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    Boyhood
    Boyhood
    Boyhood
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    Boyhood

    By Leo Tolstoy

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Tolstoy’s first published novel and the beginning of his Autobiographical Trilogy.
     
    Written when he was just twenty-three years old and stationed at a remote army outpost in the Caucasus Mountains, Childhood won Leo Tolstoy immediate fame and critical praise years before works like War and Peace and Anna Karenina would bring him to the forefront of Russian literature.
     
    It is the story of the ten-year-old son of a wealthy Russian landowner in the mid-1800s, as told by the child himself. Not a mere chronicle of events and characters, the novel is an intense study of the boy’s inner life and his reactions to the world around him. With an intricacy of thought and substance, Tolstoy describes the everyday thoughts of a child—innocent and mischievous, bold and afraid, and curious above all.
     
    Childhood, followed by Boyhood and Youth, is the first part of Tolstoy’s semiautobiographical series, originally planned as a quartet tentatively called the “Four Epochs of Growth.” The completed works together form a remarkable expression of the great Russian novelist’s early voice and vision, which would ultimately make him one of the most renowned and revered authors in literary history.
     
    This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateSep 12, 2017
    ISBN9781504048194
    Author

    Leo Tolstoy

    Count Lev (Leo) Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born at Vasnaya Polyana in the Russian province of Tula in 1828. He inherited the family title aged nineteen, quit university and after a period of the kind of dissolute aristocratic life so convincingly portrayed in his later novels, joined the army, where he started to write. Travels in Europe opened him to western ideas, and he returned to his family estates to live as a benign landowner. In 1862 he married Sofia Behr, who bore him thirteen children. He expressed his increasingly subversive, but devout, views through prolific work that culminated in the immortal novels of his middle years, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Beloved in Russia and with a worldwide following, but feared by the Tsarist state and excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox church, he died in 1910.

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    Reviews for Boyhood

    3.5/5

    18 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This purports to be fiction but supposedly it is autobiographical. One can see why Tolstoy would not hold it forth as autobiography, since the narrator is an annoying and unlikeable person, who does stupid and gauche things repeatedly. But one can see that Tolstoy is an able writer, even in this early work, published in 1852 and 1856. I cannot say I enjoyed it greatly, but after finishing it I was glad to have read it and felt the time spent reading it was worthwhile
    • 4/5
      A tender, sensitive book, and partly autobiographical - but only partly.

      Tolstoy had a difficult childhood, and at this time in his life, after seeing the Crimean War, and having been through so much - a difficult childhood, with both parents dying young, we see both the intense frustration he has with the world, but also his sensitivity and goodness - his ability to understand people, which so colors the rest of his work. It is partly his own life shown here, but also the childhood he wished he had. He paints these innocent scenes so well that one can recognize their own self in it - or is that just me, with my delusions of grandeur of being like him in some way?

      In any case, a very good book. Recommended for Tolstoy fans, as well as anyone reminiscing about childhood.
    • 4/5
      Though not called a "memoir," Tolstoy's trilogy [Childhood, Boyhood, Youth] is based on himself. It is his first published work and it is a joy to read. The boy, Nikolai Irten'ev, retells his childhood from about the age of eight to seventeen. It is not, however, the 'boy' telling the story, but his older, more mature (about 24 - Tolstoy's age when he wrote it) self who narrates with such astuteness and clarity the feelings of young boy angry at his tutor, the shame he feels when a complimentary poem he writes for his grandmother's name-day feels like a falsehood, and the contradictory thoughts and feelings of an adolescent who is vain, snobbish and self-involved, yet sensitive and easily offended. The tone of the narrative is so well-balanced, that the reader comes to truly like Nikolai, despite his sometimes inane and thoughtless actions, because of the insight of his narrator-self. One would have liked the story to continue to the point where we see this more empathetic and insightful Irten'ev come into being. In some ways, the narrative reminds me of Turgenev's novella "First Love," also the story of an adolescent retold from the perspective of a much older, wiser man. While Turgenev's story is a masterpiece as well, there is something so honest and unforced (the power of a great artist) about Tolstoy's early work that makes it refreshing to read.Another wonderful thing about these novellas is the description of how the Russian landed classes lived, how they interacted with their peers and with their subordinates, how they interacted with the opposite sex, what was thought 'comme il faut' and how important propriety was to this society. There is something a little 'Jane Austenish' about it.
    • 3/5
      Difficult to rate as I read a sickly-sweet Finnish translation, so I'll give it a three as it clearly can't be quite as bad as it seemed. In any case this early Tolstoy work was originally published part by part with the third publication combining _Childhood_ and _Boyhood_ with _Youth_, the final part. _Youth_ is by far the strongest work in this trilogy, the only part that made me think this really is Tolstoy. The two earlier parts, which made me gag and retch and angry enough to want to slap Tolstoy, appear to have more clarity and taste in the Maude translation this edition refers to, but I doubt even a good translation can completely negate the general dullness of them.

    Book preview

    Boyhood - Leo Tolstoy

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    Boyhood

    Volume Three of the Autobiographical Trilogy

    Leo Tolstoy

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    I. A SLOW JOURNEY

    Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe. In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other—a britchka—sat Woloda, myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps. He made the sign of the cross at the windows of the carriages, and said:

    Christ go with you! Good-bye.

    Jakoff and our coachman (for we had our own horses) lifted their caps in answer, and also made the sign of the cross.

    Amen. God go with us!

    The carriages began to roll away, and the birch-trees of the great avenue filed out of sight.

    I was not in the least depressed on this occasion, for my mind was not so much turned upon what I had left as upon what was awaiting me. In proportion as the various objects connected with the sad recollections which had recently filled my imagination receded behind me, those recollections lost their power, and gave place to a consolatory feeling of life, youthful vigour, freshness, and hope.

    Seldom have I spent four days more—well, I will not say gaily, since I should still have shrunk from appearing gay—but more agreeably and pleasantly than those occupied by our journey.

    No longer were my eyes confronted with the closed door of Mamma’s room (which I had never been able to pass without a pang), nor with the covered piano (which nobody opened now, and at which I could never look without trembling), nor with mourning dresses (we had each of us on our ordinary travelling clothes), nor with all those other objects which recalled to me so vividly our irreparable loss, and forced me to abstain from any manifestation of merriment lest I should unwittingly offend against HER memory.

    On the contrary, a continual succession of new and exciting objects and places now caught and held my attention, and the charms of spring awakened in my soul a soothing sense of satisfaction with the present and of blissful hope for the future.

    Very early next morning the merciless Vassili (who had only just entered our service, and was therefore, like most people in such a position, zealous to a fault) came and stripped off my counterpane, affirming that it was time for me to get up, since everything was in readiness for us to continue our journey. Though I felt inclined to stretch myself and rebel—though I would gladly have spent another quarter of an hour in sweet enjoyment of my morning slumber—Vassili’s inexorable face showed that he would grant me no respite, but that he was ready to tear away the counterpane twenty times more if necessary. Accordingly I submitted myself to the inevitable and ran down into the courtyard to wash myself at the fountain.

    In the coffee-room, a tea-kettle was already surmounting the fire which Milka the ostler, as red in the face as a crab, was blowing with a pair of bellows. All was grey and misty in the courtyard, like steam from a smoking dunghill, but in the eastern sky the sun was diffusing a clear, cheerful radiance, and making the straw roofs of the sheds around the courtyard sparkle with the night dew. Beneath them stood our horses, tied to mangers, and I could hear the ceaseless sound of their chewing. A curly-haired dog which had been spending the night on a dry dunghill now rose in lazy fashion and, wagging its tail, walked slowly across the courtyard.

    The bustling landlady opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative cows into the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other cattle), and exchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip, with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was working the windlass of a draw-well, and sending sparkling fresh water coursing into an oaken trough, while in the pool beneath it some early-rising ducks were taking a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch his strongly-marked, bearded face, and the veins and muscles as they stood out upon his great powerful hands whenever he made an extra effort. In the room behind the partition-wall where Mimi and the girls had slept (yet so near to ourselves that we had exchanged confidences overnight) movements now became audible, their maid kept passing in and out with clothes, and, at last the door opened and we were summoned to breakfast. Woloda, however, remained in a state of bustle throughout as he ran to fetch first one article and then another and urged the maid to hasten her preparations.

    The horses were put to, and showed their impatience by tinkling their bells. Parcels, trunks, dressing-cases, and boxes were replaced, and we set about taking our seats. Yet, every time that we got in, the mountain of luggage in the britchka seemed to have grown larger than before, and we had much ado to understand how things had been arranged yesterday, and how we should sit now. A tea-chest, in particular, greatly inconvenienced me, but Vassili declared that things will soon right themselves, and I had no choice but to believe him.

    The sun was just rising, covered with dense white clouds, and every object around us was standing out in a cheerful, calm sort of radiance. The whole was beautiful to look at, and I felt comfortable and light of heart.

    Before us the road ran like a broad, sinuous ribbon through cornfields glittering with dew. Here and there a dark bush or young birch-tree cast a long shadow over the ruts and scattered grass-tufts of the track. Yet even the monotonous din of our carriage-wheels and collar-bells could not drown the joyous song of soaring larks, nor the combined odour of moth-eaten cloth, dust, and sourness peculiar to our britchka overpower the fresh scents of the morning. I felt in my heart that delightful impulse to be up and doing which is a sign of sincere enjoyment.

    As I had not been able to say my prayers in the courtyard of the inn, but had nevertheless been assured once that on the very first day when I omitted to perform that ceremony some misfortune would overtake me, I now hastened to rectify the omission. Taking off my cap, and stooping down in a corner of the britchka, I duly recited my orisons, and unobtrusively signed the sign of the cross beneath my coat. Yet all the while a thousand different objects were distracting my attention, and more than once I inadvertently repeated a prayer twice over.

    Soon on the little footpath beside the road became visible some slowly moving figures. They were pilgrims. On their heads they had dirty handkerchiefs, on their backs wallets of birch-bark, and on their feet bundles of soiled rags and heavy bast shoes. Moving their staffs in regular rhythm, and scarcely throwing us a glance, they pressed onwards with heavy tread and in single file.

    Where have they come from? I wondered to myself, and whither are they bound? Is it a long pilgrimage they are making? But soon the shadows they cast on the road became indistinguishable from the shadows of the bushes which they passed.

    Next a carriage-and-four could be seen approaching us. In two seconds the faces which looked out at us from it with smiling curiosity had vanished. How strange it seemed that those faces should have nothing in common with me, and that in all probability they would never meet my eyes again!

    Next came a pair of post-horses, with the traces looped up to their collars. On one of them a young postillion-his lamb’s wool cap cocked to one side-was negligently kicking his booted legs against the flanks of his steed as he sang a melancholy ditty. Yet his face and attitude seemed to me to express such perfect carelessness and indolent ease that I imagined it to be the height of happiness

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