Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-j824f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T11:19:48.396Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - History and autobiography in Tolstoy

from Part 3 - General topics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Donna Tussing Orwin
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

At the end of Sevastopol in May, Tolstoy makes a famous claim, central to his fiction and startling in its simplicity and boldness: “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have attempted to depict in all of his beauty, and who was, is and will always be sublime, is the truth.” In notes toWar and Peace a decade or so later, he wrote: “I was afraid that the necessity to describe the significant figures of 1812 would force me to be governed by historical documents rather than the truth.” But what did Tolstoy mean by “truth” in works of fiction which have, since Aristotle, been understood to describe not what is but what might be?

Given that both works contain this Tolstoyan truth, it makes sense to search for it in their intersection. At first, this approach may seem unpromising, however. Sevastopol in May, a feuilleton, focuses on the day-to-day life of a few “randomly chosen” soldiers during a short period of time in an enclosed space. War and Peace, set entirely in the past, sprawls over multiple characters and huge chunks of time and space. In other ways, however, Sevastopol Sketches and War and Peace are quite similar. Both are constructed of “real” material taken from life (and especially from Tolstoy’s biography), while that same material is fitted into a context that disguises its provenance. Tolstoy was in Sevastopol.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×