Apart from these works stands Resurrection (published in 1899-1900) in which he returned to his old "superfluous-detail" and which consequently failed to satisfy him. It contains beauti ful passages in the idyllic style of War and Peace, and pages of powerful satire on the evil social order, but it falls short of being a masterpiece.
The most important imaginative work of his last period are the stories based on his inner experience—those connected with his conversion (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Master and Man, The Memoirs of a Madman), and those in which he embodied his experience of sex, the Kreutzer Sonata (1889) and The Devil (1889, pub. 191 1). The former group in particular stands in im portance by the side of War and Peace. The atmosphere pervad ing them is totally different : they are as grimly tragical as the earlier novel is idyllic. They are on a level with the greatest religious writings of the world.
Tolstoy's plays (with the exception of a comedy written in 1863 and published in 1926) all belong to the period after his conversion. They include The Power of Darkness (1889), a powerful drama of peasant life ; The Fruits of Enlightenment (1st ed., 1891; 2nd ed., '910, a light comedy satirizing the fads of "society," and The Living Corpse (pub. 1911), one of his last writ ings in which there is a mellowness of old age, and in which the character creator of War and Peace makes his last appearance.
Last Years.—Tolstoy's conversion led to his adopting a new mode of life—he dressed like a peasant, did much manual work. learned bootmaking and adopted a vegetarian diet. His wife and children (except his youngest daughter, Alexandra) remained hostile to his teaching and the Countess Tolstoy would not hear of his renouncing his worldly belongings which, she maintained, be held in trust for his children. So he made over all his property (including the copyright of his works written before 1880 to her. The paradoxical situation arose of the preacher of poverty and abstention continuing to live in affluence surrounded by a family who disapproved of his views, but adored him. The first tension between him and his wife was followed by a rapprochement, ce mented by the birth in 1886 of a sixth son. But the death of the little boy at the age of seven was followed by an increasing estrangement between husband and wife. She grew increasingly hysterical, embittered and tactless, and life at Yasnaya became a hell, a constant state of war between the family and followers of Tolstoy, between Countess Tolstoy and Chertkov. Tolstoy
suffered deeply from the incongruity of his position at home. At last on Oct. 28, 1910, he left home secretly at night with his daughter Alexandra. He had no particular aim in view. His health broke down at Astapovo (gov. of Ryazan). He was laid up there in the station-master's room, and he died on Nov. 8 (21), 1910. He was interred at Yasnaya, without a Christian burial.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.—An edition of the complete works of Tolstoy, trans lated by Louise and Aylmer Maude is in progress in the Oxford Uni versity Press ; versions of most of Tolstoy's works, by the same trans lators, are available in the World's Classics series of the same press. Also: Complete Works, 24 volumes, tr. Leo Wiener, Boston and Lon don (1904—o5) ; Works (incomplete) 7 vols., tr. Constance Garnett (1901-04, and 1911-15) ; The Dramatic Works, tr. N. H. Dole, London and New York (1923) ; posthumous works: Hadjz-Murad, and other stories; The Forged Coupon, and other stories; Father Sergius and other stories, ed. C. Hagberg Wright (1911-12) ; Stories and Dramas, hitherto unpublished, tr. Lydia Turin, etc. (London and New York, 5926) ; Tolstoy on Art (containing all Tolstoy's writings on the sub ject), by Aylmer Maude (1925; Boston, 5924).
Diaries and Letters: The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy [1852-77], tr. Hogarth and Sirnis (1917) ; The Private Diary of Leo Tolstoy 57) tr. L. and A. Maude (1927) ; The Journals of Leo Tolstoy (1895 99), tr. Rose Strunsky (1917) ; Tolstoy's Love Letters, tr. Koteliansky and Virginia Woolf (1923).