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Did the fat lion drink? Leo Tolstoy - an imaginary patient? How Leo Tolstoy cooked his own food

Daria Eremeeva

Senior Researcher at the State Leo Tolstoy Museum. Published (under the pseudonym Daria Danilova) in the journals Novy Mir, Friendship of Peoples, October, Day and Night, Literary Study, Literature Issues and scientific collections.

The literary experiments of the child Levushka began with a description of birds in the handwritten magazine "Children's Fun" - the Tolstoy brothers came up with it and compiled it themselves. “The falcon is a very useful bird, it catches gazelles. The gazelle is an animal that runs very fast, so that the dogs cannot catch it, then the falcon descends and kills. The notorious “descriptions of wildlife”, which our children consider a boring duty in schools, were favorite entertainment and education for Levushka’s contemporaries: the Tolstoy boys supplied their texts with drawings and issued them in the form of handwritten magazines with a circulation of one copy. Already in childhood, Tolstoy was distinguished by the ability to gaze intently at the world and remember all its “little things”. He observed ants and butterflies, about one of which he wrote that “the sun warmed her, or she took juice from this grass, it was only clear that she was very well”; he liked to watch how "young greyhounds roamed across the unmowed meadow, on which high grass spurred them on and tickled them under the belly, flew around with their tails bent to the side." All his life Tolstoy adored horses, loved even their smell: “Horses are tied. They trample the grass and smell like horses have never smelled after.”

The young Tolstoy had a “project of settling Russia with forests,” about which P.V. Annenkov wrote to Turgenev and received the following answer from him: “You surprised me with the news of Tolstoy’s forest undertakings! Here's a man! With excellent legs, he certainly wants to walk on his head. He recently wrote a letter to Botkin, in which he says: "I am very glad that I did not listen to Turgenev, that I did not become only a writer." In response to this, I asked him - what is he like: an officer, a landowner, etc. It turns out that he is a forester. I'm only afraid that he would dislocate the spine of his talent with these jumps. Tolstoy then indeed returned to literature, but he did not abandon the "ecological" ideas, and later they became an important part of his teaching. By the way, the idea of planting forests did not leave the writers even later, when the forest was cut down already at a catastrophic pace. We observe the continuation of this theme, for example, in Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya", where Dr. Astrov "embodied" the idea of the young Tolstoy - he planted forests.

Many noted that in the face and in the whole figure of Tolstoy one could feel (no matter how trite it sounds) that very “closeness to nature”. Tolstovets Yevgeny Ivanovich Popov, for example, claimed that the writer "possessed a very subtle sense of smell."

“Once, returning from a walk, he said that, passing by a walnut bush, he felt that he smelled of strawberries.

I began, like a dog, to sniff where it smells stronger, and I found a berry, he said.

Tolstoy, as you might guess, loved dogs and not only described them in his novels (remember the wonderful hunting Laska in Anna Karenina), but also tried to train them. Popov recalled: “In the Moscow house, the Tolstoys had a black poodle, who often came to Lev Nikolayevich’s office, and then he himself went out the door and left it open, which interrupted Lev Nikolayevich’s classes. Lev Nikolayevich taught him so much that the poodle began to shut the door behind him.”

The same Popov relates a remarkable conversation with Tolstoy during their journey on foot from their Moscow home in Khamovniki to Yasnaya Polyana. “When we walked along the highway (the highway crosses the railway several times) and went downhill, Lev Nikolayevich, pointing to the village lying below, said:

When we were walking here with Kolechka and Dunaev, a pig ran out of that yard, screeching, all bloody. She was cut, but not cut, and she broke free. It was scary to look at her, probably most of all because her naked pink body was very similar to a human.

In another place, when the evening twilight was already descending, a woodcock flew out at us. He flew straight at us, but when he saw us, he got scared and turned sharply and disappeared into the forest. Lev Nikolaevich told me:

But really he would have to fly up to us and sit on his shoulder. Yes, it will be."

These dreams may sound strange coming from a man who has been an avid hunter for most of his life. Anyone who has read the hunting scenes in War and Peace and Anna Karenina understands that only those who knew how to follow the trail of a hare, shoot woodcocks, poison wolves and even finish off wounded birds with the most anything could describe it so vividly and naturally. to eat in a hunting way - by sticking a feather in their eye. Tolstoy was like that most of his life. In general, hunting seems like child's play to those who have been in the war. However, after the "spiritual break" Tolstoy not only stopped hunting, but became a vegetarian, reaching in his pity for all living things to the point that sometimes, noticing a mouse in a mousetrap in his office, he would break off from work, descend from the second floor, go out into the garden and let out her to freedom. Tolstoy liked to show his grandchildren the scar from the bear's teeth on his forehead and talk about the incident on the hunt, ending with the words that "every living thing wants to live."

Sofya Andreevna did not share Tolstoy's enthusiasm for vegetarianism. From a letter to sister Tatyana after another quarrel with her husband: “I attribute all these nervous explosions, and gloom, and insomnia to vegetarianism and back-breaking physical work. Perhaps he will come to his senses there. Here, by heating stoves, caustic water, and so on. he tortured himself to thinness and to a nervous state. During a serious illness of Lev Nikolaevich in 1901 in the Crimea, his wife even went to the trick and added meat broth to her sick husband in his vegetarian soup. As the daughter of a doctor, she was convinced of the benefits of animal protein, and she was especially upset by her passion for vegetarianism and the already poor health of her daughter Masha, who later died of pneumonia at the age of 35.

Leo Tolstoy with his wife Sophia.

At one time Tolstoy lived in Yasnaya with several relatives and friends who agreed to go on a meat-free diet with him. A funny incident related to this was described by his youngest daughter Alexandra from the words of her aunt: “T.A. Kuzminskaya told how once she went to Yasnaya Polyana to visit the “hermits”, as she said. Auntie loved to eat, and when she was given only vegetarian food, she was indignant and said that she could not eat any filth, and demanded meat, chickens. The next time, when the aunt came to dinner, to her surprise, she saw that a chicken was tied to the leg of the chair and a large knife lay nearby.

What is it? - asked the aunt.

You wanted a chicken, - Tolstoy answered, barely holding back his laughter, - no one wants to cut a chicken here. We have prepared everything for you so that you can do it yourself.

And since we are talking about chickens, the already mentioned Tolstoyan E.I. Popov recalled: “In Yasnaya Polyana there was a young, very gambling rooster. The boys amused themselves by crowing with a rooster, and then this rooster, wherever it was, immediately appeared with the intention of fighting, but, not meeting an opponent, little by little began to attack people passing by, even without a challenge. It ended up that some of the visitors who knew nothing had the backs of their coats torn open by the spurs of this gambling rooster. This angered Sofya Andreevna, and she once said at dinner that this rooster should be slaughtered. Lev Nikolaevich remarked:

But now we know the nature of this rooster. He is already a person for us, not provisions. How to cut it?

The cook, Semyon, slaughtered the rooster after all.”

The "chicken" theme will take an interesting turn in the fate of Tolstoy's youngest daughter, Sasha, who many years later, as an adult woman, will emigrate to the United States, where she will become a farmer for some time and will earn a living by breeding chickens. Since Yasnaya Polyana childhood she adored animals. Here is how she recalls it: “I loved animals very much. I had a big black poodle Marquis with a human mind and a gray parrot with a pink tail and human talk. I adored both.<…>Everyone loved my poodle Marquis, even my mother, who didn't like dogs at all. One of my favorite games with Marquis is hide and seek. I hid the spectacle case on cupboards, in the sofa, in my father's pocket. The poodle ran around the room, sniffing the air, jumping up on tables and chairs and, to everyone’s delight, reached into his father’s pocket and carefully pulled out a case from there ... Probably, the Tolstoyans despised me, regretted that Tolstoy had such a frivolous daughter. And the father loved the Marquis and marveled at his mind. But where did I get this love for sports, for horses, for dogs, cheerfulness, even enthusiasm? Did you see these "dark" traits in your teacher? Did they feel the full force of his love and understanding of life in all its boundless breadth? My father forgave me my youth. He himself rejoiced at the intelligence, fervor, sensitivity of his faithful horse Delir. Delir carefully carried his master in winter, stepping with his right foot along a snowy or slippery road, in summer - carefully stepping through viscous swamps, through forest thickets. Father loved to shorten roads and let his horse run through the snow, and when Delir was buried in snowdrifts up to his belly, father got down, threw the bridle behind the stirrups and let the horse forward tread the path, and Delir, having got out onto the road, stopped, turning his thoroughbred Arab head , squinting with a smart, bulging eye, he was waiting for his master.

Horses were probably Tolstoy's main passion in the "animal world". Let us recall at least Frou-Frou at the races, where her death is described, it seems, with no less feeling than the death of Anna Karenina: “She was one of those animals that, it seems, do not speak only because the mechanical device of their mouth does not allow them this. It seemed to Vronsky, at any rate, that she understood everything he felt now, looking at her. As soon as Vronsky entered her, she drew in a deep breath and, squinting her bulging eye so that the white of the eye was filled with blood, looked at the newcomers from the opposite side, shaking her muzzle and stepping elastically from foot to foot.<…>There was only one last groove two arshins full of water. Vronsky did not even look at it, but wishing to get far first, he began to work the reins in a circle, raising and lowering the horse's head in time with the lope. He felt that the horse was coming from the last stock; not only her neck and shoulders were wet, but on the back of her neck, on her head, on her sharp ears, sweat stood out in drops, and she breathed sharply and shortly. But he knew that this supply would be more than sufficient for the remaining two hundred sazhens. Only because he felt closer to the ground, and because of the special gentleness of his movement, Vronsky knew how much speed his horse had increased. She flew over the ditch, as if not noticing. She flew over her like a bird; but at that very moment Vronsky, to his horror, felt that, not keeping up with the horse's movement, he himself, without understanding how, made a nasty, unforgivable movement, sinking into the saddle. Suddenly his situation changed, and he realized that something terrible had happened.

Once Ivan Turgenev, after a conversation with Tolstoy about horses, said so directly to him: "In a past life, you probably were a horse." The story told by Tolstoy to Turgenev was later embodied in his famous late story The Strider, where Tolstoy, surrounded in the house by young children and their friends, described an old, sick, tired gelding surrounded by young, carefree, selfish stallions and fillies. Sofya Stakhovich recalled that when Kholstomer was being written, the young people who came to the house of Tolstoy's children were called "herds". Reading some fragments of Kholstomer, it is impossible not to develop this parallel: “The piebald gelding was the eternal martyr and jester of this happy youth. He suffered from these youth more than from people. He did no harm to either of them. People needed him, but why did his young horses torment him?

He was old, they were young; he was thin, they were full; he was boring, they were cheerful. Therefore, he was a completely alien, an outsider, a completely different being, and it was impossible to feel sorry for him. Horses pity only themselves and occasionally only those in whose shoes they can easily imagine themselves. But after all, the piebald gelding was not to blame for the fact that he was old and thin and ugly? .. It would seem that not. But he was guilty like a horse, and only those who were strong, young and happy were always right, those who had everything ahead, those whose every muscle trembled from unnecessary tension and the tail rose like a stake. It may be that the piebald gelding himself understood this and in calm moments agreed that it was his fault that he had already lived his life, that he had to pay for this life; but he was still a horse and could not often refrain from feelings of insult, sadness and indignation, looking at all these young people who executed him for the very thing that they will all be subject to at the end of their lives.

It is interesting that Tolstoy, who never wrote gymnasium essays for his children, once made an exception for his son Leo - he simply could not resist saying on his favorite topic: “Only once did he help me write a Russian essay on the topic “Horse”. I was at a loss and decidedly did not know then what to say about the horse more than that it is a horse. But my father helped me out by writing half a page of my Russian essay for me. He wrote something like this: “And how beautiful she is when, waiting for the owner, she impatiently beats her hoof on the ground and, turning her sharp neck, looks back with her black eye and neighs in a sonorous, trembling voice.” Of course, my father wrote incomparably better than this, and my teacher L.I. Polivanov immediately recognized my father’s style and gave me 4 for this composition.

The realist Tolstoy generally thought in symbols. In his books, the horse is always a symbol of everything living and natural; it is often directly opposed to the train, which symbolizes the mechanical, inanimate principle. At the time of Tolstoy, the train was a sign of the beginning of technical progress, a new "iron", accelerated life, already at the end of the nineteenth century, crowding out the patriarchal, estate life - that life, the singer of which was Leo Tolstoy.

The train as an ominous sign is most memorable in Anna Karenina, but we see the same thing in other works. "The Girl and the Mushrooms" is a short story about how a girl scattered mushrooms on the rails and, not having time to collect them, lay down along the rails, and the train passed without hitting her. Sympathizing with the children in their fear of trains, Tolstoy tried to somehow alleviate this horror, and nothing terrible happens to his heroine. He seemed to be afraid of trains himself, especially since there were reasons for this. In the diary of his niece Varya, there is a story about how Leo Tolstoy, with her and Sofya Andreevna's brother Sasha, went hunting with greyhounds on October 15, 1871. Sofya Andreevna rewrote it from Varya’s diary into her book “My Life”: “A train has just passed in front of us, and we moved onto the canvas in order to get along the rails to the booth that was in sight, and there cross the rails. We were met by workers on the road and shouted: “It’s not supposed to drive here, now the train will pass, it will scare the horses.” We paid no attention to them. But then, in fact, smoke appeared towards us, and a piercing signal whistle of the locomotive rang out. What was to be done? It was still far from the booth, to the left of us - a sheer wall of the embankment, to the right - the rails. The train was supposed to fly at a distance of some arshin from us. It was a serious matter, we began to gallop along the track, hoping to get to the crossing before the train; but at last it became clear that the train would overtake us before we reached the booth. Levochka galloped ahead, stopped and shouted: "Get off your horses." I threw my leg off the pommel and suddenly felt that my left leg was tangled in the stirrup and in the Amazon. "What are you doing? For God's sake, hurry!" Leva called to me and ran up to me. Seeing what was the matter, he grabbed me in an armful, pulled me off the saddle and with a strong movement freed my leg. The train was terribly close and did not stop, as if on purpose, piercingly whistling. The horses trembled and pricked up their ears. As soon as we were on the ground, we somehow clambered up the embankment on all fours, and barely had time to drag the horses behind us when the train rushed past us with a deafening whistle and thud. The horses wheezed and shied away, and we were saved. All this is a long time to write. And it happened in an instant…”

In The First Russian Book for Reading there is a miniature “From speed is strength. Byl". In this story, a train hits a cart with a horse stuck on the rails. At first glance, this "truth" only explains why the train cannot slow down at full speed, and warns to be more careful when transporting a cart over the rails. But when reading, one cannot help but feel how helpless a man with a horse is in the face of this new mechanical "speed".

Leo Tolstoy called us all passengers of the train of life, now entering it, now leaving it, but he himself preferred to ride, he loved to drive a horse. Contemporaries noticed that in extreme old age, climbing on a horse, he straightened his back, seemed to become slimmer and younger.

In 1910, in the autumn, leaving home, Leo Tolstoy caught a cold on the train. The doctor Makovitsky, who accompanied him, recalled how they traveled part of the way in an open area, because it was too stuffy and smoky in the cars. He got off the train and visited Optina Pustyn and the Shamorda Monastery. There he mentioned to his sister that he would like to stay to live near the monastery, to live as an ascetic, like a monk, far from civilization, only so that he would not be forced to go to the temple. Even before leaving, he confessed to Dr. D.P. Makovitsky: “I want solitude, to get away from the bustle of the world, as Buddhist monks do. I'm talking to you alone." Lev Nikolayevich wanted to get off the tiresome train of his fate, he wanted to stop, rest and connect with nature and God. But he could not stay to lead the quiet life of a hermit - people were looking for him, waiting for something from him. “There are many people in the world besides Leo Tolstoy, and you look only at one Leo” - these were Tolstoy’s dying, penultimate words, addressed to those who were next to him, and recorded by his daughter Alexandra Lvovna. Dying at the railway station, he heard the beeps and noise of trains - the voices of impending "iron" changes. And the living world of horses, dogs, cocky roosters, butterflies, hiking, inns, horses, carriages, peasant and lordly life - a world in which one could find strength for a huge epic novel - this world died along with Tolstoy on a small station Astapovo.

publishing house "Boslen", Moscow, 2017

Interesting facts from the life of the writer: how distrust of doctors helped to bring into being a masterpiece...

I know only two real misfortunes in life: remorse and illness. And happiness is only the absence of these two evils.

Lev Tolstoy

You can make fun of a simple fact as much as you like, but Lenin's words about Leo Tolstoy are firmly registered in our minds. In any conversation about the most ambitious Russian writer, with one hundred percent probability, chased Leninist definitions will come up: “ What a lump! What a hardened human!"

The pressure and magic of words are such that the qualities of the writer are transferred to a man named Lev Nikolaevich. Bogatyr! And his health, presumably, is also heroic.

This is partly confirmed. Indeed, the "breed" of Tolstoy was strong. Those who did not end their days in the war or on the chopping block lived long and fruitful lives. Actually, Lev Nikolayevich himself died, as you know, not in the hospital, but on the road. And he was 82 years old - a respectable age even by today's standards, and even more so by those standards.

Tolstoy's achievements in the field of promoting a healthy lifestyle have also become textbooks. He did not drink, did not smoke, in the middle of his life he stopped drinking coffee, in old age - meat. He developed a set of gymnastic exercises, by the way, very advanced and quite suitable for modern times. In other words, a role model.

Suffering in an empty place

But the main thing remains outside the brackets - how exactly Tolstoy came to all this. Usually they say that the mentioned successes are the fruit of long spiritual searches and reflections.

Basically true. It is only necessary to make one clarification: Lev Nikolaevich thought not so much about high spirituality, but about the basest matters, like elementary survival. Because his health was, to put it mildly, not up to par.

Here is an extract from the certificate given by the army hospital and fixing the state of health of artillery lieutenant Leo Tolstoy:

« Medium build, lean. Several times he was ill with pneumonia with rheumatic pain in the arms and legs. A strong beating of the heart was also established, accompanied by shortness of breath, coughing, anxiety, melancholy, fainting and dry crackling, masking breathing.

Withon top of this, due to the hardness of the liver left after the Crimean fever, his appetite is weak, digestion is incorrect with persistent constipation, accompanied by rushes of blood to the head and whirling in it. In wet weather there are flying rheumatic pains in the limbs.

Note that this is an official document, deliberately rejecting the fabrications and anxieties of the patient himself. Isn't it enough that he imagines himself there?

And Lev Nikolayevich had no problem with fantasies. The rich writer's imagination unwound any modest sore to an unthinkable scale. Let's say such a common occurrence as barley on the eye. The people do not attach importance to him at all - he is supposed to give a damn about him. In the literal sense - to get close to the sick and suddenly spit in his eye. It is believed that after this everything will pass.

Tolstoy, who flaunted his "proximity to the people", this method was categorically unsuitable. Here is what he writes in his diary:

« Gigantic-sized barley grew in front of my eye. It torments me so much that I completely lost all senses. I can't eat or sleep. I can’t see well, I can’t hear well, I can’t smell well, and I’ve even become very stupid.”

It is written with such mastery that one cannot help imbued with sympathy for the patient. But here is how others reacted to this ailment, for example, the Decembrist Mikhail Pushchin:

“We are all very pleased with his suffering, amusing and amusing suffering: for his empty barley, he sent for the doctor three times».

In the work of the English writer Jerome K. Jerome "Three men in a boat, not counting the dog," the protagonist begins to read a medical dictionary and, as he reads, he discovers all the diseases mentioned there, except for puerperal fever.

It seems that the Englishman was briefly acquainted with the Russian classic: the relationship between Tolstoy and medicine was built exactly according to the same pattern.

32 teeth and 33 misfortunes

Here is a far from complete list of what Lev Nikolayevich “suffered”, who, by the way, did not even reach 30 years.

Bloody diarrhea with cutting, rash of unknown origin, urticaria, heartburn, heart tides, pain in the lower back, throat and liver at the same time, dry and wet cough, migraine with vomiting, pain and swelling in the groin, runny nose, rheumatism, gastric disorders, varicose veins veins, scabies and hemorrhoids.

And these are flowers. Because in addition to "every little thing" he quite seriously suspected tuberculosis, epilepsy, syphilis, stomach ulcers and, finally, brain cancer.

Of course, doctors were called for every occasion. Of course, all of them, not finding any of the above, were declared charlatans: “ Ignorant, terrible talkers, do not understand anything in their business, there is no benefit from them, a complete lie».

The funny thing is that he really had one very real ailment. Caries and periodontal disease progressing at an alarming rate. The first entries like " The flux increased, again I caught a cold in my teeth, which do not let me sleep, my teeth hurt all day appear when he was 22 years old. And for the next 11 years, this becomes the leitmotif of the writer's diary.

Just this - real, tangible, painful - problem, for some mysterious reason, did not receive attention. The medical assistance of dentists was flatly rejected by Tolstoy. And the teeth ached and fell out until the same time when, in 1861, the writer visited London.

There he spent a month and a half, and the problem resolved itself. Tolstoy writes about it this way: Broken teeth". In reality, this meant that out of the 32 teeth he was supposed to have, only 4 remained in service.

You don't have to be a doctor to understand that it's very difficult to live with such a catastrophe in your mouth. All relatives advise Tolstoy to insert "false" teeth. In vain. Lev Nikolaevich proudly carries his 4 remaining hemp until the end of his life.

Oddly enough, but it is precisely this phenomenon that can be found at least somewhat rational explanation. Around the same years, similar problems overcame another world-famous writer - Hans Christian Andersen.

The one with teeth was, perhaps, worse than Tolstoy's. The same caries, periodontal disease and wild constant pain. But plus, the confidence that it is this pain that gives inspiration and ensures his fertility as an author. The confidence was so strong that when the last tooth fell out, Andersen actually lost the ability to write.

"Andersen's case" was circulated by all European newspapers, and Lev Nikolaevich was well aware of such a sad collision. He did not want to repeat the path of the famous storyteller. And therefore false, "false" teeth were rejected - they can only bring "false" inspiration.

The birth of a masterpiece

Surprisingly, it helped. True, in a rather strange way.

Just in the early 1860s. Lev Nikolaevich worked on the main work of his life - the epic novel War and Peace. The product once again stalled. The toothache, which was just a background until then, suddenly worsened. To such an extent that Tolstoy, almost for the first time, seriously listened to the advice of doctors. Namely, he heeded the postulate that 99 diseases out of 100 come from overeating and other excesses.

Saving the remaining teeth, he refused meat, began to eat pureed soups, cereals and kissels: “ Abstinence in food is now complete. I eat very moderately. For breakfast - oatmeal". But even this was not enough: Started skipping dinner. Returned to a strict diet. Every day I wipe myself with a wet towel.

Two weeks later, the novel moved off the ground. And the writer described his general condition for the first time in many years as follows: Excess and power of thought. Fresh, cheerful, head is clear, I work 5 and 6 hours a day. Is it a coincidence or not?

A question that smacks of literary coquetry. Tolstoy clearly decided for himself that all this was not an accident. It was during the period of work on "War and Peace" that he consistently quit drinking, smoking and drinking coffee. And besides, he draws attention to "hygiene" - that's what they called both the device of the way of life and the organization of work.

Here are the words of his wife, Sophia Andreevna Tolstoy:

« Lev Nikolaevich took great care of his physical health, practicing gymnastics, lifting weights, observing digestion and trying to be as much as possible in the air. And most importantly, he terribly valued his sleep and enough hours of sleep.».

The latter is especially valuable. It is not known who launched the most perfect nonsense - they say, Tolstoy slept 4 hours a day and that was enough for him. The eldest son of the writer, Sergei Lvovich, says something else about his father's daily routine:

« He went to bed at about one in the morning, got up closer to nine in the morning. It turns out that Tolstoy took 7-8 hours to sleep - exactly as much as modern somnologists advise.

Tolstoy is rightly considered a unique writer. But he was also a unique person. The path he traveled from suspiciousness and dental superstition to a rational and healthy lifestyle is no less impressive than his literature.

People come to Yasnaya Polyana to feel the atmosphere, the mood of the place where the novel "War and Peace" was created, and indeed, most of the works Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. But in the estate you can not only get in touch with the great past of Russian literature, but also learn how the landowners lived in the 19th century, how they ate, drank, slept, worked, rested ...

Yasnaya Polyana is a typical estate of a middle-class landowner. And it was this middle class that gave us Tolstoy, Turgenev, Tchaikovsky… Those people who created the great Russian culture. Not the upper, very rich class of people (they were mainly engaged in philanthropy), not the poor (those had to survive, and there were no opportunities for creativity), but the middle class gave us those of whom we are proud.

We offer you to make a gastronomic journey through the estate and see how they lived, what the owners ate and where they cooked for the Tolstoy family.

Hostess life

The most important person in the economic life of the family was Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya, née Bers. Nothing in the estate happened without her knowledge. Sofya Andreevna knew everything: she determined what would be for lunch and breakfast, gave out products, calculated their quantity, for which there were several scales in the kitchen, stocks were made under her leadership, she even went to Tula to the market herself to choose products for families.

Sofya Andreevna closely watched the cook, checked whether he was preparing everything correctly. After all, in which case she would have to blush in front of the guests. When Leo Tolstoy became a vegetarian, Sofya Andreevna followed his diet, because her husband's diet had to be balanced.

Sofya Andreevna and her sisters have been learning how to run a household since childhood. The girls were taught very strictly, from the age of 9 the Bers sisters were on duty around the house. At first, the duty lasted a week, the girls got up early, even before the lessons (which no one canceled, of course), brewed coffee for their father, had breakfast, checked all the preparations, and so they performed all the duties of the hostess all day long. And at the end of the week they had to hand over the duty: all the cupboards had to remain in good condition, sugar was chopped, coffee was scheduled for a week. When the girls got older, they were on duty for a month.

Such upbringing was commonplace in noble families, because sooner or later daughters got married and became mistresses in large houses. If they remained in the parental home, they still kept housekeeping in it.

So, when Sofya Andreevna married Lev Nikolaevich and arrived in Yasnaya Polyana, all her worries were clear and understandable to her, she was ready for such a life, and yet very often she was so tired that she didn’t even have the strength to dine.

Sofya Andreevna was a very active person, she believed that happiness lies in not sitting idle for a minute. Of course, her time was occupied not only by household chores. The most important were the children, their education and upbringing, she helped her husband in his affairs, was engaged in painting and photography, and contemporaries said that she was a great expert in photography. She sewed virtuously, embroidered wonderfully.

Sofya Andreevna treated cooking in the same way as creativity. Sofia Andreevna collected recipes all her life, she wrote them down, experimented, added new ingredients. Recipes flocked to her from everywhere: for example, Sofya Andreevna Bersov brought a recipe for the famous Ankovsky pie from her parents' house, which became a symbol of home comfort for the Tolstoys.

Sofya Andreevna subscribed to magazines on home economics, exchanged recipes with neighbors and friends, and asked the hosts when she was visiting. She even compiled her own cookbook. And as a creative person, fond of painting, she also designed it with great taste. Sofya Andreevna's handwritten cookbook is still kept in the museum in Khamovniki, in the Moscow home of the Tolstoy family.

In the kitchen in the Tolstoy house

The small kitchen, where meals for the family were prepared, seems to still keep the spirit of this extraordinary woman. Here Sofya Andreevna watched the cook, here dishes were prepared according to her recipes.

Every day she made a menu for the day, measured out the required amount of products and gave them to the cook and cook. Every day Sofya Andreevna assessed the quality of cooking.

Cooking in this small kitchen was mainly on a cast-iron wood-burning stove, in the next room there was a Russian stove where they baked pies and made porridge. The stove, although it seems to be a fairly familiar object for us, was quite difficult to handle, for a modern person it would be a difficult task to cook dinner on it. After all, the temperature was regulated by the amount of firewood. It also mattered what kind of firewood it was, for example, the best and hottest - birch, and firewood from other types of wood did not give such heat. There were three ovens in the stove, as well as a tank for hot water, which was present in the kitchen around the clock.

There were quite a lot of dishes in Sofya Andreevna's kitchen. Unfortunately, not all of it has survived to this day, but what is in the kitchen is exactly the items in which dinners were prepared for the Tolstoys. Cast iron pans and copper pots, whisks for beating eggs, molds for jelly, cakes, there was even a meat grinder with 18 knives! Very expensive, American, it cost 4.50 - a fortune in those days.

All kitchen utensils were of good quality, not cheap. And you can be surprised to see that much of what was used in the 19th century helps us in the kitchen now. Except, of course, electrical appliances.

All this wealth was used by the Tolstoy family cook, Nikolai Mikhailovich Rumyantsev. He served in the family from time immemorial, even under the grandfather of Lev Nikolayevich, Prince Volkonsky. After him, Semyon Rumyantsev, his son, prepared. The cook had a cook as a permanent assistant, and if a large reception was planned, then other assistants were invited.

I must say that Sofya Andreevna had a very high opinion of her cook, she often said that only old serf masters could cook like that.

How Leo Tolstoy cooked his own food

But the cook did not always prepare the food. There were days when Sofya Andreevna herself got up to the stove. And even Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy prepared dinners for himself. This happened when he was alone in the estate - the family, after buying a Moscow house in Khamovniki, spent the winters in the city. Tolstoy did not like the city and often stayed in Yasnaya Polyana.
During such periods, he cooked his own food, even tried to bake bread. The culinary experiments of the writer usually ended unsuccessfully. The fact is that Tolstoy was generally indifferent to food, he didn’t care what to eat, as long as he quickly returned to work. He could linger at the table, but not for the sake of food, but for the sake of conversation.

Tolstoy's favorite dish was oatmeal - he cooked it on a spirit stove and ate it during those periods when the family left and took the cook with them. Lev Nikolaevich knew how to make coffee for himself. Perhaps, on this list of his specialties could be completed.

Tolstoy had a sweet tooth. He adored dried fruits, dates and dried apples were not translated in the house, the writer ate his favorite porridge with them. And Sofya Andreevna, when she left for Moscow, left her husband a large supply of oatmeal and dates.

Tolstoy and vegetarianism

The writer believed that the meaning of life of every person is in self-improvement. And vegetarianism is only the first step on this long journey. But at the same time, the writer understood that it was impossible to force anyone to take this step. He did not impose his own beliefs on the household, but the daughters followed their father and also refused meat. The sons did not become vegetarians.

Of course, Tolstoy told his family about how useful vegetarianism is for both the soul and the body. After all, what is meat-eating is when you force another person to kill a living being so that you can eat a cutlet. The main thing is to overcome yourself, to refuse this cutlet, and then you will not force anyone to kill.

Greenhouses, bees and apple orchards

The 1860s and 70s were a period when Tolstoy was passionately fond of agriculture. It was at this time that fruit, apple orchards appeared on the estate, which began to make a profit, at the same time Tolstoy took up apiary and bees. The estate had large greenhouses where exotic fruits were grown: peaches, grapes, pineapples.
In 1867, a fire broke out in Yasnaya Polyana, and all valuable plants perished. It was a strong blow. Something was restored, but the Fats were left without peaches and grapes. But pineapples are still grown on the estate. There is even a charming tradition: every year, when the fruits are ripe, children from the kindergarten in the village are invited to the estate and treated to pineapples.

In the second half of the 19th century, the estate was partially provided with products of its own production: meat, milk, some fruits and vegetables. But a lot had to be bought, for example, tea, coffee, sugar, pasta. Throughout the year, the Tolstoys bought pears, oranges and tangerines, vegetable oil and wine. That is, there was no longer any talk of a completely subsistence economy.

Tolstoy, like many landowners of the 19th century, worked very hard on his estate, he provided for his family and did it very successfully, and not only at the expense of his fees. Orchards, buckwheat, rye, clover, timothy seeds (forage grass), timber, honey - all these were items of income for Yasnaya Polyana.

Until now, almost all outbuildings, gardens, an apiary, greenhouses have remained in the estate. And if you take a walk through these places, you understand that the noble life of the 19th century is not at all balls, dinners, walks and sentimental novels, but everyday hard work for all the inhabitants of the estate, and landlords are no exception. Yes, there were beautiful dresses and walks in the park, but basically the life of the landowners was subject to a strict schedule, the day began at dawn and ended in darkness, because the fate of hundreds of inhabitants of the estate depended on the owners.

We thank the press service of the museum-estate of L. N. Tolstoy "Yasnaya Polyana", as well as Galina Fedoseeva and Yulia Vronskaya for their help in preparing the material.

Everyone has their favorite drink. Everyone loves liquids in their own way, one for the taste, the other simply because they experience a special pleasure by drinking one of their favorite favorite drinks in the morning, afternoon or evening. But there are still others for whom their favorite drinks are a source of inspiration. Of course, these are creative personalities, for example, writers. What drinks did the classics and contemporaries of the pen use to increase their inspiration?

Favorite drinks of famous writers:

Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
(Lemonade, Zhzhenka) - “Our everything”, he is Alexander Sergeevich, to raise the poetic spirit, and just to distract himself from thoughts, he was very fond of lemonade. Moreover, exclusively home-made. As Pushkin himself believed, ordinary lemonade, which is sold in shops, often does not cause inspiration. Therefore, Alexander Sergeevich had to put homemade lemonade and take up the pen. But in case of stormy parties, Pushkin gave preference to Zhzhenka - a drink made from fruits and sugar, somewhat reminiscent of Punch. Rumor has it that Pushkin treated the last drink with love, since the Hussars drank it, and Pushkin sympathized with them.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol (Pear kvass, Gogol-Mogol) - But the creator of "Viya" Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol, was very fond of Pear kvass. However, having gone to Italy, Gogol tried one of the drinks, which was completely fixed in our country. This drink was made from goat's milk with the addition of rum. And since such a drink was new to us, Gogol's friends, naturally for the sake of a joke, nicknamed the novelty "Gogol-Mogol". That's how the name came about.
Honore de Balzac (Coffee) - The famous Honoré de Balzac was a coffee aficionado. And not just a fan, but even a fan. He could drink about 50 cups of this drink a day. And, of course, the sort of coffee that Balzac loved was his own. And it was called "Bourbon Confusion". By the way, this variety was a favorite of Louis XV, now it is considered lost.
William Faulkner (Whisky) - Faulkner adored this drink, and in excessive doses. But he always told everyone that he drinks Whiskey exclusively for therapeutic and prophylactic purposes. “There is nothing that whiskey cannot cure,” he assured. In his youth, Faulkner and his friends gathered in a company and drank moonshine whiskey from a basin that stood on the table.
Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Kumiss, Tea) - Leo Tolstoy could not imagine his work without good tea. And he said that in order to work hard, you need to drink a lot of tea. Tolstoy was a strong opponent of alcoholic beverages. But he fell in love with Kumis after meeting with the Bashkirs in the Samara province.
Charles Dickens (Sparkling wine) - Dickens, in 1858, prescribed a special diet. It consisted of the obligatory drinking of half a liter of sparkling wine a day. And of course - a glass of cream with rum. As a result - fruitful creativity, and the publication of the novel "Great Expectations" and much more.
Fedor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Tea and Coffee) - Dostoevsky was very fond of good tea. And if he was suddenly not at hand, he drank coffee without cream. And waiting for the tea to be ready. He drank it (tea), brewing it in a teapot several times, and while the samovar was being put on, he drank slowly a cup of fragrant black coffee without sugar. At least this fact was brought to us by an assistant who worked for Dostoevsky in a bookstore.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Wine) - One of the founders of German literature, Johann Goethe was very fond of good wine. And only good. Goethe had no passion for medium varieties of wine. But he even drank good wine in excess. What is the fact that Goethe asked to send him good wine from Bavaria in the amount of up to 900 liters per year.
Vasily Bykov (RedBull) - Modern writers also love drinks. For example, Vasily Bykov is very fond of RedBull energy drink. Naturally, you need to read Bykov's books, but it is not recommended to get involved in energy drinks.
Zakhar Prilepin (Tea and not only) - But Zakhar Prilepin likes to treat himself differently every time. For example, he can drink both tea and beer, both good Abkhazian wine and Porter. In a word, different combinations for more fruitful inspiration.
Ernest Hemingway ( Mojito and Daiquiri) - Many consider Hemingway one of the most drinking writers of his time. Maybe this is due to the fact that in his works the characters spend more time with different alcoholic beverages. But Hemingway still drank. And not just anything, but cocktails. The writer preferred Mojito and Daiquiri, which, thanks to the description in his works, have become fashionable in our time.

The writer Tolstoy, who appears on the pages of Darya Eremeeva's book "Count Leo Tolstoy. How he joked, whom he loved, what he admired and what the Yasnaya Polyana genius condemned," can no longer be treated as a classic from a famous portrait - with a stern look and a white beard. And even, scary to say, you may want to re-read Anna Karenina, Hadji Murad, War and Peace - or read them for the first time. Because Count Tolstoy, it turns out, is not at all what we used to consider him to be - but a daring, bodybuilder and a man with an excellent sense of humor.

Critics, contemporaries, and journalists accused Tolstoy of everything - but not a single Zoilist dared to reproach him for cowardice, cowardice, excessive caution. Both in life and in his writings, Tolstoy was not afraid to say what he thinks, to act as his conscience dictates, and sometimes, as if out of some kind of youthful intransigence, he spoke and acted against everyone. In addition, he was highly characteristic of what was called at that time "youth".

L.N. Tolstoy. Photo by M. Abadi. Firm "Scherer, Nabgolts and Co.". 1854. Moscow

Youth of Count Tolstoy

The young Tolstoy often "found a verse", and he could, for example, having arrived with his friend the prosecutor A.S. Ogolin to visit the husband of his aunt Pelageya Ilyinichna, Vladimir Ivanovich Yushkov, and having reported on his arrival, immediately argue who will climb the birch first. “When Vladimir Ivanovich came out and saw the prosecutor climbing a tree, he could not come to his senses for a long time,” Tolstoy himself recalled later.

Interestingly, the playfulness of the young Tolstoy was strangely combined with timidity. In his youth, he was shy, considered himself ugly, and even "exaggerated his ugliness," as his sister Maria claimed.

Thinking of making an offer to Sonya Bers, he hesitated for a long time, carried a letter of recognition in his pocket, advised himself in his diary: "Do not poke your head where youth, poetry and love are." And shortly before the confession, on September 10, 1862, he wrote: "Lord, help me, teach me. - Again a sleepless and painful night, I feel I, who laugh at the suffering of lovers. What you laugh at, you will serve."

Nevertheless, having decided to make an offer, he insisted that the wedding be in a week. Maybe he was afraid to change his mind, knowing his contradictory nature?

Sofya Andreevna recalls one of the childish tricks of the young and enamored Tolstoy not without pleasure in the book “My Life”: “I remember once, we were very cheerful and in a playful mood. I will do something"<...>I got into a convertible and shouted: “When I am the Empress, I will ride in such convertibles.” Lev Nikolaevich grabbed the shafts and instead of a horse, he trotted me, saying: “Here I will ride my Empress.” How strong and healthy he was, this episode proves."

Sofya Andreevna did not exaggerate, Tolstoy really tried all his life, as they would say now, "to be in shape." He skated well (like his Konstantin Levin), from his youth he loved horseback riding and horizontal bars, and he performed the most difficult exercises on it, and until his advanced years he rode a horse quickly, jumping ravines and not noticing how the branches whip him in the face, so that the satellites could hardly keep up with him. Tolstoy was very passionate, struggled with this all his youth and still paid dearly (with his stepfather's house sold for export) for his ardor.

Tolstoy - about the military, soldiers, horsemen

There is a recollection of Colonel P.N. Glebov in his "Notes" about Tolstoy's stay in the Sevastopol garrison. "... Tolstoy tries to smell gunpowder, but only on a raid, as a partisan, eliminating from himself the difficulties and hardships associated with the war. He travels to different places as a tourist, but as soon as he hears where the shot is, he will immediately appear on the battlefield; the battle is over, - he again leaves according to his arbitrariness, wherever his eyes look.

Glebov, as a true military man, criticizes some of Tolstoy's carelessness and willfulness, not imagining what literary masterpieces this "arbitrariness" of the writer will result in. It is also important not to forget that Tolstoy himself decided to go to Sevastopol and twice submitted a report about being transferred to the Crimean army, although he could “sit out” this time in the Caucasus, where it was safer.

Tolstoy loved the rough soldier's humor. In drafts, he has a lot of sketches of soldiers' conversations. With sympathetic humor, the courtship of the soldiers for the "beautiful doctor" in "War and Peace" is described. “There was only one spoon, there was the most sugar, but they didn’t have time to stir it, and therefore it was decided that she would stir the sugar in turn for everyone. Rostov, having received his glass and pouring rum into it, asked Marya Genrikhovna to stir.

Are you sugar free? - she said, smiling all the time, as if everything she said and everything others said was very funny and had another meaning.

Yes, I don’t have sugar, I just want you to stir with your pen.

Marya Genrikhovna agreed and began to look for the spoon, which someone had already seized.

You are a finger, Marya Genrikhovna, - said Rostov, - it will be even more pleasant.

Hot! said Marya Genrikhovna, blushing with pleasure.

Ilyin took a bucket of water and, dropping rum into it, came to Marya Genrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.

This is my cup, he said. “Just put your finger in, I’ll drink everything.”

Tolstoy, who himself served, was well aware of this special soldier's laughter, which intensifies in the face of danger - a laughter that can become the last at any moment.

Studying the life and work of Tolstoy, it becomes obvious that for all his moralizing and call for non-resistance to evil by force and a moderate life, he loved reckless, desperate, brave people. In The Cossacks, old Eroshka, a man with a stormy past full of risk and youth, instructs young Olenin writing a letter in his charming, direct manner:

"- What slander to write? Walk better, be well done!

There was no other concept of writing in his head, except for a harmful slander. Olenin laughed. Eroshka too. He jumped up from the floor and began to show his skill in playing the balalaika and singing Tatar songs.

The already mature Tolstoy, with his well-formed doctrine of non-resistance to evil by force, suddenly takes up the story "Hadji Murad" and works on it with enthusiasm. And after ten (!) revisions, the story gradually becomes a hymn to the natural life of small peoples, a denial of colonial policy and any despotism: both Russian great-power and local Caucasian. Hadji Murad is sympathetic to Tolstoy as a whole person, brought up "naturally" - the place and time in which he found himself - his figure is very harmonious, despite the unpredictability, cunning, thirst for revenge and other features of the mountaineer's character.

Who and how did Tolstoy laugh at?

But not all good fellows and brave men are sympathetic to Tolstoy. In "The Raid" a type of officer is given, apparently common in the Caucasus during Tolstoy's service: then in a language unknown to me to the Tatars who rode with him, but from the bewildered, mocking glances that these latter threw at each other, it seemed to me that they did not understand him. Marlinsky and Lermontov.

Tolstoy always feels a "pose", an attempt to appear, and not to be, and these posing people are contrasted in "The Raid" with the seasoned soldier Khlopov, who expresses a simple and at the same time original thought: "He is brave who behaves properly." Later, this idea will return and be embodied in the image of the famous captain Tushin in "War and Peace" - with his true courage, in which there is not a single gram of pathos, but only the desire to do "the right way."

As much as Tolstoy sympathizes with ordinary soldiers, jigits, he does not like secular young dandies who look alike - narcissistic and selfish.

These dandies, brilliant young (and not very young) people who are looking for adventures and profitable parties, bring deceit, discord and temptations and therefore are mercilessly ridiculed by Tolstoy. The only way to get rid of the fake and the vulgar is to expose it, to laugh at it. And here Tolstoy has no equal among prose writers. No one could so ironically, bringing to the point of absurdity, give parallel external and internal monologue, secret thoughts and desires, covered with decency and general phrases of his unloved heroes.

The clearest example is the brief but selfless immersion of the secular careerist Boris Drubetskoy and the wealthy aging bride Julie Karagina into a pseudo-romantic image. I will allow myself the pleasure of quoting a well-known passage.

“The thought of being fooled and losing for nothing this whole month of hard melancholic service under Julie and seeing all the income from the Penza estates already planned and used properly in his imagination in the hands of another - especially in the hands of stupid Anatole, offended Boris. He went to the Karagins with the firm intention of making an offer.

“I can always arrange myself so that I rarely see her,” thought Boris. “And the work has begun and must be done!” He flushed, raised his eyes to her, and said to her: “You know my feelings for you! - It was no longer necessary to speak: Julie's face shone with triumph and complacency; but she forced Boris to tell her everything that is said in such cases, to say that he loves her, and never loved a single woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and Nizhny Novgorod forests she could demand this, and she got what she demanded.

The bride and groom, no longer remembering the trees that sprinkled them with darkness and melancholy, made plans for the future arrangement of a brilliant house in St. Petersburg, made visits and prepared everything for a brilliant wedding.

In Anna Karenina, the coquettish Vassenka Veslovsky, who flirted with the pregnant Kitty, is expelled from home by Konstantin Levin. In this scene, Tolstoy almost reaches the point of grotesque: it is unlikely that in real life the landowner would have escorted a social guest out of the house on a hay cart without inflicting a mortal insult on him. But with the lustful Vasenka Veslovsky, Tolstoy wants to deal with it stronger. And after the awkward expulsion of a stranger to them, everyone "...became unusually lively and cheerful, as if after a punishment or big after a difficult official reception, so that in the evening Vasenka's expulsion in the absence of the princess was already spoken of as about a long-standing event."

Tolstoy walked a lot all his life. Already an elderly man, he several times made the whole way from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana on foot. Evgeny Popov, a person close to Tolstoy in his views, a teacher and translator, accompanied the writer on one of these trips and recalled this: “It seems that on the fifth day we were in Tula. We went to the house of Vice-Governor Sverbeev, with whom Lev Nikolayevich was we were well-acquainted. We were received cordially, fed and placed in a room where the two sons of the owner, naval cadets, usually lived. In the morning, when we got up, Lev Nikolaevich noticed huge cast-iron gymnastic weights under the bed, took it and wanted to do exercises. I was afraid that this would be harmful to him at his age, and protested, he put down the weights, but said:

Well, you know, I lifted five pounds with one hand.

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Did the fat lion drink? Leo Tolstoy - an imaginary patient? How Leo Tolstoy cooked his own food

Hostess life

In the kitchen in the Tolstoy house

How Leo Tolstoy cooked his own food

Tolstoy and vegetarianism

Greenhouses, bees and apple orchards

Favorite drinks of famous writers:

Youth of Count Tolstoy

Tolstoy - about the military, soldiers, horsemen

Who and how did Tolstoy laugh at?

More on the topic "Leo Tolstoy in his youth":

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Did the fat lion drink? Leo Tolstoy - an imaginary patient? How Leo Tolstoy cooked his own food

Hostess life

In the kitchen in the Tolstoy house

How Leo Tolstoy cooked his own food

Tolstoy and vegetarianism

Greenhouses, bees and apple orchards

Favorite drinks of famous writers:

Youth of Count Tolstoy

Tolstoy - about the military, soldiers, horsemen

Who and how did Tolstoy laugh at?

More on the topic "Leo Tolstoy in his youth":

What else to read

THE LAST NOTES

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