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Abstract: The article analyzes the relationship between L. N. Tolstoy and A. I. Herzen. The paper presents a brief overview of previous publications on the topic and traces all stages of the personal and creative dialogue between the two writers. The aims of the article are to study the relationship between Tolstoy and Herzen both before their personal meeting and after on the basis of their correspondence; to decode and comment on Tolstoy’s surviving letters to London for March-April 1861; and to eliminate errors and “blank spaces” in the epistolary heritage. Herzen’s letters were studied from archival sources, which are stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. The author of the article clarifies many aspects of the correspondents’ relationship, focuses on the ideological and socio-political views of the two writers, and shows their points of contact and irreconcilable differences. Special attention is paid to the views of Herzen and Tolstoy on the situation in Russia, the peasant question, and their vision of the country’s future. The role of Herzen in the evolution of Tolstoy’s artistic genius is noted. The article provides detailed comments on some fragments of the letters that have remained without explanation until this study, offers various variants of their interpretation, and clarifies important historical facts.

About the author(s) :

Evgenija M. Geronimus
A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences

(Moscow, Russia)
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-4063-7083

 

Acknowledgments: This work was carried out at IWL RAS with financial support of the Russian Science Foundation, project no. 23-28-00661 “Correspondence of L. N. Tolstoy with Russian writers and publicists. 1860s”, https://rscf.ru/project/23-28-00661.

Publication Timeline:

Date of receipt: 19.04.2023; date of publication: 30.06.2023

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