Tolstoy полностью

As the eldest, Nikolay Tolstoy was revered by his brothers, who all used the polite vy form of address with him (rather than ty). Young Lev admired Nikolay most of all, and describes him in his memoirs as a ‘remarkable boy with a keen artistic sensitivity, a vibrant imagination, and a highly developed moral sense, who was kind and good-natured without ever being smug’. The Tolstoy boys were enthralled by the elaborate games and rituals thought up by Nikolay, who one day promised to take them to the mythical ‘Fanfaronov mountain’ if they carried out to the letter the conditions he set. These included standing in the corner and trying not to think about the white bear, and avoiding seeing a hare for a whole year. In their childhood, the Tolstoy brothers also played at being ‘ant brothers’ by huddling together in a den created from two chairs, a couple of boxes and some shawls. In his adulthood, Tolstoy would continue to believe fervently in the possibility of the ant brothers’ ideal, but writ large, so as to encompass the whole of humanity. In memory of his brother Nikolay, and his aspirations to love and kindness, which he had sought to emulate, Tolstoy requested towards the end of his life to be buried at the spot where the little green stick was supposedly hidden, and this was indeed where he would be laid to rest in November 1910.⁴⁸

The religious impulse which inspired Tolstoy in the 1880s was strangely not so distant from that which gave rise to the Moravian Brethren. The Moravian Church, which continues to flourish today, dates back to the rebellion against Roman Catholicism mounted by Jan Hus in the late fourteenth century, more than 100 years before Luther and the Protestant Reformation. Hus and his other Czech-speaking followers were based in Bohemia and Moravia, whose Slav populations had been the first to be converted to Eastern Orthodoxy by the Byzantine missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century. The ‘Hussites’ were keen to revive those traditions, as well as rejecting the contemporary practice of indulgences ministered by the Catholic Church, to which the local populations had been forcibly converted when they became subjects of the Austrian Empire. The idea of personal salvation based on the individual’s relationship with God was and remains central to the doctrine of the Moravian Church, and Tolstoy would preach something similar many centuries later, when he rebelled against what he perceived as the Orthodox Church’s dependence on ritual and superstition. The early Protestants of Bohemia and Moravia were inevitably persecuted during the Counter Reformation, and in the years which followed, their church went underground. Many of their number eventually emigrated to parts of Europe hospitable to Lutheranism, with whose doctrines they had much in common.

It is intriguing that Tolstoy also has something in common with the founder of the revived Moravian Church, the eccentric Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, whose commitment to serving the poor led him to allow a group of Brethren to form a community on his land in the 1720s. Zinzendorf ended up leaving his position with the Saxon royal court in Dresden, and turning his back on his title and aristocratic lifestyle to live a simple life and devote himself to serving God. It was he who brought unity to the new village established by the immigrants, which led to them adopting a ‘Brotherly Agreement’, and he was key to the Brothers one day experiencing a spiritual transformation which led them to love one another. Tolstoy, of course, never believed he was starting a new church and he also dispensed with all sacraments. But in his appeal to ecumenical ideas of fellowship, and in his preaching of the merits of a simple life of service, he aligned himself with the ideals of the Moravian Brotherhood. As a pioneer ant brother, he would, moreover, definitely have approved of their motto: ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, love’.

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ORPHANHOOD

I congratulate you, my dear Lyova, and also your brothers and sister, I wish you good health and diligence in your studies, so that you never cause any unpleasantness for dear Auntie Tatyana Alexandrovna, who works so hard for us. Mitya and Lyova, we went on a wonderful walk the other day, we all went to Sparrow Hills, and drank tea there. Since the weather is so good, I imagine you were in Grumant. I hope you have lots of fun. I send love to my dear Masha …

Letter from Nikolay Tolstoy in Moscow to Lev, Dmitry and Masha Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana, on the occasion of Lev’s tenth birthday, August 1838¹