En écoutant Tolstoï
Sitôt expédié mon « équipage », Tolstoï croise les jambes, et, tout de suite, il me dit : - A-t-on des nouvelles à Saint-Pétersbourg ? Je dis ce que je sais, et j'ajoute : - Est-ce que vous suivez exactement les événements de la guerre ? Alors il fait, de la main droite, un grand geste désolé : - Comment se désintéresser d'un pareil conflit ? Comment se désintéresser de cette guerre, de n'importe quelle guerre ? C'est un grand sujet d'affliction que ces batailles entre les hommes. Je levai les yeux au-dessus de sa tête. En face de moi, derrière lui, je vis, piquée au mur par des épingles, une carte française de la Corée et de la Mandchourie. Je dis : - Mais cette guerre n'est pas seulement le conflit de deux peuples. Elle jette l'une contre l'autre deux races. Quelles conséquences, selon vous, de la victoire de l'une ou de l'autre ? - Qu'importe ! Je ne distingue pas entre les races. Je suis pour « l'homme » d'abord ; qu'il soit russe, qu'il soit japonais, je suis pour l'ouvrier, pour l'opprimé, pour le malheureux, qui est de toutes les races ; et, quoi qu'il advienne, quel sera, pour lui, le gain de celle rencontre ?... Elle montre douloureusement à quel point les hommes oublient ou ignorent la notion du devoir. Faire son devoir, sait-on seulement ce que ces mots-là expriment ?...
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Léon Tolstoï
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (; Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой, IPA: ; 9 September [O.S. 28 August] 1828 – 20 November [O.S. 7 November] 1910), usually referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential authors of all time.
Born to an aristocratic family, Tolstoy achieved acclaim in his twenties with his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Childhood, Boyhood and Youth (1852–1856), and with Sevastopol Sketches (1855), based on his experiences in the Crimean War. War and Peace (1869), Anna Karenina (1878), and Resurrection (1899), which is based on his "youthful sins", are often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction and three of the greatest novels ever written. His oeuvre includes short stories such as "Alyosha the Pot" (1911) and "After the Ball" (1911) and novellas such as Family Happiness (1859), The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), The Kreutzer Sonata (1889), The Devil (1911), and Hadji Murat (1912). He also wrote plays and essays concerning philosophical, moral and religious themes.
In the 1870s, Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work Confession (1882). His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), had a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Luther King Jr., and James Bevel. He also became a dedicated advocate of Georgism, the economic philosophy of Henry George, which he incorporated into his writing, particularly in Resurrection.
Tolstoy received praise from countless authors and critics, both during his lifetime and after. Virginia Woolf called Tolstoy "the greatest of all novelists", and Gary Saul Morson referred to War and Peace as the greatest of all novels. He received nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature every year from 1902 to 1906 and for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, 1902, and 1909. Tolstoy never being awarded a Nobel Prize remains a major Nobel Prize controversy.
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![ebook cover of Anna Karénine [édition intégrale revue et mise à jour], by Léon Tolstoï](https://mysmartbook.fr/media/7d/3d/57/1775561766/anna-karenine-edition-integrale-revue-et-mise-a-jour-leon-tolstoi-9791023202021-cover.jpg?ts=1790064647 "ebook cover of Anna Karénine [édition intégrale revue et mise à jour], by Léon Tolstoï")
