Leo Tolstoy Leo Tolstoy had a life as chaotic as the lives of his characters. His tumultuous domestic affairs were long in the making, starting from his tragic childhood. His young idealizations would lead him to fruitless searches for perfect happiness, and later would affect his marriage even before it began. The life of Leo Tolstoy is a fascinating and disordered one, in his childhood, beliefs, and marriage.
Leo, or Lev, Tolstoy had a fascinating childhood. The fourth of five children in a noble family dating back to the ninth century, he was born September 9, 1828 at the Yasnaya Polyana estate in Russia (Frank, Harmon, Lillios, Radley). After his father’s death when he was nine, Tolstoy and his siblings were sent from family to family member to be taken care of (Harmon). Though he was orphaned by nine, Tolstoy’s mother had died when he was two (Frank, Harmon). While Tolstoy’s memory only served to make idealizations of his late mother, his father, according to Radley, “was very much the country gentleman, with a passion for hunting and little interest in literature” which Tolstoy took after in his childhood. According to Harmon, when Tolstoy was five, Nikolay, his older brother, claimed he
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The ‘green stick’ his older brother Nikolay invented had arguably taken Tolstoy on a long journey, throughout his life, looking for simple solutions of which he never found. His dissatisfactory home life only added to his internal struggles, but there was no one to blame but himself for his lack of money as time went on. Perhaps Tolstoy’s life does mirror Stepan Oblonsky’s -- having unhappiness where others were not unhappy -- but one thing is certain- Leo Tolstoy blessed the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with great literature for as long as he