Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
Encyclopedia
Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy ( – ), was a Russia
n poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist. He also gained fame for his satirical works, published under his own name (History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev
, The Dream of Councillor Popov
) and under the collaborational pen name of Kozma Prutkov
.
to the famed family of Tolstoy. His father, Count Konstantin Petrovich Tolstoy (1780-1870), a son of the army general, was a Russian state assignation bank councilor. His mother, Anna Alekseyevna Perovskaya (1796-1857), was an illegitimate daughter of Count Aleksey Kirillovich Razumovsky (1784-1822), an heir of the legendary Ukrainian hetman
Aleksey Razumovsky
. A. K. Tolstoy's uncle (on his father's side) was Fyodor Tolstoy
(1783-1873). His uncle on his mother's side was Aleksey Perovsky (1787-1836), an author known under the pen name of Antony Pogorelsky
. Aleksey Konstantinovich was a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy
; Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy
was their common great-grandfather.
Konstantin Tolstoy and Anna Perovskaya's marriage was short-lived; they divorced in October 1817. With her six weeks old son Anna moved first to her own Blistava estate in Chernigov Governorate
, then to Krasny Rog, belonging to her brother Aleksey Perovsky, who became Aleksey Konstantinovich's tutor and a long-time companion. Common knowledge has it that Pogorelsky's famous fantasy fairytale The Black Chicken or The People of the Underground was premiered at home, his young nephew being the only member of Pogorelsky's audience. It was under the latter's influence that Aleksey started to write poetry, as early as 1823, inspired by some old books he found at home. Aleksey had good teachers and at the age of six he fluently spoke French
, German
and English
. Later he learned Italian
as well..
As for the Tolstoys, Anna Perovskaya stopped seeing them altogether, only sending them postcards on major dates and holidays. Remembering those happy years, Aleksey later wrote:
In early 1826 Anna Perovskaya returned to Saint Petersburg with her brother and son. Here, due to his mother's closeness with the court of the Tsar, Aleksey was admitted to the future Tsar Alexander II
's childhood entourage and in August became what was officially termed "a comrade in games" for the young Crown Prince. Aleksey's duties were not many: he had to visit the Crown Prince in Saint Petersburgh and Tsarskoye Selo
, take walks with him on Yelagin Island
and participate in games, many of which were, in effect, small scale military exercises. They became friends and this friendship lasted for several decades, ending in the mid-1860s. In autumn of 1826 Aleksey met Aleksander Pushkin for the first time.
In summer 1827 the family visited Germany where in Weimar
young Aleksey met Goethe
. The great man greeted the boy very warmly and left him a fragment of a mammoth
tusk with his own drawing (depicting a frigate
) on it, for a present. Aleksey, having been awe-stricken, remembered little: "Only his magnificent features and the way he took me upon his lap", according to his autobiography. The family spent the next ten years in continuous travel, both in Russia and abroad. An 1831 trip to Italy
especially impressed the 13-year old. "Back in Russia I fell into a deep nostalgic depression, longing for Italy which felt like a real motherland; desperately mourning the loss, I cried at night when my dreams carried me off to this Paradise lost", he wrote in his autobiography decades later. In Italy the family met Karl Bryullov. On May 10, 1831, Aleksey wrote in his diary: "Bryullov dined with us and left a sketch in my album". The the painter promised Perovsky to make portraits of all three of them once he was back in Russia, but five years later he had finished only one- that of his nephew.
of tuberculosis
) and had become heir to his Krasny Rog estate. Also in 1835 Aleksey showed some of his new poems to Vasily Zhukovsky
, who praised them. There's evidence that Pushkin also approved of the young poet's early works, giving him full moral support. The Young poet wrote a lot, refining his technique, but wasn't eager to get published. "My first experiments were, no doubt, absurd, but at least metrically they were flawless. I went on training thus for many years, before I debuted... as a prose writer, not a poet", Tolstoy remembered later.
In January 1837 Tolstoy became attached to the Russian Embacy in Frankfurt
where he spent the next two years. The assignment was rather formal, it did not demand Tolstoy's presence in Germany and he spent most of his time in Saint Petersburg, leading a merry life, spending up to three thousand rubles per month, often going to Italy and France
. It was during one of these visits that he wrote his first two "gothic" novellas - Vurdalak's Family and Three Hundred Years On (originally in German, later translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich
). Tolstoy showed great interest in all things macabre, influenced, again, by his late uncle who "was obsessed with mysticism in every possible form" and who, in turn, was influenced by E. T. A. Hoffmann whom he was personally acquainted with.
In late 1840 Tolstoy was transferred back to Russia to a position in the Tsar's Imperial State Chancellery 2nd Department where he continued to work for many years, slowly rising in the hierarchy. As time went by, though, he showed less and less enthusiasm for what felt more and more like a major hindrance to his literary aspirations. In May 1841 Tolstoy debuted with The Vampire (a novella published under the pen name of "Krasnorogsky", a reference to Krasny Rog, his residence). Complicated in structure, multi-layered and rich in counterpoints, featuring both the element of "horror" and political satire, it instantly caught the attention of Vissarion Belinsky
who praised its "obviously still very young, but undoubtedly gifted author", totally ignorant of the latter's real identity.. Tolstoy himself saw the story as insignificant and made no attempt to include it in any of the subsequent compilations; it was only in 1900 that The Vampire was re-issued. In the autumn of 1843 Tolstoy debuted as a poet: his poem "Serebryanka" was published in the #40 edition of Listok dlya svetskikh lyudey (The Fashionable Paper). It took another two years for him to see his second short story, "Artyomy Semyonovich Bervenkovsky" published in the 1st volume of Count Vladimir Sollogub's Yesterday and Today almanac. The 2nd volume featured Amena, a novella, described as an extract from a novel called Stebelovsky which remained unfinished.
Throughout the 1840s Tolstoy led a busy high society life, full of pleasure trips, saloon parties and balls, hunting sprees and fleeting romances. He was described as "a handsome young man with blonde hair and a freshly coloured face" and was renowned for his physical strength, "bending spoons, forks and horse-shoes and driving nails into walls with one finger". One notable business trip to Kaluga
in 1850 led to a close friendship with Nikolay Gogol (whom he first met in Frankfurt and then in Rome
). Tolstoy recited to Gogol many of his yet unpublished poems and fragments from what later became the novel Prince Serebryanny. Gogol read him the second part of his novel Dead Souls
. Among other friendships he struck up in the forties were those with Aksakov
, Annenkov
, Nekrasov, Panayev
and Turgenev
.
In the early 1850s, in collaboration with the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Tolstoy created the fictional writer Kozma Prutkov
, a petty bureaucrat with great self-esteem who parodied the poetry of the day and wrote banal aphorisms. In 1851 Prutkov debuted with The Fantasy a comedy which was signed "Y" and "Z" and written by Tolstoy and Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov
. The play, mocking the then popular 'nonsense' vaudeville premiered on January 8 in the Alexandrinsky Theatre. This spectacular farce (featuring at one point a dozen small dogs running about on stage) caused a huge scandal, was promptly banned by Nikolay I (who was among the audience) and remained unpublished up until 1884.
It was also in 1851 that Tolstoy first met Sophia Andreyevna Miller (1827?-1892), the wife of a cavalry colonel (whom she later divorced with great difficulty) and an impressively well-educated woman who knew 14 languages, at a Bolshoy Theater masquerade. Tolstoy fell in love with her but had to wait for another twelve years before they were able to marry. Miller had, apparently, a perfect artistic taste and Tolstoy later referred to her as his harshest and most objective critic, as well as the best friend he'd ever had. All of his love lyrics from 1851 onwards were written for and about Sophia. Many of his poems ("My dear bluebells", "Amidst the ball uproar", "Brighter than the skylark's singing", "The wind from high up, it is not...") have been set to music by renowned composers and have become famous Russian romances.
In 1854 Sovremennik
magazine published several of Tolstoy's verses ("My bluebells", "Oh you haystacks..." and others), which instantly got critics talking, and also the first of Kozma Prutkov's humorously pompous poetic exercises. The latter was not so much a collective pseudonym, as a character who was making quite a point of coming across as a 'real' creature, performing, among other things, obnoxious pranks, one of which involved a messenger visiting all the leading Saint Petersburg architects late at night with the urgent news of the Isaakiyevsky Cathedral
having fallen down and urging them to appear early next morning at the court of Tsar Nikolay I, which they hastily did, to the Tsar's utter annoyance.
As the Crimean War broke out, Tolstoy's first intention was to gather a partisan fighting unit and lead it to the Baltic Sea
, should the English decide to land there. Along with Count Aleksey Bobrinsky (future Minister of transport) he started to finance and equip two partisan squads, forty fighters each. He bought some ammunition from Tula
and traveled all along the Baltic coastline, examining what was supposed to be his future theater of war, the Crown Prince being totally unaware of his plans. On September 2 the allies landed at Yevpatoria and Tolstoy headed South, to join the Imperial infantry regiment (under the command of Lev Perovsky, another of his uncles) as an army major, in March 1855. The regiment went only as far as Odessa
where a thousand men were lost from typhoid. In February 1856 Tolstoy became one of the casualties. In Odessa he was nursed back to health by Sophia Miller. Aleksander II was telegraphed daily on the subject of his old friend's condition, at his personal request. In May 1855 Tolstoy was back on his feet, but the war was over for him; he instead embarked upon a Crimean journey with Sophia.
After the War, in 1856, on the day of his Coronation, Aleksander II appointed Tolstoy as one of his personal aide-de-adjutants. It was only three years later that Tolstoy managed to get rid of this tiresome privilege which implied regular duties in the Palace, interfering with his now burgeoning literary career. "You cannot imagine what a storm of rhymes rages in me, what waves of poetry are sweeping through me, longing to break free", he wrote in a letter to Sophia Miller. Two thirds of Tolstoy's poetic legacy was created in the late 1850s. 1857 saw the publication of a large poem called The Sinner. It was followed by the more significant Ioann Damaskin, first published in Russkaya Beseda
January 1859 issue. The poem, dealing with the nature of poetry and the poet's position in society (and being in some ways autobiographical) caused scandal in higher places. The head of the 3rd Department Prince Vasily Dolgorukov
ordered the printing of the magazine to be stopped and for the poem to be removed. Evgraf Kovalevsky, the Minister of Education, personally permitted the publication, his rather daring decision marking a serious rift between the two departments.
Tolstoy's poems were appearing in virtually all the major Russian magazines of the time, regardless of their ideological inclinations. Yet, in 1857 his relationship with the leftist Sovremennik group became strained. Tolstoy drifted towards the Slavophile
s and their Russkaya beseda magazine, becoming a close friend of Ivan Aksakov
and Aleksey Khomyakov
, but this liaison was short-lived too.
He caused much controversy with his scathing remarks aimed at contemporary government officials (Timashev, Butkov, Panin, Velio) whom he– a supporter of the monarch– considered real enemies of the State. Tolstoy criticized the activities of the 3rd Department
, and in the wake of the Polish uprising
was one of the very few people in the Court to openly denounce Muravyov the Hangman's draconian methods of political repression.
A fierce opponent of xenophobia
, he saw Russia as a European country, and Russians as Europeans. This clashed with the slavophile
doctrine of maintaining Russia's "special place" in the world. " of slavophiles, Khomyakov sickens me when he places above the West just on the strength of our being Orthodox
", Tolstoy wrote in a letter. All the while, his dispute with Turgenev
, who saw the French state as Russia's potential guiding light, was well-publicised. "What France is moving towards is the dictatorship of mediocrity", Tolstoy argued. Being neither a westernizer
or a slavophile, Tolstoy annoyed both parties by his infatuation with pre-Tatar Russian society (which he idealized whole-heartedly, seeing it as an Eastern strain of European knighthood, based on the cult of the nobleman), his critique of the West's amoral pragmatism and socialist ideas, his dismissal of imperial ideals which he saw as tragically flawed, with the original doctrine of a centralized Russia, the vile Moscovia State
being, in his view, at the root of all Russian political evil. His eclectic outlook, described by some as "political romanticism", appeared to be in conflict with every political and social trend of the time.
Tolstoy rejected Christian dogmas, calling them the "church's argo" and believed in God as a 'higher being' and cosmic mind. "I don't have much respect either for the human mind, or for the 'possible or impossible' dilemma. What I believe in is that God gave us the power of emotion so we could go further than our mind leads us. As a leading force, human emotion is preferable to a thought, just as music is more perfect than a spoken word," he wrote.
, a literary historian and BEED
biographer in 1903.
From then on the writer's visits to the Palace became rare, but he used each one as an opportunity to "speak the truth regardless", as he put it. In 1862 Tolstoy solicited for Ivan Aksakov who'd been banned from editing his Denh newspaper. A year later he helped Ivan Turgenev out of an exile he found himsef in as a result of having contacted the "London propagandists", as Herzen
and Ogaryov
were then known. In 1864 Tolstoy tried to exert his influence upon Aleksander II to make him alleviate the plight of the imprisoned Chernyshevsky. Asked by the Tsar for the latest news in the world of literature, Tolstoy said: "The whole of Russia has gone into mourning for Chernyshevsky to whom an injustice has been done..."- "No, Tolstoy, I beg you never to remind me of Chernyshevsky, please", the monarch hastily retorted. This aborted conversation, as it happened, brought to and end the friendship that had lasted for forty years.
Tolstoy's historical novel Prince Serebrenni
(1862, Russky Vestnik), set during the time of Ivan the Terrible, was widely popular and was translated into many languages, including an English translation. The novel premiered at a recital evening in the Palace, and brought its author a book-trinket from the Empress consort Maria Aleksandrovna, who greatly admired Tolstoy, both as writer and a person. His poetic drama Don Juan
, published the same year, was less successful: even if not officially banned, it wasn't staged in its author's lifetime and made its theatrical debut only in 1905, severely cut by censors.
Kozma Prutkov aside, Tolstoy wrote satirical verses under his own name, the best known of which was the Karamzin-inspired History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev (1868), a parody on Russian history that focused on the vicious characteristics of Russian monarchs. Another satirical poem, The Dream of Councillor Popov, written in the summer of 1873, spread across Russia in hand-written form and became hugely popular. Both Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev expressed their delight at this- on the one hand a personal swipe at the Interior Minister Pyotr Valuyev, on the second, a mockery in general of a conservative bureaucrat trying to come across as a liberal. The poem came out in 1878, in Berlin, as a brochure, then six years later was reprinted by Russkaya Starina (#12, 1884). 1867 saw Poems, the vast collection of Tolstoy's verse (all in all, 131 pieces), published, the only such compilation published in his lifetime.
Tolstoy's lasting contribution to Russian literature was a trilogy of historical drama
s (modelled after Pushkin's Boris Godunov
): The Death of Ivan the Terrible
, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, and Tsar Boris. The Death of Ivan the Terrible, published in 1866 in Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, was staged the following year in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and some provincial theaters and enjoyed massive success, but after 1870 was virtually banned and only returned to the stage stage in the late 1890s. Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (1868, Vestnik Evropy) was promptly banned from theaters by the personal decree of Interior minister Timashev; as late as 1907 censors deemed the play "inappropriate for stage production". Tsar Boris (1870, Vestnik Evropy) received no official ban, but the Directorial council of Imperial theaters refused to sanction its production. In 1871 Tolstoy started his fifth and final Posadnik play (set in the times when the Novgorod Republic
prospered), which remained unfinished. Parts of it were published in Skladchina (an 1874 charity almanac), the rest appeared in Vestnik Evropy magazine in 1876, after the author's death.
, gave money to everybody present and participated in the grandiose drinking spree that followed. Being a lavish spender and having no knowledge of the practical side of life, by the end of 1860s he found himself on the verge of bankruptcy, but loathed the idea of returning to Court.
Ever since the mid-1860s Tolstoy had fallen more and more out of sync with Russian cultural life, feeling acutely his ideological and spiritual isolation. Referring to himself as an 'anchorite
', he spent most of his time in Pustynka (near Saint Petersburg) and his Krasny Rog estate. His worsening financial situation and deteriorating health added to his troubles. Tired of fighting his many opponents, totally disillusioned with what he saw around him, A.K.Tolstoy wrote to his friend Boleslav Markovich in 1869:
Tolstoy entered the 1870s as a very sick man, suffering from asthma
, angina pectoris, neuralgia
s and severe headaches. Regular visits to European medics only temporarily alleviated his conditions. In the spring of 1875 A.K.Tolstoy started taking morphine
. "Now I'm feeling much better, at least the neuralgia's gone. But never before have I been so short of breath. Asthma fits are continuous", he complained in a letter to Karolina Pavlova
(a poet and the translator of his dramas) on July 8, 1875. Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy died on September 28, 1875, in Krasny Rog, Chernigov Governorate
, after having given himself a lethal injection of Morphine. He was buried in the family vault in the Uspenskaya Church in nearby Krasny Rog.
in Russian literature; art for him was a mystic link between the human world and the higher spheres where "eternal ideas dwell". Along with Fet
, his artistic and spiritual ally, he saw Art as a kind of higher science, man's only instrument for a true and comprehensive understanding of the world. Romantic tendencies were best realised in Tolstoy's poetry and in some of his dramas, notably Don Juan where the hero is on a quest for a romantic ideal, looking everywhere for love "that helps one penetrate into the wonderful universal laws, our world's hidden beginnings", as he put it. "Art can only be a 'means' - all of the 'ends'... it contains in itself", Tolstoy wrote in 1870, in the course of long dispute with those whom he labeled "utilitarianists in literature". Such views automatically made him a "conservative" in the eyes of the revolutionary democrats who formed a large majority in the Russian literary circles of the 1850s and 1860s. Unlike Fet, though, Tolstoy insisted on the artist's total independence from ideology and politics, and felt himself totally free to criticize and mock authorities, a trait that snubbed many people in high places.
Tolstoy's poetry had certain qualities that made it unusual and even unique, one being the "half-spoken" nature of the verse. "It's good for poetry when a thought is only half-fulfilled, so that readers can complete it - each in their own way", he explained in a letter to Sophia Miller in 1854. This view translated into a technique of writing. One of the things Tolstoy was criticised and even jeered for were "bad rhymes". He used them consciously, as part of his "poetic system". "Imperfect rhyming, if kept in bounds of course, can be seen as corresponding to the Venetian school
in painting which with little imperfections, or should I say, carelessnesses, could achieve the kind of effects which Raphael
wouldn't dream of for all of his precision", Tolstoy wrote in 1859. In fact, Tolstoy, as I. Yampolsky pointed out, was a master of versification. Consciously imposed "careless" rhyming gave his poems an improvisational tone (with "an impression of thoughts being put to paper exactly in the form they were born") but behind it there was hard work and much editing. "Tolstoy's verse is so simple it hardly rises above prose, yet the poetic impression it carries is perfectly full", critic Nikolay Strakhov
wrote in 1867. Another unusual feature of Tolstoy's poems was the fact that, while rather salon-like and graceful both in nature and form, they were full of 'simplisticisms' borrowed freely from common talk and traditional Russian folklore. Kept in perfect balance, these tinged his verse with a peculiar, musical quality. More than half of Tolstoy's poems have been put to music by leading Russian composers like Tchaykovsky
, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Mily Balakirev
, César Cui
, Anton Rubinstein
, Sergey Rakhmaninov and others. "Tolstoy is the unfathomable well of poems crying for music. For me he is one of the most attractive poets", wrote Tchaykovsky.
Assessing Tolstoy's poetry as a whole, D.S.Mirsky wrote: "Even if they suffer from sentimentality and are occasionally banal, his lyrics retain their freshness and even now taste like a delightful morning dew", the critic wrote.
Innokenty Annensky
saw Tolstoy's poetry as being the perfect expression of "pure love", the "human soul's inner beauty" being the poet's ideal. "Tolstoy never wrote for children but "his crystal clear idealism, tinged with mysticism", made his poetry resonate well with the period in adolescence when the "human soul reaches out to something high and indescribable", Annensky wrote. Mentioning Nekrasov, who in his latter works created a strong image of the Russian mother, Annensky argued that what Tolstoy managed to create was an equally sublime portrait of the noble woman whose "serene placidity belies unspeakable sadness… of the one who's ashamed of her own happiness fearing that she, making the most of this world's beauty, somehow takes it away from those who have no opportunity to enjoy such riches in abundance".
Tolstoy's ballads and songs were close to traditional bylinas both in essence and form; in fact, the author himself made no distinction between the two genres. Critics argued that (unlike, say, Nekrasov) Tolstoy used folklorisms as a mere stylistic instrument, using stories from the history of the Russian Middle Ages as a means to convey his own ideas and theories (Zmei Tugarin), and to link historical utopias with relevant social comment (Boryvoi, Vasily Shibanov
). Tolstoy tended to greatly idealise Russia's pre-Mongol past which made the traditional bylina characters almost superheroes. "It's hard to recognize Alyosha Popovich
, eyes-a-jealous, hands-a-grabbin'- as a romantic youth, speaking of love and devotion to his beloved", Semyon Vengerov
remarked. Likewise, the fearsome Ilya Muromets
who came across as a rather violent, dangerous and often sacrilegious type in folk bylinas, was portrayed by Tolstoy as a "benign grandfather figure", rather gracious and well-spoken.
Critic Yuly Aykhenvald derided Tolstoy's insistence on continuing with his "nationalistic masquerade" and quoted Chekhov
as commenting: " has put the opera costume on and forgotten to take it off before leaving the theater". According to Aykhenvald, Tolstoy "missed the point, in that national values, when taken to the extreme, become alien-looking". For Aykhenvald, though, it was Tolstoy's humour that prevented him from turning into an "archeology worshipper". The critic saw Tolstoy's romanticism as universal and in a certain way religious (resulting in the fact that his most memorable character, Tsar Fyodor was "an epitome of Christian meekness and grace"). Yet, " worshipped that kind of God who was devoid of stiffness... he was a free spirit and valued freedom most.
Tolstoy's sense of humour was best realised in Kozma Prutkov
's extraordinary aphorisms, as well as in his own satirical poems. "Tolstoy... without any doubt, is Russia's greatest absurdist poet", wrote Mirsky. The Dream of Councillor Popov
and History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev
, his best known satires, were spread across Russia in manuscript, gaining huge popularity amongst all social strata. According to Mirsky, The Dream is "the acme of Russian humorous poetry, mixing sharp, poignant satire... and pure delight in cheerful absurdity". It's The Dream that can be seen as Aleksey Tolstoy's most solid claim for immortality", the critic argued, mentioning The Uproar in the Vatican as another of his humorous masterpieces.
Tolstoy's anti-leftist, pro-conservative sarcasm, on the other hand, received much stick from the 'democratic' press. His "Ballad with a Tendency" was bitterly criticised by Saltykov-Schedrin
while Iskra magazine parodied it in 1872 with a verse entitled "A Ballad with a Pro-Police Tendency". Schedrin, describing the current state of Russian literature as a "kingdom of scoundrels", in a letter to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov
wrote: "Add to all this the fun-and-games-seeking 'free artists' like Count A. K. Tolstoy who makes... our obscurantists's hearts beat faster with delight. I don't know about you, but I find it painful to see how people whom I though honest, even if not very far-seeing, fight on the side of obscurantism, employing pseudo-folklorism as a weapon".
Tolstoy was a master of prose; both his novella The Vampire (praised by Belinsky
) and his novel Prince Serebrenni
received a lot of good press. The latter, though, was criticised, mainly for being tendentious; many argued that both the main character and Yelena Morozova looked very much like people of the 19th, rather than 16th century. On the other hand, Ivan Grozny and the oprichnina
horrors were depicted with great vividness and passion; the novel's masterfully built structure, its rich musical language made it a perfect Walter Scott
-type of book for adolescents, according to S. Vengerov. "The novel is highly involving, is being read with great interest, and is well-built and well-written", Turgenev
wrote, recommending it to a French publisher. For all that, as a prose writer Tolstoy made much less of an impact than as a poet. He's been credited with being the true classic of 19th century Russian historical drama. D. S. Mirsky regarded Tolstoy as a dramatist superior to Aleksander Ostrovsky, describing his plays as "full of intriguing ideas and brilliantly crafted characters. They impress us with intelligence and insight rather than with flights of imagination, but in Tsar Fyodor Tolstoy managed to create one of the most interesting characters in Russian literature: that of a kind and weak ruler who has a keen sense of justice but is unable to make his evil aids implement his good will".
Critics noted, though, that history as such was secondary to Tolstoy; he was driven mostly by his own personal views and feelings, tending to judge his 16th century characters using mid-19th century moral values. "The life of today seeps through everywhere", Tolstoy himself admitted, speaking of his ballads. According to the author, historical drama had to be "true" only in a "humanist way". "A poet... has just one responsibility: to his own poetic self... human truth is his one law. Historical truth is something he is not bound to. If it fits into the concept, very good, if not, he can easily do without it", he wrote. So on the one hand, Tolstoy's dramatic trilogy- The Death of Ivan the Terrible
, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Tsar Boris
- was not historical in the strict sense of the word; on the other hand, it was far from being the brand of "patriotic drama" produced by Nestor Kukolnik
or the imitation of the French tragedie des allusions which Pushkin ridiculed. In fact, Pushkin's attitude was the closest approximation to that of Tolstoy. The latter's plays had their "second levels", directly corresponding to contemporary political situations, but were driven mostly by the author's historical views and theories which involved the glorifying of Russian 'noble men' (he associated them with the boyarstvo
) and the vilification Ivan Grozny whom the boyarstvo had fallen victim to.
Pavel Annenkov
considered Ioann and Fyodor as "loosely based upon" characters, being perfectly fine but only in representing their era, not their own historical selves. "They are as loose as King Lear
or Hamlet
were and, if they do belong more to Russian history than those two belong to English history, that is because no other reality than that of our Old Russia could have inspired in such a way, bringing him such colors, such an essence to freely draw from", the critic wrote. It was the generic closeness of Tolstoy's plays to the Russia of old, Annenkov argued, that made them historic in the truest sense of the word, for "their significance as living testimony to the spirit those people and their times is beyond doubt".
Common to the trilogy was a somewhat morbid look at the history of the Russian monarchy of the previous three centuries, where, as the author saw it, all the efficient rulers happened to be evil, and all the 'good' ones proved to be inefficient. The three stories of three different historical figures had similarly didactic finales: "God help you, Tsar Ivan, and God forgive us all. That's the fate autocracy deserved. Here's the result of our disintegration" (Zakharyin's words over Ivan the Terrible's dead body), "I am to blame for all of this... Oh God, why did you make me Tzar!" (Tsar Fyodor), "What Evil spawns is only more evil and nothing else" (Boris Godunov). All three parts of the trilogy, which, according to Nestor Kotlyarevsky, were "united by the idea of tragedy being intrinsic to Tzarist power in Russia", had serious problems with the censorship. In fact, the trilogy continued to divide opinion in Russia up until 1917. Not long before the Revolution, in Aleksandrinka the public reacted to Tsar Boris in an overtly political fashion. Monarchists applauded Boris Godunov's words, the left "supported" the boyarin Sitsky, seeing in him a fighter of despotism.
All three plays became part of the repertoire of the leading Russian and Soviet theaters, notably the Maly Theatre
, with stars like Ivan Moskvin
, P. Orlenev, C. Kuznetsov and N. Khmelyov in the leading roles. According to I. Yampolsky, Tolstoy the dramatist, even if not on par with Pushkin, was high above his contemporaries; he created complex, multi-dimensional historical figures. "In the arts, to be wary of showing weaknesses in your favourite characters is to pay them bad service... Thus one can only succeed in creating faceless dummies whom nobody would believe in", Tolstoy wrote.
In the mid-19th century Tolstoy was not taken very seriously, but his reputation started to grow after his death in 1875. Vladimir Korolenko
, twenty years after the publication of the final part of the drama trilogy, wrote in a diary that he "re-read it and... despite the obvious note of romanticisation of the boyarshina" it made a "very strong and vivid impression" on him. It was Korolenko who called Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich "a gem of Russian drama", that's been shining especially bright next to "the totally dismal theater repertoire of the late 19th century".
Tolstoy was highly valued by Aleksander Blok and Valery Bryusov
; Ivan Bunin, otherwise harsh in his comments on fellow writers, rated him very high; Velemir Khlebnikov mentioned him among his all-time favourites and, most surprisingly (according to Korney Chukovsky
), Vladimir Mayakovsky
knew his poetry by heart and often recited it in public. Both Tolstoy's poetry (the larger part of which has been transformed into classic romance) and his historical drama trilogy are regarded as an intrinsic part of the classic Russian literature of the 19th century.
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n poet, novelist and playwright, considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist. He also gained fame for his satirical works, published under his own name (History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev
History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev
History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev is a parody poem in 83 verses by the Russian poet and dramatist Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1868...
, The Dream of Councillor Popov
The Dream of Councillor Popov
The Dream of Councillor Popov is a satire in verse by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, first published in 1878 in Berlin, and regarded as one of the best satirical poems in Russian literature, mixing "sharp, poignant satire… and pure delight in cheerful absurdity"...
) and under the collaborational pen name of Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Petrovich Prutkov is a fictional author invented by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his cousins, three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander, during the later part of the rule of Nicholas I of Russia....
.
Early life
A. K. Tolstoy was born in Saint PetersburgSaint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
to the famed family of Tolstoy. His father, Count Konstantin Petrovich Tolstoy (1780-1870), a son of the army general, was a Russian state assignation bank councilor. His mother, Anna Alekseyevna Perovskaya (1796-1857), was an illegitimate daughter of Count Aleksey Kirillovich Razumovsky (1784-1822), an heir of the legendary Ukrainian hetman
Hetman
Hetman was the title of the second-highest military commander in 15th- to 18th-century Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which together, from 1569 to 1795, comprised the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Rzeczpospolita....
Aleksey Razumovsky
Alexey Razumovsky
Count Alexei Grigorievich Razumovsky , was a Ukrainian Cossack who rose to become lover and, the morganatic spouse of the Russian Empress Elizaveta Petrovna.- Early life :...
. A. K. Tolstoy's uncle (on his father's side) was Fyodor Tolstoy
Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy
Count Fyodor Petrovich Tolstoy was a Russian artist who served as Vice-President of the Imperial Academy of Arts for forty years . His works — wax-reliefs, watercolours, medallions, and silhouettes — are distinguished by a cool detachment and spare and economical classicism.Fyodor Tolstoy came...
(1783-1873). His uncle on his mother's side was Aleksey Perovsky (1787-1836), an author known under the pen name of Antony Pogorelsky
Antony Pogorelsky
Antony Pogorelsky is a penname of Alexey Alexeyevich Perovsky , a Russian prose writer.He was a natural son of A.K...
. Aleksey Konstantinovich was a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...
; Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy
Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy
Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy was a Russian statesman prominent during and after the reign of Peter the Great. He was the ancestor of all the Counts Tolstoy, including the novelist Leo Tolstoy Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy (1645 – 1729) was a Russian statesman prominent during and after the...
was their common great-grandfather.
Konstantin Tolstoy and Anna Perovskaya's marriage was short-lived; they divorced in October 1817. With her six weeks old son Anna moved first to her own Blistava estate in Chernigov Governorate
Chernigov Governorate
The Chernigov Governorate , also known as the Government of Chernigov, was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate with an administrative centre of Chernigov...
, then to Krasny Rog, belonging to her brother Aleksey Perovsky, who became Aleksey Konstantinovich's tutor and a long-time companion. Common knowledge has it that Pogorelsky's famous fantasy fairytale The Black Chicken or The People of the Underground was premiered at home, his young nephew being the only member of Pogorelsky's audience. It was under the latter's influence that Aleksey started to write poetry, as early as 1823, inspired by some old books he found at home. Aleksey had good teachers and at the age of six he fluently spoke French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. Later he learned Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
as well..
As for the Tolstoys, Anna Perovskaya stopped seeing them altogether, only sending them postcards on major dates and holidays. Remembering those happy years, Aleksey later wrote:
In early 1826 Anna Perovskaya returned to Saint Petersburg with her brother and son. Here, due to his mother's closeness with the court of the Tsar, Aleksey was admitted to the future Tsar Alexander II
Alexander II of Russia
Alexander II , also known as Alexander the Liberator was the Emperor of the Russian Empire from 3 March 1855 until his assassination in 1881...
's childhood entourage and in August became what was officially termed "a comrade in games" for the young Crown Prince. Aleksey's duties were not many: he had to visit the Crown Prince in Saint Petersburgh and Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo
Tsarskoye Selo is the town containing a former Russian residence of the imperial family and visiting nobility, located south from the center of St. Petersburg. It is now part of the town of Pushkin and of the World Heritage Site Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments.-History:In...
, take walks with him on Yelagin Island
Yelagin Island
Yelagin Island is an island at the mouth of the Neva River which is part of St. Petersburg, Russia. Yelagin Island is home to the Yelagin Palace but has few other buildings; the island initially served as a wooded retreat for the ruling class...
and participate in games, many of which were, in effect, small scale military exercises. They became friends and this friendship lasted for several decades, ending in the mid-1860s. In autumn of 1826 Aleksey met Aleksander Pushkin for the first time.
In summer 1827 the family visited Germany where in Weimar
Weimar
Weimar is a city in Germany famous for its cultural heritage. It is located in the federal state of Thuringia , north of the Thüringer Wald, east of Erfurt, and southwest of Halle and Leipzig. Its current population is approximately 65,000. The oldest record of the city dates from the year 899...
young Aleksey met Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer, pictorial artist, biologist, theoretical physicist, and polymath. He is considered the supreme genius of modern German literature. His works span the fields of poetry, drama, prose, philosophy, and science. His Faust has been called the greatest long...
. The great man greeted the boy very warmly and left him a fragment of a mammoth
Mammoth
A mammoth is any species of the extinct genus Mammuthus. These proboscideans are members of Elephantidae, the family of elephants and mammoths, and close relatives of modern elephants. They were often equipped with long curved tusks and, in northern species, a covering of long hair...
tusk with his own drawing (depicting a frigate
Frigate
A frigate is any of several types of warship, the term having been used for ships of various sizes and roles over the last few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and maneuverability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
) on it, for a present. Aleksey, having been awe-stricken, remembered little: "Only his magnificent features and the way he took me upon his lap", according to his autobiography. The family spent the next ten years in continuous travel, both in Russia and abroad. An 1831 trip to Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
especially impressed the 13-year old. "Back in Russia I fell into a deep nostalgic depression, longing for Italy which felt like a real motherland; desperately mourning the loss, I cried at night when my dreams carried me off to this Paradise lost", he wrote in his autobiography decades later. In Italy the family met Karl Bryullov. On May 10, 1831, Aleksey wrote in his diary: "Bryullov dined with us and left a sketch in my album". The the painter promised Perovsky to make portraits of all three of them once he was back in Russia, but five years later he had finished only one- that of his nephew.
Career
In 1834 Tolstoy enrolled in the Moscow Foreign Ministry State Archive as a "student", where he got his first taste of working with real historical documents. In December 1835 he took exams (in English, French and German languages and literature, Latin, World and Russian history, and Russian statistics) at the University of Moscow for the formal 1st Grade State Bureaucrat certificate. He soon embarked on a career in the Economic Affairs and Statistics Department in Saint Petersburg. Before that, in July 1835, he had buried his uncle Aleksey Perovsky (who died in WarsawWarsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
) and had become heir to his Krasny Rog estate. Also in 1835 Aleksey showed some of his new poems to Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Zhukovsky
Vasily Andreyevich Zhukovsky was the foremost Russian poet of the 1810s and a leading figure in Russian literature in the first half of the 19th century...
, who praised them. There's evidence that Pushkin also approved of the young poet's early works, giving him full moral support. The Young poet wrote a lot, refining his technique, but wasn't eager to get published. "My first experiments were, no doubt, absurd, but at least metrically they were flawless. I went on training thus for many years, before I debuted... as a prose writer, not a poet", Tolstoy remembered later.
In January 1837 Tolstoy became attached to the Russian Embacy in Frankfurt
Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
where he spent the next two years. The assignment was rather formal, it did not demand Tolstoy's presence in Germany and he spent most of his time in Saint Petersburg, leading a merry life, spending up to three thousand rubles per month, often going to Italy and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. It was during one of these visits that he wrote his first two "gothic" novellas - Vurdalak's Family and Three Hundred Years On (originally in German, later translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich
Boleslav Markevich
Boleslav Mikhailovich Markevich 1884, Saint Petersburg) was a Russian writer, essayist, journalist, and literary critic of Polish origin; author of a number of popular novels, including: Marina of the Aluy Rog , A Quarter of a Century Ago , The Turning Point and The Void .-Biography:Boleslav...
). Tolstoy showed great interest in all things macabre, influenced, again, by his late uncle who "was obsessed with mysticism in every possible form" and who, in turn, was influenced by E. T. A. Hoffmann whom he was personally acquainted with.
In late 1840 Tolstoy was transferred back to Russia to a position in the Tsar's Imperial State Chancellery 2nd Department where he continued to work for many years, slowly rising in the hierarchy. As time went by, though, he showed less and less enthusiasm for what felt more and more like a major hindrance to his literary aspirations. In May 1841 Tolstoy debuted with The Vampire (a novella published under the pen name of "Krasnorogsky", a reference to Krasny Rog, his residence). Complicated in structure, multi-layered and rich in counterpoints, featuring both the element of "horror" and political satire, it instantly caught the attention of Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
who praised its "obviously still very young, but undoubtedly gifted author", totally ignorant of the latter's real identity.. Tolstoy himself saw the story as insignificant and made no attempt to include it in any of the subsequent compilations; it was only in 1900 that The Vampire was re-issued. In the autumn of 1843 Tolstoy debuted as a poet: his poem "Serebryanka" was published in the #40 edition of Listok dlya svetskikh lyudey (The Fashionable Paper). It took another two years for him to see his second short story, "Artyomy Semyonovich Bervenkovsky" published in the 1st volume of Count Vladimir Sollogub's Yesterday and Today almanac. The 2nd volume featured Amena, a novella, described as an extract from a novel called Stebelovsky which remained unfinished.
Throughout the 1840s Tolstoy led a busy high society life, full of pleasure trips, saloon parties and balls, hunting sprees and fleeting romances. He was described as "a handsome young man with blonde hair and a freshly coloured face" and was renowned for his physical strength, "bending spoons, forks and horse-shoes and driving nails into walls with one finger". One notable business trip to Kaluga
Kaluga
Kaluga is a city and the administrative center of Kaluga Oblast, Russia, located on the Oka River southwest of Moscow. Population: It is served by Grabtsevo Airport.-History:...
in 1850 led to a close friendship with Nikolay Gogol (whom he first met in Frankfurt and then in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
). Tolstoy recited to Gogol many of his yet unpublished poems and fragments from what later became the novel Prince Serebryanny. Gogol read him the second part of his novel Dead Souls
Dead Souls
Dead Souls is a novel by Nikolai Gogol, first published in 1842, and widely regarded as an exemplar of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an "epic poem in prose", and within the book as a "novel in verse". Despite supposedly completing the trilogy's second part, Gogol...
. Among other friendships he struck up in the forties were those with Aksakov
Ivan Aksakov
Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov was a Russian littérateur and notable Slavophile. He was the son of Sergey Aksakov and younger brother of Konstantin Aksakov. He was born in what is now Bashkortostan....
, Annenkov
Pavel Annenkov
Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov was a significant Russian literary critic and memoirist.-Biography:Annenkov was born into a wealthy landowning family in Moscow. He attended the philological faculty of St Petersburg University...
, Nekrasov, Panayev
Ivan Panaev
Ivan Ivanovich Panaev was a Russian writer, literary critic, journalist and magazine publisher.-Early life:Panaev was born into a gentry family in St Petersburg. He graduated from the Boarding School for the Nobility at Saint Petersburg State University in 1830. He began publishing his works in 1834...
and Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
.
In the early 1850s, in collaboration with the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Tolstoy created the fictional writer Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Petrovich Prutkov is a fictional author invented by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his cousins, three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander, during the later part of the rule of Nicholas I of Russia....
, a petty bureaucrat with great self-esteem who parodied the poetry of the day and wrote banal aphorisms. In 1851 Prutkov debuted with The Fantasy a comedy which was signed "Y" and "Z" and written by Tolstoy and Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov
Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov
Aleksey Mikhailovich Zhemchuzhnikov , 1821, Pochep, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire, - March 25 , 1908, Tambov, Russia) was a Russian poet, dramatist, essayist and literary critic, a nephew of Antony Pogorelsky, a cousin to A.K...
. The play, mocking the then popular 'nonsense' vaudeville premiered on January 8 in the Alexandrinsky Theatre. This spectacular farce (featuring at one point a dozen small dogs running about on stage) caused a huge scandal, was promptly banned by Nikolay I (who was among the audience) and remained unpublished up until 1884.
It was also in 1851 that Tolstoy first met Sophia Andreyevna Miller (1827?-1892), the wife of a cavalry colonel (whom she later divorced with great difficulty) and an impressively well-educated woman who knew 14 languages, at a Bolshoy Theater masquerade. Tolstoy fell in love with her but had to wait for another twelve years before they were able to marry. Miller had, apparently, a perfect artistic taste and Tolstoy later referred to her as his harshest and most objective critic, as well as the best friend he'd ever had. All of his love lyrics from 1851 onwards were written for and about Sophia. Many of his poems ("My dear bluebells", "Amidst the ball uproar", "Brighter than the skylark's singing", "The wind from high up, it is not...") have been set to music by renowned composers and have become famous Russian romances.
In 1854 Sovremennik
Sovremennik
Sovremennik was a Russian literary, social and political magazine, published in St. Petersburg in 1836-1866. It came out four times a year in 1836-1843 and once a month after that...
magazine published several of Tolstoy's verses ("My bluebells", "Oh you haystacks..." and others), which instantly got critics talking, and also the first of Kozma Prutkov's humorously pompous poetic exercises. The latter was not so much a collective pseudonym, as a character who was making quite a point of coming across as a 'real' creature, performing, among other things, obnoxious pranks, one of which involved a messenger visiting all the leading Saint Petersburg architects late at night with the urgent news of the Isaakiyevsky Cathedral
Saint Isaac's Cathedral
Saint Isaac's Cathedral or Isaakievskiy Sobor in Saint Petersburg, Russia is the largest Russian Orthodox cathedral in the city...
having fallen down and urging them to appear early next morning at the court of Tsar Nikolay I, which they hastily did, to the Tsar's utter annoyance.
As the Crimean War broke out, Tolstoy's first intention was to gather a partisan fighting unit and lead it to the Baltic Sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...
, should the English decide to land there. Along with Count Aleksey Bobrinsky (future Minister of transport) he started to finance and equip two partisan squads, forty fighters each. He bought some ammunition from Tula
Tula
Tula may refer to:In geography:*Tula, Hidalgo, a town in Mexico, once the capital and sacred city of the Toltec people.*Tula, Tamaulipas, a place in the state of Tamaulipas, Mexico*Tula River in central Mexico...
and traveled all along the Baltic coastline, examining what was supposed to be his future theater of war, the Crown Prince being totally unaware of his plans. On September 2 the allies landed at Yevpatoria and Tolstoy headed South, to join the Imperial infantry regiment (under the command of Lev Perovsky, another of his uncles) as an army major, in March 1855. The regiment went only as far as Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
where a thousand men were lost from typhoid. In February 1856 Tolstoy became one of the casualties. In Odessa he was nursed back to health by Sophia Miller. Aleksander II was telegraphed daily on the subject of his old friend's condition, at his personal request. In May 1855 Tolstoy was back on his feet, but the war was over for him; he instead embarked upon a Crimean journey with Sophia.
After the War, in 1856, on the day of his Coronation, Aleksander II appointed Tolstoy as one of his personal aide-de-adjutants. It was only three years later that Tolstoy managed to get rid of this tiresome privilege which implied regular duties in the Palace, interfering with his now burgeoning literary career. "You cannot imagine what a storm of rhymes rages in me, what waves of poetry are sweeping through me, longing to break free", he wrote in a letter to Sophia Miller. Two thirds of Tolstoy's poetic legacy was created in the late 1850s. 1857 saw the publication of a large poem called The Sinner. It was followed by the more significant Ioann Damaskin, first published in Russkaya Beseda
Russkaya Beseda
Russkaya Beseda was a Russian literary magazine founded in Moscow, Russian Empire, in 1856 by Alexander Koshelev, who was also its editor-in-chief...
January 1859 issue. The poem, dealing with the nature of poetry and the poet's position in society (and being in some ways autobiographical) caused scandal in higher places. The head of the 3rd Department Prince Vasily Dolgorukov
Vasily Andreyevich Dolgorukov
Prince Vasily Andreyevich Dolgorukov was a Russian statesman, General of the Cavalry , Minister of War , Chief of Gendarmes and Executive Head of the Third Section of H.I.M. Chancellery ....
ordered the printing of the magazine to be stopped and for the poem to be removed. Evgraf Kovalevsky, the Minister of Education, personally permitted the publication, his rather daring decision marking a serious rift between the two departments.
Tolstoy's poems were appearing in virtually all the major Russian magazines of the time, regardless of their ideological inclinations. Yet, in 1857 his relationship with the leftist Sovremennik group became strained. Tolstoy drifted towards the Slavophile
Slavophile
Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...
s and their Russkaya beseda magazine, becoming a close friend of Ivan Aksakov
Ivan Aksakov
Ivan Sergeyevich Aksakov was a Russian littérateur and notable Slavophile. He was the son of Sergey Aksakov and younger brother of Konstantin Aksakov. He was born in what is now Bashkortostan....
and Aleksey Khomyakov
Aleksey Khomyakov
Aleksey Stepanovich Khomyakov was a Russian religious poet who co-founded the Slavophile movement along with Ivan Kireyevsky, and became one of its most distinguished theoreticians....
, but this liaison was short-lived too.
Tolstoy's politics and philosophy
In the 1860s he found himself in the very strange position of being a highly popular author, criticised fiercely both from the left and from the right. As to the reasons for this, A.K. Tolstoy was never in doubt. In an autobiographical letter to A. Gubernatis he wrote:He caused much controversy with his scathing remarks aimed at contemporary government officials (Timashev, Butkov, Panin, Velio) whom he– a supporter of the monarch– considered real enemies of the State. Tolstoy criticized the activities of the 3rd Department
Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery
The Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery was a secret department set up in Imperial Russia, inherited from Tayny Prikaz, Privy Chancellery and Specialty Chancellery, effectively serving as the Imperial regime's secret police for much of its existence. The organization was...
, and in the wake of the Polish uprising
January Uprising
The January Uprising was an uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Russian Empire...
was one of the very few people in the Court to openly denounce Muravyov the Hangman's draconian methods of political repression.
A fierce opponent of xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
, he saw Russia as a European country, and Russians as Europeans. This clashed with the slavophile
Slavophile
Slavophilia was an intellectual movement originating from 19th century that wanted the Russian Empire to be developed upon values and institutions derived from its early history. Slavophiles were especially opposed to the influences of Western Europe in Russia. There were also similar movements in...
doctrine of maintaining Russia's "special place" in the world. "
Russian Orthodox Church
The Russian Orthodox Church or, alternatively, the Moscow Patriarchate The ROC is often said to be the largest of the Eastern Orthodox churches in the world; including all the autocephalous churches under its umbrella, its adherents number over 150 million worldwide—about half of the 300 million...
", Tolstoy wrote in a letter. All the while, his dispute with Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
, who saw the French state as Russia's potential guiding light, was well-publicised. "What France is moving towards is the dictatorship of mediocrity", Tolstoy argued. Being neither a westernizer
Westernizer
Westernizers were a group of 19th century intellectuals who believed that Russia's development depended upon the adoption of Western European technology and liberal government. In their view, western ideas such as industrialisation needed to be implemented throughout Russia in order to make it a...
or a slavophile, Tolstoy annoyed both parties by his infatuation with pre-Tatar Russian society (which he idealized whole-heartedly, seeing it as an Eastern strain of European knighthood, based on the cult of the nobleman), his critique of the West's amoral pragmatism and socialist ideas, his dismissal of imperial ideals which he saw as tragically flawed, with the original doctrine of a centralized Russia, the vile Moscovia State
Grand Duchy of Moscow
The Grand Duchy of Moscow or Grand Principality of Moscow, also known in English simply as Muscovy , was a late medieval Rus' principality centered on Moscow, and the predecessor state of the early modern Tsardom of Russia....
being, in his view, at the root of all Russian political evil. His eclectic outlook, described by some as "political romanticism", appeared to be in conflict with every political and social trend of the time.
Tolstoy rejected Christian dogmas, calling them the "church's argo" and believed in God as a 'higher being' and cosmic mind. "I don't have much respect either for the human mind, or for the 'possible or impossible' dilemma. What I believe in is that God gave us the power of emotion so we could go further than our mind leads us. As a leading force, human emotion is preferable to a thought, just as music is more perfect than a spoken word," he wrote.
1861-1875
In 1861 Tolstoy quit the Court altogether. "For quite some time I was under the illusion that I'd be able to suppress my artistic nature but life taught me different; this struggle was futile. Service and the arts are incompatible", he wrote in a letter to a very disappointed Aleksander II. "Tolstoy represented a rare type of man who not only evaded by every possible means the favours and laurels that came his way, but had to go through painfully tedious battles with people who, driven by the best of intentions, were imposing every opportunity of making a brilliant career on him", wrote Semyon VengerovSemyon Vengerov
Semyon Afanasievich Vengerov was the preeminent literary historian of Imperial Russia. He was the pater familias of an artistic clan that included his sister Isabelle Vengerova, a co-founder of the Curtis Institute in New York City, and nephew Nicolas Slonimsky, a Russian-American...
, a literary historian and BEED
Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary
The Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary is, in its scope and style, the Russian counterpart to the Encyclopædia Britannica. It contains 121,240 articles, 7,800 images, and 235 maps...
biographer in 1903.
From then on the writer's visits to the Palace became rare, but he used each one as an opportunity to "speak the truth regardless", as he put it. In 1862 Tolstoy solicited for Ivan Aksakov who'd been banned from editing his Denh newspaper. A year later he helped Ivan Turgenev out of an exile he found himsef in as a result of having contacted the "London propagandists", as Herzen
Alexander Herzen
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism...
and Ogaryov
Nikolay Ogarev
Nikolay Platonovich Ogarev , was a Russian poet, historian and political activist. He was deeply critical of the limitations of the Emancipation of the Serfs claiming that the serfs were not free but had simply exchanged one form of serfdom for another.Ogarev was a fellow-exile and collaborator of...
were then known. In 1864 Tolstoy tried to exert his influence upon Aleksander II to make him alleviate the plight of the imprisoned Chernyshevsky. Asked by the Tsar for the latest news in the world of literature, Tolstoy said: "The whole of Russia has gone into mourning for Chernyshevsky to whom an injustice has been done..."- "No, Tolstoy, I beg you never to remind me of Chernyshevsky, please", the monarch hastily retorted. This aborted conversation, as it happened, brought to and end the friendship that had lasted for forty years.
Tolstoy's historical novel Prince Serebrenni
Prince Serebrenni
Prince Serebrenni is a historical novel by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1859-1861 and first published by the Russky vestnik magazine in 1862...
(1862, Russky Vestnik), set during the time of Ivan the Terrible, was widely popular and was translated into many languages, including an English translation. The novel premiered at a recital evening in the Palace, and brought its author a book-trinket from the Empress consort Maria Aleksandrovna, who greatly admired Tolstoy, both as writer and a person. His poetic drama Don Juan
Don Juan (drama)
Don Juan is an 1862 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, first published in the April issue of Russky Vestnik magazine. Don Juan never appeared on stage during its author's lifetime. In 1891, its production was deemed "unsuitable" by censors. The play was staged for the first time ever in...
, published the same year, was less successful: even if not officially banned, it wasn't staged in its author's lifetime and made its theatrical debut only in 1905, severely cut by censors.
Kozma Prutkov aside, Tolstoy wrote satirical verses under his own name, the best known of which was the Karamzin-inspired History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev (1868), a parody on Russian history that focused on the vicious characteristics of Russian monarchs. Another satirical poem, The Dream of Councillor Popov, written in the summer of 1873, spread across Russia in hand-written form and became hugely popular. Both Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Turgenev expressed their delight at this- on the one hand a personal swipe at the Interior Minister Pyotr Valuyev, on the second, a mockery in general of a conservative bureaucrat trying to come across as a liberal. The poem came out in 1878, in Berlin, as a brochure, then six years later was reprinted by Russkaya Starina (#12, 1884). 1867 saw Poems, the vast collection of Tolstoy's verse (all in all, 131 pieces), published, the only such compilation published in his lifetime.
Tolstoy's lasting contribution to Russian literature was a trilogy of historical drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
s (modelled after Pushkin's Boris Godunov
Boris Godunov (drama)
Boris Godunov is a play by Alexander Pushkin. It was written in 1825, published in 1831, but not approved for performance by the censor until 1866. Its subject is the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar from 1598 to 1605. It consists of 25 scenes and is written predominantly in blank...
): The Death of Ivan the Terrible
The Death of Ivan the Terrible
The Death of Ivan the Terrible is an historical drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy written in 1863 and first published in the January 1866 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski magazine. It is the first part of a trilogy that is followed by Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich and concludes with Tsar Boris. All...
, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich, and Tsar Boris. The Death of Ivan the Terrible, published in 1866 in Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine, was staged the following year in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and some provincial theaters and enjoyed massive success, but after 1870 was virtually banned and only returned to the stage stage in the late 1890s. Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (1868, Vestnik Evropy) was promptly banned from theaters by the personal decree of Interior minister Timashev; as late as 1907 censors deemed the play "inappropriate for stage production". Tsar Boris (1870, Vestnik Evropy) received no official ban, but the Directorial council of Imperial theaters refused to sanction its production. In 1871 Tolstoy started his fifth and final Posadnik play (set in the times when the Novgorod Republic
Novgorod Republic
The Novgorod Republic was a large medieval Russian state which stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Ural Mountains between the 12th and 15th centuries, centred on the city of Novgorod...
prospered), which remained unfinished. Parts of it were published in Skladchina (an 1874 charity almanac), the rest appeared in Vestnik Evropy magazine in 1876, after the author's death.
Later life
Tolstoy was a lenient land-owner, admired by his Krasny Rog peasants who were permitted to use his fields as common pastures and given free timber and primary education for their children in a school he built for them in 1859. In 1861 he personally gathered all of his peasants together, read them the 1961 Liberation ManifestEmancipation reform of 1861
The Emancipation Reform of 1861 in Russia was the first and most important of liberal reforms effected during the reign of Alexander II of Russia. The reform, together with a related reform in 1861, amounted to the liquidation of serf dependence previously suffered by peasants of the Russian Empire...
, gave money to everybody present and participated in the grandiose drinking spree that followed. Being a lavish spender and having no knowledge of the practical side of life, by the end of 1860s he found himself on the verge of bankruptcy, but loathed the idea of returning to Court.
Ever since the mid-1860s Tolstoy had fallen more and more out of sync with Russian cultural life, feeling acutely his ideological and spiritual isolation. Referring to himself as an 'anchorite
Anchorite
Anchorite denotes someone who, for religious reasons, withdraws from secular society so as to be able to lead an intensely prayer-oriented, ascetic, and—circumstances permitting—Eucharist-focused life...
', he spent most of his time in Pustynka (near Saint Petersburg) and his Krasny Rog estate. His worsening financial situation and deteriorating health added to his troubles. Tired of fighting his many opponents, totally disillusioned with what he saw around him, A.K.Tolstoy wrote to his friend Boleslav Markovich in 1869:
Tolstoy entered the 1870s as a very sick man, suffering from asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
, angina pectoris, neuralgia
Neuralgia
Neuralgia is pain in one or more nerves that occurs without stimulation of pain receptor cells. Neuralgia pain is produced by a change in neurological structure or function rather than by the excitation of pain receptors that causes nociceptive pain. Neuralgia falls into two categories: central...
s and severe headaches. Regular visits to European medics only temporarily alleviated his conditions. In the spring of 1875 A.K.Tolstoy started taking morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
. "Now I'm feeling much better, at least the neuralgia's gone. But never before have I been so short of breath. Asthma fits are continuous", he complained in a letter to Karolina Pavlova
Karolina Pavlova
Karolina Pavlova was a 19th century Russian poet and novelist who stood out from other writers on account of her unique appreciation of exceptional rhymes and imagery.-Biography:...
(a poet and the translator of his dramas) on July 8, 1875. Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy died on September 28, 1875, in Krasny Rog, Chernigov Governorate
Chernigov Governorate
The Chernigov Governorate , also known as the Government of Chernigov, was a guberniya in the historical Left-bank Ukraine region of the Russian Empire, which was officially created in 1802 from the disbanded Malorossiya Governorate with an administrative centre of Chernigov...
, after having given himself a lethal injection of Morphine. He was buried in the family vault in the Uspenskaya Church in nearby Krasny Rog.
Legacy
Tolstoy represented the later period of RomanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in Russian literature; art for him was a mystic link between the human world and the higher spheres where "eternal ideas dwell". Along with Fet
Afanasy Fet
Afanasy Afanasyevich Fet , was a Russian poet regarded as one of the finest lyricists in Russian literature.-Origins:...
, his artistic and spiritual ally, he saw Art as a kind of higher science, man's only instrument for a true and comprehensive understanding of the world. Romantic tendencies were best realised in Tolstoy's poetry and in some of his dramas, notably Don Juan where the hero is on a quest for a romantic ideal, looking everywhere for love "that helps one penetrate into the wonderful universal laws, our world's hidden beginnings", as he put it. "Art can only be a 'means' - all of the 'ends'... it contains in itself", Tolstoy wrote in 1870, in the course of long dispute with those whom he labeled "utilitarianists in literature". Such views automatically made him a "conservative" in the eyes of the revolutionary democrats who formed a large majority in the Russian literary circles of the 1850s and 1860s. Unlike Fet, though, Tolstoy insisted on the artist's total independence from ideology and politics, and felt himself totally free to criticize and mock authorities, a trait that snubbed many people in high places.
Tolstoy's poetry had certain qualities that made it unusual and even unique, one being the "half-spoken" nature of the verse. "It's good for poetry when a thought is only half-fulfilled, so that readers can complete it - each in their own way", he explained in a letter to Sophia Miller in 1854. This view translated into a technique of writing. One of the things Tolstoy was criticised and even jeered for were "bad rhymes". He used them consciously, as part of his "poetic system". "Imperfect rhyming, if kept in bounds of course, can be seen as corresponding to the Venetian school
Venetian school (art)
-Context:In the 15th century Venetian painting developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina, who introduced the oil painting technique of Early Netherlandish painting. It is typified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour...
in painting which with little imperfections, or should I say, carelessnesses, could achieve the kind of effects which Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
wouldn't dream of for all of his precision", Tolstoy wrote in 1859. In fact, Tolstoy, as I. Yampolsky pointed out, was a master of versification. Consciously imposed "careless" rhyming gave his poems an improvisational tone (with "an impression of thoughts being put to paper exactly in the form they were born") but behind it there was hard work and much editing. "Tolstoy's verse is so simple it hardly rises above prose, yet the poetic impression it carries is perfectly full", critic Nikolay Strakhov
Nikolay Strakhov
Nikolay Nikolayevich Strakhov, also transliterated as Nikolai Strahov , was a Russian philosopher, publicist and literary critic who shared the ideals of pochvennichestvo. He was a long-time friend and correspondent of Leo Tolstoy....
wrote in 1867. Another unusual feature of Tolstoy's poems was the fact that, while rather salon-like and graceful both in nature and form, they were full of 'simplisticisms' borrowed freely from common talk and traditional Russian folklore. Kept in perfect balance, these tinged his verse with a peculiar, musical quality. More than half of Tolstoy's poems have been put to music by leading Russian composers like Tchaykovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Russian: Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский ; often "Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky" in English. His names are also transliterated "Piotr" or "Petr"; "Ilitsch", "Il'ich" or "Illyich"; and "Tschaikowski", "Tschaikowsky", "Chajkovskij"...
, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Mily Balakirev
Mily Balakirev
Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev ,Russia was still using old style dates in the 19th century, and information sources used in the article sometimes report dates as old style rather than new style. Dates in the article are taken verbatim from the source and therefore are in the same style as the source...
, César Cui
César Cui
César Antonovich Cui was a Russian of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications; his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music, in that he was a composer and music critic; in this sideline he is known as a...
, Anton Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...
, Sergey Rakhmaninov and others. "Tolstoy is the unfathomable well of poems crying for music. For me he is one of the most attractive poets", wrote Tchaykovsky.
Assessing Tolstoy's poetry as a whole, D.S.Mirsky wrote: "Even if they suffer from sentimentality and are occasionally banal, his lyrics retain their freshness and even now taste like a delightful morning dew", the critic wrote.
Innokenty Annensky
Innokenty Annensky
Innokentiy Fyodorovich Annensky was a poet, critic and translator, representative of the first wave of Russian Symbolism...
saw Tolstoy's poetry as being the perfect expression of "pure love", the "human soul's inner beauty" being the poet's ideal. "Tolstoy never wrote for children but "his crystal clear idealism, tinged with mysticism", made his poetry resonate well with the period in adolescence when the "human soul reaches out to something high and indescribable", Annensky wrote. Mentioning Nekrasov, who in his latter works created a strong image of the Russian mother, Annensky argued that what Tolstoy managed to create was an equally sublime portrait of the noble woman whose "serene placidity belies unspeakable sadness… of the one who's ashamed of her own happiness fearing that she, making the most of this world's beauty, somehow takes it away from those who have no opportunity to enjoy such riches in abundance".
Tolstoy's ballads and songs were close to traditional bylinas both in essence and form; in fact, the author himself made no distinction between the two genres. Critics argued that (unlike, say, Nekrasov) Tolstoy used folklorisms as a mere stylistic instrument, using stories from the history of the Russian Middle Ages as a means to convey his own ideas and theories (Zmei Tugarin), and to link historical utopias with relevant social comment (Boryvoi, Vasily Shibanov
Vasily Shibanov
Vasily Shibanov is a poem by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in the late 1840s and first published in the September 1858 issue of Russky vestnik magazine...
). Tolstoy tended to greatly idealise Russia's pre-Mongol past which made the traditional bylina characters almost superheroes. "It's hard to recognize Alyosha Popovich
Alyosha Popovich
Alyosha Popovich , alongside Dobrynya Nikitich and Ilya Muromets, is a bogatyr . He is the youngest of the 3 main bogatyrs of Kiev Rus.The three of them are represented together at Vasnetsov's famous painting Bogatyrs....
, eyes-a-jealous, hands-a-grabbin'- as a romantic youth, speaking of love and devotion to his beloved", Semyon Vengerov
Semyon Vengerov
Semyon Afanasievich Vengerov was the preeminent literary historian of Imperial Russia. He was the pater familias of an artistic clan that included his sister Isabelle Vengerova, a co-founder of the Curtis Institute in New York City, and nephew Nicolas Slonimsky, a Russian-American...
remarked. Likewise, the fearsome Ilya Muromets
Ilya Muromets
Ilya Muromets is a Kievan Rus' epic hero. He is celebrated in numerous byliny . Along with Dobrynya Nikitich and Alyosha Popovich he is regarded as the greatest of all the legendary bogatyrs...
who came across as a rather violent, dangerous and often sacrilegious type in folk bylinas, was portrayed by Tolstoy as a "benign grandfather figure", rather gracious and well-spoken.
Critic Yuly Aykhenvald derided Tolstoy's insistence on continuing with his "nationalistic masquerade" and quoted Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...
as commenting: "
Tolstoy's sense of humour was best realised in Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Prutkov
Kozma Petrovich Prutkov is a fictional author invented by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy and his cousins, three Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Alexei, Vladimir and Alexander, during the later part of the rule of Nicholas I of Russia....
's extraordinary aphorisms, as well as in his own satirical poems. "Tolstoy... without any doubt, is Russia's greatest absurdist poet", wrote Mirsky. The Dream of Councillor Popov
The Dream of Councillor Popov
The Dream of Councillor Popov is a satire in verse by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, first published in 1878 in Berlin, and regarded as one of the best satirical poems in Russian literature, mixing "sharp, poignant satire… and pure delight in cheerful absurdity"...
and History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev
History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev
History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev is a parody poem in 83 verses by the Russian poet and dramatist Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1868...
, his best known satires, were spread across Russia in manuscript, gaining huge popularity amongst all social strata. According to Mirsky, The Dream is "the acme of Russian humorous poetry, mixing sharp, poignant satire... and pure delight in cheerful absurdity". It's The Dream that can be seen as Aleksey Tolstoy's most solid claim for immortality", the critic argued, mentioning The Uproar in the Vatican as another of his humorous masterpieces.
Tolstoy's anti-leftist, pro-conservative sarcasm, on the other hand, received much stick from the 'democratic' press. His "Ballad with a Tendency" was bitterly criticised by Saltykov-Schedrin
Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin
Mikhail Yevgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin , better known by his pseudonym Shchedrin , was a major Russian satirist of the 19th century. At one time, after the death of the poet Nikolai Nekrasov, he acted as editor of the well-known Russian magazine, the Otechestvenniye Zapiski, until it was banned by...
while Iskra magazine parodied it in 1872 with a verse entitled "A Ballad with a Pro-Police Tendency". Schedrin, describing the current state of Russian literature as a "kingdom of scoundrels", in a letter to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov
Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov
Aleksey Mikhailovich Zhemchuzhnikov , 1821, Pochep, Chernigov Governorate, Russian Empire, - March 25 , 1908, Tambov, Russia) was a Russian poet, dramatist, essayist and literary critic, a nephew of Antony Pogorelsky, a cousin to A.K...
wrote: "Add to all this the fun-and-games-seeking 'free artists' like Count A. K. Tolstoy who makes... our obscurantists's hearts beat faster with delight. I don't know about you, but I find it painful to see how people whom I though honest, even if not very far-seeing, fight on the side of obscurantism, employing pseudo-folklorism as a weapon".
Tolstoy was a master of prose; both his novella The Vampire (praised by Belinsky
Vissarion Belinsky
Vissarion Grigoryevich Belinsky was a Russian literary critic of Westernizing tendency. He was an associate of Alexander Herzen, Mikhail Bakunin , and other critical intellectuals...
) and his novel Prince Serebrenni
Prince Serebrenni
Prince Serebrenni is a historical novel by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1859-1861 and first published by the Russky vestnik magazine in 1862...
received a lot of good press. The latter, though, was criticised, mainly for being tendentious; many argued that both the main character and Yelena Morozova looked very much like people of the 19th, rather than 16th century. On the other hand, Ivan Grozny and the oprichnina
Oprichnina
The oprichnina is the period of Russian history between Tsar Ivan the Terrible's 1565 initiation and his 1572 disbanding of a domestic policy of secret police, mass repressions, public executions, and confiscation of land from Russian aristocrats...
horrors were depicted with great vividness and passion; the novel's masterfully built structure, its rich musical language made it a perfect Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
-type of book for adolescents, according to S. Vengerov. "The novel is highly involving, is being read with great interest, and is well-built and well-written", Turgenev
Ivan Turgenev
Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev was a Russian novelist, short story writer, and playwright. His first major publication, a short story collection entitled A Sportsman's Sketches, is a milestone of Russian Realism, and his novel Fathers and Sons is regarded as one of the major works of 19th-century...
wrote, recommending it to a French publisher. For all that, as a prose writer Tolstoy made much less of an impact than as a poet. He's been credited with being the true classic of 19th century Russian historical drama. D. S. Mirsky regarded Tolstoy as a dramatist superior to Aleksander Ostrovsky, describing his plays as "full of intriguing ideas and brilliantly crafted characters. They impress us with intelligence and insight rather than with flights of imagination, but in Tsar Fyodor Tolstoy managed to create one of the most interesting characters in Russian literature: that of a kind and weak ruler who has a keen sense of justice but is unable to make his evil aids implement his good will".
Critics noted, though, that history as such was secondary to Tolstoy; he was driven mostly by his own personal views and feelings, tending to judge his 16th century characters using mid-19th century moral values. "The life of today seeps through everywhere", Tolstoy himself admitted, speaking of his ballads. According to the author, historical drama had to be "true" only in a "humanist way". "A poet... has just one responsibility: to his own poetic self... human truth is his one law. Historical truth is something he is not bound to. If it fits into the concept, very good, if not, he can easily do without it", he wrote. So on the one hand, Tolstoy's dramatic trilogy- The Death of Ivan the Terrible
The Death of Ivan the Terrible
The Death of Ivan the Terrible is an historical drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy written in 1863 and first published in the January 1866 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski magazine. It is the first part of a trilogy that is followed by Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich and concludes with Tsar Boris. All...
, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Tsar Boris
Tsar Boris (drama)
Tsar Boris is a 1870 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1868-1869 and first published in 1870 in the #3, March issue of the Vestnik Evropy magazine...
- was not historical in the strict sense of the word; on the other hand, it was far from being the brand of "patriotic drama" produced by Nestor Kukolnik
Nestor Kukolnik
Nestor Vasilievich Kukolnik was a Russian playwright and prose writer of Carpatho-Rusyn origin. Immensely popular during the early part of his career, his works were subsequently dismissed as sententious and sentimental. Today, he is best remembered for having contributed to the libretto of the...
or the imitation of the French tragedie des allusions which Pushkin ridiculed. In fact, Pushkin's attitude was the closest approximation to that of Tolstoy. The latter's plays had their "second levels", directly corresponding to contemporary political situations, but were driven mostly by the author's historical views and theories which involved the glorifying of Russian 'noble men' (he associated them with the boyarstvo
Boyar
A boyar, or bolyar , was a member of the highest rank of the feudal Moscovian, Kievan Rus'ian, Bulgarian, Wallachian, and Moldavian aristocracies, second only to the ruling princes , from the 10th century through the 17th century....
) and the vilification Ivan Grozny whom the boyarstvo had fallen victim to.
Pavel Annenkov
Pavel Annenkov
Pavel Vasilyevich Annenkov was a significant Russian literary critic and memoirist.-Biography:Annenkov was born into a wealthy landowning family in Moscow. He attended the philological faculty of St Petersburg University...
considered Ioann and Fyodor as "loosely based upon" characters, being perfectly fine but only in representing their era, not their own historical selves. "They are as loose as King Lear
King Lear
King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The title character descends into madness after foolishly disposing of his estate between two of his three daughters based on their flattery, bringing tragic consequences for all. The play is based on the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological...
or Hamlet
Hamlet
The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, or more simply Hamlet, is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1599 and 1601...
were and, if they do belong more to Russian history than those two belong to English history, that is because no other reality than that of our Old Russia could have inspired
Common to the trilogy was a somewhat morbid look at the history of the Russian monarchy of the previous three centuries, where, as the author saw it, all the efficient rulers happened to be evil, and all the 'good' ones proved to be inefficient. The three stories of three different historical figures had similarly didactic finales: "God help you, Tsar Ivan, and God forgive us all. That's the fate autocracy deserved. Here's the result of our disintegration" (Zakharyin's words over Ivan the Terrible's dead body), "I am to blame for all of this... Oh God, why did you make me Tzar!" (Tsar Fyodor), "What Evil spawns is only more evil and nothing else" (Boris Godunov). All three parts of the trilogy, which, according to Nestor Kotlyarevsky, were "united by the idea of tragedy being intrinsic to Tzarist power in Russia", had serious problems with the censorship. In fact, the trilogy continued to divide opinion in Russia up until 1917. Not long before the Revolution, in Aleksandrinka the public reacted to Tsar Boris in an overtly political fashion. Monarchists applauded Boris Godunov's words, the left "supported" the boyarin Sitsky, seeing in him a fighter of despotism.
All three plays became part of the repertoire of the leading Russian and Soviet theaters, notably the Maly Theatre
Maly Theatre (Moscow)
Maly Theatre is a drama theater in Moscow, Russia. Established in 1806 and operating on its present site on the Theatre Square since 1824, the theatre traces its history to the Moscow University drama company, established in 1756...
, with stars like Ivan Moskvin
Ivan Moskvin
Ivan Mikhailovich Moskvin , 1874, Moscow – February 16, 1946, Moscow) was a Russian actor and People's Artist of the USSR. He became director of the Moscow Art Theatre in 1943. He was a student in the Moscow Philharmonic Society from 1893 to 1896. He also performed in the Yaroslavl company...
, P. Orlenev, C. Kuznetsov and N. Khmelyov in the leading roles. According to I. Yampolsky, Tolstoy the dramatist, even if not on par with Pushkin, was high above his contemporaries; he created complex, multi-dimensional historical figures. "In the arts, to be wary of showing weaknesses in your favourite characters is to pay them bad service... Thus one can only succeed in creating faceless dummies whom nobody would believe in", Tolstoy wrote.
In the mid-19th century Tolstoy was not taken very seriously, but his reputation started to grow after his death in 1875. Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Korolenko
Vladimir Galaktionovich Korolenko was a Ukrainian-Russian short story writer, journalist, human rights activist and humanitarian. His short stories were known for their harsh description of nature based on his experience of exile in Siberia...
, twenty years after the publication of the final part of the drama trilogy, wrote in a diary that he "re-read it and... despite the obvious note of romanticisation of the boyarshina" it made a "very strong and vivid impression" on him. It was Korolenko who called Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich "a gem of Russian drama", that's been shining especially bright next to "the totally dismal theater repertoire of the late 19th century".
Tolstoy was highly valued by Aleksander Blok and Valery Bryusov
Valery Bryusov
Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was a Russian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and historian. He was one of the principal members of the Russian Symbolist movement.-Biography:...
; Ivan Bunin, otherwise harsh in his comments on fellow writers, rated him very high; Velemir Khlebnikov mentioned him among his all-time favourites and, most surprisingly (according to Korney Chukovsky
Korney Chukovsky
Korney Ivanovich Chukovsky was one of the most popular children's poets in the Russian language. His poems, Doctor Aybolit , The Giant Roach , The Crocodile , and Wash'em'clean have been favourites with many generations of Russophone children...
), Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky was a Russian and Soviet poet and playwright, among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.- Early life :...
knew his poetry by heart and often recited it in public. Both Tolstoy's poetry (the larger part of which has been transformed into classic romance) and his historical drama trilogy are regarded as an intrinsic part of the classic Russian literature of the 19th century.
Drama
- Don JuanDon Juan (drama)Don Juan is an 1862 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, first published in the April issue of Russky Vestnik magazine. Don Juan never appeared on stage during its author's lifetime. In 1891, its production was deemed "unsuitable" by censors. The play was staged for the first time ever in...
(Дон Жуан, 1862) - The Death of Ivan the TerribleThe Death of Ivan the TerribleThe Death of Ivan the Terrible is an historical drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy written in 1863 and first published in the January 1866 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski magazine. It is the first part of a trilogy that is followed by Tsar Fiodor Ioannovich and concludes with Tsar Boris. All...
(Смерть Иоанна Грозного, 1866) from Google Books - Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (Царь Фёдор Иоаннович, 1868) from Google Books
- Tsar BorisTsar Boris (drama)Tsar Boris is a 1870 drama by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1868-1869 and first published in 1870 in the #3, March issue of the Vestnik Evropy magazine...
(Царь Борис, 1870) - Posadnik (Посадник, 1871, published in 1874-1976)
Prose
- Prince SerebrenniPrince SerebrenniPrince Serebrenni is a historical novel by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1859-1861 and first published by the Russky vestnik magazine in 1862...
(known also as The Silver Knight, Князь Серебряный, 1862) from Google Books - The Family of the Vourdalak (Семья вурдалака, 1839)
- The Vampire (Упырь, 1841)
Poetry
- The Sinner (Грешница, 1857)
- Ioann Damaskin (Иоанн Дамаскин, 1858)
- Vasily ShibanovVasily ShibanovVasily Shibanov is a poem by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in the late 1840s and first published in the September 1858 issue of Russky vestnik magazine...
(Василий Шибанов, 1858) - The Alchemist (unfinished, 1867)
- History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to TimashevHistory of the Russian State from Gostomysl to TimashevHistory of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev is a parody poem in 83 verses by the Russian poet and dramatist Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in 1868...
(1868) - Portrait (Портрет, 1872)
- DragonDragon (Aleksey Tolstoy)Dragon is a poem by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, written in the spring and summer of 1875 and first published in Vestnik Evropy October 1875 issue . The poem was subtitled "A XII century tale...
(1875) - The Dream of Councillor PopovThe Dream of Councillor PopovThe Dream of Councillor Popov is a satire in verse by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, first published in 1878 in Berlin, and regarded as one of the best satirical poems in Russian literature, mixing "sharp, poignant satire… and pure delight in cheerful absurdity"...
(written 1873, first published in 1978, Berlin)
External links
- Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy. Poems (in Russian)
- Love’s Ebb and Flow - a poem by Tolstoy translated into English by Alice Stone Blackwell.
- Do You Remember the Evening - a poem by Tolstoy translated into English by Anton Bespalov and Rianne Stam.