The Diaries of Sofia Tolstoy
translated by Cathy Porter
Paperback
Price: £9.99
Publisher:Alma Books from Gardners Books
Published:2010
ISBN:978-1-846-88102-2
GoodBookStall Review:
Leo Tolstoy and his wife, Sofia, both kept diaries throughout their married life, and, unusually, they read each others diaries as a means of understanding how the other was feeling. Sofia not only looked after her husband and many children, undertaking the household management, but also managed the Tolstoy estate and farms to free Tolstoy to concentrate on his writing. She was very involved with his writing as she laboriously copied out his work into a legible format from his illegible scribbles, made comments and dealt with his publishers and royalties. Tolstoy was a complex and difficult man and reading the diaries one wonders how she ever continued to love him and indeed how she survived living with him. Part way through his life he moved from writing fiction to social and spiritual themes. His writings were admired by many including Ghandi and Martin Luther King, but he came to be considered as an anarcho-pacifist, and when he put into words his feelings about his faith in such essays as The Kingdom of God is Within You, he was attacking the established church, so in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.
A fascinating read, not least for being alongside a woman who suffered much but stayed faithful to her husband and family.
Reviewer: Carole Burrows (03/02/12)
Leo Tolstoy and his wife, Sofia, both kept diaries throughout their married life, and, unusually, they read each others diaries as a means of understanding how the other was feeling. Sofia not only looked after her husband and many children, undertaking the household management, but also managed the Tolstoy estate and farms to free Tolstoy to concentrate on his writing. She was very involved with his writing as she laboriously copied out his work into a legible format from his illegible scribbles, made comments and dealt with his publishers and royalties. Tolstoy was a complex and difficult man and reading the diaries one wonders how she ever continued to love him and indeed how she survived living with him. Part way through his life he moved from writing fiction to social and spiritual themes. His writings were admired by many including Ghandi and Martin Luther King, but he came to be considered as an anarcho-pacifist, and when he put into words his feelings about his faith in such essays as The Kingdom of God is Within You, he was attacking the established church, so in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church.
A fascinating read, not least for being alongside a woman who suffered much but stayed faithful to her husband and family.
Reviewer: Carole Burrows (03/02/12)
