Sublime vision and self-derision: the aesthetics of death in Tolstoy
Journal: Cambridge University Press eBooks
Year: 2010

Death features prominently in Tolstoy's artistic and intellectual universe. Tolstoy's very first work, Childhood, a semi-fictional account of scenes inspired by his childhood, relates the 10-year-old protagonist's first confrontation with death when his mother unexpectedly succumbs to an illness. Tolstoy was about 2 years old when his mother died, and 9 when his father followed her. This initial painful realization of human mortality clearly exerted a profound impact, prompting him to recreate t