Comparing My Childhood with Tolstoy’s Fictionalized Youth

by

Mackenzie Patel

I recently finished reading Childhood, Boyhood, Youth, a three part novel published by Count Leo Tolstoy in 1852. A fictionalized autobiography, this book tells the story of Nikolai Irtenyeff, a Russian aristocrat struggling with the thorny rosebush that is growing up. The three categories—childhood, boyhood, and youth—were depicted so fully and minutely that despite the 164 year age difference, I found myself enraptured with the relatable story. I do not own surfs or plan on getting married at age 18, but the struggles with identity, first loves, and burgeoning independence I know only too well. The main character was whiny and arrogant, but key scenes (i.e. the death of his beloved mother, the hilarious ball room disaster, and the symbolic carriage journey) were eloquently written.

However, how realistic and true to the ebb of time is this Russian classic? The universality of certain themes gripped me, but it was unclear whether their hold over me was personally relatable or just fictionally intriguing. I’m a sucker for Russian novels in general, but this sweet sample of epic Tolstoian words was a double edged sword for me. After delving into the story, I decided to compare my childhood stages (ages 6-17 according to Tolstoy’s categories) to those of Tolstoy’s. Interestingly, this novella is not an autobiography of Tolstoy himself. Although he plopped certain real life events into the storyline, many are fabricated shadows of his imagination. For example, the mother in this story dies when young Nikolai is only 8 or 9, while in his own life, Tolstoy’s mother died when he was a toddler. Although he never acknowledged the autobiographical nature explicitly, his almost coy deceitfulness (the reader believes this is an actual biography of the Count) is dubious.

To begin, this comparison is inherently faulty because 1). I am not a boy and 2). I did not grow up in 19th century Russia. However, differences aside, Nikolai Irtenyeff and I experienced feelings of the same passionate strain growing up. The first installment, Childhood, is characterized by innocence, playfulness, acceptance, carefree attitudes, overflowing love, obedience, and shyness. Although this list of adjectives only pokes at the convoluted fabric of childhood, specific incidences described by Tolstoy illustrate their nettled meaning. First, he wrote a particularly interesting and telling scene involving a ball hosted by Nikolai’s grandmother. Replete with flowing gowns, childish awkwardness, and highly formal dancing, the ballroom scene indicated the strict social customs native to Russia. Although Nikolai was a mere child, he was still expected to conform to the rules of accepted propriety observed by the Russian aristocracy. The hilarity of the fingerless glove and burgeoning, embarrassed love for Sonya made me blush for young Nikolai, mostly because memories of my first crushes and social events came to mind. Middle school dances, doused with angst, acne, and boy band music, were a terrible affair for all parties involved, although the emotions of shyness, hesitancy, and curiosity struck Nikolai as well.  True, 19^th century Russia did not have the Jonas Brothers or Hannah Montana, but on that late 7 p.m. night, when I thought my purple tank top and Bermuda shorts were scandalous and his eyes were the most daring things I had ever looked into before, that exhilaration and slight fright were felt by everyone in the room, in the decade, in the past centuries. Playing was the highest art for a child of eleven, and nothing was real or difficult.

The other brilliant insight penned by Tolstoy involved a description of Nikolai’s father.

“He was a man of the last century and possessed that indefinable chivalry of character and spirit of enterprise, the self-confidence, amiability, and sensuality….”

Like most children, Nikolai idolized this imposing figure and thought his every movement, expression, and word was faultless. As I child, I too believed authority figures to be untouchable, inhuman creatures because my childish eyes repelled the flaws of other. I was soaked in a shower of obedience, not because I was scared, but because those key adults in my life inspired respect and love from me. However, like Nikolai, my opinions of adults began to change as I grew older, my family members no longer on the fresh-faced pedestal of youth. For example, in Boyhood, the narrator reveals

“On the whole he is gradually descending in my eyes from the unapproachable pinnacle upon which my childish imagination had placed him…I allow myself to consider and pass judgment on his behavior…”

The second part of the novel, Boyhood, was fascinating to read because unconcerned play and youth musings were replaced by hatred, jealously, and worldliness. One of the opening lines was

“For the first time I envisaged the idea that we were not the only people in the world…that there existed another life—that of people who had nothing in common with us, cared nothing for us…”

This expanding notion of “existence” happens at some point in tweendom, catalyzed by a defining event (i.e. 9/11, Iraq War) or just a natural evolution. This revelation occurred to me when I was around eleven years old when I traveled throughout Europe with my parents. The Eifel Tower barreled me over with its novelty and the unending graveyard of my German ancestors shoved perspective into my eyes. In short, my life wasn’t just about me and my compact family unit of four—It was about curiosity, discoveries, and differences. In Boyhood, this realization also created a wedge between the two brothers (Nikolai and Volodya). Volodya, being a year older, considered himself superior to the less dashing, uglier, and awkward Nikolai. Although I never experienced this brotherly (or sisterly) tension, I’ve flirted with feelings of doubt, inferiority, and negative self-esteem to know their effects. Nikolai particularly starts to hate his outward appearance in Boyhood. “I am as ugly as ever and still make myself miserable over my ugliness.” This hatred, for himself and his French tutor, was not present in Childhood, when days were filled with hunting excursions, sweets, and fragrant sunshine. The beginnings of independence are also seen in Boyhood, although they fully blossom in the tempestuous account of Youth.

Gallery of my Youth

Ah Youth! To be jaded and aware, but not nearly enough to be utterly disillusioned with your surroundings! You are high on life and freedom, the novelty of it all making you more supercilious and fake than need be.  But you are good looking and sweet, suave and intelligent, and according to your underdeveloped frontal cortex, handsomely invincible. In this last short novella, Nikolai Irtenyeff goes to University, attempts to untangle his knotted identity, and tries so desperately to fall in love the right way. After passing his exams, Nikolai proclaims,

“So now I have no tutor, I have a carriage of my own, my name is printed in the list of students…I am grown up, and, so it seems, I am happy.”

On this first wild carriage ride of freedom, Nikolai abandoned himself to his own smugness. The first time I drove by myself, I obediently complied with speed limit and dashed to the library, blasting Taylor Swift or some other trash song down the seaside brick roads. Instead of buying cigars and paintings like Nikolai, I consumed book after book, lazily completing my calculus homework on the side. Besides high school independence, this passage forces me to think about my own college (“University”) experience so far. Local minima and maxima have made my slope zero several times, the highs being extremely unreal and the lows unbearable. “And, so it seems, I am happy” rings true to me, for college is the land of freedom and midnight donut rides without parent supervision. This redundant happiness lost itself among disappointment my first semester of college, but I think I finally found it. Nikolai also struggles with defining his own character in early adolescence. He bends into the shape that society has cut for him, desperately trying to be unique while still upholding the social rules.

The pressure to “look the part” is synonymous with adolescence and all throughout high school, I was conflicted with trying to be “cool” and interesting at the same time. I laughed when I felt like crying, conformed when I wanted to put on my lilac fishnet gloves, and downplayed my obsession with writing until the end of senior year. Nikolai stated so plainly,

“I think that a vainglorious desire to appear quite a different person from what I was, combined with the impossible hope of lying without being detected, were the chief causes of this peculiar impulse.”

I am not an avid liar, but lies tainted with white are not foreign to my mauve lips. Finally, I notice that Nikolai’s youth is characterized by potent selfishness. He is supremely confident the world revolves around him, the low self-esteem of the past being overcompensated with pomp. Leaving his friends’ female relations in the drawing room, Nikolai thought, “’I expect she wants to talk about me…no doubt she wants to say that she had observed that I am a very very intelligent young man.”

Ha! I’ve had friends ditch me because of ivy leagues, cello players, and their straight-laced morals, although I’m not immune to selfishness either. However, unlike Nikolai, I’ve never thought that highly of myself, my confidence tempered by humbleness and a family background in rural India and Germany. All in all, I think Tolstoy’s version of freshly made life is exaggerated truth. I have felt jealously and fear, anger and almost love, but these raw emotions were never spoiled by lies or aristocratic pretension.