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Denna sida har korrekturlästs minst en gång.
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(historik)
nor can the results of centuries of slavery be undone even in a
lifetime.
The disappointed youth resolved to go to Petersburg in
the autumn of 1847, to continue his studies, intending this
time to take a degree in law. But the juridical hair-splitting
of Petersburg satisfied him no more than the fables of Kasan.
He returned to his estate in 1848.
It was at this period that the years of dissipation occurred
that have been referred to above; then followed his experience
as a soldier in Caucasia, and his successful career as a novelist.
Still, through all these varied years he retained his love of the
people unchanged; unlike some who have feebly tried to help
the poor, and have drawn back into their selfish ease like a
snail into its shell, at the first touch of what they loudly
proclaim as “ingratitude.” In Caucasia, as well as in
European Russia, he was careful to keep himself in living
touch with the people, not simply to study their life, but to
give them real aid and sympathy. This love of men is reflected
in his writings. He cared nothing for outward events nor
outward greatness, but for everything that influences the moral
development of the individual, though so slight as to escape
superficial observation altogether. In a word, this young
author cared for man, and made living men and women the
object of his genius. His first book, “Utro Pomestchika”
(The Landlord’s Morning), and those that followed are full of
that deep sympathy with the oppressed and the poor, that love
of the people, that Tourgenieff sneeringly stigmatises as
“hysterical.”
Shortly after the Crimean War (Tolstoi bore his part in the
siege of Sebastopol), he visited Western Europe, in order to
study the school systems in use there, with a view to his work
of raising the life of the Russian peasantry. On his return he
began to establish schools on his own estate of Yasnaya
Poljana.
The same year, 1861, saw the abolition of serfdom—in name,
at least. Tolstoi probably saw more clearly than the rest of
his countrymen the enormous difficulty of making this
paper-emancipation an actual fact, and thus realising the ideal of
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