Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Born 9 September 1826
Died 20 November 1910

War and Piece

Anna Karenina

Sketches of Sivastapol
Based on Crimean War.

His approach to non violent protests for social change influenced Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, junior.

He was deeply religious man and followed Christianity.

Currently Russians are Orthodox Christians.

Greatest writer of all times.
Towering figure in Russian literature.
Charles Dicken lived at the same time.
Like a wise old grandpa with amazing stories.
CD was a poor city boy whereas LT was a country gentleman. Dicken wrote monthly or weekly.
LT wrote epic long stories like family, society and politics. CD believed in life opportunities and was very optimistic.
LT believed in mystical forces within self and was recklessly pessimistic.
CD dreaming of future and fortune(capitalistic outlook) and LT looking inside and purpose in life.
Dickens stories are overtly sentimental whereas LT overtly moralistic (eastern approach).
Egalitarianism was a dominant philosophy in the west. The most famous was of Karl Marx equality of rights of mankind.
The sacrifice of soldiers was normal in war and the glory went to the generals and kings.
Two who lived through this period were LT and CD who captured the mood in literary sense.
CD
Good Expectations
Tales of Two Cities
Christmas Carol

LT
Pioneered art of story telling by traumatization.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Psychological depth and dramatic structure in his literature and journalistic writing.

Leo Tolstoy
Sociological and more comparable to Dickens.
Childhood, boyhood and youth is modelled on CD's David Copperfield.
LT went to France and met Victor Hugo.
Dickens wrote about ugly side of industrial revolution while LT wrote about ugly side of history warfare.

Likes
English peasants vs Russian counts
Father was sent to prison for unpaid debts.
Count into an aristocratic family.
Dickens troubles with money.

Tolstoy troubled with life.
His mother died when he was two and his father died when he was nine.

What is the purpose of this life?

CD worked 10 hours as a 15 year old.
Learned how to write shorthand.
He became a journalist.
Started writing short stories.
He rose up the social ladder.

Tolstoy was a sloppy student.
He quit oriental languages in the university.
His life was easy.

He pursued alcohol, women and gambling.
He realized he need a bigger purpose in life and joined the army to fighting the Crimean war in 1850.
He used this experience in his masterpiece in War and Peace.
Horrors of war changed his perspective in life.
Lead to pessimism.

Dickens met Victor Hugo and Alexander Duma in France. Dickens was global figure.
CD had 10 children and LT had 13.
LT met Victor Hugo 15 years after CD.
Huge impact on him reading les miserables.
He returnec to Russia and started writing War and Peace.
In 1853 CD had a midlife crisis and left his wife with 10 children and married an 18 year girl.
Dickens had a stroke and died 58  in 1870.

Unlike Dickens Tolstoy crisis was the purpose of life. In his 50s he disowned his novels and confessed his religious belief.

Struggles for meaning constantly shifting from Arthur  Schopenhauer's negation of self and Christian belief.

Died in 1910 aged 82 in a railway station.