novel
One of the world's greatest novelist, some say the greatest. The history of the novel cannot be written without describing his place in it. Contradictions in the character and life of Tolstoy1. An aristocrat. He was stiff-necked: after a search by the police, he wrote to the Emperor asking for reparations and received an apology (Maud, 282-3). He had great self-esteem. But at the end of his life, he renounced his background and lived the "simple" life of a peasant and espoused the peasant virtues.2. A great rationalist. He kept a diary, analysed himself and others, dissected his conduct, male-female relations, conflicts between the public and private personas, probed contradictions. He was brutally honest. Both he and his wife kept diaries and allowed one another to read their most intimate views. But he also had limited faith in the powers of the intellect. He felt that the human intellect never really can understand the primary causes of personal or societal events. Moments of illumination, crises, mysterious communications with nature, strange turning points in one's emotional and spiritual life do occur, but they often have little to do with the rational part of the mind. Tolstoy trusted to the full emotiona
This was linked to his guilt concerning the treatment of the peasantry, the use of violence for political and social ends (in the army, prisons, institutions) and the role of the Church. In this way he tried to rework his life, improve himself. " It consists of not calling something by its accepted name, but disintegrating a complex action into its indivisible components. Perhaps he developed a sense of guilt toward his own and fashionable society's treatment of women. The tsar became more conservative later in life and, when he was assassinated in 1881, Alexander III brought on a period of reaction. They analyse and dissect their conduct, or the narrator does it for them. As a young man he lived the privileged, often dissolute life typical of an aristocrat. Eikhenbaum, Molodoi Tolstoi, Pet-Berlin, 1922, rep. He is famous for his use of detail to characterize and to stir associations. His devices of repetition, and of parallelism structure his prose. " Later in life, he renounced his earlier great works and tried to move toward writing simple morality tales.
Common topics in this essay:
Alexander III,
,
Isaiah Berlin,
Caucasus Sevastopol,
Russian Literature,
Family Happiness,
Chekhov Shakespeare,
Viktor Shklovsky,
Tolstoi Pet-Berlin,
Prentice Hall,
isaiah berlin,
plan action,
male-female relations,
life renounced,
matlaw tolstoy,
male view,
primary causes,
|
Acceptance Essays
