Discussion on Tolstoy - from my Facebook page -

13 hours ago near Washington

Quote of the day - Count Leo Tolstoy on poetry -

Poetry is the fire burning in a person’s soul. This fire burns, warms and brings light . . . There are some people who feel the heat, others who feel the warmth, others who just see the light, and others who do not even see the light . . . But the true poet cannot help burning painfully, and burning others. That’s what it is all about.

Leo Tolstoy
Diary entry 28 Oct. 1870
As quoted in Rosamund Bartlett, Tolstoy: A Russian Life.

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• Tin Min Htet and Aye Aye Soe Win like this.
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  Myo Nyunt Kyi May, still the poet, scholar activist and a good daughter of Burma. With Metta 777 77 Perth

  6 hours ago · Unlike · 1
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  Kyi May Kaung You have to read that Tolstoy bio - now 300 descendents spread all over the world - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/living-with-leo-tolstoys-impressive-dynasty-2136883.html

  

  Living with Leo: Tolstoy's impressive dynasty

  www.independent.co.uk

  Today is the 100th anniversary of Leo Tolstoy’s death. A century on, he is still...See More

  16 minutes ago · Like · Remove Preview
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  Kyi May Kaung You would like Tolstoy, no wonder Lenin lionized him but his children had to flee in 1917 - Maybe I will make my own pilgrimage to Yasnya Polyana one of these days. He just wasn't a writer of fiction and an "empty theorist" - he went all over Europe looking at schools (like my father did) and he set up schools for his serfs, and he freed his serfs before the Tsar did - and he used his influence to write letters abt individual cases, but still a serf got executed for slapping an officer - I don't see how he could not have become a writer with all the death and injustice around him - He lost almost all his older generation family members and 3 infant children bf he was 40. Truly a person ahead of his time. The books is also good because it sets his life in context, with the early reformers (Decembrists), the Crimean War, his War & Peace research abt the Napoleonic War (from which he described the Russian victory - and now the famous 1812 Overture comes into context) - and he also foresaw a famine in the eastern part of Russia where he bought land, wrote a letter to the Tsar !!!, raised money and had food/grain delivered - And I am only 1/2 way through the book. But is was very hard on his wife who became a sort of child-bearing machine - That part of the story is in the William Shirer book and the movie with Helen Mirren.

  3 minutes ago · Like
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  Kyi May Kaung and he collected his own statistics - to prove there was a famine going on.

  2 minutes ago · Like