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Tolstoy, Aleksey Konstantinovich, Count (b. Sept. 5 [Aug. 24, old style], 1817, St. Petersburg, now Leningrad—d. Oct. 10 [Sept. 28, O.S.], 1875, Chernigov, now in Ukrainian S.S.R.), poet, novelist, and dramatist, an outstanding writer of humorous and satirical verse, serious poetry, and novels and dramas on historical themes.
A distant relative of Leo Tolstoy, A.K. Tolstoy was born into an aristocratic family and was brought up in the province of Chernigov on his uncle’s estate, which he inherited in 1836, and at St. Petersburg, where he was a childhood friend of the future tsar Alexander II. After studying at the University of Moscow, he was attached to the Russian legation at Frankfurt am Main, held various honorary posts at court, and spent much time in western Europe.
Tolstoy started his literary career with Upyr (1841; “The Vampire”), a fantastic prose romance influenced by German Romantic writing. In the 1 850s, in collaboration with two cousins, he began to publish comic verse under the joint pseudonym Kozma Prutkov, who is portrayed as a clerk in the Ministry of Finance, a self-satisfied, naïve, pompous person who devotes his spare time to writing; his “works” include fables, plays, and anecdotes, many of them complete nonsense, and they gave rise to an entire school of Russian nonsense poetry. Other satirical verses were written under Tolstoy’s own name: Son statskogo sovetnika Popova (1878; “The Dream of Councillor Popov”) makes fun of Russian bureaucracy and political careerism; Istoriya gosudarstva Rossiyskogo (1868; “History of the Russian State”) ridicules the imperial autocracy. These works reflect the liberal views of an aristocrat who has turned his back on the court career that might have been his. Together with his gift for humour went a deep interest in Russia’s past, which Tolstoy tended to contrast with the unsatisfactory and absurd present.
Among his most popular historical works is Knyaz Serebryany (1862; Prince Serebrenni, 1874), a novel about 16th- century Russia inspired by Sir Walter Scott and the German Romantics; the hero is a gallant nobleman who is matched against Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Tolstoy’s trilogy of plays
Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolitoy, portrait after an oil painting by I.E. Repin, 1879
By courtesy of the State Ljte,atu,e Museum. Moscowdealing with the late 16th and early 17th century belongs among Russia’s best historical dramatic writing. The three plays—Smert Joanna Groznogo (1866; The Death of Ivan the Terrible, 1869); Tsar Fyodor J’oannovich (1868; Czar Feodor loannovitch, 1924); and Tsar Boris (1870)—are written in blank verse and inspired to some extent by Shakespeare. Tsar Fyodor, the character study of a good man but a weak ruler, is probably Tolstoy’s masterpiece. In the same historical vein he also wrote ballads, using the subject matter of Russian folk songs or idealized historical figures.
As a poet Tolstoy had a considerable range of style and feeling; he could write grand and sonorous as well as nonsense verse. In addition to many love and nature poems, he wrote a very effective paraphrase of St. John of Damascus’ prayer for the dead in Ioann Damaskin (1859; Eng. trans. in The Oxford Book of Russian Verse, 1925). His narrative poems include “Portret” (1874; “The Portrait”), a humorous story of a young poet’s love for a lady’s portrait, and the majestic “Drakon” (1875; “The Dragon”). Though his verses occasionally seem facile or oversentimental, he was a versatile master of Russian poetic techniques. Much of his poetry has been set to music by Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, and others.
