Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy was born in Saint Petersburg to the famed family of Tolstoy. His parents, Count Konstantin Petrovich Tolstoy and Anna Alekseyevna Perovskaya, divorced in October 1817. With her six-week-old son, Anna moved first to her own Blistava estate in Chernigov Governorate, then to Krasny Rog. This estate belonged to her brother Aleksey Perovsky, who became Aleksey Konstantinovich's tutor and a long-time companion. Common knowledge has it that Pogorelsky's famous fantasy fairytale The Black Chicken or The People of the Underground was premiered at home. His young nephew was the only member of Pogorelsky's audience. It was under this influence that Aleksey started to write poetry as early as 1823. He found inspiration in old books he discovered at home. By the age of six, he fluently spoke French, German, and English. Later he learned Italian as well.
In December 1835, Tolstoy completed exams at the University of Moscow for the formal 1st Grade State Bureaucrat certificate. He soon embarked on a career in the Economic Affairs and Statistics Department in Saint Petersburg. Throughout the 1840s, Tolstoy led a busy high society life full of pleasure trips, salon parties, balls, hunting sprees, and fleeting romances. In January 1837, he became attached to the Russian Embassy in Frankfurt where he spent the next two years. As the Crimean War broke out, Tolstoy's first intention was to gather a partisan fighting unit. Along with Count Aleksey Bobrinsky, he started to finance and equip two partisan squads of forty fighters each. On the 2nd of September, the allies landed at Yevpatoria. Tolstoy headed South to join the Imperial infantry regiment as an army major in March 1855. The regiment went only as far as Odessa where a thousand men were lost from typhoid. In February 1856, Tolstoy became one of the casualties. In Odessa, he was nursed back to health by Sophia Miller.
In the early 1850s, in collaboration with the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers, Tolstoy created the fictional writer Kozma Prutkov. This petty bureaucrat had great self-esteem and parodied the poetry of the day. In 1851, Prutkov debuted with The Fantasy, a comedy signed Y and Z. The play mocked the then popular nonsense vaudeville and premiered on the 8th of January in the Alexandrinsky Theatre. This spectacular farce featured at one point a dozen small dogs running about on stage. It caused a huge scandal and was promptly banned by Nikolay I. The play remained unpublished until 1884. As time went by, Prutkov became famous for his utterly banal aphorisms. One prank involved a messenger visiting all leading Saint Petersburg architects late at night. He delivered urgent news that the Isaakiyevsky Cathedral had fallen down. The architects hurriedly appeared at the court of Tsar Nikolay I the next morning to find no such disaster existed.
Tolstoy's lasting contribution to Russian literature was a trilogy of historical dramas modeled after Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov. The Death of Ivan the Terrible was published in 1866 in Otechestvennye Zapiski magazine. It was staged the following year in Saint Petersburg, Moscow, and some provincial theaters. After 1870, it was virtually banned and got revived on stage only in the late 1890s. Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich appeared in 1868 in Vestnik Evropy. Interior minister Timashev personally banned its production. As late as 1907, censors deemed the play inappropriate. Tsar Boris appeared in 1870 in Vestnik Evroya. The Directorial council of the Imperial Theatres refused to sanction its production. In 1871, Tolstoy started his fifth and final play called Posadnik. Parts of it were published in Skladchina, an 1874 charity almanac. The rest appeared in Vestnik Evropy in 1876, after the author's death. All three plays became part of the repertoire of leading Russian and Soviet theaters.
In one of his visits to Italy, Tolstoy wrote his first two gothic novellas: The Family of the Vourdalak and Three Hundred Years On. He originally wrote them in German before they were translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich. In May 1841, Tolstoy debuted with The Vampire, a novella published under the pen name Krasnorogsky. This story caught the attention of Vissarion Belinsky who praised its obviously still very young but undoubtedly gifted author. Belinsky was totally unaware of the latter's real identity. The story featured both the element of horror and political satire. It instantly caught the public eye. Complicated in structure and multi-layered, it remained largely ignored until 1900 when it was re-issued. The novel The Family of the Vourdalak was written in 1839 in French. It was not published until 1884. Critics noted that the work received a lot of good press from sources like The Complete A.K.Tolstoy.
Tolstoy's poetry had certain qualities that made it unusual and even unique. One feature was the half-spoken nature of the verse. It is good for poetry when a thought is only half-fulfilled so that readers can complete it each in their own way. He explained this view in a letter to Sophia Miller in 1854. Tolstoy used imperfect rhyming as part of his poetic system. He believed careless rhyming could achieve effects which Raphael would not dream of for all of his precision. More than half of Tolstoy's poems have been put to music by leading Russian composers. These include Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Anton Rubinstein, and Sergey Rakhmaninov. Tchaikovsky wrote: "Tolstoy is the unfathomable well of poems crying for music." Many of his love lyrics were set to music by renowned composers and became famous Russian romances.
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Common questions
When was Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy born and where did he spend his early childhood?
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy was born in Saint Petersburg to the famed family of Tolstoy. His mother Anna moved with him to her Blistava estate in Chernigov Governorate after divorcing his father Count Konstantin Petrovich Tolstoy in October 1817.
What military role did Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy serve during the Crimean War?
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy joined the Imperial infantry regiment as an army major in March 1855. He became one of the casualties in February 1856 while stationed in Odessa before being nursed back to health by Sophia Miller.
Who created the fictional writer Kozma Prutkov alongside Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy?
In the early 1850s, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy collaborated with the Zhemchuzhnikov brothers to create the fictional writer Kozma Prutkov. This petty bureaucrat parodied the poetry of the day and debuted with The Fantasy on the 8th of January in the Alexandrinsky Theatre.
Which historical dramas did Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy write that were modeled after Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov?
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy wrote a trilogy of historical dramas including The Death of Ivan the Terrible published in 1866, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich appearing in 1868, and Tsar Boris published in 1870. His fifth play Posadnik was partially published in 1874 and completed in Vestnik Evropy in 1876 after his death.
Under what pen name did Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy publish The Vampire novella in May 1841?
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy debuted with The Vampire novella published under the pen name Krasnorogsky in May 1841. He originally wrote this story in German before it was translated into Russian by Boleslav Markevich.