“Why Do I Need a Heart, If There Is No One to Love...” Sentimental Correspondence of Tolstoy’s Teachers A.I. Osten-Saken and T.A. Ergolskaya

About the author:

Lyudmila V. Gladkova (Kalyuzhnaya), Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

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ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3640-8783 

Abstract:

The article is devoted to the study of Leo Tolstoy’s family archive and the establishment of the sources used by the writer when creating the novel “War and Peace”. A tribute to the sentimental tradition Tolstoy gave in his correspondence with T.A. Ergolskaya is pointed out. The sentimental correspondence of Tolstoy’s aunts A.I. Osten-Sacken and T.A. Ergolskaya is considered as a supposed source of correspondence between Princess Mary Bolkonskaya and Julie Karagina in the novel, and the family circle of reading in Yasnaya Polyana and its influence on Tolstoy is also studied.