Countess Sarra Fedorovna Tolstaya (August 20, 1820 - April 24, 1838) is the author of youthful poems and prose in English , Italian , French and German .
| Sarah Fedorovna Tolstaya | |
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| Date of Birth | August 20, 1820 |
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| Date of death | April 24, 1838 (17 years old) |
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Content
Biography
Born in the family of Count Fyodor Ivanovich Tolstoy (“American”) and Evdokia Mikhailovna, nee. Tugaeva, a former gypsy dancer. She was the fifth child in the family, her parents were very afraid for her health, since the children born to them died in infancy. Her health was extremely poor and soon the first signs of hysteria appeared.
Having received an excellent upbringing, Countess Sarah was already six years old fluent in French and German, and at 9 she completely studied English. She knew the Russian language poorly and only a year before her death began to study it according to the works of Zhukovsky . From German poets, she studied: Schiller , Goethe , Herder , Schlegel, Novalis , Uland , Tick , Gelty, Foss , Kerner , the songs of the minnesingers . Of the English, Byron , Moore, and others. From the age of nine, she played the piano beautifully, successfully painted, loved horseback riding, swimming, and from the age of 12 was read by Walter Scott .
In 1836, Sarah began periodic bouts of mental illness, which forced her parents to seek help from homeopaths. In the same year, her parents drove Sarah to Dresden , where she with particular zeal visited the painting gallery , which she loved very much. In the early spring of 1837 she moved to Teplice , from where in the middle she moved to Tsarskoye Selo , and then to Petersburg , where she began to take Russian lessons from Professor Butyrsky. But consumption, which developed in it gradually, despite all the efforts of the famous Dr. Mandt, brought her to the grave.
She died in St. Petersburg at the 18th year of her life. Buried at the Vagankovsky cemetery in Moscow . Belinsky called her “ one of the strangest, most original, most poetic both by nature, and by fate, and by talent, and by the spirit of individuals; this beautiful phenomenon flashed without a trace and memory ” [1] .
Creativity
She began to write at the age of 14. Some of her works are “Poor Mother”, “Mother’s Song”, “Love and Music”, “Feeling for Which There Is No Name”, “Soul Impulse”, “Oh Sorrow”, “Violet”, “Orphan”, “Towards the Moon” , “Perished Happiness”, “Despondency”, “Grave”, “Towards the Evening Star”, “Ardent Desire for Compassion”. According to Belinsky, “ all these poems are imbued with one feeling, one thought, and that feeling is melancholy , that thought is the thought of a near end, of the quiet rest of the grave decorated with spring flowers ” [1] .
In the 1830s, Sarah published the poem Evening Ring in English. In 1839, shortly after her death, the reverse Russian translation of this poem was made by M. N. Likhonin:
"Evening call, evening Bell! Oh, how much these sounds say to a feeling heart about the days long gone, about past joy, about every tear, about every sigh, about everything that is dear to our heart: how eloquent this evening ringing! ”
No reference was made to either Moore or Kozlov in this publication. The English poem by Tolstoy apparently did not survive. Researchers, however, write: “in a biographical sketch that opened the same edition of 1839, Thomas Moore was named among the English poets who nourished the“ poetic, fiery soul, enthusiastic fantasy ”by S. F. Tolstoy, from which one can make an assumption of direct influence on the Russian writer Mura. " For the most part, she wrote in English, less in German, in addition to poems, she wrote two stories in German and an excerpt of the novel in English.
Her works, translated into Russian by M.N. Likhonin (prose), were published in Moscow in 1839 in a small number of copies intended for relatives and friends of Count Tolstoy. Edition entitled "Works in verse and prose c. S. F. Tolstoy ”consisted of two parts: the first part contains her biography, the preface of the translator and all completed plays, and the second contains various passages and rough drafts, even the most insignificant ones.