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L. N. Tolstoi: A Cadet in the Caucasus1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2017
Extract
Travelling together is like living together. If the enforced intimacy fails to breed contempt, it makes travellers inordinately sensitive to each other's slightest fault. It was May, 1851, and the twenty-two year-old Leo Tolstoi was on his way to visit the Caucasus with his soldier-brother, who was stationed there. On the road Nikolai complained of his brother's cleanliness. Changing one's shirt “twelve times a day,” as he put it, seemed excessive. The fastidious Leo, on the other hand, admired nearly everything about his older brother, except “his dirtiness.”
Instead of taking the direct southern route to the Caucasus by way of Voronezh, Nikolai decided to head southeast for Saratov, in order to cover the long stretch from there to Astrakhan by boat down the Volga. A delightful prospect; and the additional attraction of a northern swing through Moscow and Kazan increased Leo's enthusiasm for the plan.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1941
Footnotes
1
A chapter in a Life of Tolstoi now in preparation and based on much new material. The publishers, Oxford University Press, have kindly permitted the use of this chapter. All references to Tolstoi's works are to the Polnoe Sóbrarie Sočineni pod obščei redakciei V. G. Čertkova (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1928 ff.).
References
2 T. A. Ergolskaya, a distant relative and foster-mother, who played an important part in Tolstoi's life.
3 Pisma, May 8, 1851, LIX, 93.
4 P. I. Biryukov, Biografija Lva Nikolaeviča Tolslogo (Moscow, 1923), I, 74.
5 Dnevnik, June 8, 1851, XLVI, 79.
6 Pisma, May 26, 1851, LIX, 96.
7 Old Believers is a general name for the sects that separated from the Russo-Greek Church in the seventeenth century.
8 Dnevnik, June 2, 1851, XLVI, 77–78.
9 Ibid,, June 8, 1851, XLVI, 80.
10 Pisma, June 22, 1851, LIX, 109.
11 Dnevnik, June 11–12, 1851, XLVI, 61–62.
12 Ibid., July 3, 1851, XLVI, 64–65.
13 Ibid., XLVI, 65.
14 It is fairly certain that Tolstoy made use of his experiences in this attack in his short story, The Raid.
15 M. S. Vorontsov, Viceroy.
16 Pisma, June 24, 1851, LIX, 112.
17 In 1908 the great-nephew of Epishka visited Tolstoi at Yasnaya Polyana, and at his request Tolstoi presented his portrait to the people of Starogladkovskaya.
18 Kazaki, VI, 47.
19 The girl may have been a certain Solomonida, who is mentioned several times in the diary, but she may well have been one of several others he mentions, and does not mention, by name.
20 Dnevnik, September 4, 1851, XLVI, 87–88.
21 Pisma, December 10, 1851, LIX, 120–121.
22 Ibid., November 12, 1851, LIX, 117–118.
23 Ibid., December 28–January 3, 1851–52, LIX, 138.
24 Ibid., December 23, 1851, LIX, 130.
25 Ibid., January 12, 1852, LIX, 162.
26 Dnevnik, February 28, 1852, XLVI, 91.
27 Ibid., March 21, 1852, XLVI, 95.
28 Pisma, May 30, 1852, LIX, 174.
29 Dnevnik, November 17, 1852, XLVI, 149–150.
30 Ibid., March 29, 1852, XLVI, 102.
31 Tolstoi, however, never forgot Zinaida. Almost fifty years later, when she had long been dead, her nephew visited him, and Tolstoi questioned him about his aunt with obvious feeling.
32 Dnevnik, June 22, 1852, XLVI, 126.
33 Pisma, May 30, 1852, LIX, 174–175.
34 Ibid., July 3, 1852, LIX, 193–194.
35 Dnevnik, March 27, 1852, XLVI, 101.
36 Ibid., May 30, 1852, XLVI, 119.
37 Ibid., May 22, 1852, XLVI, 118.
38 Ibid., August 29, 1852, XLVI, 140.
39 Literaturnye priloženija, Niva, February, 1898, No. 2, p. 340.
40 Otečeslvennye zapiski, 1852, X, 85.
41 R. Töpfer was a Swiss writer, whose Bibliothéque de mon oncle appeared in 1832 and was translated into Russian in 1848.
42 P. A. Biryukov (quoted by N. N. Gusev, Žizn Lva Nikolaeviča Tolstogo. Molodoi Tolstoi [Moscow, 1927], I, 192).
43 Dnevnik, September 2, 1852, LXVI, 140.
44 A good case can be made out for the influence of David Copperfield on Childhood.
45 In a letter, February 3, 1904 (quoted by N. N. Gusev, op. cit., I, 164).
46 Dnevnik, December 27, 1852, XLVI, 154.
47 Ibid., October 24, 1853, XLVI, 182.
48 Ibid., December 11, 1852, XLVI, 152.
49 Ibid., December 1, 1853, XLVI, 206.
50 Ibid., September 22, 1852, XLVI, 142.
51 Ibid., August 3, 1852, XLVI, 137.
52 Ibid., June 29, 1852, XLVI, 128–129.
53 Ibid., July 4, 1852, XLVI, 131.
54 Ibid., July 18, 1852, XLVI, 135.
55 Ibid., November 14, 1852, XLVI, 149.
56 Ibid., August 7, 1852, XLVI, 137.
57 Ibid., August 28, 1852, XLVI, 140.
58 Tolstoi's short story, The Woodfelling, is based on this action.
59 Dnevnik, April 18, 1853, XLVI, 159.
60 Ibid., July 31, 1853, XLVI, 171.
61 Ibid., August 11, 1853, XLVI, 172.
62 Ibid., November 3, 1853, XLVI, 192.
63 Ibid., October 26, 1853, XLVI, 184.
64 Ibid., November 2, 3, 1853, XLVI, 191.
65 Ibid., April 16, 1853, XLVI, 158.
66 Tolstoi used this incident in his tale, A Prisoner of the Caucasus.
67 Dnevnik, June 23, 1853, XLVI, 162.
68 Ibid., July 18, 1853, XLVI, 169.
69 Pelageya Ilinichna Yushkova, aunt and legal guardian of the Tolstoi children.
70 Dnevnik, August 28, 1853, XLVI, 173.
71 Ibid., October 13, 1853, XLVI, 177.
72 Novel of a Russian Landowner, The Cossacks, Christmas Eve, Caucasian Reminiscences, and The Woodfelling.
73 Dnevnik, December 18, 1853, XLVI, 214.
74 Pisma, December 27–January 1, 1854, LIX, 254.