Presidential Library’s collections: “Count Tolstoy was a poet of vigorous thought…”

“Unlike Tyutchev – the poet of exclusively contemplative nature, – Count A. K. Tolstoy was the poet of vigorous thought, the poet-fighter… Our poet had a weapon of free speech to struggle for the right to beauty, which is a tangible form of truth, and for basic human rights”, – reads the article “Poetry of Count A. K. Tolstoy” by the philosopher, literary critic and publicist Vladimir Solovyov.

This statement is relevant both to the works of Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, whose 201st anniversary of birth will be marked on September 5, 2018, and generally to his whole life: his lively nature reacted vehemently to all the major social events of that time. Digitized books about Tolstoy, which are available on the portal of the Presidential Library, give proof of this. They include: The History of Russian Statehood. Vol. 1. Basics of the Ancient Russian State by S. Korf (1908) with the epigraph from the poem by A. K. Tolstoy; Vestnik Evropy (Herald of Europe). 1905. Vol. 1 (January), along with contemporary publications, provided by the Bryansk Regional Research Library. They were written by the philologist and local history researcher V. Zakharova and represent the research, based on documents, memoirs and correspondence: A. K. Tolstoy: Chronicle of Life and Oeuvre, Following Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy: Seeking the Truth, Alexey Tolstoy and Myth-makers, Following Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy: Fiction and Truth.

Homeland was his heartbreak. In March 1861 he arrived at Krasny Rog, to personally read out the Emancipation Manifesto from the porch of the Dormition Church.  In every possible way did Tolstoy try to alleviate the life of his former peasants, who suffered either from hunger and disease, or from abuse of local authorities and the village priest.

A. K. Tolstoy was the one who helped to release I. S. Turgenev from the exile in Spaskoye-Lutovinovo, and T. G. Shevchenko from the Central Asian exile. When Alexander II asked Count Tolstoy about the current news of literature, the latter responded: “The Russian literature grieves for Chernyshevsky, who is wrongfully arrested”.

Such an insolence made Tolstoy and his wife Sofya Andreevna leave the capital city, out of sight of the tsar, and settle in the family estate Krasny Rog. He was born in St. Petersburg and after his parents’ divorce he - a six-week-old baby - was taken away from the northern city. Alexey Tolstoy considered Krasny Rog to be his homeland. It happens that a particular city becomes just a birthplace, while the family place – where childhood and adolescence passed – might become the most essential part of person’s life to shape his “moral and psychological world”, the book by V. Zakharova Following Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy: Seeking the Truth reads.

“My obvious love for poetry was greatly encouraged by the nature which surrounded me, – reads the poet's letter to the Italian translator and biographer Angelo de Gubernatis of February 20, 1874, – the air and the sight of our large woods, which I love passionately, impressed me profoundly, affected my character and my whole life” (Vestnik Evropy. 1905. Vol. 1 (January). It was here that he was carried away by reading and wrote his first poems. “At the age of six I started to scribble and write poems, – he confessed to Gubernatis. So deeply was I struck by some works of our best poets, which I had discovered in the poorly printed collection of works with a dirty-brown cover”.

In Krasny Rog the count wrote his major works: the historical novel of the time of Ivan the Terrible Prince Serebrenni, a historical trilogy “The Death of Ivan the Terrible”, “Tsar Feodor Ioannovich”, “Tsar Boris”, historical ballads and his best poems. The long solitude in a small homely Krasny Rog was not a continuous poetry idyll for Alexey Konstantinovich. He had his own accurate opinion about everything what happened in Russia and at his home place. “All around is the universal hunger, in many villages people are dying of starvation …” – he wrote to his friend and man of letters B. M. Markevich in February 1869. – It is unbearable to look at what is going on”.

Philosopher Solovyov, who visited Krasny Rog, was not the only one to give credit to Bryansk hermit. B. Markevich, A. Fet, Ya. Polonsky, Zhemchuzhnikov brothers paid him a visit, too. Together with them, as if to relieve the boredom, playfully, he invented the literary mystification, made up the writer Kozma Prutkov with his poems full of “worldly wisdom” and currently used aphorisms.

“He was a cheerful man”, – N. Leskov once said. A. Fet wrote: “I am happy, that I was acquainted with Count Alexey Konstantinovich -  the man, who was morally sensible, well-educated, noble as a knight and gentle as a woman”.

Diplomat A. Tsertelev, who came to Krasny Rog to visit Tolstoy, wrote about the last days of his life: “Until the last minute he remained true to himself, he thought and cared about others; was afraid to be a burden or distract others <…> the disease never took the better of him  – he was the person he had always been and passed away, being of sound mind”.