| Chapter 1: | Life |
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place where his onetime idol, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, had lived thrilled him, but the Tolstoy propensity for swinging from virtue to license, from pride to humility, from spirituality to debauchery, held sway as always; and his Swiss stay, which began with reading from the New Testament and dreams of pure living, ended with enormous losses at the casinos. He returned to Russia after seven months, only to find himself disgusted at the thieving, lawlessness, backwardness, and patriarchal barbarism of his own country. 24 His trip abroad had made its mark; the wretchedness of his people, and the sufferings of their animals, now appalled him. He started a school at Yasnaya Polyana to teach the peasant children and adopted a Rousseauian form of education with no curriculum, no punishment, and no rewards, believing he could learn as much from the unspoilt children as he could teach them. 25 His second trip abroad was motivated by his interest in education theory and methods, and it brought him to Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and England in 1861. It was on this trip that Nikolai died in Paris of tuberculosis. Tolstoy returned to Russia in April 1861, never to leave again.
—Tolstoy, My Confession 26
The following year, at the age of thirty-four, he married the eighteen-year-old Sofya Behrs, a melancholy young woman who had gained her