Pumping stations

The fat lion drank. Writers' Favorite Drinks

Every day in the count's house for big family Tolstoy was set a table with simple and hearty dishes from Russian and French cuisine. And besides, guests often came to the hospitable Yasnaya Polyana. Julia Vronskaya, Head of the International Projects Department of the Yasnaya Polyana Museum, tells about when, what and how they ate and cooked in the writer's house.

Julia Vronskaya Sophia Tolstaya Ilya Tolstoy

When, in 1862, 18-year-old Sophia Bers married 34-year-old Count Leo Tolstoy, cook Nikolai Mikhailovich Rumyantsev was already “in command of the parade” in the Yasnaya Polyana kitchen. In his youth, he was a serf flutist with Prince Nikolai Volkonsky. When Rumyantsev's teeth fell out, he was transferred to the kitchen men. For him it was, of course, a tragedy. And the former musician did not learn to cook right away. Judging by the diaries of Sofya Andreevna, she was not always satisfied with the cooking of the cook Nikolai. One day she wrote: “Dinner was very bad, the potatoes smelled of bacon, the pie was dry, left-handers were like soles ... She ate one vinaigrette and scolded the cook after dinner.” But over time, Rumyantsev became an excellent cook. Ilya Lvovich, Tolstoy's son, remembers his left-handers as a signature dish. The cook stuffed the pies with jam and inflated them from the corners with air, for which the left hand pies got the name "Nikolai's Sighs".

So, when Sofya Andreevna was just getting used to the house, one day she went into the kitchen and saw that the cook's apron was stale, the dishes were not very clean ... The Countess immediately sewed a white jacket, cap, apron for Nikolai and ordered the cook to keep the kitchen clean. And Tolstoy was shocked by what dishes the count's family ate from. She lamented that until her dowry - silver cutlery - was brought to the house, they were forced to eat with simple iron spoons and forks. Out of habit, the young countess even pricked her mouth - the instruments were so uncomfortable!

Sofya Andreevna practically did not cook herself, but she always wrote down what needed to be cooked for the day.

- main man in the house - mom,- Ilya Lvovich Tolstoy wrote in his memoirs. Everything depends on her. She orders dinner for Nikolai the cook, she lets us go for a walk, she always breastfeeds someone small, she runs around the house with hurried steps all day ...

True, there were times when she herself still had to get to the stove - this happened when the cook got drunk. The Countess was assisted by Nikolai's wife. Once they were cooking a goose together, and Sofya Andreevna wrote: “How I became disgusted with this goose by the end of cooking. I couldn't even eat it!" Having sobered up, Nikolai asked for forgiveness from Sofya Andreevna, and she, of course, forgave him.

The schedule of meals in the Tolstoy house was very interesting. At six or seven in the morning (who got up at what time) they drank tea or coffee. A hearty breakfast, by our standards, was very late - at one o'clock in the afternoon. At this time, everyone at home was having breakfast, and Lev Nikolaevich went out to the table even later.

Every day in the morning he ate the same thing: eggs, oatmeal and yogurt. Eggs were generally the writer's favorite dish. He adored them in different ways.

Graduation scrambled eggs, eggs in tomato, scrambled eggs folded in half, scrambled eggs with champignons, beaten scrambled eggs with dill, soft-boiled eggs, scrambled eggs soup ... Sofya Andreevna, making lists for the purchase of products, noted: Lev Nikolayevich buy 20 larger eggs, everyone else - ordinary.

July, 1908 Leo Tolstoy with family and guests. Photo by Karl Bulla

At six in the evening the Fats dined, and at eight they had supper or simply drank tea with biscuits, honey and jam.

Valentin Fyodorovich Bulgakov, friend and last secretary of Tolstoy, recalled:

At one o'clock in the afternoon they had breakfast at home. At about two or two and a half, shortly after the end of the general breakfast, when the dishes were still not cleared from the table, Lev Nikolayevich went out into the dining room, talkative, lively, with the air of a man who had managed to do something and was pleased with this. Someone called or ran to tell Lev Nikolaevich to serve breakfast, and a few minutes later Ilya Vasilyevich Sidorkov (a servant in the Tolstoy household) brought oatmeal, which had warmed up by this time, and a small pot of curdled milk - every day the same thing. Lev Nikolaevich, talking, ate oatmeal, then knocked over a pot of yogurt into a plate and, sticking up his mustache, began to put spoons of yogurt into his mouth ...

Evening tea is another matter. The candles on the table were not always lit, and those sitting at the table were usually content with the meager diffused light coming from those located far away, in other corners of the room, kerosene lamps. It was cozy and simple. They sat where they wanted. The usual treat: dry (purchased) tea biscuits, honey, jam. The samovar purred its song. And even Sofya Andreevna did not give orders, leaving the pouring of tea to someone else and sitting down to the side of the table as one of the "ordinary mortals."

Tolstoy had a very good appetite. He could drink up to three bottles of kefir a day, several cups of coffee, eat five eggs, a decent amount of oatmeal, rice puree, pies. Sofya Andreevna was constantly worried about her husband's health, his sick stomach. "Today at dinner,- she wrote in her diaries, - I watched with horror as he ate: first, salted milk mushrooms ... then four large buckwheat toasts with soup, and sour kvass, and black bread. And all this in large numbers.

1901 Tolstoy's daughter, Alexandra Lvovna, called her photo like this: "For a cheerful breakfast"

Tolstoy had an impossible sweet tooth. Sofya Andreevna bought dried fruits, dates, nuts, dried apricots. And, of course, the famous Yasnaya Polyana jam always flaunted and emitted a divine aroma on the tea table.

It was cooked from apples, gooseberries, apricots, melons, cherries, plums, peaches. Lemon and vanilla were always added to gooseberry and apple jam. In his memoirs, the count wrote about himself at the age of 11: “I was very fond of jam, I never refused it, and even managed to get it myself when they didn’t give me. I remember once they gave me some jam, but I wanted more. I was told that it was impossible. I myself quietly went to the buffet, where there was an unlocked jam, and began to drag it from the jar into my mouth with my right hand. When I was full, I had jam here, and here, and here, ”he showed himself, telling this story to the children.

Yard at the house. The housekeeper Dunechka is making jam. Photo by Sofia Andreevna Tolstaya

All fruits were grown in the greenhouse right on the estate. When the greenhouses burned in 1867, Leo Tolstoy wrote: “I heard the frames crack, the glass burst, it was terribly painful to look at. But it hurt even more because I could smell the peach jam.”

Tolstoy was a rather economical host, but sometimes he liked to surprise children. And in 1879, returning from Moscow, he put a huge box on the table, in which there were various fruits: pomegranates, pineapples, coconuts, tangerines ... When he took out another fruit from the box, the children screamed loudly, because they would see such exotic didn't have to! Sofya Andreevna wrote: “Lev Nikolaevich brought a knife and, cutting pomegranates and other fruits, divided them among the children. It was very touching and funny. The children remembered and told this episode for a long time.”

AT Yasnaya Polyana loved the guests. One of the frequent guests of the estate was the writer Ivan Turgenev, but he always ordered simple Russian food, such as semolina soup with dill, a pie with rice and chicken, and buckwheat porridge.

At the age of 50, the count became a vegetarian - he completely refused meat, but not eggs and dairy products. Tolstoy's new way of life attracted people to him, who also experimented with nutrition. Once a certain gentleman came to Yasnaya, who ate according to a new diet - he ate once every two days. And he managed to visit the writer's family on such a day when he was not supposed to eat. As luck would have it, the table was bursting with food that day. The eccentric sat aside, and when he was invited to the table, he answered modestly: "Thank you, I ate yesterday!"

As for alcoholic drinks, the Tolstoy family loved home-made tinctures, the recipes for which were preserved in Sofya Andreevna's Cookbook. For example, there is a herbalist of the Tolstoy family and orange tincture, Sauternes (French white dessert wine), white port wine were also served on the table. There is even a historical anecdote about Lev Nikolayevich's attitude to alcohol, according to which one can definitely say that in this respect the count was not a hypocrite. Ivan Bunin cites this anecdote in his memoirs: “Once I wanted to flatter Lev Nikolayevich and started talking about a sober lifestyle. Now these sobriety societies are springing up everywhere... He knitted his eyebrows: - What kind of societies? - Sobriety societies... - That is, when are they going to not drink vodka? Nonsense. In order not to drink, there is no need to gather. And if you get together, then you need to drink!

Culinary recipes in the "Cookbook" were recorded by the Countess herself and her younger brother Stepan Bers. There are 162 recipes in total. Nearly every recipe in the Cookbook is related to family traditions, has its own history. In it we find: "Apple kvass of Maria Nikolaevna" - the younger sister of Lev Nikolaevich; "An elixir for a toothache of Pelageya Ilyinichna" - P. I. Yushkova, Tolstoy's aunt on her father's side; Lemon Kvass by Marusya Maklakova, a close friend of the Tolstoy family; “Apple marshmallow by Maria Petrovna Fet”, the wife of the poet Afanasy Fet, etc.

The name of Hanna Tardzey appears in the manuscript. Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy wrote in his Sketches of the Past that this young Englishwoman, the daughter of a gardener at Windsor Palace, was written out by her parents for him, Tanya and Ilyusha. Bonna loved to cook.

She was especially good at creamy pudding, which was prepared for Christmas. The dish was doused with rum, set on fire and, like a flaming torch, carried into the living room.

In 1870, the Tolstoys went to the Salsky steppes, where Lev Nikolayevich was treated with koumiss. He gets better. And Sofya Andreevna, of course, writes down the recipe for making this drink in her "Cookbook".

The fate of the Ankovo pie is especially interesting. The name of this delicacy is associated with the doctor of medical sciences, the Bers family's family doctor Nikolai Bogdanovich Anke. He gave the pie recipe to Tolstoy's mother-in-law, Lyubov Alexandrovna Bers, who, in turn, gave it to her daughter. Sofya Andreevna taught cook Nikolai how to cook the Ankovsky pie. And since then, not a single celebration in the Tolstoy family has been complete without this dish. According to Ilya Tolstoy, "name days without the Ankovo pie are the same as Christmas without a Christmas tree, Easter without rolling eggs."

Photo from the archive of the museum-estate "Yasnaya Polyana"

Recipes from the "Cookbook" by Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy

matlot

Take any fish you like, or even heterogeneous fish, cut it up and put it in a saucepan where there is melted butter, browned, then put pepper, salt, bay leaves and flour; pour red wine halfway with the broth, close the pan and let the fish simmer over low heat until it is cooked. Then lay out on a dish each piece of fish on a slice of fried white bread and cover everything with sauce.

Duck with mushrooms

Boil water, throw the mushrooms into boiling water and let it boil three times with a key, then take the mushrooms out onto a sieve; fry crushed onions in oil and put in a saucepan where mushrooms are located, pour in a little sour cream, salt, add pepper, mix, transfer mushrooms to an earthenware pan and put, sparing no oil; and put the duck, a little cooked, in the oven and let the mushrooms fry until they and the duck are ripe; and so that the mushrooms do not bake, add a little broth.

Pie Anke

1 lb flour, 1/2 lb butter, 1/4 lb crushed sugar, 3 egg yolks, 1 glass of water. Oil, to be straight from the cellar, colder.

Filling for it:

1/4 lb butter rubbed

2 eggs grate with butter; crushed sugar 1/2 lb., grated zest from 2 lemons and juice from 3 lemons. Boil until thick as honey.

Stepanov's cake

1 pound flour, ½ pound butter, ½ pound sugar, 3 egg yolks, a glass of water, salt. Make a dough out of it; make a glass of twist from this dough and sprinkle them with chopped almonds. Then put them on a sheet, brush with egg and put in the oven, not very hot.

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, Lenin's chiselled definitions will come up: “What a block! What a hardened human!"

The pressure and magic of words are such that the qualities of a writer are transferred to a person 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.

The achievements of Tolstoy in the field of propaganda became a textbook healthy lifestyle life. 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 physique, 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. Moreover, 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 enters into his diary: “Giant-sized barley has grown in front of his 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's how others reacted to this illness, for example Decembrist Mikhail Pushchin: "We are all very pleased with his suffering, amusing and amusing suffering: for his trifling barley, he sent for the doctor three times."

In the work English writer Jerome K. Jerome“Three in a boat, not counting the dog,” the main character begins to read a medical dictionary and, as he reads, he discovers that he has 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 Nikolaevich “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 anything of the above, were declared charlatans: "Ignorant, terrible talkers, do not understand anything in their business, there is no benefit from them, sheer lies."

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 that 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: "The teeth are broken." In reality, this meant that out of the 32 teeth he was supposed to have, only 4 remained in service. You don’t need to be a doctor to understand that it is 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 jelly: “Now abstinence in food is complete. I eat very moderately. Breakfast is oatmeal." But this seemed not enough: “I began to skip dinner. Returned to a strict diet. I wipe myself with a wet towel every day.

Two weeks later, the novel moved off the ground. And for the first time in many years, the writer described his general condition 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 Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy: “Lev Nikolayevich 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 a sufficient number of 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, Sergey 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.

Writer Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy with his wife Sophia. Gaspra. Crimea. Photo of 1902 from the L.N. Tolstoy "Yasnaya Polyana" Photo: RIA Novosti

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.

To that writer Tolstoy, who appears on the pages of the book by Darya Eremeeva "Count Leo Tolstoy. How he joked, whom he loved, what he admired and what the Yasnaya Polyana genius condemned", it will no longer be possible to treat him 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 most of the 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 could at any moment be the last.

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 being 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.

Comment on the article "Whom Leo Tolstoy laughed at and loved. About the classics - without tediousness"

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

And today I just burst out laughing. Khmelevskaya, All red, laughed at the top of her lungs, even re-reading several times) But the biggest shock, they laugh, was reading "How the Steel Was Tempered" after school, and just died of laughter.

lovers of Dostoevsky. And please give me ideas of what is good "Crime and Tolstoy, Chekhov is readable and consonant in something, but in Dostoevsky there is nothing close. Whom Leo Tolstoy laughed at and loved. About the classics - without tediousness.

What did Tolstoy want to say? Music, books, TV, movies. What Tolstoy (they say) described the classic addiction to cocaine, morphine, I later read. Lev Nikolaevich wrote for his contemporaries, it is difficult for us to understand their actions, aspirations and moral dogmas.

It seemed to me that Caucasian and southern women in general, on the contrary, persist for quite a long time and look young. And if you ask more broadly - in your opinion, which women retain their outer appearance longer ... I don’t know, freshness, youth - southern or northern. Maybe black women?

Except Goethe, Schiller, Leo Tolstoy and Cicero. As, for example, the opinion of Leo Tolstoy, to whom it was "obvious" in Yasnaya Polyana: everything. By the time Solzhenitsyn got to this topic, they managed to carefully correct it - both in the union and in the Elimination of Unrest (dispersal ...

Whom Leo Tolstoy laughed at and loved. About the classics - without boredom. In Anna Karenina, the coquettish Vassenka Veslovsky, who flirted with the pregnant Kitty, is expelled from home by Konstantin Levin. Inspired by the new series "War and Peace". I think it's such a wickedness...

Whom Leo Tolstoy laughed at and loved. About the classics - without boredom. To content. At whom and how Tolstoy laughed. But far from all are good fellows and daredevils. The clearest example is the brief but selfless immersion of the secular careerist Boris In "Anna Karenina ...

Look at other discussions on the topic "who else, like a fat man, stole someone else's fairy tale and remade it" "The Girl and the Robbers". This fairy tale was written by such an eminent uncle as Leo Tolstoy. So, what is there with the girl with the robbers?

Leo is a Hebrew name? I must say right away that there is no trace of nationalism. Just curious about the history of the name, if anyone knows. I wore this name for a long time, I really like it and my husband. And then our friends told us, why do you want to give the child a Jewish name, you have it ...

Lev Tolstoy. - get-togethers. About his own, about a girl's. Discussion of questions about the life of a woman in the family, at work, relationships with men. In general, I don’t like and respect Tolstoy, but once every five years the thought arises: “After all, do people find something in him?” and I'm trying to find it myself.

Leo Tolstoy story "Bone". The boy ate a plum, but told his dad that he had not eaten. Tolstoy is a master who knows how to hide from the reader his true attitude to the characters. You know, of course, that Tolstoy did not like women like Anna Karenina, but women like Natasha...

Somehow it just so happened that in the world with someone light hand a stereotype has become entrenched: we cannot live without alcohol, and Russians are bitter drunkards, drunkenness is their tradition, which is in the blood, in the genes and is inherited.
Yes, to be honest, we ourselves are sometimes not averse to boasting of this supposedly innate “dignity”. However, everything looks different. Quite in the recent past - 25-35 years ago - we were the most non-drinking people in comparison with other drinking peoples, and drunkenness has never been so common among us.
Noteworthy in this regard is the response of the Lenin Prize laureate Academician F.G. Uglov to the correspondent of the Smena magazine (No. 10, 1985). To the question “How serious is your statement: “Alcoholism brings death and degradation, the destruction of all moral foundations, physical and mental degeneration.” You read - frost on the skin! Isn't it too much, having a thousand-year experience of "drinking in Russia", you are exaggerating? Do not take it as a stupid joke, but it seems that we all drink, and nothing - we develop, we do not stand still? Fedor Grigoryevich replied: “Firstly, where did you get the idea that we have been drinking for so many years? This is an obvious lie. Yes, I have to hear: why fight against drunkenness, if the Russians drank and will continue to drink and drunkenness is almost a Russian disease. A very dangerous lie! There is our history, and there are statistics. And we have statistics dating back to 1750, although there are earlier figures. The average alcohol consumption per capita in Russia was the lowest among the major countries of the world.
Secondly, if we take such an indicator as the average world level of alcohol consumption, then in Russia this indicator has always been 2-5 times less than in other countries. This data has been collected over the last two hundred years. The fact that Russia has never been the first in alcohol consumption is irrefutable!
Thirdly, it is useful to recall the history of our Fatherland. For almost 500 years, from the 13th to the 18th century, Russia was surrounded by aggression from Germany, Lithuania, Turkey, Sweden, and Poland. In those years, peacetime was a short respite. Where can Russian people drink here? And who could afford to drink strong drinks? Princes, boyars, rich people, and the people, millions of ordinary people did not know alcohol, and if they allowed themselves, it was only on patronal holidays.
Drunkenness was never encouraged in Russia.
Even in the “Life” of Theodosius of the Caves, the founder of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, it is mentioned that the mentally ill were considered really sick, the monastery took care of the “wretched cripples” and the “possessed”, while drunkards were neglected, they were persecuted by religion: “ The devil suffers involuntarily and will get eternal life, but the drunk ... will get himself eternal torment.
Alcoholic drinks were known even by the ancient Slavs. So in chronicles, epics, songs, one can find descriptions of feasts and chanting of drinks. “Rus is the joy of drinking, it cannot exist without it,” we read in one of the ancient Russian chronicles the words of the Kiev prince Vladimir. But drunkenness among the Russians in old days was not very common. The manufacture of liquor was an expensive business, which means that ordinary people they were unaffordable. The poor took communion from time to time, on major holidays, and they also consumed low-grade drinks: beer, mash, honey. Recall the epic: "they drank honey-beer." That is why alcoholic drinks were popularly called "princely".
The abuse of strong drinks on a massive scale in Russia has been observed only since the 16th century, when bread vodka began to spread and Tsar Ivan III made an attempt to monopolize the production and sale alcoholic beverages(1552). "Tsar's taverns" were established - at first the first large tavern for guardsmen in Moscow, and under Ivan the Terrible - throughout Russia. They sold wine, honey, beer, vodka. Drinking tsar's vodka was considered a great honor. Then these taverns were reorganized into "circle yards" - no more than one in the city or in the palace village. In 1652, in order to limit drunkenness and its consequences, it was established: “To sell vodka for one glass to a person, and not to sell more than that specified glass to one person, and it is not ordered to sit on the mug yards and close to the yard and give them a drink.”
During fasts, as well as on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, wine was not released at all.
Under Peter I, alcoholics were hung around their necks with a cast-iron medal with the inscription "For drunkenness." Her weight was 23 pounds.
The taxation system introduced in 1795 had a detrimental effect on the spread of drunkenness in Russia. The farmer was obliged to buy vodka from the treasury, and then sell it to the population. So the seller of alcohol (tselovalnik), appointed from above, was replaced by a private person (farmer), who, having received a monopoly on the sale of vodka, engaged in speculation, soldered the population, pumping the last pennies out of it. Moreover, by decree of Catherine II, tax-farmers were allowed to open taverns - as much as they wanted and anywhere. The queen owns the words: "Drunken people are easier to manage."
The soldering of the people caused great discontent among the masses. A powerful wave of anti-alcohol riots swept across the country. Sobriety societies began to form, making decisions about abstaining from drinking wine.
In connection with the wide spread of drunkenness in Russia in the middle of the 19th century, a spontaneous movement of the masses for sobriety arose, unofficial sobriety societies were organized. But this spontaneous movement, not supported by the state, quickly died out ...
The first sobriety society in Russia was officially established in 1874 in the village of Deykalovka, Poltava region.
The spread of drunkenness tsarist Russia became a social disaster, because it carried the danger of the spiritual and physical degeneration of the people. But it was beneficial to the tsarist government, landowners and capitalists. No wonder the progressive figures of the 19th century called the budget of tsarist Russia a "drunken budget." V.M. Bekhterev wrote about this: “The influence of alcohol on the degeneration of the population, on the development of the frailty of the offspring in general, and on the increase in infant mortality in the families of alcoholics cannot be doubted. The harm resulting from this should affect the increase in the death rate of the population and the weakening of its health in general. It was V. M. Bekhterev who called for a persistent fight against alcoholism in the interests of preserving the health of the population.
At the end of the last century, a mass anti-alcohol movement of the Russian intelligentsia began - teachers, doctors, writers. They were headed by the great Russian writer, exposer of all the ulcers of Russian life, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, who was convinced that "most evil deeds are committed in a drunken state." L.N. Tolstoy said: “It seems to me that when I see drinking man that he plays with a sharp weapon with which he can cut himself every minute ... A drunk person does a lot of things that he would never do when sober. Tolstoy was a fierce opponent of drunkenness, did not drink himself and fought this evil in every possible way. He is the author of 13 articles on anti-alcohol topics. “Wine destroys the bodily health of people,” he wrote, “destroys mental faculties, destroys the well-being of families and, most terrible of all, destroys the soul of people and their offspring, and, despite this, every year the use of alcoholic beverages and the drunkenness that comes from it. A contagious disease captures more and more people: women, girls, children drink. And adults not only do not interfere with this, but, being drunk themselves, encourage them. It seems to both the rich and the poor that it is impossible to be merry except when drunk or half-drunk; the best remedy to show one's grief or joy is to become stupefied and, having lost the human form, become like an animal.
And what is most amazing of all is that people die from drunkenness and ruin others, without knowing why they do it. In fact, if everyone asks himself why people drink, he will never find an answer. ... And wine is not tasty, it does not nourish, and does not strengthen, and does not warm, and does not help in business, and it is harmful to the body and soul - and yet so many people drink it, and what comes next, then more. Why do they drink and destroy themselves and other people? “Everyone drinks and treats, it’s impossible for me not to drink and treat,” many answer this, and, living among the drunk, these people imagine that everyone is drinking and treating everyone around. But that's not true. If a person is a thief, then he will associate with thieves, and it will seem to him that all are thieves. But as soon as he gives up stealing, he will associate with honest people and see that not all are thieves. It’s the same with drunkenness ”(Collected works: In 22 vols. - M, 1984 - Vol. 17. - S. 136-137).

Those wishing to enter the first influential sobriety society in Russia, founded by Leo Tolstoy in 1887, had to sign the following declaration, written by Leo Nikolayevich himself: never drink yourself drunk - no vodka, no wine, no beer, no honey, and do not buy or treat other people drunk with anything; secondly, to the best of your ability, inspire other people, and especially children, about the dangers of drunkenness and the benefits of sober life and attract people to our agreement. We ask all those who agree with us to start a similar list and enter new brothers and sisters on it and inform us. Brothers and sisters who have changed their consent and started drinking again, please inform us about it. brothers and sisters:…".

L.N. Tolstoy himself was the first to enroll in "Consent against drunkenness", followed by the outstanding Russian painters I.E. Repin, N.N. Ge Jr., the famous traveler N.N. more than seven hundred and forty people signed the declaration of Leo Tolstoy). One of the adherents of the Russian classic, who shared his sober views, was the well-known Kazan public figure, the author of the repeatedly reprinted brochure "Wine for a man and his offspring is poison" A.T. Solovyov, about which L.N. Tolstoy said in one of his conversations, that "A.T. and I were the first in Russia to recently begin the fight against drunkenness." Highly appreciating the sober enthusiasm of A.T. Solovyov, the count gave him active assistance in anti-alcohol publishing activities, recommending Alexander Titovich's brochure to the well-known publisher I.D. Sytin. Later, in 1892, A.T. Soloviev and his associates founded the Kazan Sobriety Society, which later became famous, and in 1905, on its basis, the first local right-monarchist organization was created - the Kazan department of the "Russian Assembly", which also headed by A.T.Soloviev.

April 28, 1913 was the First All-Russian holiday of sobriety, covering several hundred cities and villages of the Russian Empire. Moreover, in Kazan, thanks to the "Kazan Society of Sobriety", the first teetotal holidays were distinguished by their special scope and solemnity.
The excise system replaced the paying system for distributing alcoholic beverages. The right to produce alcoholic beverages was granted to landowners and breeders. In the market, vodka products were subject to excise duty (tax). This reform coincided with the development industrial production vodka. Prices for alcohol decreased, hitherto unprecedented drinking began. This left its mark on the attitude to alcohol, accelerated the formation of alcohol habits.
In 1894, the government re-established the state wine monopoly. And although it was introduced ostensibly to reduce drunkenness, in fact, it was pursued solely for financial purposes.
Alcohol consumption has become more and more common. Moreover, the wine monopoly did not exclude home cooking alcohol. In some cases (weddings, commemoration) it was allowed to brew beer, mash, honey and other drinks. At the same time, the family was obliged to drink everything within 3-4 days, which often gave rise to crowded drinking parties. The consumption of alcohol on the occasion of such events (and even without reasons) gradually turned into a social norm, formed a kind of "culture" of the "drinking" business.
Alcohol surrogates began to be abused in the country: they drank varnish, polish, and denatured alcohol. Moonshine brewing took on a wide scope, which caused enormous damage to the economy of the state, as a huge amount of grain was exhausted.
Russian doctors fought persistently against the spread of drunkenness and alcoholism.
Alcohol turned out to be a very serious and dangerous enemy for the October Revolution. But sobriety played a great role in her defense. Alcohol acted as an accomplice of the counter-revolution. “Petrograd,” wrote the manager of the Council of People's Commissars V.D. Bonch-Bruevich, - was flooded with a flurry of drunken debacles. In connection with this event, Lenin has the following lines: "... the bourgeoisie commits the worst crimes, bribing the dregs of society and degraded elements, soldering them for the purposes of pogroms ..." (Pol. sobr. soch. - T. 35. - S. 156). The Special Committee for Combating Pogroms was forced to introduce a state of siege in Petrograd and apply the Red Terror against the pogromists. 100 "absolutely reliable members of the party - to serve as commissars" formed the core of the committee, the main force of which were the sailors of Helsingfort. All of them were guided by an oath: "Death to those who do not fulfill the comradely vow not to drink!" The pogroms were quickly liquidated.
The first decree of the Soviet government was the Decree on Peace, the second - the Decree on Land, but few people know that the third decree of November 8, 1917 was the Decree on "dry law" in our country.
Back in 1914, the State Duma of Russia adopted the "dry law", which lasted 11 years and was canceled in 1925. Then they returned to this law in 1985, during the years of perestroika, which entailed even more serious consequences: substance abuse, drug addiction, etc.
But world practice shows that the introduction of "dry laws" inevitably gave rise to mass moonshining, smuggling and illegal sale of alcoholic beverages. The same thing happened in Russia after the introduction in 1914 of a ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages. In 1924, on the eve of the abolition of the ban on the sale of alcoholic beverages, 233,446 home-brewing centers were registered in the country.
"Dry laws", as prohibitive measures, are powerless until public opinion awakens.
“A person will get rid of drunkenness not when he is deprived of the opportunity to drink, but when he does not drink, even if there is wine in his room and he smells it.” In these words of Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy - the whole difficulty of educating a convinced teetotaler.
The fight against alcoholism is one of the most important problems of our time. In the book "At the dangerous line" S.N. Sheverdin, as if summing up the history of the development of the drinking traditions of mankind, writes that in the history of all peoples who, in connection with the beginning of agriculture and pottery, suddenly got acquainted with intoxicating drinks, the following pattern is manifested. Initially - for several millennia - intoxication and intoxicating liquids were revered. Then there is a special production of alcoholic beverages - more than necessary for the ceremonies. There is an opportunity for profit and trade in wine. It becomes possible and drunkenness, violating the established regulation. Only then does the struggle begin - with a noticeable delay, because the use of alcoholic liquids is firmly rooted and sanctified. Of the legislative acts against alcoholic excesses, apparently, the most ancient law of the Chinese emperor Wu Wong (1220 BC). So, alcohol consumption is 7-8 thousand years old. The fight against drunkenness is more than two times younger. Moreover, this is a struggle only with the excesses of abuse, and not with intoxication itself. Yes, and it was conducted by different, far from the best methods. Among some peoples, the methods of struggle were very cruel, but they gave little results. In Sparta, for example, they deliberately soldered slaves, and then put them on public display in an ugly state, thus trying to arouse an aversion to wine. AT Ancient Rome There was a law according to which it was allowed to drink wine moderately only to persons who had reached the age of thirty. Women were not allowed to drink wine at all.
In 1536, the French king Francis I issued a law according to which drunkards were sentenced for the first time to imprisonment, for the second time to rods, and for the third time to public flogging. If this did not help, the guilty were cut off the ears and expelled from France.
In ancient Egypt, a human skeleton was placed in front of the feasters in order to remind them of death...
Along with this, intoxication was revered for a long time and by no means by some backward ignoramuses. One can cite many enthusiastic confessions of guilt made by outstanding thinkers, humanists, poets of the past, who cannot even be suspected of deliberately intoxicating the people. For example, the Scottish folk poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) wrote in a song aptly titled "The Omnipotence of the Bottle":
So let our empty mugs not stand,
We'll drink, fill and rise again
For eternal care with need
Washed away without a trace living water!
Yes, the great poet, while praising the charms of intoxication and merriment (especially in his famous ballad "John Barleycorn"), did not yet know the other side of the coin of these "charms". We have come to know her. The epidemic of alcoholism and drug addiction has flared up with the greatest force in the last 20-25 years. It flared up and acquired such a scope that it is no longer possible to turn a blind eye to this problem.

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.

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?

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 Nikolaevich “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.

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.

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.

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?

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.