Further to the post about the last days of Tolstoy and the upcoming film, The Last Station, here’s some rare footage showing the man himself in the period just before his death in 1910.
Accompanied by Tchaikovsky, we can see it all: grandchildren pulling faces, sleighs, pines, railway stations, fawning retinues, Sophia, and what must be his daughter, Sasha. We even see him on his deathbed.
And guess what? Leo Tolstoy walked like Charlie Chaplin.
What an amazing clip. It transports us to another time. I can’t even decide whether it was recent (by comparison to Hannibal and Scipio, to Virgil and Caesar, yes) or apocryphal (when contrasted with our media cornucopia, yes).
Since I was watching the great man on a YouTube video embedded in a blog, I could not help but wonder how he would have done in today’s environment. Would he even have stood out enough to become a classic?
It is amazing. I’m very moved seeing them all, and seeing his little dog and the kids running around in circles at the station, and Sophia picking a flower knowing the camera’s on her, and the odd kind of walking stick he had.
I know what you mean about another time that’s hard to work out. It’s like a time out of time.
Thank you for posting this–really interesting in a number of ways. One of the things that pulls me, at least, into Tolstoy’s (and other Russian writers’) books is the mysterious world of Russia and these clips capture that somehow.
That’s how I feel too, Thomas. There’s something very special and mysterious for me about Russia. And this clip from pre-Revolutionary, pre-WW1 days, is all the more mysterious. I really get the feeling of a vanished world.
One other thing–did anyone else notice how bizarre the women’s hats look?
Aren’t they? There’s some weird bonnet-cum-beret thing that two women are wearing at one point, and others seem to be wearing astrakhans with scarves over them.
“…..Leo Tolstoy walked like Charlie Chaplin…..
They all walked like Charlie Chaplin!!
Could the depth of your feeling that what you were watching was mysterious in a peculiarly Russian way, have come from your hearing the accompanying music of Tchaikovsky.
When listening to the piano concertos and symphonies of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov, I often ask myself whether what I am listening to could have been composed by anyone other than a Russian.
ha ha. Yes, the music adds so much. It’s had me search high and low for my one and only Tchaikovsky CD. When I find it it’s going to have a good workout.