Tolstoy: A Russian Life [Paperback]

I don't know why this biography is described on the back cover as "unorthodox" unless it is because of the author's frank, but very well supported criticisms of Tolstoy.

It is a relief to find a biography of a widely revered writer which reveals him warts and all. I was intrigued to read that the author finds Tolstoy an unappealing young man, sanctimoniously writing over-ambitious lists of worthy resolutions, only to spend a few days in prison for failure to attend lectures, or weeks in a clinic to be treated for venereal disease.

When a young man, he was forced to sell villages along with serfs to pay for his gambling debts, and then used some of proceeds together with bail-outs from long-suffering friends, to lose still more money.

He is portrayed as promiscuous - apparently quite common for wealthy young men of his day - controlling, for instance of the long-suffering wife who was a teenager, half his age, when he married her, and very opinionated, prone to falling out with friends - once, he even challenged his friend Turgenev to a duel.

It is interesting to learn that Tolstoy cared more for his "ABC" primer for children than his most famous novels. Although he spent many months researching them and trying out different plots, he was bored with "War and Peace" before it was finished, and struggled with "Anna Karenina" which became for him, a "banal.. bitter radish".

As his social conscience developed, Tolstoy tried to free his serfs, only to discover that they mistrusted his intentions and refused to cooperate. Then, he was one of the first to found a school for his serfs' children. It was remarkably child-centred for its day. Yet, he left it after only a few matter of months to research educational practice in Europe, then closed it down completely in order to move on to other interests. This kind of flitting from one obsession to another was typical. To be fair, from the age of 7 X 7 = 49 (he was very superstitious), he was consistent in his attempt to lead an ethical life, passing through the phases of "religious maniac" to "Holy Fool". Tolstoy's run-ins with the ludicrous censor make fascinating reading. Eventually, he was excommunicated for his inflammatory writing in an extraordinary procedure in which he was declared "anathema" but this only aroused yet more interest in him, by then far more popular than the Tsar.

We are told that the only reason the Tsar did not consign the outspoken Tolstoy to a remote monastery in later life was because he did not want to give him the oxygen of the publicity.

Even Tolstoy ceased to deny, in fact came to revel in, his weaknesses which included self-absorption and insensitivity, in particular to the wife ground down by childbearing, domesticity and isolation in the countryside, with whom he vainly tried to practise "sexual abstinence" but totally refused to use contraception. Yet he was a visionary thinker, genuinely concerned with inequality and the meaning of life and possessed a rash courage. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened to this pugnacious individualist if he had been born into a poor family.

Although the book sometimes gives too much space to minor details - such as which relatives came for Christmas one year - it is mostly very clear and readable - not only concerning how Tolstoy produced his books - with his wife copying out "War and Peace" several times by hand - and the complexity of his personality but also in bringing to life C19 Russia in a period of dramatic change.

The author raises the intriguing question of the extent to which Tolstoy's anarchic views triggered revolution. She highlights the sad irony of the speed with which the Bolsheviks adopted a schizophrenic approach - revering Tolstoy's novels whilst condemning his anarchic views and persecuting his followers even more fiercely than the Tsar's regime had done. How would Tolstoy have reacted to Stalinism? As the author suggests, he would no doubt have been promptly shot.

War and Peace and Anna Karenina are both in my top ten or so favourite novels, and my desire to learn more about their author was my main reason for reading this book. As a source of such information Bartlett's book didn't disappoint: it provides a fascinating account of a larger-than-life character. It's long (454 pages of text plus a further 90 pages devoted to footnotes, references, and a detailed and very helpful index) but not unreasonably so given the complexity of Tolstoy's life and work, and the enormous mass of paperwork which he produced during his life.

The book told me a lot of things that I hadn't previously known about both WAP and AK. For example, chapter 1 focuses on earlier generations of Tolstoy's family, which at first sight doesn't sound very interesting; but it emerges that Tolstoy's maternal ancestors, the Volkonsky family, provided the inspiration for WAP's fictional Bolkonsky family, with WAP's Princess Maria Bolkonskaya being modelled on Tolstoy's own mother, Maria Volkonskaya. Later chapters provide similar insights about how Tolstoy worked multiple experiences from his own life into both WAP and AK. All this is in the first half of the book. The second half focuses mainly on his philosophical and religious thinking. I initially knew much less about this, but I found it sufficiently interesting to want to follow some of it up in future reading. Likewise, Bartlett's book has motivated me to read or re-read some of his less well-known literary works, as well as to revisit work by Dostoyevsky and other Russian literary giants whom I haven't read for a long time.

Over and above his life's work, the book also provides a detailed portrait of Tolstoy the man, warts and all - and unfortunately there are some rather large warts. He was undoubtedly in part selfish and arrogant, so bound up in his own ideas that he was oblivious to others' ideas and sensibilities. There are many examples throughout the book, but for me the most jaw-dropping is in chapter 12, during which his first meeting with Tchaikovsky is described. One might assume that he would defer to Tchaikovsky on musical matters. Far from it: he immediately offered the judgement that "Beethoven lacked talent", a view which Tchaikovsky understandably found "fatuous and offensive". It seems extraordinary that a writer of such remarkable accomplishment should say this about a composer of even more remarkable accomplishment; seemingly, it all stemmed from his world view in which most Western culture was morally corrupt. (Incidentally, Beethoven could be said to have had the last laugh here, since in the book's Epilogue we learn that at the 1928 centenary celebrations of Tolstoy's birth one of the highlights was a group of 250 schoolchildren singing the Ode To Joy from the 9th symphony). Arguably much worse than Tolstoy's arrogance in his professional life, though, was his systematic selfishness towards his wife Sonya, who supported him faithfully throughout their marriage and was rewarded by having her wishes repeatedly ignored if they conflicted with his work priorities. I felt that Bartlett provided a well-balanced treatment here: her obvious admiration for his achievements doesn't blind her to his personal failings.

Bartlett's book is relatively short on analysis of Tolstoy's work. I don't mean this as a criticism: it's not the primary purpose of the book, and in any case there is already such a wealth of analytical material about Tolstoy that Bartlett probably felt that it would be superfluous to add to it. Clearly you should look elsewhere if you want a considered literary critique of his major novels, or a discussion of the place of his religious thought in a longer term perspective. But if you want a rounded picture of Tolstoy the literary giant, Tolstoy the radical religious philosopher, and Tolstoy the man, then I recommend this book very strongly; unless you are already exceptionally knowledgeable about his life you are likely to learn a lot, as I did.

This is a life (450 pages) of Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910 - aristocrat, soldier, novelist, farmer, thinker, social campaigner) with an epilogue about his influence in Russia since 1910 (and the Soviet attitude to Tolstoyanism). It's by Rosamund Bartlett, an expert on Russian cultural history and Fellow of King's College (London).

It's about the development of key books e.g., "Anna Karenina" and "ABC" (an educational text) but also about Tolstoy as educationalist and thinker. The boldness and range of his religious/philosophical thinking about how to live was tremendous. A centrepiece was "The Gospel in Brief" (based on the Sermon on The Mount) which - a radical re-examination of Christianity - drew conclusions he lived by. He became a non-violent pacifist, but also anti-state, anti-militarist and arguably anarchist, which explains why the Soviets and Orthodox church were so hostile.

Dr Bartlett's thorough book is well-researched , but I'd have liked more opinions (in addition to chronology) about the literature and philosophy; e.g., why is Anna Karenina so highly regarded and writers e.g., Chekhov in awe, ... what are the merits/demerits of Tolstoy's "anarchistic" ideas? Was he right? Perhaps such discussion could have been in footnotes? Perhaps Dr Bartlett felt such judgements were provided by others in the literature.

The portrayal of (Tolstoy's wife) Sophia - central but in shadow - seemed understated; perhaps the marriage was a drama (tensions of a woman married to a radical genius) Dr Bartlett didn`t want to major on. Tolstoy and Sophia married in 1862 when she was 18 (he 34), she bore 13 children (8 survived childhood), and died 1919 at Yasnaya Polyana (the Tolstoy estate south of Moscow). She attempted suicide when told (at the end of his life) Tolstoy had left Yasnaya Polyana.