Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy’s study room in his estate house within Yasnaya Poliana.
His boyhood and adulthood estate is now the Yasnaya Poliana Tolstoy Museum. I hear that it’s a difficult trek to make from Moscow if you have poor Russian skills. One of you, please corroborate this for me.
“L. N. Tolstoy in his study. Iasnaia Poliana, 1908. Photo by K. K. Bulla.”
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Iasnaia Poliana (Yasnaya Polyana) was the large estate Tolstoy was born in and returned to raise his family on later in his life. In 1908, Tolstoy was 80 years old and had already written all of his great novels. In fact, he had given up novel writing, seeing it as a lesser art and his talents better used in philosophical type writings. Although, many of his great short stories were still being written.
Oh, for those who have seen The Last Station, the couch on the right is most likely the one Tolstoy was born on.
“J. Robert Oppenheimer, lead scientist of the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.” (© UPI/Bettman)
“The changes are just barely perceptible, but their consequences are colossal, terrible. The instant when a human being makes a decision and begins to act can change many material things. Houses, fortunes, peoples’ bodies can perish, but nothing that is brought about is more important than that which is deposited in the human being’s consciousness. Consciousness limits what can take place. From barely perceptible changes that take place in the area of consciousness, the most unimaginably important, limitless consequences can follow.”
- from Leo Tolstoy’s essay, How Literature Teaches Us about Moral and Psychological Life (1890)
“Leo Tolstoy on his deathbed. Photo by V. S. Morozov.” (via http://www.topfoto.co.uk/gallery/Tolstoy/ppages/ppage9.htm)
” ‘As you lived before, well and pleasantly?’ the voice repeated.
And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. But strange to say none of those best moments of his pleasant life now seemed at all what they had then seemed - none of them except the first recollections of childhood. There, in childhood, there had been something really pleasant with which it would be possible to live if it could return. But the child who had experienced that happiness existed no longer, it was like a reminiscence of somebody else.
…
‘What is this? Can it be that it is Death?’ And the inner voice answered: ‘Yes, it is Death.’
‘Why these sufferings?’ And the voice answered, ‘For no reason - they just are so.’ “
- Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych. Ivan starts questioning his life and purpose.
A Hebrew translation of a Leo Tolstoy poem. Below is my re-translation into boring, literal English. A Hebrew professor gave it to me yesterday and I had never heard it before. If someone knows the poem, please give me some more information on it. Maybe it’s Alexei Tolstoy? a parable by Leo?
Leo Tolstoy / The Blind Man
The Blind Man asked the Man Who Sees: ”What is the color of milk?”
The Man Who Sees said: “The color of milk is like paper.”
The Blind Man asked: ”The color of milk is like the sound paper makes?”
The Man Who Sees said: ”No, it is like flour.”
The Blind Man asked: “So the color is pleasant feeling like flour?”
The Man Who Sees said: ”No, it is white like a white rabbit.”
The Blind Man asked: ”The color of milk is soft like a rabbit?”
The Man Who Sees said: ”No. It’s white like snow.”
The Blind Man asked: ”The color is cold like snow?”
The Man Who Sees tried to give more and more examples, but the Blind Man could not understand the color of milk.
Tolstoy playing chess.
“The mainspring that activates all human life lies not in human beings’ moving their arms, legs, and backs, but in their consciousness. In order for a human being to do something with his legs or arms, it is first necessary for a certain change to take place in his consciousness. This change, which defines all subsequent actions of that person, is always minute, almost imperceptible.”
- Leo Tolstoy, from his essay “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?”
