Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi

In this intimate collection, Maxim Gorky’s scattered notebook entries from the early 1900s give listeners a rare glimpse into the private world of Leo Tolstoy during a period of severe illness and gradual recovery. Written on scraps of paper while the two writers shared a summer house in the Crimea, the fragments capture everyday moments, fleeting thoughts, and the palpable tension between a great literary mind and the frailty of his own body.

Gorky’s observations move from the philosophical—Tolstoy’s relentless wrestling with the idea of God—to the tactile, describing the writer’s hands as “knotted with swollen veins” yet capable of striking, weighty speech. He also recounts the warm, sometimes paternal, relationships Tolstoy maintained with friends like Chekhov and the fiery Sulerzhizky, whose anarchist debates reveal Tolstoy’s sharp, often irritable, moral compass. The volume concludes with an unfinished, heartfelt letter penned after Tolstoy’s departure from his estate, preserving the raw emotions of a friend confronting loss.