Word: tolstoys
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...powerful means for achieving true happiness," noted candid young Leo Tolstoy in his diary, "[is] to spread out from oneself, in every direction, like a spider, a whole spider's web of love, and to catch in it everything that comes along-whether it is an old woman or a child, a girl or a policeman...
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...
Most of the recent books about Tolstoy have emphasized his old age-as dean of Russian letters, Christian pacifist, anti-patriot and abysmally unhappy husband. Tolstoy As I Knew Him, published in Russia in 1926 and now fully translated into English for the first time, has the charm and importance of showing him in the full flush of youth, when he most delighted in the very things which he later renounced. A glimpse of the Czar, "sitting so handsomely on his horse," could make him feel "clogged with tears"; and " [life's] greatest happiness," he still believed then, "Iies...
...eyes of the world, Tolstoy was no more than a Count who was regarded as a promising young author. But when he began to visit the Bers in their Moscow home, the whole household felt 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...
...Bers took his eccentricities for granted; they knew that all the Tolstoys were mildly mad. (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...