Léon Tolstoï (Leo Tolstoy)

Overview

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), the Russian novelist, author of War and Peace (La Guerre et la Paix, 1869) and Anna Karenina (1877-78). Not to be confused with `TOLSTOY.md` or `TOLSTOY_FAMILY.md` — those entries document a different Tolstoy family, minor Russian expatriate nobility resident in Nice and mentioned 19 times in the diary during 1873-1874. Marie is explicit that those Nice Tolstoys are social acquaintances, not the writer's household. This entry is reserved specifically for the novelist himself, whom Marie mentions by name only once in the diary, a decade later and in an entirely different context.

Relevance to Marie

On 15 July 1884, in carnet 105 (paras 105.0217-0220, 105.0226), Marie writes about reading Tolstoy's War and Peace — she gives the title in reversed form, "la Paix et la guerre du Comte Tolstoï" — some years earlier and being struck by its resemblance to Zola: "j'en ai été frappée au point de m'écrier : mais c'est comme Zola !" She notes that a study on "notre Tolstoï" ("our Tolstoy," claiming him with Russian pride) has just appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, written by M. de Vogüé (para 105.0218) — this is Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé's essay "Les écrivains russes contemporains: le comte Léon Tolstoï," published in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1884.

Marie draws out a comparison and a contrast between Tolstoy and the French naturalists (Zola, Maupassant): both "grands" (great), but Tolstoy, unlike Zola and especially Maupassant, does not dwell obsessively on sex and desire even while "avoiding nothing" (105.0219). She closes the passage (para 105.0226) wishing for artistic glory of Tolstoy's caliber for her own country: "si jamais j'ai un grand talent comme Tolstoï, n'est-ce pas plus glorieux que les bombes de dynamite ?" — tying her Russian patriotism and her artistic ambition together in one of the diary's more striking passages of national and literary self-reflection, written three months before her death.

Historical Context

Tolstoy completed War and Peace in 1869 and Anna Karenina in 1877-78; by 1884 he was already the most internationally celebrated living Russian novelist, though his post-conversion religious/moral writings (beginning with A Confession, 1882) were only just emerging. Vogüé's 1884 Revue des Deux Mondes essay was an early and influential piece of French literary criticism that helped introduce Tolstoy (and Russian realism generally) to French readers, later expanded into his book Le Roman russe (1886).

References in Diary

• Sole direct mention: 1884-07-15 (carnet 105, paras 105.0217, 105.0219, 105.0220, 105.0226)