Fantastic Genius
Curtin, Anne
THE REVIEWERS DON EDWARDS, California Democrat who has served in the House of Representatives since 1962, is a former national chairman of Americans for Democratic Action. BARTON J. BERNSTEIN,...
...Tolstoy was a fantastic character, and any well-drawn account of his peregrinations has more than usual interest...
...The proof of the genius of Tolstoy is his ability at times to skim off and crystallize...
...That is why his work is beautiful and his life bad...
...Reviewed by Anne Curtin It is almost impossible to put down Henri Troyat's Tolstoy, despite its great length...
...Later they both kept notebooks containing their most intimate feelings about the other, and they exchanged the diaries from time to time for the good of truth...
...Fantastic Genius Tolstoy, by Henri Troyat...
...Those who have gone back since high school or college and reread the immortal classics have probably found that War and Peace and Anna Karenina and many of the stories are still great works...
...For the general reader who hase not thought much about Tolstoy or the classics since high school and college, the book will contain a graveyard of shattered idols...
...individuals who were the models for character portraits in the books...
...GABRIEL GERSH is a free lance writer and critic who has specialized in Mediterranean affairs...
...The life and acts of the artist have nothing to do with our opinions of his creations...
...7.95...
...Nor do the excoriating relations between Leo Tolstoy and his wife, Sonya...
...To Sonya, when she was his eighteen-year-old fiancee, Tolstoy showed his diaries of his sex life on the eve of their wedding...
...This was probably a consoling interpretation for Tolstoy in his self-flagellating search for truth and meaning...
...War and Peace and Anna Karenina together were created in off-and-on work for ten years, out of a full eighty-two years of chaotic and sometimes contradictory thinking...
...It is a difficult job, but it could be done...
...It seems that every scrap of relevant books, letters, memoirs, and diaries has been consulted to research this biography...
...Leo Tolstoy is not, as we were told, the pious, fatherly thinker who wished to free his serfs because of his advanced humanitarian thinking...
...His two great contributions to the world of literature were in his life like mere sparks thrown off from a hot fire...
...This does not demean the genius...
...For example, this reviewer recalls the return of Pierre to Natasha who has lost her girlhood figure and spark and turned into a fat and happy matron...
...And many scenes from the books remain vivid years after a reading...
...themes and ideas basic to the books...
...Finally their relations became more and more difficult, and he refused to have her at his deathbed...
...Tolstoy said in his notebook, "The poet skims off the best of life and puts it in his work...
...While some sources are valuable for students of Russian literature, Troyat has done little for either the general reader or the specialist in sorting out the many Leo Tolstoys housed within that genius...
...Double-day...
...He humiliated his wife by getting her pregnant at a time when he was preaching celibacy...
...Because of its length it is a marvelous book to set aside for the recuperation period after a minor operation...
...The relatively short periods of writing were among the happiest for them both, for at those times their vast mental resources were occupied and directed...
...With Allen J. Ma-tusow he edited "The Truman Administration: A Documentary History...
...Troyat has done an interesting job of pointing out the relation between Tolstoy and his works of art: incidents in Tolstoy's life which were set into the novels...
...W. ALLYN RICKETT is an associate professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania...
...The mass of material —all interesting—is overwhelming for the general reader because of the lack of perspective or interpretation...
...He lived in Peking from 1948 to 1955...
...His extraordinary sensitivity and mammoth intellect produced an individual who spent his life reacting to, or bouncing off, everything which struck his senses...
...PETER COLLIER teaches contemporary literature at the University of California and is a staff writer for Ramparts...
...Tolstoy believed it was the place of women to reproduce and stay at home, but his repugnant idea expressed in that marvelous reunion scene has nothing to do with our present appreciation...
...BARTON J. BERNSTEIN, assistant professor of history at Stanford, edited "Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History," just published by Pantheon...
...ANNE CURTIN is a journalist with a background in book publishing...
...However, one also has the impression that almost everything Troyat discovered was included, with little selection or rejection...
...762 pp...
Vol. 32 • June 1968 • No. 6
