Tolstoy and enlightenment

an exchange with Isaiah Berlin

pp. 201-211

in: Robert Grant, The politics of sex and other essays, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

The three most written-about people in history, it is said, are Jesus, Napoleon and Wagner. One would expect to find Tolstoy somewhere in the vicinity. Yet full-scale Western biographies of him are curiously few: Maude, Rolland, Leon, Troyat and one or two others. It may be that his copious diaries and confessional writings, so far from stimulating biographers, have actually deterred them, by leaving so little for them to do.