TWO STORIES + ONE MAN = GREAT LITERATURE? OK LEO

Where does great literature come from?

From more than two stories, but first about ‘that man.’

The great literature man.

Where does he come from?

If a man goes on a journey he may stop along the way. They always do.

They probably stop at night to rest?

If they travel at night they might be on the run.

On the run from what?

Running from the life they led in their own town, from the future they saw in front of them.

The usuals.

They fled for the uncertainty, the unknown, calling it an adventure.

Instead of embracing life where they were, they took off.

Tolstoy didn’t take off as much as he continued the life he was born into:

 

When Tolstoy’s mother died in 1830, his father’s cousin took over caring for the children.

When their father, Count Nikolay Tolstoy, died just seven years later, their aunt was appointed their legal guardian. When the aunt passed away, Tolstoy and his siblings moved in with a second aunt, in Kazan, Russia.

Although Tolstoy experienced a lot of loss at an early age, he would later idealize his childhood memories in his writing.

 

Mother dies when he was two years old, father dies when he’s nine, and raised by strangers.

Sounds like a page right out of great literature.

 

Prone to partying in excess, Tolstoy ultimately left the University of Kazan in 1847, without a degree. He returned to his parents’ estate, where he made a go at becoming a farmer.

His stab at becoming the perfect farmer soon proved to be a failure.

He did, however, succeed in pouring his energies into keeping a journal — the beginning of a lifelong habit that would inspire much of his fiction.

 

Tolstoy The Blogger

Look back at your earlier years and think about what you did that carries over to today.

Good student? Good sportsman? Good son, brother, friend, and father?

Not feeling like you were good at any of that in your younger years?

Did you get any better?

That’s not a question from me to you, it’s more you to you.

Tolstoy would say going from no good, to good, is a journey.

First we’d read about the no good, the people met, the incidents and scenes, and how they improved you.

Or how you made them all worse because you were just no damn good. Yet.

Then you make a mistake, feel threatened, and ask for help.

And get it.

You get help from unexpected people and change your evil ways.

The ‘new you’ finally discovers peace and harmony and settles down.

For my baby boomer readers to pass onto their millennial children:

 

One of his most successful later works was the novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich, written in 1886. In Ivan Ilyich, the main character struggles to come to grips with his impending death.

The title character, Ivan Ilyich, comes to the jarring realization that he has wasted his life on trivial matters, but the realization comes too late.

 

Sounds cheery, like Tolstoy’s picture.

 

A Stranger Comes To Town

That’s Joe Frazier, the stranger who came to town, who lived in Philadelphia, who had a training gym in North Philadelphia you’d ride past on the train from 30th Street Station to NYC.

Joe is the greatest heavyweight fighter in Philadelphia history, but the local boxing mythology likes Rocky Balboa better.

No respect.

It’s the same respect, no respect, that Tolstoy showed on his last journey.

 

Anxious to escape his wife’s growing resentment, in October 1910, Tolstoy, his daughter, Aleksandra, and his physician, Dr. Dushan P. Makovitski, embarked on a pilgrimage.

Valuing their privacy, they traveled incognito, hoping to dodge the press, to no avail.

Unfortunately, the pilgrimage proved too arduous for the aging novelist.

In November 1910, the stationmaster of a train depot in Astapovo, Russia opened his home to Tolstoy, allowing the ailing writer to rest.

Tolstoy died there shortly after, on November 20, 1910.

 

Pneumonia got him.

He was the stranger who came to town, died, and began his final journey to the graveyard.

Except he was a Russian celebrity and everyone knew him.

There’s a book about his last year.

 

Based on the diaries of various family members and associates and the great Russian’s own words, and told through their different voices, it effectively and sensitively depicts the forces vying for his very soul.

 

And a movie.

 

With all of its faults, The Last Station will satisfy even those only slightly familiar with the works of Leo Tolstoy and the time in which he lived

 

PS:

If you go on your own journey and say nothing, write nothing about it, it’s still a good journey.

But why not map it out in the do’s and don’t’s you encounter?

For example, if a dying man wants to take a long train trip, or short, encourage them to do something else, anything else, unless you’re okay dealing with the body in case they die along the way. Like Tolstoy.

 

PSS:

If you and the wife have problems, work them out instead of taking a Grand Journey.

How bad does it have to get on the home front for you to drag your wheezing, weak hearted ass, out of town and give everyone you know anxiety. And still die?

Does that sound good? Nooooo.

Don’t do that.

Instead, follow the health regime you know and trust, and continue on your regular, daily, routine.

After you settle things with your wife.

First things first, okay Leo?