Ilya Tolstoy
- Sophia Nikolaevna Filosofova
- Nadezhda Klimentievna Katulskaya
Nicholas Tolstoy
Micheal Tolstoy
Andrei Tolstoy
Ilya Tolstoy
Vladimir Tolstoy
Vera Tolstoya
Kyril Tolstoy
Count Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy (Russian: Илья́ Льво́вич Толсто́й; 22 May 1866 – 11 December 1933) was a Russian writer, and the third child and second son of Leo Tolstoy.
Early life
Ilya was born at Yasnaya Polyana and spent most of his young life there, until the family took a house in Moscow in 1881. He received his early education at home; his mother taught him to read and write, first in Russian, and later in French and English, and his father taught him mathematics, and later Greek and Latin. He and his siblings were also schooled by private tutors.[1]
Leo Tolstoy, in an 1872 letter to his father's cousin Alexandra Andreyevna Tolstaya, described his children; he said the following of his son Ilya:[1]
Ilya, the third, has never been ill in his life; broad-boned, white and pink, radiant, bad at lessons. Is always thinking about what he is told not to think about. Invents his own games. Hot-tempered and violent, wants to fight at once; but is also tender-hearted and very sensitive. Sensuous; fond of eating and lying still doing nothing. When he eats currant-jelly and buck-wheat kasha his lips itch. Independent-minded in everything. When he cries, is vicious and horrid at the same time; when he laughs every one laughs too. Everything forbidden delights him; he recognizes it at once.
In 1881 Ilya entered a private gymnasium to continue his education. His father had originally planned for him to attend a state school, but had refused to sign a declaration of Ilya's loyalty to the Tsar, which was required for entry.[1]
Career
Ilya left school before graduating, and entered military service in the Sumy Dragoons. In 1888 he married Sofia Filosofova. After his time as an officer, he was a bank employee, and later an agent for an insurance company. He assisted his father in relief efforts during the Russian famine of 1891–92.[1] During World War I he worked for the Red Cross. He also tried his hand at journalism. In 1915 he founded the newspaper New Russia.[2]
In 1916, Ilya left Russia, and travelled to the United States, arriving in December; and he traveled across the country lecturing about his father's life and work.[3]
His lecture tour ended in 1917 and he returned to Russia, but left the country when the Bolsheviks came to power later that year. He moved to Paris and then back to the United States, where in September 1920 he married Nadine Perchina, who later became one of the closest disciples of the spiritual teacher Meher Baba.[4] This was the second marriage for both. They moved to Waterbury, Connecticut, and he continued to lecture and write. He pawned some of the family treasures brought from Russia to raise money in 1922. Then, in 1925, along with fellow Russian writer, George Grebenstchikoff, Tolstoy moved to the small Connecticut town of Southbury. They founded a Russian community in the southwest corner of the town. Tolstoy had originally found the area and set up a home earlier in 1923. He loved the way the rolling hills reminded him of the Russian country side.[5] He moved temporarily to California in 1926 to work on a movie version of his father's novel, Resurrection.[3]
He died on 11 December 1933 in New Haven, Connecticut.[3]
He is best known for his book of memoirs about his father Reminiscences of Tolstoy. He also wrote the short novel The Corpse in 1890 (published posthumously), and the story One Bastard Less which was published in the journal Russian Thought in 1905.[2]
English translations
- Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Chapman & Hall, London, 1914 (at the Internet Archive).
- Reminiscences of Tolstoy, Century Company, NY, 1914 (on Google Books).
- Tolstoy, My Father; Reminiscences, Cowles Book Company, Chicago, 1971. (at the Internet Archive).
References
- ^ a b c d Tolstoy, Ilya Reminiscences of Tolstoy. New York: Century Company, 1914.
- ^ a b "Ilya Tolstoy". Archived from the original on 13 April 2012.
- ^ a b c "Count Tolstoy, 68, dies in New Haven". New York Times. 13 December 1933. p. 23.
- ^ Kalchuri, Bhau (1986). Meher Prabhu: Lord Meher. 4. Myrtle Beach: Manifestation, Inc. pp. 1483-84.
- ^ "A Russian Village Retreat in Southbury". 11 May 2020.
External links
- Quotations related to Ilya Tolstoy at Wikiquote
- Ilya Tolstoy at IMDb
- v
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- Bibliography
- War and Peace (1869)
- Anna Karenina (1878)
- Resurrection (1899)
- Childhood (1852)
- Boyhood (1854)
- Youth (1856)
- Family Happiness (1859)
- Polikúshka (1860)
- The Cossacks (1863)
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)
- The Kreutzer Sonata (1889)
- The Devil (1911)
- The Forged Coupon (1911)
- Hadji Murat (1912)
- "The Raid" (1852)
- "The Cutting of the Forest" (1855)
- "Sevastopol Sketches" (1855)
- "Recollections of a Billiard-marker" (1855)
- "The Snowstorm" (1856)
- "Two Hussars" (1856)
- "A Landowner's Morning" (1856)
- "Lucerne" (1857)
- "Albert" (1858)
- "Three Deaths" (1859)
- "The Porcelain Doll" (1863)
- "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" (1872)
- "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1872)
- "The Bear Hunt" (1872)
- "What Men Live By" (1881)
- "Diary of a Lunatic" (1884)
- "Quench the Spark" (1885)
- "An Old Acquaintance" (1885)
- "Where Love Is, God Is" (1885)
- "Ivan the Fool" (1885)
- "Evil Allures, But Good Endures" (1885)
- "Wisdom of Children" (1885)
- "The Three Hermits" (1886)
- "Promoting a Devil" (1886)
- "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886)
- "The Grain" (1886)
- "Repentance" (1886)
- "Croesus and Fate" (1886)
- "Kholstomer" (1886)
- "The Two Brothers and the Gold" (1886)
- "A Lost Opportunity" (1889)
- "A Dialogue Among Clever People" (1892)
- "Walk in the Light While There is Light" (1893)
- "The Coffee-House of Surat" (1893)
- "The Young Tsar" (1894)
- "Master and Man" (1895)
- "Too Dear!" (1897)
- "Work, Death, and Sickness" (1903)
- "Three Questions" (1903)
- "Alyosha the Pot" (1905)
- "Father Sergius" (1911)
- "After the Ball" (1911)
- The Power of Darkness (1886)
- The First Distiller (1886)
- The Light Shines in the Darkness (1890)
- The Fruits of Enlightenment (1891)
- The Living Corpse (1900)
- The Cause of It All (1910)
- A History of Yesterday (1851)
- Confession (1882)
- The Gospel in Brief (1883)
- What I Believe (1884)
- What Is to Be Done? (1886)
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894)
- What Is Art? (1897)
- "A Letter to a Hindu" (1908)
- The Inevitable Revolution (1909)
- A Calendar of Wisdom (1910)
- The Decembrists (1884)
- "Posthumous Notes of the Hermit Fëdor Kuzmich" (1905)
- Sophia (wife)
- Alexandra (daughter)
- Ilya (son)
- Lev Lvovich (son)
- Tatyana (daughter)
- Yasnaya Polyana
- Tolstoyan movement
- Christian anarchism
- Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912 film)
- Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicholas II (1928 documentary)
- Lev Tolstoy (1984 film)
- The Last Station (1990 novel)
- 2009 film)
- Story of One Appointment (2018 film)
- A Couple (2022 film)
- Tolstoy Farm
- Tolstoj quadrangle
- crater
- The Triumph of the Farmer or Industry and Parasitism (1888)
- Vladimir Chertkov
- Aylmer and Louise Maude
- Translators of Tolstoy
- Tolstoy scholars
- Category