War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich — many of us have felt the influence, to the good or the ill of our own reading and writing, of Leo Tolstoy. But whose influence did Leo Tolstoy feel the most? As luck would have it, we can give you chapter and verse on this, since the novelist drew up just such a list in 1891, which would have put him at age 63. A Russian publisher had asked 2,000 professors, scholars, artists, and men of letters, public figures, and other luminaries to name the books important to them, and Tolstoy responded with this list divided into five ages of man, with their actual degree of influence (“enormous,” “v. great,” or merely “great”) noted. It comes as something of a rarity, up to now only available transcribed in a post at Northampton, Massachusetts’ Valley Advocate:
WORKS WHICH MADE AN IMPRESSIONChildhood to the age of 14 or soThe story of Joseph from the Bible - EnormousTales from The Thousand and One Nights: the 40 Thieves, Prince Qam-al-Zaman - GreatThe Little Black Hen by Pogorelsky - V. greatPuskin’s poems: Napoleon - GreatAge 14 to 20Matthew’s Gospel: Sermon on the Mount – EnormousSterne’s Sentimental Journey – V. greatRousseau Confessions - EnormousEmile - EnormousNouvelle Héloise - V. greatPushkin’s Yevgeny Onegin - V. greatSchiller’s Die Räuber - V. greatGogol’s Overcoat, The Two Ivans, Nevsky Prospect - Great“Viy” [a story by Gogol] – EnormousDead Souls - V. greatTurgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches - V. greatDruzhinin’s Polinka Sachs - V. greatGrigorovich’s The Hapless Anton - V. greatDickens’ David Copperfield - EnormousLermontov’s A Hero for our Time, Taman - V. greatPrescott’s Conquest of Mexico - GreatAge 20 to 35Goethe. Hermann and Dorothea - V. greatVictor Hugo. Notre Dame de Paris - V. greatTyutchev’s poems – GreatKoltsov’s poems – GreatThe Odyssey and The Iliad (read in Russian) – GreatFet’s poems – GreatPlato’s Phaedo and Symposium (in Cousin’s translation) – GreatAge 35 to 50The Odyssey and The Iliad (in Greek) – V. greatThe byliny - V. greatVictor Hugo. Les Misérables - EnormousXenophon’s Anabasis - V. greatMrs. [Henry] Wood. Novels – GreatGeorge Eliot. Novels – GreatTrollope, Novels – GreatAge 50 to 63All the Gospels in Greek – EnormousBook of Genesis (in Hebrew) – V. greatHenry George. Progress and Poverty - V. great[Theodore] Parker. Discourse on religious subject – Great[Frederick William] Robertson’s sermons – GreatFeuerbach (I forget the title; work on Christianity) [“The Essence of Christianity”] – GreatPascal’s Pensées - EnormousEpictetus – EnormousConfucius and Mencius – V. greatOn the Buddha. Well-known Frenchman (I forget) [“Lalita Vistara”] – EnormousLao-Tzu. Julien [S. Julien, French translator] – Enormous
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