his early years and his loved
ones: Leo’s father never humbled himself before any one, nor altered his brisk, merry, and
often chaffing tone. Count Tolstoy was a gentle, easy going man. Quick to tell a joke, he was
reluctant to mete out corporal punishment that was so common at the time to the hundreds
of serfs on their estate. He disliked wolf-baiting and fox-hunting, preferring to ride in the
fields and forests, or walking with his children and their pack of romping greyhounds. Leo
recounts outings with his siblings, friends, and paternal grandmother Pelageya Nikolayevna
Tolstoy (d.1838) to pick hazelnuts; she seemed a dreamy magical figure to him. Sometimes he
spent the evening in her bedroom while their blind story-teller Lev Stepanovich narrated
lengthy, enchanting tales.
Leo greatly admired his oldest brother Nikolay ‘Koko’ (1823-1860). In recollecting their childhood
Leo revered him, along with his mother, as saintly in their modesty, humility, and unwillingness
to condemn or judge others. His other siblings were Sergey (b.1826), Dmitriy (1827-1855) and
Mariya (b1830). The Tolstoy House was a bustling household, often with extended family
members and friends visiting for dinner or staying for days at a time. The children and adults
played Patience, the piano, put on plays, sang Russian and Gypsy folk songs and read stories
and poetry aloud. A voracious reader, Leo would visit his father in his study as he read and
smoked his pipe. Sometimes the Count would have young Leo recited memorised passages
from Alexander Pushkin. The family home still contains the library of over twenty thousand
books in over thirty languages. When not indoors, there was no shortage of outdoor activities
for the children: tobogganing in winter, horseback riding, playing in the orchards, forests,
formal gardens, greenhouses and bathing in the large pond which Leo loved to do all his life.
Days in the country however were to come to an end when, in 1836, the Tolstoys moved to
Moscow so that the boys could attend school. The following summer Count Tolstoy died
suddenly. He was buried at Tula. Leo had a hard time accepting this inevitability of life; the
loss of his father was a profound experience to such a young boy and as he watched his
beloved grandmother Pelageya (who died two years later) suffer through her grief, he had his
first spiritual questionings. His father’s sister, Countess Aleksandra Osten Saken ‘Aunt Aline’
became the children’s guardian and Nikolay and Sergey stayed with her in Moscow while Leo
and his sister Mariya and Dmitriy moved back to Yasnaya Polyana to live with Aunt Tatyana.
When Aunt Aline died in 1841, Leo, now aged thirteen travelled with his brothers to Kazan
where their next guardians Aunt and Uncle Yushkof lived. Despite the pall of death, loss of
innocence and upheavals in living arrangements, Leo started preparations for the entrance
examinations to Kazan University, wanting to enter the faculty of Oriental languages. He
studied Arabic, Turkish, Latin, German, English, and French, and geography, history, and
religion. He also began in earnest studying the literary works of English, Russian and French
authors including Charles Dickens, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov, Jean Jacques
Rousseau, Laurence Sterne, Friedrich Schiller, and Francois-Marie Arouet Voltaire.

Boyhood: Military Service and First Writings

In 1844, at the age of sixteen and the end of what Tolstoy says was his childhood, and the
beginning of his youth, he entered the University of Kazan to study Turco-Arabic literature.
While he did not graduate beyond the second year (he would later attempt to study law) this
period of his life also corresponded with his coming out into society. He and his brothers
moved out of their uncle’s home and secured their own rooms. No longer the provincial, there

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 55