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Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (Penguin Classics) |  | Author: Leo Tolstoy
Creator: Rosemary Edmonds
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $16.00
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 698918
Media: Paperback
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0140441395
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780140441390
ASIN: 0140441395
Publication Date: September 30, 1964
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
The artistic work of Leo Tolstoy has been described as 'nothing less than one tremendous diary kept for over fifty years'. This particular 'diary' begins with Tolstoy's first published work, "Childhood", which was written when he was only twenty-three. A semi-autobiographical work, it recounts two days in the childhood of ten-year-old Nikolai Irtenev, recreating vivid impressions of people, place and events with the exuberant perspective of a child enriched by the ironic retrospective understanding of an adult. "Boyhood and Youth" soon followed, and Tolstoy was launched on the literary career that would bring him immortality.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
 Genius September 10, 2009
Mary E. Sibley (Carneys Point, NJ USA)
These books are fiction in the form of autobiography. The first was Leo Tolstoy's initial published work. Since the age of nineteen, the introduction notes, he had wanted to be an author in order to get to know himself. As the story begins, it is learned that the narrator, Nikolai, and his brother are to go to Moscow with their father to continue their education. The tutor, Karl Ivanych, contrives to have himself included in the move. Playing Robinson to the children means performing scenes from THE SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON and this is described. The father of the family, Piotr Alexandrych, is enterprising and chivalrous Nikolai avers.
In the first thirty-eight pages everything is here-- the serfs, a hunt scene, the monetary issues regarding the management of the estate, the matrimonial fortune brought to Piotr Alexandrych and the need to segregate those funds, the tutor from Germany, the use of the French language, the family retainer, the holy fool. The boys are called home from Moscow because their mother is ill. She had not left her room in six days and dies in dreadful agony. CHILDHOOD was completed in 1852.
BOYHOOD commences with a description of a journey during a thunder storm. One of the servants has been appointed the alms-giver. In Moscow the family lives with the maternal grandmother. After the mourning period-- it lasts a year-- visitors are received. Nikolai gets into trouble as he fantasizes that unlike his brother, Volodya, and his sister, Lyuba, he is adopted. The tutor, St.-Jerome, Karl's successor, does not wish to remain at his post for reason of Nikky's misbehavior. Volodya, a year and some months older than Nikki, is sent to the university. University students wear uniforms. The grandmother dies, leaving everything to Lyuba in her will. Nikki prepares for the Faculty of Mathematics because, he claims, he likes words such as sine, tangent differential. The novela was completed in 1854.
YOUTH opens with the friendship of the narrator and Dmitri. He is nearly sixteen and it is the year he enters the university. The plan is for the brothers to stay in Moscow near the university while Lyuba and her father travel to Italy for a couple of years. In the absence of the mother and the grandmother, dinner is no longer ceremonial. It is no longer a joyous family festival. The narrator, Nikolai Petrovich, fears being snubbed. After he passes his university entrance exams, his father assigns specific horses for his use, there is a dinner celebrating the event, and he is compelled to make a number of formal visits. At the visit to Dmitri's family, the Nekhlyudovs, ROB ROY is being read aloud.
During the summer Nikolai plays the piano, (both brothers have become interested in girls). He also reads French novels. The author devotes an entire chapter to the concept comme il faut. The father remarries. Nikolai fails his first exam. YOUTH was completed in 1857. It is clear that the short novels were preparation for the author's subsequent masterpieces, ANNA KARENINA and WAR AND PEACE.
Charming and innocent May 18, 2009
Biblibio
"Childhood Boyhood Youth" is an example of a brilliant author's first work. Childishly innocent at times, this small book aims not to stun with scope, but rather to present the simple life of a young Russian man growing up. This is precisely what "Childhood Boyhood Youth" does. And charmingly as well.
Tolstoy is best known for giants such as "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". While this lacks the huge punch "War and Peace" might give the reader, it has its own little quirks - the book is funny at times, sad at others and remarkably realistic. Semi-autobiographical as it is, it's very easy to get into the story and relate to the characters (based, obviously, on Tolstoy's own experiences). Readers coming from "War and Peace" will find equally descriptive, solid writing but including a touch more innocence and, ironically enough, youth to it.
"Childhood Boyhood Youth" is not a splendid novel for the ages. It is, however, a small opening novel to a remarkable author's career. Readers new to Tolstoy will want to continue to his later works (and may even appreciate them more). Readers looking back will find a different type of book, but one that still stands tall as a Tolstoy book, and a good one at that. In that same vein, it's an excellent novel about growing up and accepting the numerous responsibilities that come with age. It looks at the whole picture of growing, the nice moments and the bad in a quiet, clear reminiscent manner.
For a different take on Tolstoy, here's a nice little book. "Childhood Boyhood Youth" is easy to read, enjoyable and interesting. Warmly recommended.
A Hidden Gem for Lovers of Russian Literature April 7, 2008
C. Robert Broerse (St.Catharines, ON.)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Most people when they think of Tolstoy, War and Peace comes to mind. Others, Anna Karenina which is in large part due to Hollywood, the popular media and the numerous translations available over the years (Constance Garnet, Maud, etc..).
When people think of Nineteenth Century Russian Literature as whole, names like Dostoevsky, Pushkin and Chekhov come to mind. "Crime and Punishment", "Eugene Onegin" and "The Cherry Orchard" are works we might randomly associate with the novel, the narrative-poem and the plays of the great Russian masters.
Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth is that work which stands on the periphery, not only of Tolstoy's works but also of Russian literature in general. It feels Russian, the characters are Russians but the influences come from French literature (Rousseau) and Germany (Schiller, Goethe). There is a Bildungsroman element but I wouldn't want to label it a novel of development. There is also something more. Feeling, wonder, innocence, they too appear in the French and Germanic influences but there is also a great deal of sensation (a "novel of sensation"?). Reading this book, I could feel the narrator's home, I could feel his emotions. It is a work that explores the visceral aspects of being young, growing up and trying to find one's way in society.
Tolstoy's work often carry a great philosophical and moral weight. He was heavily influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer and his theories about the "will-to-live" and the endless cravings of "desire". Not only that, he was reading up on the works of the Shakers, their celibacy stance. The Kreuzer Sonata and The Devil are essentially works in which Tolstoy is maddened with lust and morality.
Here, you could say is the lighter Tolstoy, a Tolstoy of impressions, beauty, and tender emotions. There is no moralizing or foreboding, no fear of judgment, no murdering of wives. It is novel that looks forward to Proust in its dreamlike presentation of being young. While reading this book I felt like I disappeared into the child I once was and still am. A true hidden treasure and also the perfect example of how all Russian literature is not necessarily dark and murky.
 Promising Prose But Little Drama from Tolstoy in His Twenties August 24, 2007
J. E. Robinson
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
I have read most of Tolstoy's major work including his most well known short stories. This is an early work from 1852 to 1856 and it is considered to be semi-autobiographical. It is not up to the standards of his later works, although it is long and detailed and made up of three stories that flow together as one.
Tolstoy was born in 1828 and he was in his twenties when he wrote this early work. He his famous for detailed physical descriptions combined with emotional drama. For example, read that wonderul short story Master and Man that combines those two elements. The present work has the detailed descriptions but lacks the emotional appeal and lacks the great characters that we see in other works, i.e.: a crying youth because he is humiliated is hardly a great emotional experienece.
Tolstoy remains as one of the leading writers of novels. His impressive legacy includes three of four monumental works including War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and the novella The Death of Ivan Ilych. According to his own estimate, he has over 400 works - as he describes in one of his non-fiction works.
Tolstoy's writing can be divided into three phases: the early years up to 1860 to 1861, the mid-career years from approximately 1861 to 1890, and his final years when he turned to non-fiction polemics. His most important fiction was written in the middle period, and it started with the release of The Cossacks in 1863. That story contains emotional elements and descriptions similar to what we read in Anna Karenina. His writings before The Cossacks contains his famous detail but lacks the same level of drama and emotion.
The present work is a good example of his early work pre-1961. Tostoy follows a Gogol like approach to produce a lengthy and detailed account of a young man growing up. The narrative is about a young man living in rural Russia. He goes on to attend university in Moscow and he is the son of a landowner as was Tolstoy himself. The story covers the boy's experiences from around the age of ten to the age of twenty. The character is based on one of Tolstoy's childhood friends and includes other characters based on real people that he knew. The story is a work of fiction. Tolstoy's own father died when he was still young as did his mother who died before his father.
This is a very slow read. It took me a week on and off to get through 314 pages in small font. Readers should not confuse this work with his famous works that came in his mid-career. The prose is excellent, especially the description of the thunderstorm about one third of the way into the book, but the story lacks drama and charm. Considering the author and his complete body of work, this is just 4 stars among the stories by Tolstoy.
As a side note, this is a beautifully bound hardcover book.
 A young aristocrat November 14, 2006
Luc REYNAERT (Beernem, Belgium)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This semi-autobiographical youth memories are characteristic for the life of a young member of the Russian tsarist high society.
The main character wants to be a young man `comme il faut': `The comme il faut people I respected and considered worthy of being on terms of equality with me; the comme il ne faut pas I pretended to despise but in reality hated. The lower classes did not exist for me, I despised them completely.'
This stands in sharp contrast with: `His tendency of ecstatic adoration of the ideal virtue and a conviction that the purpose of man's life is continually to perfect himself. At that time it seemed very possible to improve all men, to destroy all the vices and miseries of mankind.'
But as the young man states himself: `noble words seldom go with noble deeds.'
His life is not without problems: his father, who loses all credit with his son, is a big gambler and doesn't give a damn for his estate. His mother adores her husband and forgives him everything. But she dies when the main character is still young. He receives an aristocratic education and, unsurprisingly, his life goes on very smoothly with `dancing' problems, adolescent loves and student exams.
This book contains beautiful pictures of the Russian countryside and lively childhood memories, but it is rather innocent stuff.
Only for Tolstoy fans.
For a picture of the lower classes (still not the `people of the abyss'), I recommend Maksim Gorky's `My Childhood'.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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