Thursday, September 12, 2013
Tolstoy's Library
"In the stationmaster's house at Astapovo, Tolstoy reportedly had two books by his bedside: The Brothers Karamazov and the Essais of Montaigne. It would appear that he had chosen to die in the presence of his great antagonist and of a kindred spirit. In the latter instance he chose aptly, Montaigne being a poet of life and of the wholeness of it rather in the sense in which Tolstoy himself had understood that mystery. Had he turned to the celebrated twelfth chapter of Book II of the Essais while composing his fierce genius to tranquility, Tolstoy would have found a judgment equally appropriate to himself and to Dostoevsky: C'est un grand ouvrier de miracles que l'esprit humain..." --George Steiner, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, 348.
In addition, one of Tolstoy's daughters is reported to have found a copy of Allamah Sir Abdullah al-Mamun al-Suhrawardy's The Saying of Muhammad in her father's overcoat after he died [see Hassan Suhrawardy's 1941 "Preface" in current reprints].
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