Word: tatyana
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TOLSTOY As I KNEW HIM (439 pp.)-Tatyana A. Kuzminskaya-Macmillan...
...Tatyana Bers Kuzminskaya, who was born in 1846 and died in 1925, was no more than a child when she and her elder sisters, Liza and Sonya, were caught in Tolstoy's love-web. Sister Liza fell madly in love with young Tolstoy-only to find that he was in love with sister Sonya, who became his wife. Tatyana herself got the next best break: her brother-in-law admired her so much that he made her the model for his heroine, Natasha Rostova, in War and Peace...
...that "he did not resemble an ordinary guest." Tolstoy roamed all over the house, talked to adults, children and servants with such impartial eagerness and sympathy that "wherever he was, life became interesting and significant." He never knew how much they all loved him because, as he often told Tatyana, he "was convinced that he was repulsively ugly...
...Devout Brother Dimitry Tolstoy attended divine service every saint's day-in the chapel of a local prison.) One of young Leo's favorite whims was to let chance decide important questions. "If she takes that final high note well," he said to himself one evening when Tatyana was singing, "then I shall deliver my letter today" (a proposal of marriage to sister Sonya). Tatyana took her note superbly; Tolstoy instantly delivered...
Kerosene & Garbage. For many years after the marriage, Tatyana visited her sister and brother-in-law at Tolstoy's estate, where she saw the still unchanneled "creative enthusiasm of a genius" sprouting wildly in all directions. Sometimes it was cabbages and bees; then it was Japanese pigs ("What snouts, what eccentricity of breed!" cried Tolstoy rapturously) -and so it went, taking in fir trees, coffee, chicory, homemade vodka, homemade butter...