Lev Tolstoy

“ It is quite true that Count Tolstoy lives, if not in palaces, at least in houses which are infinitely better than those of ninety-nine out of a hundred of his countrymen. It is no less certain that primitive as is his dress, it is sufficient, and that cannot be said of the clothing of most Russian peasants, while his food, if simple, is certainly better and more regular. Black coffee is not a prime necessity of life, neither are bicycles, but I have seen the count drinking coffee after dinner, and he bicycles and rides on horseback in the Moscow suburbs without any qualms of conscience. ”

“ If the old man came round it would be all the better to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otrádnoe.
“That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took her,” said the old count.
“No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But if he won't—that's his affair,” said Márya Dmítrievna, looking for something in her reticule. “Besides, the trousseau is ready, so there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after you. ”

“ Pierre has arrived, and now we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Borís. Thank God, Borís is now on the staff.”
The count was delighted at Anna Mikháylovna’s taking upon herself one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.
“Tell Bezúkhov to come. I’ll put his name down. Is his wife with him?” he asked.
Anna Mikháylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was depicted on her face.
“Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate,” she said. “If what we hear is true, it is dreadful. ”

“ Márya Dmítrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout, holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if rolling them up. Márya Dmítrievna always spoke in Russian.
“Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to her children,” she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned all others. “Well, you old sinner,” she went on, turning to the count who was kissing her hand, “you’re feeling dull in Moscow, I daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old man? ”

“ Rostóv was struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender expression on Dólokhov's face.
“Well? How do you feel?” he asked.
“Bad! But it's not that, my friend” said Dólokhov with a gasping voice. “Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have killed her, killed. . . She won't get over it! She won't survive.. . .”
“Who?” asked Rostóv.
“My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother,” and Dólokhov pressed Rostóv's hand and burst into tears. ”

“ And what have you to do yourself?” she asked the count sternly.
“One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just for a day, and leave my lassies with you.”
“All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet them a bit,” said Márya Dmítrievna, touching her god-daughter and favorite, Natásha, on the cheek with her large hand. ”

“ He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried his bulk with evident ease.
He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman did not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his master was at the Rostóvs’ he stayed till midnight. The Rostóvs’ footman rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and stick in the anteroom.
The first person he saw in the house was Natásha. ”

“ Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he walked along beside her while the coach still moved on.
“What is the matter, Count?” asked the countess in a surprised and commiserating tone.
“What? What? Why? Don't ask me,” said Pierre, and looked round at Natásha whose radiant, happy expression—of which he was conscious without looking at her—filled him with enchantment.
“Are you remaining in Moscow, then?”
Pierre hesitated.
“In Moscow?” he said in a questioning tone. “Yes, in Moscow. Goodby!”
“Ah, if only I were a man! I'd certainly stay with you. ”

“ Dólokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon the window sill.
“Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I’ll do the same thing!” he suddenly cried. “Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a bottle. I’ll do it.... Bring a bottle!”
“Let him do it, let him do it,” said Dólokhov, smiling.
“What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why, you go giddy even on a staircase,” exclaimed several voices.
“I’ll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!” shouted Pierre, banging the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb out of the window. ”

“ It's like a portable house.. . . That fellow's dropped his sack and doesn't see it. Fighting again. . . A woman with a baby, and not bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you pass. . . . Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven, so they are! In carriages—see how comfortably they've settled themselves!”
Again, as at the church in Khamóvniki, a wave of general curiosity bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted their curiosity. ”

“ The man of example is much rarer than the man of precept. So while we all are familiar with Tolstoy as a worker in the field, a herdsman, a shoemaker, and a schoolmaster, Tolstoy at rest from his labors, or laboring only at the perfecting of his own ideas, is a figure unknown to most.
Yet though Moscow is Count Tolstoy's home throughout the whole of the long Russian winter, Tolstoy is in it, but not of it. He forms no part of its common social or common intellectual life. The great mass even of educated Russians know little about the greatest man who has ever lived among them ”

“ This is what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy . . .' "
"It's certainly well written," said Túshin, "but that's not the point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostóv. "One has to submit, and Vasili Dmftrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told you it was a bad business."
"Well, let it be bad," said Denísov.
"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Túshin, "and you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he" (indicating Rostóv) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a better opportunity." ”

“ The count considered.
“We can’t have less—yes, three... the mayonnaise, that’s one,” said he, bending down a finger.
“Then am I to order those large sterlets?” asked the steward.
“Yes, it can’t be helped if they won’t take less. Ah, dear me! I was forgetting. We must have another entrée. Ah, goodness gracious!” he clutched at his head. “Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmítri! Eh, Dmítri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate,” he said to the factotum who appeared at his call. “Hurry off and tell Maksím, the gardener, to set the serfs to work. ”

“ All the time in Petersburg I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all else is mere amusement.”
“Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children,” said Natásha. “Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure.”
“Yes,” Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind. “Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides, when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can say this to you) that the whole affair would go to pieces without me—everyone was pulling his own way. ”

“ He could admire no one, not even himself. He scorned the gifts which were given him, and the greatest gifts of the greatest men. But this landmark of Tolstoy’s [Pg 208] evolution, his turning his back on the Church, and on his work, is a landmark in Russian history as well as in Russian art. For far less than this Russian thinkers and writers of high position had been imprisoned and exiled. Nobody dared to touch Tolstoy. He fearlessly attacked all constituted authority, both spiritual and temporal, in an epoch of reaction, and such was his prestige that official Russia raised no finger. ”

“ AKÍM does not look at his son, but puts his leg-bands and bast-shoes on the oven.
ANÍSYA (going out with the samovár) Her box is full as it is, and still he's bought more!
NIKÍTA (pretending to be sober) You must not be cross with me, father. You think I'm drunk? I am all there, that's flat! As they say, "Drink, but keep your wits about you." I can talk with you at once, father. I can attend to any business. You told me about the money; your horse is worn-out,--I remember! That can all be managed. That's all in our hands. If it was an enormous sum that's wanted, then we might wait ”

“ The boys were ragged, and, like all city lads, bold and impudent. I stopped to watch them. A ragged old woman, with yellow, pendent cheeks, came round the corner. She was going to town, to the Smolensk market, and she groaned terribly at every step, like a foundered horse. As she came alongside me, she halted and drew a hoarse sigh. In any other locality, this old woman would have asked money of me, but here she merely addressed me.
"Look there," said she, pointing at the boys who were sliding, "all they do is to play their pranks! They'll turn out just such Rzhanoff fellows as their fathers." ”

“ Now then, Natásha, now then, dearest! Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She’s taken it! Thank God!” And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si he sung a second, a third below the high note. “Ah, God! How fine! Did I really take it? How fortunate!” he thought.
Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was finest in Rostóv’s soul! And this something was apart from everything else in the world and above everything in the world. “What were losses, and Dólokhov, and words of honor?... All nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy....” ”

“ After the Crimean War, Tolstoy went abroad. He found nothing in Western Europe to satisfy him. On his return he settled down at Yasnaya Polyana, and married; and the great patriarchal phase of his life began, during which every gift and every happiness that man can be blessed with seemed to have fallen to his lot. It was then that he wrote War and Peace, in which he describes the conflict between one half of Europe and the other. He takes one of the largest canvases ever attacked by man; and he writes a prose epic on a period full of tremendous events. ”

“ Natásha, Sónya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas' sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Pétya, into the old count's, and the rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.
“You go ahead, Zakhár!” shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman, wishing for a chance to race past him.
The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward, squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered like sugar, and threw it up. ”

“ He is a Russian seigneur who has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.. . . If he wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not been for you that affair would have ended ill.”
And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before—a fight between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) ”

“ I began to feel for the first time that life was not a game, but a serious affair . . .” [3] Shortly before the death of Tolstoi’s father, the whole family, consisting of four boys and one little girl, removed to Moscow in order that the eldest son, Nicholas, might prepare for the University, but the sudden death of Count Tolstoi, almost immediately afterwards, left the family in such straitened circumstances that they were obliged to return at once to Yasnaya Polyana, where the children were taught German by a German governess and Russian language and literature by a poor native seminarist. ”

“ The little fellow, giving Pierre no time to betray his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant tones:
“Eh, lad, don’t fret!” said he, in the tender singsong caressing voice old Russian peasant women employ. “Don’t fret, friend—‘suffer an hour, live for an age!’ that’s how it is, my dear fellow. And here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too, there are good men as well as bad,” said he, and still speaking, he turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and went off to another part of the shed. ”

“ Natásha and Nicholas often noticed their parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostóv house and estate near Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the count had been Marshal, and life at Otrádnoe was quieter than in former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live in the count's house. ”