Count Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (; – ), often referred to as A. K. Tolstoy, was a Russian poet, novelist, and playwright. He is considered to be the most important nineteenth-century Russian historical dramatist, primarily on account of the strength of his dramatic trilogy The Death of Ivan the Terrible (1866), Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich (1868), and Tsar Boris (1870). He also gained fame for his satirical works, published under his own name (History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev, The Dream of Councillor Popov) and under the collaborational pen name of Kozma Prutkov. His fictional works include the novella The Family of the Vourdalak, The Vampire (1841), and the historical novel Prince Serebrenni (1862).

Aleksey was a member of the Tolstoy family, and a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy. Due to his mother's closeness with the court of the Tsar, Aleksey was admitted to the future Alexander II's childhood entourage and became "a comrade in games" for the young Crown Prince. As a young man Tolstoy traveled widely, including trips to Italy and Germany, where he met Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Tolstoy began his education at home under the tutelage of his uncle the writer Antony Pogorelsky, under whose influence he first became interested in writing poetry, and a number of other teachers. In 1834 Tolstoy enrolled in the Moscow Foreign Ministry State Archive as a student. In December 1835 he completed exams (in the English, French, and German languages as well as in literature, Latin, World and Russian history, and Russian statistics) at the University of Moscow.

Throughout the 1840s, Tolstoy led a busy high society life, full of pleasure trips, salon parties and balls, hunting sprees, and fleeting romances. He also spent many years in state service as a bureaucrat and diplomat. In 1856, on the day of his Coronation, Alexander II appointed Tolstoy one of his personal aide-de-adjutants. Tolstoy served as an infantry major in the Crimean War. He eventually left state service in the early 1860s to pursue his literary career. He died in 1875 of a self-administered lethal dose of morphine at his Krasny Rog estate in the Chernigov Governorate.

Biography

Early life

Alexey Konstantinovich Tolstoy was born in Saint Petersburg to the famed family of Tolstoy. His father, Count Konstantin Petrovich Tolstoy (1780–1870), a son of the army general, was a Russian Assignation Bank councilor. His mother, Anna Alekseyevna Perovskaya (1796–1857), was an illegitimate daughter of Count Aleksey Kirillovich Razumovsky (1748–1822), an heir of the legendary Ukrainian hetman Alexey Razumovsky. A. K. Tolstoy's uncle (on his father's side) was Fyodor Tolstoy (1783–1873). His uncle on his mother's side was Aleksey Perovsky (1787–1836), an author known under the pen name of Antony Pogorelsky. Aleksey Konstantinovich was a second cousin of Leo Tolstoy; Count Pyotr Andreyevich Tolstoy was their common great-grandfather. Remembering those happy years, Aleksey later wrote:

A. K. Tolstoy entered the 1870s as a very sick man, suffering from asthma, angina pectoris, neuralgias and severe headaches. Regular visits to European medics only temporarily alleviated his conditions. In the spring of 1875 Tolstoy started taking morphine. "Now I'm feeling much better, at least the neuralgia's gone. But never before have I been so short of breath. Asthma fits are continuous," he complained in a letter to poet Karolina Pavlova (who was also a translator of his dramas) on 8 July 1875.

Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy died on 28 September 1875, in Krasny Rog, Chernigov Governorate, after having given himself a lethal injection of morphine. He was buried in the family vault in the Uspenskaya Church in Krasny Rog. "Art can only be a 'means' – all of the 'ends'... it contains in itself," Tolstoy wrote in 1870, in the course of long dispute with those whom he labeled "utilitarianists in literature". Such views automatically made him a "conservative" in the eyes of the revolutionary democrats who formed a large majority in the Russian literary circles of the 1850s and 1860s. Unlike Fet, though, Tolstoy insisted on the artist's total independence from ideology and politics, and felt himself totally free to criticize and mock authorities, a trait that snubbed many people in high places. Another unusual feature of Tolstoy's poems was the fact that, while rather salon-like and graceful both in nature and form, they were full of 'simplistic' bits borrowed freely from common talk and traditional Russian folklore. Kept in perfect balance, these tinged his verse with a peculiar, musical quality. More than half of Tolstoy's poems have been put to music by leading Russian composers like Tchaykovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Musorgsky, Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Anton Rubinstein, Sergey Rakhmaninov and others.

Assessing Tolstoy's poetry as a whole, D. S. Mirsky wrote: "Even if they suffer from sentimentality and are occasionally banal, his lyrics retain their freshness and even now taste like a delightful morning dew," the critic wrote. Mentioning Nekrasov, who in his latter works created a strong image of the Russian mother, Annensky argued that what Tolstoy managed to create was an equally sublime portrait of the noble woman whose "serene placidity belies unspeakable sadness… of the one who's ashamed of her own happiness fearing that she, making the most of this world's beauty, somehow takes it away from those who have no opportunity to enjoy such riches in abundance."]]

Tolstoy's ballads and songs were close to traditional bylinas both in essence and form; in fact, the author himself made no distinction between the two genres. Critics argued that (unlike, say, Nekrasov) Tolstoy used folklorisms as a mere stylistic instrument, using stories from the history of the Russian Middle Ages as a means to convey his own ideas and theories (Zmei Tugarin), and to link historical utopias with relevant social comment (Boryvoi, Vasily Shibanov). while Iskra magazine parodied it in 1872 with a verse entitled "A Ballad with a Pro-Police Tendency". Shchedrin, describing the current state of Russian literature as a "kingdom of scoundrels", in a letter to Aleksey Zhemchuzhnikov wrote: "Add to all this the fun-and-games-seeking 'free artists' like Count A. K. Tolstoy who makes... our obscurantists' hearts beat faster with delight. I don't know about you, but I find it painful to see how people whom I though honest, even if not very far-seeing, fight on the side of obscurantism, employing pseudo-folklorism as a weapon."

Tolstoy was a master of prose; both his novella The Vampire (praised by Vissarion Belinsky) and his novel Prince Serebrenni received a lot of good press. The latter, though, was criticised for being tendentious; many argued that both the main character and Yelena Morozova looked very much like people of the 19th, rather than 16th century. On the other hand, Ivan Grozny and the oprichnina horrors were depicted with great vividness and passion; the novel's masterfully built structure, its rich musical language made it a perfect Walter Scott-type of book for adolescents, according to Vengerov. Still, as a prosaic Tolstoy made much less of an impact than as a poet. He's been lauded as a classic of the 19th century Russian historical drama. So on the one hand, Tolstoy's dramatic trilogy- The Death of Ivan the Terrible, Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Tsar Boris- was not historical in the strict sense of the word; on the other hand, it was far from being the brand of "patriotic drama" produced by Nestor Kukolnik or the imitation of the French tragedie des allusions which Aleksander Pushkin ridiculed. In fact, Pushkin's attitude was the closest approximation to that of Tolstoy. The latter's plays had their "second levels", directly corresponding to contemporary political situations, but were driven mostly by the author's historical views and theories which involved the glorifying of Russian "noble men" (he associated them with the boyarstvo) and the vilification Ivan Grozny whom the boyarstvo had fallen victim to. the critic wrote. It was the generic closeness of Tolstoy's plays to the Russia of old, Annenkov argued, that made them historic in the truest sense of the word, for "their significance as living testimony to the spirit those people and their times is beyond doubt".

thumb|left|200px|A. K. Tolstoy's grave in Krasny Rog

Common to the trilogy was a somewhat morbid look at the history of the Russian monarchy of the previous three centuries, where, as the author saw it, all the efficient rulers happened to be evil, and all the 'good' ones proved to be inefficient. The three stories of three different historical figures had similarly didactic finales: "God help you, Tsar Ivan, and God forgive us all! That's the fate autocracy deserved! Here's the result of our disintegration!" (Zakharyin's words over Ivan the Terrible's dead body), "I am to blame for all of this... Oh God, why did you make me Tsar?!" (Tsar Fyodor), "What Evil spawns is only more evil and nothing else." (Boris Godunov). All three parts of the trilogy, which, according to Nestor Kotlyarevsky, were "united by the idea of tragedy being intrinsic to Tsarist power in Russia," had serious problems with the censorship. The trilogy continued to divide opinion in Russia up until 1917. Not long before the Revolution, in Alexandrinsky Theatre the public reacted to Tsar Boris in an overtly political fashion. Monarchists applauded Boris Godunov's words, the left "supported" boyarin Sitsky, seeing in him a fighter of despotism.

In the mid-19th century Tolstoy was not taken very seriously, but his reputation started to grow after his death in 1875. Vladimir Korolenko called Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich "a gem of Russian drama," that's been shining especially bright next to "the totally dismal theater repertoire of the late 19th century".

  • Tsar Boris (Царь Борис, 1870)
  • Posadnik (Посадник, 1871, published in 1874–1976)
  • The Alchemist (unfinished, 1867)
  • History of the Russian State from Gostomysl to Timashev (1868)
  • Portrait (Портрет, 1872)
  • Dragon (1875)
  • The Dream of Councillor Popov (written 1873, first published in 1978, Berlin)

References

  • Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy poetry at Stihipoeta (rus)
  • Ivan the Terrible
  • Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich
  • Prince Serebrenni – 1895 English translation with the title "The Terrible Czar".
  • Poems by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy
  • “Love’s Ebb and Flow,” translated by Alice Stone Blackwell (1906).
  • Do You Remember the Evening – a poem by Tolstoy translated into English by Anton Bespalov and Rianne Stam.