Volume-I, Issue-III, March 2025
Volume-I, Issue-III, January, 2025 |
আমন্ত্রিত পাঠ | ||
তলস্তয়ের গল্প প্রফেসর মানস মজুমদার (প্রাক্তন), বঙ্গ ভাষা ও সাহিত্য বিভাগ, কলিকাতা বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়, কলকাতা, পশ্চিমবঙ্গ, ভারত |
DOI: 10.69655/atmadeep.vol.1.issue.03W.33 | Page No: 453-466 |
Stories of Tolstoy Manas Mazumder, Former Professor, Calcutta University, Kolkata, West Bengal, India | ||
ABSTRACT | ||
Leo Tolstoy was born on August 28, 1828, into an aristocratic landowning
family in Russia. He was the owner of a vast estate and spent his early years
in luxury and indulgence. However, as he grew older, he developed a growing
disillusionment with wealth, status, and social prestige. Rejecting his
aristocratic background, he aspired to become one with the common people of his
country. He realized that true peace does not lie in material abundance but
rather in love, sympathy, self-sacrifice, and service to others. Tolstoy had
immense compassion for humanity. He felt deep pain for the suffering of the
oppressed, impoverished, and downtrodden and stood beside them with a heart
full of kindness. He was well acquainted with human nature—its morality, sins,
greed, desires, and conflicts.
Tolstoy freely interacted with people from all classes of Russian society.
The extravagance, vanity, and power-hungry tendencies of the aristocracy
repelled him. In contrast, he found a profound sense of humanity among the
common people, whose simplicity, mutual support, and faith in God reassured
him. He believed that the world remains habitable because of the love,
kindness, and wisdom of a few noble souls.
The 19th century was a golden age in Russian literature. During this
period, great literary figures such as Pushkin (1799-1837), Dostoevsky
(1821-1881), Chekhov (1860-1904), and Gorky (1868-1936) emerged. Among them,
Tolstoy (1828-1910) stood at the pinnacle. Pushkin first gave voice to the pain
and struggles of neglected and marginalized people in his stories. Gogol
portrayed the plight of those crushed by a ruthless bureaucratic system.
Chekhov, like a literary physician, sought to diagnose and cure the deep-seated
social ills, envisioning social transformation. Gorky sang the songs of
revolution, filling his tales with both turbulence and human love. But Tolstoy?
He was incomparable. Recognized as one of the greatest novelists of all time,
Tolstoy also enriched the realm of short stories, writing nearly fifty of them.
His stories exhibit remarkable breadth, diversity, and depth. | ||
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