Andrei Zorin - Leo Tolstoy (Critical Lives)

Leo Tolstoy

Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question and relates it to their major works.

In the same series

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Roland Barthes Andy Stafford

Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall

Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd

Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd

Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson

Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie

John Berger Andy Merrifield

Leonard Bernstein Paul R. Laird

Joseph Beuys Claudia Mesch

Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson

Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller

Bertolt Brecht Philip Glahn

Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne

Mikhail Bulgakov J.A.E. Curtis

William S. Burroughs Phil Baker

John Cage Rob Haskins

Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes

Fidel Castro Nick Caistor

Paul Czanne Jon Kear

Coco Chanel Linda Simon

Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich

Jean Cocteau James S. Williams

Salvador Dal Mary Ann Caws

Guy Debord Andy Merrifield

Claude Debussy David J. Code

Gilles Deleuze Frida Beckman

Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird

Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros

Sergei Eisenstein Mike OMahony

William Faulkner Kirk Curnutt

Gustave Flaubert Anne Green

Michel Foucault David Macey

Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen

Jean Genet Stephen Barber

Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Jeremy Adler

Gnter Grass Julian Preece

Ernest Hemingway Verna Kale

Langston Hughes W. Jason Miller

Victor Hugo Bradley Stephens

Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth

Alfred Jarry Jill Fell

James Joyce Andrew Gibson

Carl Jung Paul Bishop

Franz Kafka Sander L. Gilman

Frida Kahlo Gannit Ankori

Sren Kierkegaard Alastair Hannay

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Arthur Koestler Edward Saunders

Akira Kurosawa Peter Wild

Lenin Lars T. Lih

Pierre Loti Richard M. Berrong

Jean-Franois Lyotard Kiff Bamford

Ren Magritte Patricia Allmer

Stphane Mallarm Roger Pearson

Thomas Mann Herbert Lehnert and Eva Wessell

Gabriel Garca Mrquez Stephen M. Hart

Karl Marx Paul Thomas

Guy de Maupassant Christopher Lloyd

Herman Melville Kevin J. Hayes

Henry Miller David Stephen Calonne

Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan

Eadweard Muybridge Marta Braun

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Georgia OKeeffe Nancy J. Scott

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Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws

Edgar Allan Poe Kevin J. Hayes

Ezra Pound Alec Marsh

Marcel Proust Adam Watt

Arthur Rimbaud Seth Whidden

John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne

Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak

Erik Satie Mary E. Davis

Arnold Schoenberg Mark Berry

Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis

Dmitry Shostakovich Pauline Fairclough

Adam Smith Jonathan Conlin

Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell

Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel

Stendhal Francesco Manzini

Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross

Rabindranath Tagore Bashabi Fraser

Pyotr Tchaikovsky Philip Ross Bullock

Leo Tolstoy Andrei Zorin

Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc

Mark Twain Kevin J. Hayes

Richard Wagner Raymond Furness

Alfred Russel Wallace Patrick Armstrong

Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau

Tennessee Williams Paul Ibell

Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian

Virginia Woolf Ira Nadel

Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter

Andrei Zorin

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In May 1878, finishing Anna Karenina and in the early stages of the deepest spiritual crisis he had ever experienced, Tolstoy started drafting his memoirs, which he provisionally called My Life. In one day he wrote several disjointed fragments describing his impressions of certain events from his childhood. He did not complete his memoirs and never returned to these fragments, the first of which was as follows:

Here are my first recollections. I am bound up, I want to free my hands and I cannot do it. I shout and weep and my cries are unpleasant to me, but I cannot stop. There were people bent over me, I do not remember who they were, and it all happened in semi-darkness, but I do remember that there were two of them, they are worried by my cries, but do not unbind me, which I want them to do, and therefore I cry even louder. It seems that for them it is necessary [that I must be bound up], while I know that it is not necessary, and I want to prove it to them and I indulge in crying that repels me, but which is uncontainable. I feel the injustice and cruelty not of people, because they pity me, but of fate and pity for myself. I do not know and shall never know what this was about... but it is certain that this was the first and the most powerful impression of my life. And what is memorable is not my cries, or my suffering, but the complex, contradictory nature of the impression. I want freedom, it wont harm anyone and yet they keep torturing me. They pity me and they tie me up, and I, who needs everything, am weak and they are strong. (CW, XXIII, pp. 46970)