Who was Leo Tolstoy's friends? Interesting facts from the life of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. From photos to words

SERGEY NIKOLAEVICH TOLSTOY
(UNCLE SEREZHA)

I knew Uncle Seryozha quite well, I often visited him on his estate Pirogovo and in Moscow when he lived there. Despite my lack of sympathy for his conservative and noble views, I loved him. He was an extremely thoroughbred, handsome, witty, proud and sincere person, without any falsehood or hypocrisy. He was what he was, did not hide anything and did not want to appear to be anything. His father said about him that his soul is open, like the mechanism of a glass watch: you can see right through what he thinks and feels. In his memoirs, his father wrote that he “always admired - strange as it may seem - the spontaneity of his brother’s egoism,” but that it was “incomprehensible to him.”

Sergei Nikolaevich is the prototype of Volodya in “Childhood”, “Adolescence” and “Youth”.

He was born on February 17, 1826. He had good abilities, and in his childhood and youth, learning was easier for him than for his brother Lev. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in the Mathematics Department of Kazan University, but after completing the course he did not study mathematics and was not interested. Then he joined the imperial family as riflemen, where he served for a short time, retired as a captain. In Kazan, St. Petersburg and Moscow, he visited aristocratic society, where he did not find much pleasure, as his sister told me, and my aunt, Marya Nikolaevna, but he led act at ease, like a natural

a member of this society, “not like brother Lev,” added Aunt Masha; Leo was always shy, awkward and proud. In his youth, Sergei Nikolaevich could easily “make a career,” as they said then, but he was not ambitious and preferred to remain free. He could not force himself, pull the burden of duty, fake and serve. He made friends with whomever he wanted, did what pleased him, or what he considered necessary to do. He thought little about the consequences of his actions. His life followed the line of least resistance; he left life to make of him what it wanted.

After the service, he took up farming on the rich black soil estate he inherited in 1000 dessiatinas, Pirogov, a stud farm and hunting. In the 50s, when his brother Lev was in the Caucasus, he also looked after the farm in Yasnaya Polyana. In his youth he lived a carefree and cheerful life. He was a good hunter and had fine horses and dogs. He hunted most of all with greyhounds and in the fall he sometimes went for several weeks to the “away field”, took seasoned wolves and hunted down many foxes. In Pirogovsky Park there was a path, on the sides of which two rows of wolf teeth were dug in; these were the teeth of the wolves he hunted.

In his youth, he was interested in “gypsyism,” that is, gypsy songs and gypsy women. Gypsies in those days were very chaste, and communication with a gypsy was fraught with difficulties - the consent of her parents and a ransom from the choir. Infatuated with an attractive gypsy singer, Marya Mikhailovna Shishkina, Sergei Nikolaevich took her to his place in Pirogovo in 1849 and began to live with her as his wife. Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya - my mother's sister - told in her memoirs how in the 60s Sergei Nikolaevich, having lived for eighteen years with Marya Mikhailovna and having children from her, almost separated from her, fell in love with Tatyana Andreevna and intended to marry her . However, this novel ended with Tatyana Andreevna marrying A. M. Kuzminsky, and Sergei Nikolaevich married Marya Mikhailovna. In this novel, perhaps for the first time in his life, he had to choose between fulfilling

his duty and the satisfaction of his passion, and, like a truly noble man, he chose the first. But this unsuccessful romance was a difficult drama for him and left a dark imprint on his subsequent life.

I often visited Pirogov, alone, with my father or with someone from our family. Pirogovo is thirty-five miles from Yasnaya Polyana. We rode there on horseback. The road led through black soil fields, partly along a highway, partly along a country road. Halfway along the road we passed through a village with the characteristic name Cow Tails, which probably stemmed from the fact that once upon a time the inhabitants of this village stole cows. To get to the estate it was necessary to drive through the relatively prosperous village of Pirogov, cross the Upa River under the mill, passing a large church, behind which a beautiful manor house with two mezzanines was already visible. Behind the house there was a garden with wide linden alleys.

As children, we said that the first thing we saw in the Pirogov house was Uncle Seryozha’s white teeth. He usually saw those coming to him from his office, went out onto the porch and smiled when he saw the pleasant guests. Then we saw the good-natured round face of Marya Mikhailovna and the joyful faces of our cousins ​​Vera, Varya and Masha. The arrival of guests was an event for them, enlivening their boring and monotonous life. Marya Mikhailovna was always very friendly, asking about relatives and friends, and saying, depending on the story, “wonderful, wonderful,” or “terrible, terrible.” Sometimes it happened that my uncle was out of sorts, received us coldly, used irony and ridiculed us, but this happened rarely; usually he was glad of our arrival. He began the conversation with what interested him at the time, about his farm, about the article in Moskovskie Vedomosti. and in recent years in “New Time”, or about an English or French novel read. “You don’t read anything,” he will say, “have you read such and such an article in Moskovskie Vedomosti or such and such a novel?”

He himself read constantly, but almost only newspapers and English and French novels. He learned English this way: one day he read the first volume of one

of the first English novel based on a Russian translation, but he lost the second volume. My father happened to have both volumes of this novel, but in English.

Take this novel and read it with a dictionary in your hands,” said the father.

My uncle did just that; his knowledge of Latin, French and German helped him. Since then, he began to read English novels in the original. The only thing he didn't learn was the English accent; he pronounced English words so well that no one could understand him.

Most of all he talked about his farm.

“You live on the money you received from your father’s writings,” he said. - And I need to count every penny. The clerk will rob your father of 1000 rubles, and he will describe him and receive 2000 rubles for this description: a thousand rubles in profit. I can't manage like this!

He loved to talk about his accounting system, which he kept himself. Every evening the manager came to him and, standing, reported on the work, expenses and income of the day. You were not supposed to sit in front of the count, and the manager, no matter how tired he was from the day’s work, sometimes had to stand in the evening for more than an hour to report to the count. The managers in Pirogov changed very often, but my uncle had, so to speak, a reserve manager - the coachman Vasily, who, after the dismissal of each manager, filled his position, sometimes for a long time, even for years. And this despite the fact that the uncle knew very well that Vasily was his stole.

Sergei Nikolaevich himself was rarely in the field, and when he was, he went out in a carriage; He walked little, no further than the garden fence. Since childhood, I heard that my uncle is an excellent host, but then I became convinced that this was not true. He knew well the conditions of the economy of that time, but was unscrupulous, unbusinesslike and ran the economy like a lord. His beautiful stud farm brought him nothing but losses, and in the end he liquidated it. He sold his second estate, Shcherbachevka, which he received after the death of his brother Dmitry and lived on. In Pirogov, he changed the farming system several times: either he would start inventory and run the farm with workers and day laborers, then he would liquidate his inventory and give the land for

cultivation to the peasants, with payment of so much for sowing, processing and harvesting tithes, then he will again start a farm farm. Any such reform was very expensive. He had neither proper crop rotation nor dairy or meat production. He was suspicious, but often suspected the wrong people. As a result, every year his financial situation worsened.

Once, my uncle instructed me, together with the coachman Vasily, who was holding the position of manager, to buy several horses at a fair in Sergievsky (now Plavsk), and I had to be the cashier and pay for the horses. He did not trust Vasily's honesty. We managed to buy the horses at an inexpensive price, and my uncle was pleased with our purchase.

Sergei Nikolaevich's beliefs were conservative, right-wing. So were his neighboring landowners: Prince. S. S. Gagarin, E. V. Bogdanovich (known in his time as a retrograde), Prince. A. A. Urusov and N. N. Bibikov. My uncle knew the peasants well, but did not idealize them. He avoided entering into any relationship with them other than business. Only sometimes on holidays the Pirogov women came to his porch and sang their songs, and he treated them to vodka. They sang well; he loved Russian songs. He did not have hostile relations with the peasants: he did not sue them, did not pester them with fines for grasses and logging, but they did not like him and were afraid of him. In personal relationships, he demanded respect from them. Once we were riding with him in his beautiful carriage, on his beautiful horses. We came across a cart with two men riding on it. One of them took off his cap when he saw the count, the other did not. My uncle did not answer the greeting and said to me:

Do you know why I didn’t answer this guy’s bow? Because his comrade did not bow to me

I was surprised by this logic, but remained silent.

Uncle loved to joke and was witty. He loved music, but, with few exceptions, not the music of composers. He loved Russian and gypsy songs, and folk music in general. He did not recognize Beethoven; he liked only a few plays by Chopin and Schumann. About pianists, he repeated the words of Alphonse Carr that they should be exiled to a desert island, but about

their game: Plus cela va vite, plus cela dure longtemps" 1.

Sergei Nikolaevich had many children, most of them died in childhood. Four reached adulthood: son Gregory and three daughters - Vera, Varvara and Maria. Grigory was a poor student, had little education, entered military service early, and served in the Pavlograd hussars. He rarely visited Pirogov and kept aloof from our family and relatives, so we knew him little. He treated his father poorly, wrote him daring letters while drunk and demanded payment of his debts. He was married to Baroness E.V. Tizenhausen and had offspring. He retired as a lieutenant colonel.

The uncle's eldest daughter, Vera, was friendly, shy, truthful and loving, and was her father's favorite, but he was harsh and strict with her, especially when he was out of sorts. She was friendly with my sister Tanya and all of us.

Our youngest daughters, Varya and Masha, were both very small and were called “bugs.” Varya, almost a dwarf, ugly, fair-haired, with blue eyes and a protruding lower lip, was not stupid, but she was envious and did not love her father. Masha, a brunette with expressive black eyes, looked like her gypsy mother not only in her face, but also in her good-natured character.

In front of his daughters, his uncle kept French governesses, of whom Maria Mikhailovna was sometimes unreasonably jealous of him. All three daughters were taught to speak French with their father, and even when he spoke to them in Russian, they had to answer him in French.

A year after our family moved to Moscow for the winter in 1881, Sergei Nikolaevich and his family also moved there. I loved visiting him at his Moscow apartment in the Rogovich house on Nikoloplotnikovsky Lane. We felt at ease and fun there. They played vint, sang, played music, had dinner and drank wine. My uncle played screw badly: he collected cards slowly, which made all his partners impatient, he assigned the game incorrectly, forgot played cards, etc. He often visited his uncle and sang Russian

1 “The sooner it is done, the longer it takes.” (French).

songs Nikolai Mikhailovich Lopatin, who recorded and published, together with V. Prokunin, a collection of lyrical Russian songs. We also sang gypsy and Russian songs in chorus to the accompaniment of a piano or guitar. Sometimes I played pieces of a light genre, like the Hungarian dances of Brahms. Lev Mikhailovich Lopatin also visited and with a mysterious air told terrible stories about apparitions.

One day, a large group of us, together with my uncle, went to Strelna to listen to the gypsies. My uncle treated the gypsies like a lord: he said “you” to the famous conductor Fyodor Sokolov, whom we young people treated with respect, ordered old songs and scolded the gypsies for forgetting real gypsy and Russian songs. The gypsies treated him with great respect; Fyodor Sokolov tried in every possible way to please His Excellency. That night I realized the charm of gypsy singing better than ever. They sang old songs, for example: “Len”, “Hear and understand”. “Not the evening dawn”, “I’m bored, young”, “Kanavela”, etc.; They also sang the best, more modern songs - “Sosenushka”, “Grisha”, “Oh, birch”, “In the fatal hour”, etc.

In 1881 - 1886 Sergei Nikolaevich was the leader of the nobility in Krapivno. The nobles respected him, but they said that he was little involved in business, and they regretted that he was under the influence of a certain A. N. Krivtsov, whom many did not like.

My uncle lived in Moscow, if I’m not mistaken, for four winters. But life in Moscow was expensive, farming in Pirogov brought little, and the uncle again began to live alone with his family in Pirogov all year round. The uncle began to treat his brother’s views not with hostility, as before, but with sympathy. In general, he did not like servants, now he tried to do without them. He cleaned his room himself, and during dinner no one served. Lunch was served from the kitchen to the dining room through a window specially made for this purpose, and dirty dishes were placed in a basket, which was taken away after lunch.

In the 90s, when Sergei Nikolaevich’s daughters were at the age when it was time for them to get married, or had already passed, they were under the influence

my father's views as expressed in the Kreutzer Sonata. But it cannot be said that chastity consoled them. Masha once said: “Voila! Nous sommes un nid de vieilles filles et nos enfants seront aussi un nid de vieilles filles. Comme c"est triste!" 1. Hearing this saying of hers, we laughed out loud and then teased her: how can vieilles filles have children?

However, neither she nor her sisters remained spinsters.

Vera was especially close to the views of her uncle Lev Nikolaevich. But the gypsy blood took its toll and she fit un faux pas 2, that is, she sinned with the Bashkir who was invited to Pirogovo in order to treat her with kumis for tuberculosis that had begun in her. She became pregnant and left Pirogov for several months. The uncle was deeply upset and only gradually came to terms with the accomplished fact and allowed her to return. She arrived; he was informed that she was waiting for him in the dining room, and he went out to her. But he did not expect what he saw: in her arms was a baby, her son. I don’t know how this scene ended; I only know that Sergei Nikolaevich did not want to see his grandson for a long time, and the grandson lived separately on the mezzanine; he was not brought downstairs to the dining room and living room. He died at a young age.

Vera's novel gave Lev Nikolaevich the theme for his story “What did I see in my dream?”

Varya, like her older sister, sinned: she entered into a relationship with a Pirogovsky peasant who served as an assistant cook in the house. She left her father, lived in Syzran, and somewhere else, and, as far as I know, after that she did not live in Pirogov.

Masha married a neighboring landowner, Sergei Vasilyevich Bibikov. Bibikov courted her for several years. She liked him, but she said about him:

Seryozha est si gentil, mais pourquoi est ce qu"il dit 3: “the dog is lying”? She found such an expression vulgar.

1 Here we are - a nest of old maids, and our children will also be a nest of old maids. How sad! (French)

2 slipped (French).

3 is very nice, but why does he say: (French).

Sergei Vasilyevich had little education, living permanently in the village and managing business, but he was a completely decent, warm-hearted and efficient person. He finally decided to woo Masha, and with this he went to Sergei Nikolaevich. Sergei Nikolaevich, despite the fact that he knew him very well, began to interrogate him, “Have you received a higher education? do you serve somewhere? Do you speak french? Do you have an independent state?” Poor Seryozha Bibikov, blushing and embarrassed, had to answer negatively to all these questions. However, Sergei Nikolaevich gave his consent. Sergei Vasilyevich got married and turned out to be a loving husband and respectful son-in-law. His relatives gave him the small estate of Dubki, next door to Pirogov, where he and his wife settled. Over time, Sergei Nikolaevich began to treat him well, and Seryozha Bibikov helped him in the Pirogov farm.

The last years of his life, the uncle was deeply depressed by the unsuccessful novels of his daughters.

In the nineties he fell ill with facial cancer. Already at the beginning of his illness, his vision began to worsen. I remember that one day he asked me: “What do you use to clean your glasses?” I answered: “With a handkerchief or whatever you have to.” “And I,” he said, “no matter what I wipe my glasses with, they remain cloudy.” It was not his glasses that were cloudy, but his eyes.

A few days before his death, when it was obvious that he was dying, my father came to him and spent ten days in Pirogov. Even before his arrival, Marya Mikhailovna and his sister, nun Marya Nikolaevna, who was in Pirogov, dreamed that Sergei Nikolaevich would receive communion, but did not dare to tell him this. When Lev Nikolaevich arrived, they expressed their wishes to him. Contrary to their expectations, he directly conveyed to Sergei Nikolaevich the wishes of his wife and sister, and Sergei Nikolaevich heeded their requests and received communion. Why did he take communion? This remained his secret. Throughout his entire life he was indifferent to the Orthodox Church. Here too he turned out to be incomprehensible, as his brother said about him in his memoirs.

His illness was painful. Before his death, he saw very poorly and asked to move the candle closer to him, and he was driven into despair that he still saw almost nothing.

Lev Nikolaevich left Pirogovo two days before his death, but, having learned about his death, he came to Pirogovo again. He telegraphed to me on August 25, 1904: “Uncle Seryozha has died. Tomorrow is the funeral. Your presence is useful." I went right away. My cousins ​​asked my advice on how to manage their father's inheritance. I don't know how helpful my advice was. It was decided to transfer 40,000 rubles lying in the bank to Grigory Sergeevich, and leave the heavily mortgaged estate in the possession of Maria Mikhailovna and her daughters. Grigory Sergeevich did not object. He soon spent the money he received.

The estate was destroyed by Pirogov peasants in 1917, and then Maria Mikhailovna and her daughters left for Tula. Soon after this, the estate was nationalized.

MARYA NIKOLAEVNA TOLSTAY
(AUNT MASHA)

My father's only sister, Marya Nikolaevna, was born in Yasnaya Polyana on March 7, 1830. On August 4 of the same year, her mother died, on June 21, 1837, her father died, and in 1838, her grandmother. She and her brothers were left orphans. They remained in the care of their aunt and guardian, the early widowed pilgrim Alexandra Ilyinichna Osten-Sacken, but she died in 1841. Their youngest aunt, the stupid, frivolous socialite Pelageya Ilyinichna Yushkova, who was married to the Kazan landowner V.I. Yushkov, was appointed guardian.

In Chapter XXI of “Adolescence,” Lyubochka in many ways resembles Marya Nikolaevna: “Lyubochka is short in stature, and as a result of the English illness, she still has goose-like legs and a disgusting waist. The only good thing about her whole figure is her eyes, and these eyes are truly beautiful - large, black and with such an indefinably pleasant expression of importance and naivety that they cannot help but stop attention. Lyubochka is simple and natural in everything, she always looks straight and sometimes, fixing her huge black eyes on someone, she doesn’t miss

fucks them for so long that she is scolded for it, saying that it is discourteous.”

Marya Nikolaevna received the same education that young ladies received at that time. In addition to a short stay at the Kazan Institute, she studied at home where she learned the French language from French governesses. She was musical and, for an amateur, played the piano quite well.

In April 1847, a division of their inherited property was made between the Tolstoy brothers and sister. The brothers assigned Marya Nikolaevna an equal share with them, and not just 1/14 of the inherited property, as they could have allocated to her according to the then law.

Marya Nikolaevna, more than her aunt Yushkova, loved her relative Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya. When Yushkova took the Tolstoy children to Kazan, Tatyana Alexandrovna went to the village of Pokrovskoye, Chernsky district, to her sister Elizaveta Alexandrovna Tolstoy, born Ergolskaya, who was married to Nikolai Ilyich’s cousin, gr. Pyotr Ivanovich Tolstoy, and already widowed, they had a son, Valeryan Petrovich. The Ergolsky sisters wooed Marya Nikolaevna for him. She was seventeen years old, he was thirty-four, she still played with dolls and had little idea about married life. Valerian Petrovich was no stranger to her, since she often visited Pokrovsky and lived with him in the same house. She was a lonely orphan, and in In those days it was believed that one should get married early. Valeryan was the nephew of her beloved Tatyana Alexandrovna, and in November 1847 she married him. After the wedding, she settled with her husband in Pokrovskoye. She lived the first years of her marriage prosperously. She gave birth to: in 1849, a son, Peter, who died in childhood, in 1850, a daughter, Varvara, in 1851, a son, Nikolai, and in 1852, a daughter, Elizabeth.

Lev Nikolaevich lived in the Caucasus at that time and more than once entrusted Valeryan Petrovich with his economic affairs. By the way, Valeryan Petrovich, on his instructions, sold a large house in Yasnaya Polyana for 5,000 rubles in banknotes.

The village of Pokrovskoe is located in the former Chernsky

district, twenty versts from Nikolsky-Vyazemsky, which belonged to Marya Nikolaevna’s brother N.N. Tolstoy, and twelve versts from the estate of I.S. Turgenev - Spassky-Lutovinov. In 1854, Turgenev met Valeryan Petrovich and Marya Nikolaevna. The first step was taken by Turgenev: he became friends with Valeryan Petrovich on the basis of his shared passion for hunting. On October 24 of this year, he brought a new book of Sovremennik to Pokrovskoye and spoke with delight about a new story by an unknown author, “Adolescence,” signed with the letters L. N.T., Turgenev read it aloud to Marya Nikolaevna. She listened in amazement to the story of a family so similar to hers, and wondered who could know the intimate details of her and her brothers' lives. She suspected Brother Nikolai and was far from thinking that Brother Lev was the author of the story. This is what she herself told Biryukov (the author of the biography of L.N. Tolstoy) and others. From this story of hers it follows that at that time she was not yet familiar with “The History of My Childhood,” published in As 9 of Sovremennik in 1852.

“Have we read Boyhood? You read it, and despite the fact that you were severely plucked by censorship or the editors, it was still good. Speaking of literature: Valerian met Turgenev. Turgenev took the first step: he brought them the issue of Sovremennik, in which your story was published; he is delighted with her.

Masha is delighted with Turgenev. You understand how much I want to see him. As soon as I meet him, I will write to you what impression he made on me. Masha says that this is a simple person. He plays spillikins with her, plays grand solitaire, and is a great friend with Varenka. But Masha knows little about the world and could be very mistaken about such an intelligent person as Turgenev. Now people have become very cunning. You need to take a closer look at them before making a conclusion. I would really like to see him."

Turgenev wrote in his letters to friends that at the first meeting with Marya Nikolaevna he almost fell in love with her, and later he spoke warmly about her more than once. In the summer of 1856 he wrote Faust with dedication

I knew this story to Marya Nikolaevna and read this story to her from the manuscript. His heroine Eltsova resembles Marya Nikolaevna even in the smallest details. So, Eltsova, like Marya Nikolaevna, was indifferent to

Meanwhile, the relationship between the Tolstoy spouses gradually deteriorated. During the first years of Marya Nikolaevna's marriage, her mother-in-law Elizaveta Alexandrovna treated her with care and respect and restrained her son's temper, rudeness towards serfs and depraved behavior; During her lifetime, the couple lived tolerably. But in 1851, Elizaveta Alexandrovna died, and Valeryan Petrovich reached the point of cynicism. His daughters told me that his mistress, who served as a housekeeper in Pokrovsky, gave birth to a child from him in the outbuilding of the estate. As a result of his behavior, Maria Nikolaevna decided to break up with him, for which her brothers sympathized with her. In 1857 she left him for Pirogovo. After breaking up with her husband, her relationship with Turgenev did not stop. In June 1858, he spent three days in Pirogov, where she lived at that time. Turgenev wrote about this to Pauline Viardot on June 25: “I spent a very pleasant three days with my friends: two brothers and a sister, a beautiful but very unhappy woman. She was forced to separate from her husband, a sort of rustic Henry VIII, very disgusting. She has three children who are growing well, especially since their father is no longer with them. He treated them harshly out of principle: he took pleasure in raising them in a Spartan way, while leading just the opposite lifestyle himself. Of the two brothers, one (Sergei) is rather colorless, the other (Nikolai) is a charming fellow, lazy, phlegmatic, taciturn and at the same time very kind, gentle, with a delicate taste and subtle feelings, a truly original being. The third brother, Count Leo Tolstoy, is the one I told you about as one of our best writers. The sister is a pretty good musician; we played Beethoven, Mozart, etc.”

Turgenev's relationship with Marya Nikolaevna was not liked by her brothers. Lev Nikolaevich wrote in his diary September 4. 1858: “Turgenev treats M. Rubbish badly.” How did Marya Niko's novel end?

Laevny with Turgenev, I don’t know, but it ended in 1858. It is only known that on March 20, 1859, Turgenev, on his way to Spasskoye, stopped at Yasnaya Polyana, where he met with her. Subsequently, she always warmly remembered Turgenev and her platonic romance with him.

In Pirogov, on part of the estate that went to Marya Nikolaevna, a brick house was built.

In 1857, Marya Nikolaevna lived in Moscow with her brother Nikolai. There she saw, among other things, her childhood friend, Lyubov Alexandrovna Bers, and her daughters.

The health of her brother Nikolai deteriorated every year. He was persuaded to go abroad for treatment, and in 1860, on the advice of Turgenev, he went to Soden. That same summer, Marya Nikolaevna went there with her children and brother Lev. They sailed to Stettin by boat. From Berlin they went to their brother Nikolai in Soden. They did not live there long; From there, together with her brothers, Marya Nikolaevna went to the south of France, to the island of Gier. On September 20, 1860, her beloved brother Nikolai died. She was deeply upset by his death and could not stay in Giera, where everything reminded her of her brother. On the advice of a French friend, she went to Algeria, where she lived for two winters. She really liked the nature of Algeria, she traveled a lot into the interior of the country, and her health and mood improved. She then moved to Switzerland, and in 1862 she returned to Russia, but not for long.

In July, she came to Yasnaya Polyana when a search was carried out there in the absence of Lev Nikolayevich, she was there when Lyubov Aleksandrovna Bers and her daughters stopped by Yasnaya Polyana and her brother’s marriage to Sofya Andreevna was planned. Soon she went abroad again. She was not at her brother Lev's wedding.

In Switzerland, in the boarding house where she settled, she became close to one handsome Swede, Hector de Clene (1831 - 1873). Friendship turned to love, and on September 8, 1863, her third daughter, Elena, was born. Marya Nikolaevna gave her up to be raised by a respectable family, and placed her 12-year-old son Nikolenka in a Geneva boarding school. She decided to divorce her husband, which she wrote to her brothers about, and the brothers took action.

some steps in this direction. Valeryan Petrovich behaved correctly. He agreed to the divorce and to sending money to support the children. But Marya Nikolaevna had little hope that Hector de Clains would marry her. She wrote to her brother Sergei: “Of course, I want freedom, but that doesn’t mean anything. He loves me sincerely and strongly, but his character is very soft, and the influence of his relatives on him is great, so if the fight is beyond his strength, then I will sacrifice myself, and, no matter what it costs me, I will leave him.” Marya Nikolaevna's relatives tried to persuade her to return to Russia. Lev Nikolaevich wrote to her on March 24, 1864:

“Your letter is also good because you want to come to Russia. For God's sake, come. I don't think about it, but I feel with all my soul that this is the Best thing you can do. Auntie, who, you know, in my opinion, always unmistakably sees correctly by feeling what the best parti a prendre is, wants one thing - for you to return to Russia and not for yourself, but for you and the children, and is not afraid of anything, how about you go out for him married I believe her, although I myself have no convictions about the chances of your future happiness with him. Whatever God wants will happen. I am sending you a letter from Valeryan Petrovich. He agrees to everything, and his letter is as good as his letter can be. I did not file a petition for divorce...”

Marya Nikolaevna was in a difficult and uncertain situation; Finally she decided to return to Russia. Sergei Nikolaevich went abroad for her and brought her in the summer of 1864. She settled with her two daughters in Pirogov, but often lived for long periods in Moscow and Yasnaya Polyana.

After the death of her husband, Marya Nikolaevna lived with her daughters for some time in Yasnaya Polyana. There, her daughters Varya and Lisa brought great excitement, but her capricious character sometimes spoiled their cheerful mood. My mother was burdened by her. In a letter dated March 24, 1865 to her sister Tatyana Andreevna, in which Lev Nikolaevich wrote a few words above the lines, she wrote:

“I’ll tell you a secret (for God’s sake, Zephyrots don’t

1 decision on what to do (French).

never spill the beans) that Mashenka forbade the children to correspond with you out of jealousy, that they would not love you and me more than her. For the same reason, sometimes they were forbidden to sit with me, and they were called into Auntie’s room to sit avec votre pauvre mere 1, where they were silent and bored. Inscribed by Lev Nikolaevich: in vain. It all seems that way only when you’re not in a good mood. And it will be, and was, and will be good and fun for everyone together. And Mashenka has a lot of good things. In general, I don’t like Mashenka: she’s very boring. Inscribed by Lev Nikolaevich, It’s all nonsense, I’m not in a good mood. Seryozha also condemns her very much, and Lyovochka agrees with him. Inscribed by Lev Nikolaevich: I agree, but not like that. She's busy there minding her own business and doesn't want to know anyone. Inscribed by Lev Nikolaevich: not true".

Marya Nikolaevna had to manage the household not only in Pirogov, but also, as the guardian of her children, in Pokrovskoye. She did not know how to manage things: fortunately, she was helped by her close neighbor in Pokrovsky, Baron Alexander Antonovich Delvig (the poet’s younger brother). She became friends with his large family and often visited his Khitrovo estate.

At the end of the 60s, Marya Nikolaevna went abroad and brought from there her son Nikolenka, a modest, absent-minded, good-natured, handsome young man. He did not speak Russian and had difficulty learning Russian. He received his education abroad; he had no schoolmates in Russia, and at first he felt like a foreigner. He visited Yasnaya Polyana; my father and we children loved him very much. In September 1876, his father took him on a trip to his Samara estate and to Orenburg. Nikolai Valeryanovich failed to enter the university; he tried to serve in the military service, was at one time a cadet, but could not get used to military discipline and soon retired. Having reached adulthood, he sold the estate he inherited and bought another one near Pokrovsky. In 1878, he married Nadezhda Fedorovna Gromova; on June 12, 1879, he fell ill with typhus and died.

1 with your poor mother (French).

In 1871, Marya Nikolaevna’s youngest daughter, Elizaveta, married Prince. Leonid Dmitrievich Obolensky, and next year the eldest daughter, Varvara, for Nikolai Mikhailovich Nagorny. Marya Nikolaevna’s daughters began to live independently in Moscow, where their husbands served, and only moved to the village in the summer. Pokrovskoye came into the possession of the Obolenskys.

Marya Nikolaevna could not get along anywhere. She lived sometimes in Pokrovskoye, sometimes in Yasnaya Polyana, sometimes in Moscow, sometimes abroad. In 1873, she accidentally met de Clains abroad. He was quite ill and died the following year. "

In August 1881 I went to Moscow to enter the university. In Serpukhov, at the station, I unexpectedly met Aunt Masha, who had just returned from abroad and was traveling on an oncoming train to Yasnaya Polyana. With her was a pretty girl of about eighteen. It was her daughter Elena from de Clene. Aunt Masha, embarrassed, it seemed to me, said: “You need to meet my pupil. Speak to her in French; She doesn’t speak Russian.” I shook hands with a “ward girl” whose existence I didn’t know existed. I only later found out that I have a cousin, Elena Sergeevna. She was called Sergeevna by her patronymic name after her godfather, uncle Sergei Nikolaevich. Subsequently, we were very friendly with her. She began to live with her mother, and Aunt Masha introduced her to her friends as her pupil, although everyone knew that she was her daughter.

Elena Sergeevna did not live long with her mother. She could not come to terms with her difficult character and left her. At one time she served as governess to the daughter of the famous music publisher P. Jurgenson and became friends with his family. In 1898, she married judicial figure I.V. Denisenko, an intelligent and decent man.

I remember Aunt Masha from childhood. I was indifferent to her religiosity, to her superstitions and conversations about miracles, churches and priests, but I was attracted by her lively speech, sincerity, musicality, her expressive large black eyes and stories about antiquity. She

I always remembered with love my older brother Nikolai Nikolaevich, noting his sensitivity and warmth as a person. He was a talented storyteller. “Unfortunately,” she said, “I remember only one of his children’s stories: “How one countess wanted to be a countess.” It was the countess who fell in love with an acrobat who performed various tricks in the circus, with a decanter and, by the way, stood with his head on the decanter. The Countess wished to be this countess; the fairy granted her wish, and she turned into a decanter. But one day, due to an awkward movement of an acrobat, the decanter fell and broke, and the countess died.”

Aunt Masha was witty. For example, when she was already an elderly woman, some street ladies' man followed her on the street in Moscow. She was not embarrassed, led him to the lantern, lifted her veil and said: “Look at me, and, probably, you will leave me behind” - which is what the ladies' man did. Another example: in Yasnaya Polyana park she met a company of summer residents who asked her to take them to L.N. Tolstoy or at least give them the opportunity to see him. She, protecting her brother from visitors, told them: “Today they don’t show the lion, they show only monkeys.”

The emptiness of Marya Nikolaevna’s lonely life depressed her. She became even more moody and irritable; She did not get along with her daughters. Living in Moscow, at one time she took up music and invited violinists to play classical sonatas with her; I was interested in Anton Rubinstein. At the same time, she became friends with D.S. Trifonovsky, a good-natured, eccentric, selfless and religious homeopathic doctor. Trifonovsky had some influence on her and introduced her to the Archpriest of the Archangel Cathedral, Valentin Amfitheatrov, who was popular in the 80s, about whom she spoke with enthusiasm. Starting from the 80s, Marya Nikolaevna became more and more religious. In 1889, she traveled to Optina Pustyn, where she saw the then famous elder Ambrose, and from that day, until Ambrose’s death in 1891, she was under his influence. He became her spiritual leader. In 1890, she settled in the Velsky convent, and from 1891 - in the Shamardinsky monastery, founded by Ambrose and

built in a beautiful area, seventeen miles from Optina Pustyn. During the first years of her life in monasteries, she had not yet taken her hair and continued to visit Moscow. About her passion for Valentin Amfitheatrov, my mother, who visited her in Moscow, wrote to my father on January 23, 1894:

“...Yesterday I went to see my sister Mashenka and found preparations there for the all-night vigil with Father Valentin. I saw him; his face is good, but his eyes do not look at anyone, but through, and when they called me, he looked at me so quickly and reluctantly, as if he had made it a rule not to look at anyone in the world. What a world this is where Mashenka is, amazing! All the women: thin, thin, everyone has their heads covered, they walk like nuns” quietly and smoothly, everyone adore Father Valentin, everyone without families, without a home, they live in this “Peterhof” in the corners and pray, light lamps, and the idol, the joy of life - Father Valentin, and the outwardly beautiful life with sturgeon, conversations about food, and so on. Everyone is saved in their own way. They pray almost all day, and if this communication with God was not mechanical, but completely sincere, real, then that would be good, that is, it would be good to pray all day and think about God.”

In the first years of Aunt Masha’s passion for Orthodoxy, with all its rituals and belief in miracles, heated arguments arose between her and my father, but soon both realized that they could not convince each other. My father said about my sister: “Let her believe in the church way; it’s better than not believing in anything.” And Aunt Masha surprisingly combined a naive faith in rituals and miracles with sympathy for the moral foundations of her brother’s worldview. For example, when he sent her his article against the death penalty in 1908 (“I Can’t Keep Silent”), she responded with a sympathetic letter, expressing her condemnation of executions from an Orthodox point of view.

In the Shamarda Monastery, Marya Nikolaevna for some time was what is called a “Rassophore” nun. Later she cut her hair, after which it became more difficult for her to visit Yasnaya Polyana. However, she came there almost every summer. One day her father tried to persuade her to stay longer in Yasnaya Polyana, but she said:

I cannot do this without the blessing of Elder Joseph.

F. Without this blessing, our nuns do nothing at all.

How many of you nuns are there in Shamardin? - asked Lev Nikolaevich.

Six hundred.

And not one of you six hundred fools can live by your own mind! Everything requires the blessing of an elder!

Marya Nikolaevna remembered these words and soon gave her brother a pillow embroidered by her, on which were embroidered in silk the words: “From one of the Shamardin fools.”

In the monastery, Marya Nikolaevna’s capricious character softened. She said: “The monastery corrected my character. A very kind cell attendant was assigned to look after me. As usual, I was sometimes capricious, irritated, scolded her, but she disarmed me with her humility and always just bowed and said: “Sorry, Mother Maria.” And I felt ashamed."

In 1911 I went to Aunt Masha in Shamardino and saw her for the last time. She was very pleased with my arrival and asked me about the last year of my father’s life and his passing. I told her that maybe he should have left his family a long time ago. She didn’t agree with me, but after thinking about it, she said:

Maybe he could have left in the late nineties.

I told her about the participation of my sister Sasha and V.G. Chertkov in drawing up my father’s last will and told her my opinion about it. that this will was the cause of the father's difficult experiences in 1910. I also told her about my mother’s hysterical state. She lamented that her brother left without saying goodbye to her, and said that the impetus for this was the arrival of Sasha, who scared her father that her mother would find out where he was and would come to Shamardino. Sasha tried to persuade him to leave immediately. “And he wanted to live here,” said Aunt Masha, “he even went to the village to rent a hut.”

After the death of Lev Nikolaevich, Aunt Masha responded to her mother’s letter with a kind and touching letter, in which she wrote:

"Christ is Risen!

Dear Sonya, I was very glad to receive your letter.

I thought that having experienced such grief and despair, you had no time for me, and this made me very sad. I believe that, in addition, it is terrible to lose such a dear person, but that it is very difficult for you.

You ask, what conclusion could I draw from everything that happened? How can I know from all the things I have heard from different people close to your home what is true and what is not. But I think, as they say: there is no smoke without fire. There was probably something wrong.

When Lyovochka came to me, at first he was very dejected, and when he began to tell me how you threw yourself into the pond, he cried bitterly, I could not see him without tears. But he didn’t tell me anything about you, he only said that he came here for a long time, he was thinking of renting a hut from a peasant and living here. It seems to me that he wanted privacy; he was burdened by Yasnaya Polyana life (he told me this the last time I was with you" and the whole situation, contrary to his convictions. He simply wanted to settle down to his liking and live in solitude, where no one would disturb him, as I understood from his words. Before Sasha’s arrival, he had no intention of leaving anywhere, but was going to go to Optina and definitely wanted to talk to the elder. But Sasha’s arrival the next day turned everything upside down.

When he left that evening to spend the night at the hotel, he did not even think about leaving, but told me: “Goodbye, see you tomorrow.” Imagine my surprise and despair the next day when at five o’clock in the morning (it was still dark) they woke me up and told me that he was leaving! I just got up, got dressed, ordered the horse to be brought, went to the hotel, but he had already left, and I never saw him.

I don't know what happened between you. Chertkov is probably largely to blame here, but there was something special, otherwise Lev Nikolayevich in his old age would not have decided so suddenly, at night, in terrible weather, having prepared hastily to leave Yasnaya Polyana.

I believe it’s very difficult for you, dear Sonya, but still don’t blame yourself too much. All this happened, of course, by the will of God. His days were already numbered, and God was pleased to send him this last test through the closest and dearest person.

Here, dear Sonya, is what conclusion I could draw from this entire amazing and terrible event. Just as he himself was an extraordinary person, so his death was extraordinary.

I hope: for his love for Christ and his work on himself in order to live according to the Gospel, he, the merciful one, will not push him away from himself.

Dear Sonya, don’t be angry with me, I frankly wrote to you what I thought and felt; I can’t be cunning in front of you, you are still very near and dear to me, and I will always love you, no matter what. After all, my dear Lyovochka, he loved you1

I don’t know if I’ll be able to come to Lyovochka’s grave in the summer; after his death I became very weak, I don’t go anywhere, I just go to church - that’s my only consolation<...>Goodbye, be healthy and at peace.

Your loving sister Mashenka.

I live with one nun, whom I almost never see: she always goes on obedience.

Where do you live, Sonya, and what are your future plans? Where do you intend to live and where do you always write?

I had all your sons once, except Leva and Misha. I was very happy with them. It’s very sad that I don’t see them anymore. Sonya Ilyushina was there; she was very nice to me.

Marya Nikolaevna died in the spring of 1912 from pneumonia. She had no fear of death. She realized that she was dying, asked for forgiveness from everyone around her, and after some hesitation agreed to be tonsured into the schema, which obligated her to observe the monastic rules even more strictly. When she was asked to bring the image of the Kazan Mother of God from the church, she said:

Well, bring it, but I don’t know how to pray to images the way you do.

She died peacefully, quietly, without agony.

I am enclosing extracts from two letters from Marya Nikolaevna, written by her shortly before her death.

The first letter is a response to a letter from Charles Salomon, a friend of our family, from Paris. French

I give the phrases of this letter in the Russian translation in italics.

“January 16, 1911. Would you like to know what my brother was looking for in Optina Pustyn? An old spiritual father or a wise man, living in solitude with God and his conscience, who would understand him and could somewhat alleviate his great grief? I think he was looking for neither one nor the other. His grief was too difficult; he just wanted to calm down and live in a quiet spiritual environment The unfortunate misunderstandings that had recently darkened the existence of my brother and his wife finally erupted into inevitable disaster. The more Leo ascended to heaven with his soul and mind, the more she immersed herself in her beloved terre-a-terre (philistinism). Poor Leo, how glad he was to see me! How he wanted to settle down in Shamardin, “if your nuns don’t drive me away” or in Optina. I don't think he would like to return to Orthodoxy, but I hoped that our elder, who acted on everyone with meekness and love, would arouse in him a feeling of tenderness, which he did not yet have, but which had already been close to him lately. And so he left and died, my dear Lyovochka, as I used to call him.

What Sasha told him when she arrived, why he left so suddenly, no one (I didn’t even say goodbye to him) knows.

Sister Maria Tolstaya."

From Aunt Masha’s letter to T. L. Sukhotina:

My dear Tanya!

I was pleased and sad to receive your letter. It's nice because I see that you seem to love me. And it’s sad because it’s as if I went somewhere with Lyovochka: he is there where “there is no sadness or sighing” (I hope that he is there by the mercy of God), and I must be somewhere on the moon, so I All have forgotten. No one comes to see me, no one writes, and I know absolutely nothing about any of you. And I love you all and, of course, I would like to know at least about this terrible and confusing story with the will.

I feel bad for my older brothers and for you. Why such exceptional trust in Sasha? Of course here

is sitting Chertkov and this, unfortunately, casts a shadow on Lev Nikolaevich.

The main thing is that I am interested in the history of the sale of Yasnaya Polyana. Will it fall into the wrong hands? and the grave?

I beg you, dear Tanechka, comfort me, the old woman, write to me in detail about all this. After all, I don’t see anyone except my nuns. I have no one to talk to about all this, no one to ask! What would I give if someone, even one of the former Tolstoyans, came to me: after all, I am the last member of the old Yasnaya Polyana Tolstoys. Isn't all this interesting to me?

I would like to visit Yasnaya, see Sonya, go to the grave, but I’m unlikely to be able to: since Lyovochka’s death I have become very weak, I can barely walk.

Recently I went to Optina (12 versts) and since then I have become even worse.

Needless to say, how happy I would be if you came with your dear husband and Tanya<...>

Dear Tanya, I am so sad that I don’t see any of you Tolstoys and don’t know anything about you. It’s like I died for everyone! And I love you all very much - some more, some less, but still you are dear to me.

It’s a pity that Sasha, in my opinion, took the wrong path. Whatever it is, becoming in a hostile relationship with your mother cannot be approved.

I would like to see your mother. I sincerely feel sorry for her, I would like to understand a lot of things when meeting her. Two enemies worked between her and Lyovochka - one visible and another invisible,- for me it’s clear as day! After all, they still loved each other. Where did they get this feeling of hatred towards each other?

And now goodbye, I kiss you all. Very tired.

Old Aunt Masha."

The writer Tolstoy, who appears on the pages of Daria Eremeeva’s book “Count Leo Tolstoy. How he joked, who he loved, what he admired and what the Yasnaya Polyana genius condemned,” can no longer be treated as a classic from a famous portrait - with a stern look and a white beard. And even, scary to say, you may want to re-read “Anna Karenina”, “Hadji Murad”, “War and Peace” - or read them for the first time. Because Count Tolstoy, it turns out, is not at all who we used to think of him as - but a daredevil, a bodybuilder and a man with an excellent sense of humor.

Critics, contemporaries, and journalists accused Tolstoy of everything, but not a single person dared to accuse him of cowardice, cowardice, or excessive caution. Both in life and in his writings, Tolstoy was not afraid to say what he thought, to act as his conscience dictated, and sometimes, as if out of some youthful intransigence, he spoke and acted contrary to everyone. In addition, he was highly characterized by what was called at that time “youth.”

L.N. Tolstoy. Photo by M. Abadi. The company "Scherer, Nabholz and Co." 1854. Moscow

The Youth of Count Tolstoy

The young Tolstoy often “found a verse”, and he could, for example, having arrived with his friend prosecutor A.S. Ogolin to visit the husband of their aunt Pelageya Ilyinichna, Vladimir Ivanovich Yushkov, and reporting their arrival, they immediately bet on who would be the first to climb the birch tree. “When Vladimir Ivanovich came out and saw the prosecutor climbing a tree, he could not come to his senses for a long time,” Tolstoy himself later recalled.

It is interesting that the playfulness of young Tolstoy was strangely combined with timidity. In his youth, he was shy, considered himself ugly and even “exaggerated his ugliness,” as his sister Maria claimed.

Having decided to propose to Sonya Bers, he hesitated for a long time, carried a letter of recognition in his pocket, and advised himself in his diary: “Don’t poke your nose in where youth, poetry and love are.” And shortly before his confession, on September 10, 1862, he wrote down: “Lord! help me, teach me. - Again, a sleepless and painful night, I feel, I, who laugh at the suffering of lovers. What you laugh at, you will serve.”

Still deciding to propose, he insisted that the wedding take place in a week. Maybe he was afraid to change his mind, knowing his contradictory character?

Sofya Andreevna recalls one of the childish antics of the young and loving Tolstoy, not without pleasure, in the book “My Life”: “I remember once, we were very cheerful and in a playful mood. I kept saying the same stupidity: “When I am Empress, I will do something"<...>I got into the convertible and shouted: “When I become Empress, I will ride in convertibles like these.” Lev Nikolaevich grabbed the shafts and, instead of a horse, took me at a trot, saying: “Here I will give my Empress a ride.” This episode proves how strong and healthy he was."

Sofya Andreevna was not exaggerating; Tolstoy really tried all his life, as they would say now, “to be in shape.” He was a good skater (like his Konstantin Levin), from his youth he loved horse riding and the horizontal bar, and performed the most difficult exercises on it, and until his old age he rode a horse quickly, jumping over ravines and not noticing how branches whipped him in the face, so that the satellites could barely keep up with him. Tolstoy was very passionate, struggled with this throughout his youth and still paid dearly (by selling his father’s house for removal) for his ardor.

Tolstoy - about the military, soldiers, horsemen

There is a recollection of Colonel P.N. Glebov in his “Notes” about Tolstoy’s stay in the Sevastopol garrison. "...Tolstoy tries to smell gunpowder, but only on a raid, as a partisan, eliminating from himself the difficulties and hardships associated with war. He travels to different places as a tourist, but as soon as he hears a shot somewhere, he will immediately appear on the battlefield; the battle is over, “He again leaves of his own free will, wherever his eyes look.”

Glebov, as a true military man, criticizes some of Tolstoy’s carelessness and his waywardness, not imagining what literary masterpieces this writer’s “arbitrariness” will result in. It is also important not to forget that Tolstoy himself decided to go to Sevastopol and twice submitted a report on transfer to the Crimean army, although he could have “sit out” this time in the Caucasus, where it was safer.

Tolstoy loved rough soldier humor. He has quite a few sketches of soldiers' conversations in his drafts. The soldiers' courtship of the "beautiful doctor" in War and Peace is described with sympathetic humor. “There was only one spoon, there was the most sugar, but they didn’t have time to stir it, and therefore it was decided that she would stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov, having received his glass and poured rum into it, asked Marya Genrikhovna to stir it.

But you're sugar-free, aren't you? - she said, still smiling, as if everything that she said and everything that others said was very funny and had another meaning.

Yes, I don’t need sugar, I just want you to stir it with your hand.

Marya Genrikhovna agreed and began to look for a spoon, which someone had already grabbed.

With your finger, Marya Genrikhovna,” said Rostov, “it will be even more pleasant.”

Hot! - said Marya Genrikhovna, blushing with pleasure.

Ilyin took a bucket of water and, dripping some rum into it, came to Marya Genrikhovna, asking him to stir it with his finger.

This is my cup,” he said. “Just put your finger in, I’ll drink it all.”

Tolstoy, who served himself, knew well this special soldier's laughter, intensifying in the face of danger - a laughter that could at any moment become the last.

Studying the life and work of Tolstoy, it becomes obvious that with all his moralizing and call for non-resistance to evil by force and a moderate life, he loved reckless, desperate, brave people. In “Cossacks,” old Eroshka, a man with a stormy past full of risk and youth, instructs young Olenin, writing a letter, in his charming, spontaneous manner:

"- Why write slander? Better have fun, be great!

There was no other concept in his head about writing other than a harmful slander. Olenin burst out laughing. Eroshka too. He jumped up from the floor and began to show his skill in playing the balalaika and singing Tatar songs."

Already mature Tolstoy, with his formed doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force, suddenly takes up the story “Hadji Murad” and works on it with enthusiasm. And after ten (!) editions, the story gradually becomes a hymn to the natural life of small nations, a denial of colonial policy and any despotism: both great-power Russian and local Caucasian. Hadji Murat is sympathetic to Tolstoy as an integral personality, brought up “naturally” - by the place and time in which he found himself - his figure is very harmonious, despite the unpredictability, cunning, thirst for revenge and other characteristics of the mountaineer’s character.

At whom and how did Tolstoy laugh?

But not all good fellows and daredevils are sympathetic to Tolstoy. “The Raid” describes a type of officer that was apparently common in the Caucasus during Tolstoy’s service: “From his clothes, posture, demeanor, and in general from all his movements, it was noticeable that he was trying to look like a Tatar. He even said something— then in a language unknown to me to the Tatars who were traveling with him; but from the perplexed, mocking glances that these latter cast at each other, it seemed to me that they did not understand him. Marlinsky and Lermontov."

Tolstoy always feels a “pose,” an attempt to appear and not to be, and these posing people are contrasted in “The Raid” with the experienced soldier Khlopov, who expresses a simple and at the same time original thought: “The brave one is the one who behaves properly.” Later, this idea will return and be embodied in the image of the famous Captain Tushin in “War and Peace” - with his true courage, in which there is not an ounce of pathos, but only the desire to do “as it should.”

As much as Tolstoy sympathizes with ordinary soldiers, horsemen, he also does not like secular young dandies who are similar to each other - narcissistic and selfish.

These dandies, brilliant young (and not so young) people looking for adventure and profitable matches, bring deception, discord and temptation and therefore are mercilessly ridiculed by Tolstoy. The only way to get rid of fakery and vulgarity is to expose it, to laugh at it. And here Tolstoy has no equal among prose writers. No one was able to so ironically, to the point of absurdity, to give in parallel an external and internal monologue, secret thoughts and desires, covered by the decency and general phrases of his unloved heroes.

The clearest example is the brief but selfless immersion of the secular careerist Boris Drubetsky and the rich aging bride Julie Karagina into a pseudo-romantic image. Let me give myself the pleasure of quoting a well-known passage.

“The thought of being a fool and wasting this entire month of difficult melancholy service under Julie and seeing all the income from the Penza estates already allocated and properly used in his imagination in the hands of another - especially in the hands of the stupid Anatole, offended Boris. He went to the Karagins with the firm intention of proposing.

“I can always arrange it so that I rarely see her,” thought Boris. “And the work has begun and must be done!” He flushed with a blush, looked up at her and said to her: “You know my feelings for you!” - There was no need to say any more: Julie’s face shone with triumph and self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to tell her everything that is said in such cases, to say that he loves her, and has never loved any woman more than her. She knew that she could demand this for the Penza estates and Nizhny Novgorod forests, and she received what she demanded.

Historical era. Development of literature, art and science in the second half of the 19th century. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy () What historical events was the writer a witness to? In what years does his creativity flourish? Which of the outstanding people L.N. Did Tolstoy communicate? January Gogol Herzen Dostoevsky Turgenev Shchedrin Ostrovsky Goncharov Korolenko Chekhov Gorky Nekrasov Tyutchev Fet Belinsky Chernyshevsky Dobrolyubov Pisarev Georges Sand Mérimée Stendhal Balzac Maupassant Rolland Repin Fedotov Perov Kramskoy Surikov Shishkin Levitan Tretyakov Chopin Tchaikovsky Dargomyzhsky Borodin Mussorgsky Rimsky-Korsakov ev Sadovsky Mochalov Ermolova Shchepkin Stanislavsky Obruchev Sechenov Pirogov Butlerov Mendeleev Botkin

L.N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of his contemporaries “The whole world, the whole earth is looking at him..., living, tremulous threads are stretched to him from everywhere...” M. Gorky. “If only you could write like Tolstoy and make the whole world listen!” T. Dreiser. “Art and life are inseparable. No one else's creativity is so closely intertwined with life... it is autobiographical in nature. From Tolstoy’s work we can, starting from the age of ten, step by step, trace the contradictory quests with which this restless life is so rich... The tragedy of his art and his life was one.” R. Rolland.

The history of the creation of the first pictorial portrait of Tolstoy is as follows. In the summer of 1873, Kramskoy, living in a dacha near Yasnaya Polyana, decided to visit the Tolstoys to meet Lev Nikolaevich and persuade him to pose for a portrait. However, the artist was unlucky: Tolstoy spent the summer on a farm in the Samara steppes. But Kramskoy did not lose hope of meeting the writer, which he also wrote to Tretyakov about. I.N.Kramskoy Self-portrait t 1867

On September 5, Kramskoy again came to Yasnaya Polyana. The fat ones are already back. Lev Nikolaevich was not in the house, and the artist went looking for him. In the courtyard, when asked if he knew where the count was, the worker replied: “That’s me.” This is how these two outstanding people met.

Ivan Nikolaevich Kramskoy I. N. Kramskoy is an outstanding Russian artist of the second half of the 19th century. His creative and social image took shape in the 1860s, an era of intense ideological struggle, during which a new artistic consciousness was formed and the art of critical realism began to rise.

Group of members of the Association of Traveling Art Exhibitions

On the serene morning of May 26, 1861, visiting Fetu they arrived at his Stepankovo ​​estate in one carriage Turgenev And Tolstoy. The day passed as usual: a joint walk to the nearest grove, a leisurely exchange of news, a light dinner.
It all started the next day. Here's how Fet talks about it:
“In the morning at our usual time, that is, at 8 o’clock, the guests went out into the dining room, in which my wife occupied the upper end of the table at the samovar, and I sat at the other end, waiting for coffee. Turgenev sat on the hostess’s right hand, and Tolstoy on the left. Knowing the importance that Turgenev attached to the upbringing of his daughter at that time, my wife asked him if he was happy with his English governess. Turgenev began to pour out praise for the governess and, among other things, said that the governess, with English punctuality, asked Turgenev to determine the amount that his daughter could have for charitable purposes.
“Now,” said Turgenev, “the Englishwoman demands that my daughter take the poor clothes of the poor into her arms and, having mended them with her own hands, return them as they belong.”
- And you think this is good? - asked Tolstoy.
- Of course, this brings the benefactor closer to the urgent need.
“And I think that a dressed-up girl holding dirty and smelly rags on her knees is playing an insincere, theatrical scene.”
- I ask you not to say this! - Turgenev exclaimed with flaring nostrils.
- Why shouldn’t I say what I’m convinced of? - answered Tolstoy.
Before I had time to shout to Turgenev: “Stop it!” - when, pale with anger, he said: “So I will force you to remain silent with an insult.”
With these words, he jumped up from the table and, clutching his head with his hands, excitedly walked into another room. A second later he returned to us and said, addressing my wife: “For God’s sake, forgive my ugly act, which I deeply repent of.” With that, he left again.”

It would seem like a meaningless squabble, even just a verbal sparring match. And it’s hard to believe that this could be the reason for a long-term quarrel between two great Russian writers. But more on these assumptions a little later. In the meantime, let’s talk about how events developed in the future.
Perhaps there were deeper, personal motives for this outburst of temperament. Thus, during Turgenev’s exile in Spassky-Lutovinovo, a “dangerous friendship” began between him and Tolstoy’s beloved sister Maria Nikolaevna, who lived next door. But due to Turgenev’s special attitude towards women, she fell apart, leaving a deep mark in Mary’s heart...
So, after this kitchen quarrel, the former friends immediately left Stepanovka: Ivan Sergeevich went to his place in Spasskoye, and Tolstoy went to Novoselki, from where immediately, on the morning of the next day, i.e. May 27, he sent Turgenev a note demanding a written apology: “... write me a letter that I could send to Fetam,” Lev Nikolaevich wrote in it.
Turgenev did not object to the world peace and on the same day, May 27, responded to Tolstoy’s message. True, in it he not only apologized, but also put an end to their friendship.

"1861. May 27. Spasskoye.
Dear Sir Lev Nikolaevich! In response to your letter, I can only repeat what I myself considered it my duty to announce to you at Fet’s: carried away by a feeling of involuntary hostility, the reasons for which is now not the place to go into, I insulted you without any positive reason on your part and asked you for an apology. What happened this morning clearly showed that any attempts at rapprochement between such opposite natures as yours and mine cannot lead to anything good; and therefore I am all the more willing to fulfill my duty to you because this letter is probably the last manifestation of any relationship between us...”

It would seem that the incident was over... But then, as if at the behest of an evil fate, the letter sent by Turgenev to Tolstoy returned to him in the evening of the same day. Ivan Sergeevich sends the same letter to Tolstoy again, having previously made a note on it with the following content: “Ivan Petrovich (I.P. Borisov) has just brought me a letter that my man foolishly sent to Novoselki, instead of sending it to Boguslav. I humbly apologize for this unpleasant oversight. I hope that my messenger will find you back in Boguslav.”
But Tolstoy, who did not receive an answer to his letter sent immediately after the quarrel, was so angry that the very next day he sent a messenger to Spasskoye challenging Turgenev to a duel. And immediately after this message, he sent another one, in which, according to Sofia Andreevna, he said that “he did not want to shoot himself in a vulgar manner, that is, that two writers arrived with a third writer, with pistols, and the duel would end with champagne , but wants to shoot for real and asks Turgenev to come to Boguslav to the edge of the forest with guns.”

In the morning a letter arrived from Turgenev, in which he said that he did not want to shoot himself, as Tolstoy suggested, but wanted a duel according to all the rules. To this, Lev Nikolaevich wrote to Turgenev: “You are afraid of me, but I despise you and never want to have anything to do with you.”
Summer has passed... In September Turgenev left for Paris. Tolstoy, who was living in Moscow at that time, somehow being in a pleasant mood, sent a letter to Turgenev through the bookseller Davydov, in which, regretting that their relationship was hostile, he wrote, in particular: “If I have offended you, forgive me, I am unbearably sad to think that I have an enemy."
However, this letter reached the addressee very late. And while Lev Nikolayevich was overcome by humility, Turgenev experienced another attack of hostility towards Tolstoy and, under the influence of these antipathetic feelings, wrote him a far from friendly letter.
“...I found out that you... call me a coward who did not want to fight with you, etc. But since I consider such an act of yours after what I did to make up for the words that escaped me, - and offensive and dishonest, then I warn you that this time I will not leave it unattended and, returning to Russia next spring, I will demand satisfaction from you...” - such a message was sent to Tolstoy from Paris by an angry Turgenev on September 26.
So, instead of peace, there is an exacerbation of hostility. But Tolstoy refused this attack in a letter dated October 8 and at the same time asked for an apology. But this letter did not affect the hostile relationship between Tolstoy and Turgenev...

Their quarrel lasted no less than seventeen years! Finally, on April 6, 1878, Tolstoy sent a letter to Turgenev in Paris, thereby taking a step towards reconciliation.

“Recently,” wrote Lev Nikolaevich, “remembering my relationship with you, to my surprise and joy, I felt that I had no enmity towards you. God grant that the same is true for you. To tell the truth, knowing how kind you are, I am almost sure that your hostile feeling towards me passed even before mine.
If so, then please give each other a hand, and please completely forgive me for everything I was guilty of before you.
It’s so natural for me to remember only one good thing about you, because there was so much good in relation to me. I remember that I owe my literary fame to you, and I remember how you loved both my writing and me. Maybe you will find such memories of me, because there was a time when I sincerely loved you.
Sincerely, if you can forgive me, I offer you all the friendship of which I am capable. In our age there is only one good thing - love relationships between people. And I will be very glad if they are established between us.
Gr. L. Tolstoy."

According to Annenkov, Ivan Sergeevich, reading this message from Tolstoy, cried. And then, immediately, he responded to this first message from his former friend in seventeen years.

“May 8, 1878. Paris.
Dear Lev Nikolaevich, I just received your letter today... It made me very happy and touched me.
With the greatest pleasure I am ready to renew our former friendship and firmly shake the hand you extended to me. You are absolutely right in not assuming hostile feelings towards you in me; if they existed, they disappeared a long time ago, and only one memory remained of you as a person to whom I was sincerely attached; and about the writer, whose first steps I was able to welcome before others, each new work of which aroused the keenest interest in me. I am sincerely glad that the misunderstandings that have arisen between us have ended. I hope to get to the Oryol province this summer - and then, of course, we will see each other. Until then, I wish you all the best - and once again shake your hand in a friendly manner.
Iv. Turgenev."

Lev Nikolaevich's meeting with Turgenev took place on August 8, 1878: Tolstoy met Ivan Sergeevich in Tula. Turgenev spent two days in Yasnaya Polyana...
On September 2 of the same year, Turgenev once again visited Tolstoy’s Yasnaya Polyana estate. This time he was there for three days.
Thus ended the seventeen-year confrontation between two giants of Russian and world literature.