Tolstoy lion He was a different person. Living in the Russia of the Czars, ostentatious to the core, he preached with austere and progressive ideas. The fact: this September 9 would have turned 191 years. It was uneven, then, at the time. Its origins were aristocratic, although he never wanted to behave as such. He had deep ethical and moral doubts, and he wrote almost compulsively. The original manuscripts of his diary, which he began writing at age 19, and which he would never put aside, are preserved. A habit that now allows us to know many of his acts and impressions about his day to day. Although there is also that of being snoopers.
“There is only one way to be happy: live for others”
Together with Dostoyevsky, he is considered one of the key authors of Russian realism. Also of the universal literature. His works are a portrait of the society of his time, with characters confronted with themselves. And confronted with the world at the same time. The social puzzle of the individual, where it is often difficult to fit. Tolstoy looked like a lost man, although he hid it with convictions. Hence he tried to practice his ideas beyond his writing. To exemplify it, We present five anecdotes of his life, where features of his thinking appear.
1. Although we presented him as a man of strong convictions, until he was 16 he did not have a rigid stance on his behavior. He dedicated himself to what he called "idleness." A task allowed by Tatiana Yergolskaya, a relative who took care of her upbringing. Tolstoy was orphaned at age 9. Without a definite course, he ended up in the front of Crimea with his brother, where he met horror and death. After the war, he would return with strong religious and moral convictions. He was an anarchist, orthodox Catholic and vegetarian.
2. After the war, he did not return home directly. He traveled for several months in different countries of Europe, coagulating his ideas about social change and free thinking. Some ideas that were based on pacifism and education. When he returned to Russia, he created a school on his estate. He educated peasant children with progressive methods.
3. After reading Henry David Thoreau, an American author, he developed strong convictions about nonviolent resistance. An ideal that went hand in hand with his Catholic faith. He wrote in an Indian newspaper about it. That by the way, his writing came to Gandhi, with whom he shared a certain written correspondence.
4. He was a man of deep religious beliefs. Many of his characters also shared this facet. Even so, the last years of his life shunned, in a way, his faith. Wrote Resurrection, a book where he criticized ecclesiastical institutions. And the Orthodox Church excommunicated it. In fact, either by austerity or by symbology, there is no ornament or cross in his grave.
5. He wanted to abandon his family and his possessions in the last years of his life. Although he owned a farm and other properties, he decided to live his life on a small plot, where he built a garden and fixed shoes. His family never wanted to move to that small land, so he had to return with them and them at night. At 82 he decided to escape, break everything, although he died within ten days of starting the feat.
His literary work is very extensive. Gather essay, short stories, chronicles and novels. It was published completely between 1928 and 1958. Although it is thought that he suffered Soviet censorship. Two of his novels stand out:
The first, War and peace. It tells the story of five aristocratic families during the Napoleonic invasion. Through a kaleidoscope of characters, we see the faces acquired by the conflict in Russian society.
The second, Ana Karenina. At the gates of the Russian Revolution, at the end of the 19th century, urban and rural areas make up a Russia of strong contrasts. The protagonist will live between the two worlds, tormented by vanity, passion and reason.