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Tolstoy: A Biography

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A. N. Wilson writes idiosyncratic books. The author states (p. 207), "This book is the story of Tolstoy, as a writer and thinker." When I began reading, I mistakenly thought I was reading biography. As I plowed on I discovered that Wilson's "Tolstoy" is only about 30 percent biography. It is also a book of literary criticism, 19th century Russian history, character and psychological analysis, and ruminative essay. In short, it is "an intellectual history." Wilson includes all the helps a reader could ask for: photographs (53 of them!), an extensive bibliography, and a handy time line, (as well as the usual aids like the index, foreword, notes, acknowledgements, and table of contents).

Wilson states: "This book is primarily the story of a novelist... a great genius whose art grew out of his three uneasy and irresolvable relationships: his relationship with God, ... with women, ... with Russia. In all cases, the relationships were stormy, full of contradictions." Hmmpf, gross understatement!! While many readers may have no image whatsoever of Tolstoy, some (like me) visualized an icon: a saintly, dreamy, old man at odds with a lowbrow wife, and persecuted by a corrupt government. How wrong I was! His wife was for many years a full partner in his productivity. Only toward the end did Tolstoy and she become each other's torturers. The government forgave Tolstoy, a well-connected aristocrat, much that would have (and did) put other dissidents in czarist labor camps (e.g. poor Dostoyevsky!). [Though Tolstoy was a contemporary of Dostoyevsky, the two men made a deliberate point of never meeting each other.] - - - - One of the fascinations of this book is that one gets to know Leo Tolstoy "with all the warts". He was no saint, either as a selfish young man, or as an opinionated old fool. In fact, throughout his life he was an unpleasant person. His saving grace was that he was a genius when it came to writing fiction! Tolstoy shamelessly took others' tragedies, and turned them into highly saleable fiction. But he did it so very, very well!

Tolstoy's life began three years after the Decembrist Uprising of 1825, and ended seven years before the Russian Revolution of 1917 - a fascinating period in Russian history! His life spanned the rule of four czars: Nicholas I (1825-1855), Alexander II (1855-1881), Alexander III (1881-1894) and Nicholas II (1894-1917). In a nation run by an autocracy out of touch with its population, Tolstoy became a folk hero simply for being a merely decent person (NOT quite a good person, much less a saint!) He was a college dropout. He fought in Chechnya with the czar's army. He "sowed his wild oats" with hundreds of young ladies, (and - predictably -- contracted gonorrhea). He was a spoiled brat. In later years, the Orthodox Church excommunicated him. His bizarre behavior led the czarist secret police to ransack his home to see if he was a dangerous revolutionary (he was, but not in the way they thought!). When Tolstoy left his home and wife to die, at age 82, in a railroad station, he did not die alone and forgotten. An early film crew was there! Crowds of people recognized him and flocked around. His wife even made it there on a later train, just in time to be there before he expired. Leo Tolstoy died in the midst of a "media circus"!

Wilson, in his own style, brings all these disparate threads together. His tapestry is fascinatingly beautiful.

And of course, Wilson makes his own points - trenchantly! For example, regarding Tolstoy's decision to live according to the Gospels, Wilson remarks: "It is possible to read [Tolstoy's last] thirty years as an extraordinary demonstration of the fact that the Sermon on the Mount is an unlivable ethic, a counsel of craziness which, if followed to its relentless conclusion as Tolstoy tried to follow it will lead to the reverse of peace and harmony and spiritual calm which are normally thought of as the concomitants of the religious quest. Tolstoy's religion is ultimately the most searching criticism of Christianity which there is. He shows that it does not work."

I left this book with a burning desire to read more of Tolstoy. This phenomenon always happens to me when I read A.N. Wilson. Unfortunately, reading Tolstoy's opus would be quite impractical: his collected works run to 90 volumes! So now I must choose!

Wilson's book is similar to books published by an author such as Robert Payne in that its entertaining and informative, but isn't the sort of book that would be very helpful in conducting graduate research or something of that sort. Much like the biographies of Robert Payne, there's a number of factual inaccuracies that would be patently obvious to scholars of the era.

If you're searching for a brisk and entertaining read, and aren't too hung up on some small detail that Wilson got wrong, then I would definitely recommend Wilson's book. But if you're trying to write a MA thesis, and need the most thorough and accurate information on Tolstoy available, you might want to look elsewhere; as this would probably fit more into the genre of popular biography. Unfortunately, no book exists that is analogous to Joseph Frank's 5 volume biography of Dostoevsky, that focuses on his counterpart Leo Tolstoy, so the best option for someone doing a research paper would probably be Henri Troyat's.

Tolstoy is one the greatest writers during what must be considered the heroic age of novel writing. He never makes a wrong move in his writing, but probably was one of the most unpleasant people ever to live. Wilson here gives us a view of both the sublime artist and the opinionated gad fly of his friends, family and country and presents a fairly complete picture of a divided man. This is a tell all book, but not in the usual sense. Wilson focuses on the inner life of Tolstoy rather than his day to day experiences which probably were not as meaningful to him as what went on inside. This probably is the best biogrpahy of Tolstoy in English. It is good for those who are familiar with Tolstoy's works and for those who are not.

Trapped and ill in Japan for two weeks, I only had ten books with me to keep me sane. Fortunately, this was one of them. The best biography I've ever read, giving a wonderful portrayal Tolstoy's personality, and shedding new light on his works. Wilson is never less than brilliant, no matter whether he's discussing Tolstoy's fondness for women or his mildly dotty religious writings. I particularly love his commentary on the dilemma of being a Russian; that you know it's the greatest country in the world, but you also know it's hell to live there! It lasted eight readings in Japan, and I've read it twice since then.

This book is something you can easily read over the span of several sittings, as it is sectioned into several chapters that chronicle each era of Tolstoy's life, making it easy to read. An excellent source of both research and simple enjoyment.

Being a lover of Tolstoy's literature and philosophy, and having read brief snippets of Tolstoy's life in the preface of his novels, I was interested in learning more about the man himself. Wilson has produced a well researched biography that is informative and interesting to read. What I especially like is its clarity on what is fact and what are speculations based on his erratic diaries, using painstaking quotes, footnotes, literary excerpts, and bibliography to back up the author's and literary community's theories.

The result is a portrait of a man at odds with himself, who like Dostoevsky was a living representation of the duality of man. No wonder these writers were so profound at portaying the the human condition, mind, spirit, and soul. If only we could go back in time and walk with these men and speak with them personally, how rich we would be.

Among it's more traditional strengths, Wilson's life of Tolstoy must be added to the exceedingly select list of laugh out loud biographies of Russian novelists. Throughout the book's considerable length and passionate examinations of Tolstoy's writing and the Russian history from which they grew, are superb jokes, asides, and sarcasm - in no way denigrating the tempestuous creator of War and Peace, but keeping a keen-eyed perspective on the many paradoxical facets of his long life.

Wilson's account is suffused with a deeply felt love of Tolstoy's writings, perfectly balanced by an appreciation for his absurdities. If you have read and loved War and Peace, Anna Karenina, or any of Tolstoy's works, this biography yields a rich and absorbing account of the life and history from which they sprung.

A.N. Wilson's biography of Tolstoy is quite different from a traditional by the dates hagiography. Instead, Wilson succeeds both in telling the story of Tolstoy's life and placing it in the turbulent times in which he lived. The result is a very satisfying work that ranges widely in Russian history, Russian literature and a touch of Christian theology. Wilson's writing also departs from the typical just-the-facts narrative of so many biographies; his own observations and wit are laced through the book. Mostly that style is very effective, although occasionally I felt like Wilson was simply showing off his erudition.

Beyond simply reporting the details of Tolstoy's life, Wilson offers an overview of most of Tolstoy's fiction and some additional analysis of his non-fiction work, particularly his later life essays on religion and government. One of the great insights in the book is how carefully Wilson ties the events and characters in War and Peace and Anna Karenina to the people who shaped Tolstoy's life. While it is a commonplace to say that novelists recycle themselves in their work to some degree, Wilson demonstrates how Tolstoy's life and fiction were thoroughly interwoven. For me, Wilson's analyses of Tolstoy's other fiction was so compelling that I immediately added a number of them to my short-term reading list.

It is not possible to discuss Tolstoy without considering the era in which he lived and his own role in 19th century Russian history. Tolstoy lived through the period in which Russia awoke from centuries of torpid slumber as the nascent intelligentsia and later the radicals sowed the seeds of the Russian revolution and the tragedy that became 20th century Russia. As others have done, Wilson tells how Russia's tiny educated class grew increasingly hostile to the entrenched and largely repressive monarchy and bureaucracy. While Wilson's focus is one Tolstoy's personal disaffection, and how Tolstoy's idiosyncratic quest for God shaped the evolution of his views, he also puts in the context of the growing atmosphere of radicalization. Wilson also makes the point that as Tolstoy's charismatic cult grew, many of his followers were indifferent to or cared little about his literary works. To them he was simply a holy man who would no more traffic in the machinery of the Tsar. One fact that I had not known was that Tolstoy's views on disengagement were an influence on Gandhi's thinking about passive resistance to government.

For all these reasons I highly recommend this biography.

I enjoyed this book for a variety of reasons. First, because it situates Tolstoy against the extraordinary events that were occurring in Russia during his lifetime, and of how he himself and his family interfaced with those events. Second, because it speaks extensively regarding the most interesting family from which he came (his own parents and brothers and sisters) as well as the family which he and his wife formed. Third, it also narrates delightfully regarding the various environs in which Tolstoy lived and, in particular, the homestead where he spend most of his life. Finally, Wilson has a most interesting perspective on all of Tolstoy's significant writings, which amount to 90 volumes.

Wilson Has the highest possible praise for War and Peace (1869), and only slightly less exalted praise for Anna Kerenina (1875). But, according to Wilson, after those two exceptional achievements, Tolstoy became more the prophet than the novelist, and as a result, his work became less impressive. Wilson has an extended comparison of Shakespeare and Tolstoy in which he says Shakespeare is superior because he delved deeper into each of his major characters without ever succumbing to the temptation to play the prophet, which for Wilson, means a moralizer.

Nonetheless, Wilson does have high praise for many of Tolstoy's so-called lesser works as well.

Also, most interesting is Wilson's treatment of Tolstoy's religious, ethical, and philosophical views by which he became in his later years something of a crank.

A thoroughly enjoyable work.

A.N. Wilson's "Tolstoy: A Biography" is a crystalline depiction of one of the world's greatest novelists, yet most cruel men. Leo Tolstoy's narcissism gradually destroyed his marriage- from ambushing his young fiancee Sofia with his sexually graphic diaries, to revealing afterwards that he had a venereal disease. Leo's obliviousness to Sofia's needs, the way he strung her along, brought the marriage to its cruel end in 1910. Wilson shows that Sofia went from being an admirer (she had memorized his Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Oneworld Classics)),a fan of his writing, to being his wife&the mother of his many children. The Tolstoy whom she worshipped as a gifted writer, she learned to her disappointment, was quite different from Tolstoy the man. Wilson vividly describes Leo as an "ugly older monster of a man who held contradictory views."

"Tolstoy" is very much present at the creation of War and Peace (Oxford World's Classics) Leo meticulously researched the ceremonies of the Freemasons for Pierre's initiation. The darker side of Leo informed the character of Andrei, who abandons his pregnant wife Lisa just as Leo threatened to abandon Sofia when she was in pain after giving birth to their first child. Wilson shows the creation of the epic as a journey. He shows Leo's inner life, not just the everyday life on the estate.

He also describes the creation of Anna Karenina (Oprah's Book Club), when Leo was morbidly fascinated with the mutilated corpse of an adulteress who had thrown herself under the train. The Tolstoy marriage was at the crossroads. Leo idealized Sofia in the character of Princess Kitty, and just as Levin refuses to share his suicidal thoughts with Kitty, as well as his intellectual explorations of Arthur Schopenhauer (The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life), so did Leo not appreciate his wife's support&love.

A.N. Wilson does a breathtaking job of describing Leo Tolstoy as a human being and a novelist. This biography is quite moving, Leo's life was as heartbreaking as any Russian novel. He vividly discusses Leo's struggles with Christianity (The Kingdom of God Is Within You: Christianity Not As a Mystic Religion, But As a New Theory of Life (Timeless Classic Books)), that eventually led to his excommunication. Last year, the centennial of Tolstoy's death, the Russian Orthodox Church refused to restore him to their good graces, because they see him as a spiritual father to Soviet Communism. Tolstoy's religiosity would later be the basis of Ludwig Wittgenstein's spirituality (An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Religion) Wilson's biography is multi-faceted, fascinating, at once heartbreaking and beautiful.

Have been researching Molokans in Russia. The fascinating story of this eccentric and talented man included many tidbits applicable to our family history in Samara as well as recounting his personal story. Well written, enjoyable reading as well as informative.