Leo Tolstoy

LEO TOLSTOY king of beasts Tolstoy, or CountLyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy1(Russian ?) (September 9, 1828 November 20, 19102), was a Russian source ofrealist fictionand philosophical quizs. His conksWar and stopandAnna Kareninarepre direct, in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian bearing and attitudes, a kick ofrealist fiction. 3 Tolstoys further talents as essayist, dramatist, and educational reformer made him the most powerful member of the aristocraticTolstoy family.His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on theSermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a ferventChristian anarchistandanarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works asThe Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to script a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures asMohandas Gandhi4andMartin Luther King, Jr. 5Many consider Tolstoy to cave in been one of the worlds abundantest saucyists. 67 mun iment Tolstoy was born inYasnaya Polyana, the family estate in theTularegion of Russia.TheTolstoyswere a well-kn suffer(a) family of old Russian nobility. He was the fourth of five children of CountNikolai Ilyich Tolstoy, a veteran of the1812 French invasion of Russia, and Countess Mariya Tolstaya (Volkonskaya). Tolstoys parents died when he was young, so he and his siblings were brought up by relatives. In 1844, he began studying lawfulness and oriental languages atKazan University. His teachers exposit him as both unable and unwilling to learn. 8Tolstoy left university in the middle of his studies, returned to Yasnaya Polyana and then spent practically of his prison term in capital of the Russian Federation andSaint Petersburg.In 1851, after running up heavy childs play debts, he went with his older brother to theCaucasusand joined thearmy. It was about this time that he started writing. His conversion from a dissolute and privileged guild author to the non-violent and ph antasmal anarchist of his latter days was brought about by his experience in the army as well as two trips around europium in 1857 and 186061. Others who followed the similar path wereAlexander Herzen,Mikhail Bakunin, andPeter Kropotkin. During his 1857 visit, Tolstoy witnessed a universal execution in Paris, a traumatic experience that would mark the heartsease of his life.Writing in a letter to his friend V. P. Botkin The truth is that the deposit is a conspiracy designed not solitary(prenominal) to exploit, but higher up all to corrupt its citizens Henceforth, I shall never serve any governing body anywhere. His European trip in 186061 shaped both his political and literary transformation when he metVictor Hugo, whose literary talents Tolstoy praised after exercise Hugos newly finishedLes Miserables. A comparison of Hugos novel and TolstoysWar and pink of my Johnshows the influence of the evocation of its battle scenes.Tolstoys political philosophy was also influenced by a March 1861 visit to French anarchistPierre-Joseph Proudhon, then brio in exile under an assumed name in Brussels. apart from reviewing Proudhons forthcoming publication,La Guerre et la Paix(War and Peacein French), whose title Tolstoy would suck up for his masterpiece, the two men discussed education, as Tolstoy wrote in his educational notebooks If I tell this conversation with Proudhon, it is to show that, in my personal experience, he was the only macrocosm who understood the signifi domiciliatece of education and of the printing press in our time. discharged by enthusiasm, Tolstoy returned to Yasnaya Polyana and founded thirteen cultivates for his serfs children, based on the principles Tolstoy described in his 1862 essay The School at Yasnaya Polyana. 9Tolstoys educational experiments were pitiable-lived due to harassment by theTsaristsecret police. However, as a direct forerunner toA. S. NeillsSummerhill School, the school at Yasnaya Polyana10can justifiably be c laimed to be the firstly moral of a coherent theory of democratic education. Personal lifeOn September 23, 1862, Tolstoy espouseSophia Andreevna Bers, who was 16 years his junior and the daughter of a court physician. She was cal take Sonya, the Russian diminutive of Sofya, by her family and friends. 11They had thirteen children, five of whom died during childhood. 12The union was marked from the out check by sexual passion and emotional insensitivity when Tolstoy, on the eve of their marriage, gave her his diaries detailing his extensive sexual past and the position that one of the serfs on his estate had borne him a son. 11Even so, their early married life was ostensibly appy and allowed Tolstoy much freedom to composeWar and PeaceandAnna Kareninawith Sonya acting as his secretary, proof-reader and financial manager. 11However, their latter life together has been described byA. N. Wilsonas one of the unhappiest in literary hi recital. Tolstoys relationship with his married a dult female deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical. This saw him seeking to reject his inherited and pull in wealth, including the renunciation of the copyrights on his earlier works. His fiction consistently attempts to convey realistically the Russian society in which he lived.Anna Karenina(1877) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical write d haveowner (much care Tolstoy), who works alongside the peasants in the fields and seeks to reform their lives. Tolstoy not only drew from his own life experiences but also created characters in his own image, such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei inWar and Peace, Levin inAnna Kareninaand to some extent, Prince Nekhlyudov inResurrection Anna Karenina expectant changes were taking place during the mid-1870s in Russia. The serfs had been liberated in 1861.This was a long-overdue sparing change in Russian society, but unfortunately it was not matched with land reform. As a result, most former serfs continued to work on the large furtherms as free peasants. The land question, also known as the peasant question, was a major political issue in Russia at the time of Anna Karenina. Tolstoy weighs in on this issue in many separate of the book, especially Part Three. At the same time, Russia was slowly and painfully undergoing a process of modernization. westerly Europe had already completed many stages of industrialization, and Russia was far behind.Many of the new changes that were happening within Russia were in response to the changes in Europe. Western thought about democracy, liberalism, and social change accompanied the scientific innovations that were imported throughout the mid-1870s and later 19th century. turn many intellectuals and members of society saw this phenomenon in a positive light, others, like Tolstoy, were horrified by the negative aspects of Western progress? the rise of the urban center, the eme rgence of capitalism, decadent living, and the disconnection of people from the land.Some of Tolstoys horror was well-placed not all Western innovations would work in Russia. For all of its backwardness, Russia was not Europe, and few ideas or expert innovations would change that concomitant. The scene in which Levin attempts to implement a new hoidenish theory on his farm and meets with resistance from his peasants, for example, has a basis in reality. A great deal of the spiritual underpinnings of Anna Karenina, especially Levins struggle to produce the Lord, are based on Tolstoys own life. ane critic has called Anna Karenina a spiritual autobiography. Tolstoy went through many religious crises in his life and struggled to discern a way of living religiously that fought against the hypocrises and greed of the Greek Orthodox Church. Though the Church is not addressed specifically in this novel? indeed, Tolstoy was excommunicated a few years after its publication and was prob ably beingness careful not to upset them with any commentary in Anna Karenina? it is snappy to think about Tolstoys own spiritual questions when reading this book.Gabriel Garcia Marquez Latin-American journalist, novelist and short story generator, a central figure in the so-called head game Realism movement. Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, in the banana zone of Colombia, the first child of Luisa Santiaga Marquez, the daughter of Colonel Nicolas Marquez, and Gabriel Eligio Garcia, an itinerant homeopath and pharmacist. Soon after his birth, his parents left him to be reared by his grandparents and three aunts. At the age of fifteen, he was sent to the Liceo de Zipaquira, a high school for the gifted.He then studied law and journalism at the National University in Bogota and at the University of Cartagena. In 1982 Garcia Marquez was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Love in the time of cholera Love in the eon of Cholera, published in 1985, wasGabriel Garcia M arquezs first book after attractive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982. Although it has often been compared negatively with Marquezs greatest achievement,One Hundred Years of Solitude, many critics see Love in the Time of Cholera as a convincing and powerful sexual dearest story that deftly accomplishes the goal Marquez et for himself writing a story about love between two people of an age that no respected writer had managed before Gustave Flaubert French novelist of the realist school, best-known for MADAME BOVARY (1857), a story of adultery and in a bad way(p) love affair of the provincial wife Emma Bovary. As a writer Flaubert was a perfectionist, who did not make a distinction between a beautiful or ugly subject all was in the style. The idea, he argued, only exists by virtue of its form its elements included the perfect word, foxily contrived and verified rhythms, and a genuine architectural structure.Madame Bovarywas first translated into side by Karl Marxs daughte r Eleanor Marx. Gustave Flaubert was born in Rouen into a family of doctors. His father, Achille-Cleophas Flaubert, a head teacher surgeon at the Rouen municipal hospital, made money investing in land. Flauberts mother, Anne-Justine-Caroline (nee Fleuriot), was the daughter of a physician she became the most important person in the authors life. Anne-Justine-Caroline died in 1872 Flaubert began to write during his school years. At the age of fifteen he won a prize for an essay on mushrooms.Actually his work was a copy. A disappointment in his teens Flaubert fell in love with Elisa Schlesinger, who was married and some 10 years his senior excite much of his early writing. His bourgeois background Flaubert found early burdensome, and lastly his rebel against it led to his expulsion from school. Flaubert completed his education privately in Paris. On his return Flaubert startedMadame Bovary, which took five years to complete. The realistic depiction of adultery was condemned as off ensive to morality and religion. nce Flaubert said Emma, cest moi. Delphine Delamare, who died in 1848, is alleged to have been the original of Emma Bovary. Flaubert died of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 8, in 1880. Flauberts other, non-literary life was marked by his prodigious appetite for prostitutes, which occasionally led to venereal infections. Direct experiences of the author also were reworked into the novel. For instance, in creating Emma Bovary, the novels protagonist, Flaubert was inspired by his mistress Louise Colet, who gave him the insight to consider Emmas discontented childhood.Moreover, DoctorLarivierewas based on Flauberts father, and the maid Felicite was based on Flauberts nurse, Julie. Flaubert also used medical lyric with the help of his brother Achille and his friend Bouilhet. Initially the novel was considered highly disputable due to its depiction of adulterous affairs, and it was the subject of a trial in 1857. Flaubert delves into the sexual relations be tween Emma and her lovers and, more importantly, appears to glorify adultery and disgrace marriage. Since it was considered inappropriate for the public, precautions were taken to prohibit access to the book.Setting The position of Madame Bovary is all-important(a) to the novel for several reasons. First, it is important as it applies to Flauberts realist style and social commentary. Secondly, the setting is important in how it relates to the protagonist Emma. It has been calculated that the novel begins in October 1827 and ends in August 1846 (Francis Steegmuller). This is around the era known as the July Monarchy, or the observe ofKing Louis-Philippe. This was a period in which there was a great up-surge in the power of the bourgeois middle class.Flaubert detested the bourgeoisie. Much of the time and case, therefore, that he spends detailing the customs of the rural French people can be interpreted as social criticism. Flaubert put much effort into making sure his depictions of common life were accurate. This was aided by the fact that he chose a subject that was very familiar to him. He chose to set the story in and around the city ofRoueninNormandy, the setting of his own birth and childhood. This care and detail that Flaubert gives to his setting is important in aspect at the style of the novel.It is this faithfulness to the mundane elements of country life that has garnered the book its reputation as the beginning of the literary movement known as literary realism. Flaubert also deliberately used his setting to business with his protagonist. Emmas romantic fantasies are strikingly foiled by the practicalities of the common life around her. Flaubert uses this juxtaposition to reflect on both subjects. Emma becomes more tearaway(a) and ludicrous in the harsh light of everyday reality. By the same token, however, the self-important banality of the local people is magnified in omparison to Emma, who, though impractical, still reflects an appreciation of beauty and greatness that seems entirely absent in thebourgeoisclass. Flauberts novel is a landmark in that unlike the writings of his predecessors, it produces a story of gritty and perhaps even jarring reality. While even today the romanticism of the Hollywood ending is popular, the realism of Madame Bovary was right away reflected in classic works such as Fyodor Dostoevskys The Idiot (1869) and king of beasts Tolstoys Anna Karenina (1877).This paper uses the authors tones in Anna Karenina and Chronicle of a Death Foretold to compare Leo Tolstoys and Gabriel Garcia Marquezs cynical tone towards society. Both authors use satire and irony to criticize the corruption of society and the institution of marriage. The paper shows that Tolstoy focuses on his disapproval of the propertied aristocracy, while Garcia Marquez satirizes society in general. Tolstoy does not present the aristocracy with much honor or morals, unlike Garcia Marquez who uses a town that, although is corrupte d, still has a strong moral back bone.