Jay Parini at Tolstoy’s Last Station | Chronicle of Higher Education

By JAY PARINI

I spent a week in Germany during the filming of The Last Station, which is based on my 1990 novel of the same title. It’s about the final year in the life of Leo Tolstoy — a time of turmoil, when the Russian author was torn between Sofya, his wife of 48 years, and his chief disciple, Vladimir Chertkov, who represented his spiritual and ascetic side. Tolstoy had, by 1910, become something of a prophet, surrounded by acolytes, many of whom lived in a nearby commune and devoted themselves to Tolstoyan ideals, which included chastity and poverty — not ideals the master himself embodied with any constancy, as he well understood.

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