Mother Tolstoy Biography

Volkonskaya; - Tolstoy did not remember her mother, she died when he was not even two years old; In the "Memories" he wrote: "I do not remember my mother at all. I was a year and a half when she died. By a strange chance, there was not a single portrait left left, so that as a real physical being, I cannot imagine it. I am partly glad of this, because in my view there is only her spiritual appearance about her, and everything that I know about her, the whole beautiful spiritual appearance of her mother, her radiant eyes Tolstoy gave the heroine of the novel “War and Peace” to Princess Marya.

Parents of Maria Nikolaevna are a prominent military leader of the Catherine era, Prince Nikolai Sergeyevich Volkonsky and Princess Ekaterina Dmitrievna, nee Princess Trubetskaya. Volkonskaya died in the city in the whole Moscow House-Komoda, Trubetskoy in Pokrovka and in their estate of the Znamenskoye, early childhood of Maria Nikolaevna. In the city, he took up the improvement of the estate and the upbringing of the only daughter, "who he loved very much, but was strict and demanding of her." Under the leadership of the “smart, proud and gifted” father, the teacher and governess taught Maria Nikolaevna German, English, Italian, French, in her own words, she owned as relatives for five years.

Volkonsky is a prototype of the old prince of Bolkonsky in the novel “War and Peace”. He himself was constantly busy with the scripture of his memoirs, then with lining of higher mathematics, then by turning tobackers on the machine, then by working in the garden and observing the buildings that did not stop in his estate "" War and Peace ", that is, all his life he remembered about it, carefully collected even the most, seemingly insignificant information about its character, habits, attitude to children, towards the world, towards the world Father.

A peculiar monument to her was one of the heroines of the “War and Peace” by Princess Marya Bolkonskaya. Tolstoy wrote about her in sketches to Roman: “M. It despises everything material. Everyone is loved and respected, gentle, affectionate. All and all loves Christian. He plays great and loves music mystically. Smart, subtle poetic mind. He cherishes his father, plays, poetizes.

” Later, when his own large family grew around Tolstoy, he told the children with unusual love and respectfulness about his “Mamenka”, and then some special mood, soft and tender, “awakened in it. In his words, such respect for her memory was heard that she seemed to us a saint, ”recalled his son Ilya Tolstoy. In August, Tolstoy transferred part of the archive of his mother to the Public Library in St.

Petersburg: her letters, translations, essays –Khg. Another part of the manuscript sheets, selected by Tolstoy for themselves, is now stored in OP GMT, this includes the diary of her trip with her father to Petersburg in the summer of G. Erygolskaya, sisters of her husband A. Osten-Saken, P. Yushkova and others. Her manuscript “The first hundred plants are stored in the Yasen-Polyansk library.

Yasnaya Polyana in July. " So Tolstoy said with the basis that his mother was “very well educated for her time, M. Tolstaya wrote correctly in Russian, and knew 4 more languages ​​- English, French and Italian.” Tolstoy believed that she "was supposed to be a bit of art." Tolstoy's mother undoubtedly had a literary talent. In her youth, she was "a great craftswoman to tell enticing fairy tales, inventing them as a story." The peers of M.

Volkonskoy recalled that “at the balls, she would collect around her in the restroom and so excitingly tells them fairy tales that no one goes to dance, and everyone listens; And the music plays, and the gentlemen are in vain waiting for their ladies in the halls. ” In - gg. Volkonskaya wrote a lot with prose and poems, trying different genres: Odes, allegories, elegy, friendly messages.

In the unfinished story “Russian Pamela, or no rule, without exception”, the heroine draws up a plan for raising children just as M. Tolstoy will then educate her eldest son: “Her plan was that in order to rejuvenate children to teaching, to always tell them the truth as they are, to reason with them and to teach them themselves sensibly.” When in the city of Volkonskaya it turned out to be the owner of large estates, which she hardly knew how to manage.

She gave part of the inheritance to her sister her companion-frane bride-condensed.

The companion-French company M-L Gennisen is described in the “War and the World” as Mr. Buryanne. Volkonskaya married N. Tolstoy, with whom she was probably only familiar with marriage in absentia. They were in distant relationship: M. Volkonskaya was the second cousin of her husband. The wedding of Count Nikolai Tolstoy and Princess Maria Volkonskoy took place on July 9 in the church of the village of Yasenev, next to the estate of the Trubetskiy Znamensky.

He was 28 years old, she was 32 years old, she was the owner of the serfs, on the track record of N. Tolstoy it appeared: "He has no fortress."She was a rich, not his first youth, an orphan, but his father was a cheerful, brilliant young man, with a name and ties, but with a very frustrated to such extent upset that his father even abandoned the inheritance of my grandfather with a thick state "" Memoirs ".

The marriage was short -lived, but very happy, filled with mutual love. The Tolstoy lived in solitude in Yasnaya Polyana, except for few acquaintances and relatives, "accidentally passing along the big road and settled" to them, no one visited Yasnaya Polyana. Tolstoy often visited the departure, busy with the troubles of inheritance, weighed down by debts.

M. Tolstoy’s life was “in classes with children, in evening readings aloud, novels for grandmother and serious readings, like“ Emil ”of Rousseau, for himself and discussions about the read, in the game on the piano, in teaching Italian one of the aunts, in walks and households in the same place.” He did not know the portraits of his mother: she did not preserve a single portrait in the family, she did not like to pose to artists, with the exception of the small children 9 years old, the Parny, where she is depicted next to her cousin V.

From the stories of his relatives, Tolstoy knew that she was ugly and illiterate, somehow went on the heels, a little biting, throwing the upper part of the body back, as pregnant women sometimes go. But he was partly even glad that he did not remember the physical appearance of his mother: “She seemed to me such a high, pure, spiritual being, that often in the middle period of my life, during the struggle with the temptations who had prevailed me, I prayed to her soul, asking her to help me, and this prayer always helped me“ Memories ”.

He was much more expensive for his family stories about the large clear and radiant eyes of his mother, that she was unusually good and talented, truthful and restrained, preferred life away from the light, in the circle of her beloved family. She wrote about herself: “I am nothing in social life,” and she said to my relatives: “Once I fell in love, nothing can delete people dear to me from my heart.” Tolstoy, speaking of her mother, especially distinguished her high moral qualities, believing that she was obviously spiritually higher than his father.

In the summer of G. Tolstoy was dangerously ill and a few days later, on August 4, died; She was buried in the family crypt of Tolstoy at the Kochakovsky cemetery. Until old age, Tolstoy carefully kept the memory of his mother, remembered her, wrote about her. ” Two years before his death, in the summer of G. never bad about her I heard what good feeling for her. How I would like to have the same feeling for everyone