Leo Tolstoy :: Essays Papers

social lion Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy was a Russian author, one of the greatest authors of all time. Leo Tolstoy was born at Yasnya Polyana, in Tula Province, the fourth of five children. His parents died when he was young, and he was brought up by relatives. In 1844 Tolstoy started to study law and oriental languages at Kazan University, save he never earned a degree. Dissatisfied with the standard of education, he returned in the middle of his studies back to Yasnaya Polyana, and then spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg. After contracting heavy gambling debts, Tolstoy accompanied his older brother to the Caucasus in 1851, and joined an artillery regiment. In the 1850s Tolstoy also began his literary career, issue the autobiographical trilogy Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. During the Crimean War, Tolstoy commanded a battery, and was at the siege of Sebastopol . In 1857 he visited France, Switzerland, and Germany to learn more about society and how to impro ve it. After traveling for a time, Tolstoy colonised in Yasnaja Polyana, where he started a school for poor children. He saw that the secret of changing the world was in education. He investigated during his travels to Europe educational hypothesis and practice, and published magazines and textbooks on the subject. In 1862 he married Sonya Andreyevna Behrs, and they had 13 children. Sonya also acted as Tolstoys secretary. Tolstoys fiction originally came out of his diaries, in which he well-tried to understand his own feelings and actions so as to control them. He read avidly, both in literature and philosophy. In the Caucasus he read Plato and Rousseau, Dickens and Sterne finished the 1850s he also read and admired Goethe, Stendhal, Thackeray, and George Eliot. Tolstoy was convinced that philosophical principles can only be understood in their concrete expression in history. Tolstoys study work, War and Peace, appeared between the years 1865 and 1869. The epic tale d epicted the story of five families against the background of Napoleons invasion of Russia. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family liveness to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. War and Peace reflected Tolstoys view that destiny controls everything, but we cannot live unless we imagine that we have free will.