Imaginary Interviews: My Visit with Leo Tolstoy

In this imagined interview, I sat down with Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), the Russian literary giant whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina redefined the possibilities of fiction, and whose later philosophical and spiritual writings reshaped his life and influenced global thought. A man of profound contradictions, Tolstoy was both an aristocrat and a champion of the poor, a soldier turned pacifist, and a novelist who ultimately sought truth beyond art. Here, I explore the pivotal moments that drove his midlife transformation, his embrace of pacifism, and the roots of his enduring influence as a writer and thinker. Through Tolstoy’s own words, we glimpse his restless spirit, unyielding moral quest, and vision for a better world.

EN: Count Tolstoy, your novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are considered masterpieces. How did your early life shape your path to becoming such an influential writer?

Leo Tolstoy: My early years were a tangle of privilege and pain. Born in 1828 to a noble family at Yasnaya Polyana, I was orphaned young—my mother died before I was two, my father when I was nine. That loss left a void, a hunger for meaning. I was a wild youth, prone to gambling, debauchery, and searching for purpose in all the wrong places—university, the army, society’s pleasures. Yet, those years in the Caucasus as a soldier and my travels exposed me to life’s raw edges: the courage of peasants, the brutality of war, the simplicity of nature. Writing became my way to wrestle with these truths. I poured my questions about life, love, and death into stories, striving to capture the chaos and beauty of human existence. My novels grew from that struggle to understand, to make sense of a world both glorious and flawed.

 

EN: In your fifties, you made the radical decision to release your serfs and renounce your estate. What prompted this dramatic shift in your life and values?

Leo Tolstoy: By my fifties, I was drowning in despair despite my wealth and fame. Anna Karenina was behind me, yet I felt empty, haunted by the question: What is the meaning of life? I saw the injustice of my aristocratic life—my comfort built on the toil of serfs, men and women no less human than I. My Christian awakening, not the Church’s dogma but Christ’s teachings, pierced me. In the Gospels, I found a call to simplicity, to love all as equals. Keeping serfs, owning vast lands while others starved—it was sin, plain and simple. In 1861, I’d supported the emancipation of serfs in Russia, but that wasn’t enough. I freed those on my estate and tried to give away my lands, though my family resisted. I could no longer live a lie, hoarding what belonged to all in God’s eyes.

EN: You served as a soldier in the Crimean War, yet later became a fervent pacifist. What led you to reject violence and advocate for nonresistance?

Leo Tolstoy: War scars the soul. In the Crimea, I saw men cut down, their lives snuffed out for empires’ games. I carried that weight, but it was my spiritual crisis in the 1870s that turned me fully against violence. Reading Christ’s words—“Resist not evil” and “Love your enemies”—I realized war and killing were an affront to God’s law. Violence begets violence, chaining humanity to suffering. My book The Kingdom of God Is Within You lays it out: true power lies in love, in refusing to harm another, even an enemy. I saw governments and armies as tools of oppression, not progress. Pacifism wasn’t weakness but strength—a radical trust in humanity’s capacity for good, guided by the divine spark within us all.

 

EN: Your works have inspired readers, writers, and thinkers worldwide, from Gandhi to modern novelists. How did you achieve such profound influence as a writer?

Leo Tolstoy: Influence was never my aim—truth was. I wrote to grapple with life’s questions, to hold a mirror to the human soul. War and Peace and Anna Karenina wove history, love, and morality into stories that felt alive because they came from my own struggles. I didn’t shy from showing people’s flaws, their contradictions, their search for meaning. Readers saw themselves in that. Later, my essays and moral writings—A Confession, What I Believe—spoke plainly to universal longings: purpose, justice, peace. I wrote for the peasant as much as the scholar, in a language raw and honest. If I influenced anyone, it’s because I dared to ask hard questions and live by the answers, however imperfectly.

EN: You faced criticism, even from your family, for your radical changes. How did you reconcile your ideals with the realities of living in a complex world?

Leo Tolstoy: Reconciliation was a daily battle. My wife, Sonya, bore the brunt of my choices—she managed our estate while I preached simplicity, a hypocrisy that pained me. I wanted to give everything away, but family duties tethered me. Critics called me a dreamer, a fool, yet I couldn’t unsee the truth: wealth and power corrupt. I strove to live simply, wearing peasant clothes, working the fields, but I was still a count, entangled in privilege. The struggle taught me humility—to act on truth as best I could, knowing perfection is God’s alone. I urged others to do the same: live your conscience, even if you stumble.

EN: If you could observe the modern world, what aspects of your teachings do you think are most needed today?

Leo Tolstoy: Your world chokes on greed, division, and endless wars. My teachings—simplicity, love, nonresistance—are cries for sanity. Live simply, free from the tyranny of possessions. See every soul as equal, whether prince or pauper, to heal your fractured societies. Above all, reject violence—your weapons grow deadlier, but peace is still the only path to true progress. Seek the kingdom of God within you, not in power or wealth. That inner truth can still redeem a world lost in noise.

 

EN: Any final words for our readers?

Leo Tolstoy: Life is a gift, but only if you seek its meaning. Question everything—your comforts, your society, your heart. Live by love, not force; by truth, not lies. The divine is within you, waiting to guide you to a life of purpose. Dare to follow it, no matter the cost, and you’ll find peace that no wealth can buy.

EN: Thank you again for this time together and your work to make this world a better place. 

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Daniel Botkin's Motorcycle Black Madonna and the Gates of Eden

I have no recollection of hearing anything about the Black Madonna before its reference in Bob Dylan's Gate of Eden in the mid-1960s. Because of its prominent position on one of his most heralded albums, Bringing It All Back Home -- in the seriously great sequence of Mr. Tambourine Man // Gates of Eden // It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) // It's All Over Now, Baby Blue -- it has received mucho much play time over the past many decades. 

So it was quite the surprise to have the Black Madonna appear in the film War & Peace, based on Tolstoy's classic of the same name. (EdNote: My relationship to War & Peace is similar to Zelig's relationship to Moby Dick in the Woody Allen classic.)

According to scholar Marcus C. Levitt one of the key features of Napoleon and Napoleonism is the power of image. Supposedly Napoleon is the original source for the famous saying "a picture is worth 1000 words." Hence his willingness to have numerous portraits made of himself at key moments in his career, projecting a bigger than life mythology that gained for him a psychological advantage in battle.

Tolstoy explicitly invokes Napoleonic visual images and juxtaposes them with Russian icons including the famed Black Madonna. 

Some legends have it that the Black Madonna was painted on a piece of wood by none other than St. Luke the physician, who wrote the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts. Historians cite a painting of the Black Madonna that stood in Czestochowa, Poland for six centuries which was profoundly revered. The icon, known as the Queen of Poland, is credited with leading a group of monks holding out against a Swedish siege in 1655. More recently, the madonna's image was never absent from Lech Walesa's lapel during the Solidarity leader's struggle against Poland's Communist regime.

In olden times it was not uncommon for armies to carry symbols like this into battle in the belief that "if God be for us, who can be against us?" Like amulets and lucky charms it was intended to put the intangibles in our favor, hence it appears in this manner in Tolstoy's epic.

How very strange, then, for the Black Madonna to make its appearance here in Bob Dylan's Gates of Eden:

The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden
 

The painting on this page is by Daniel Botkin. winner of the Dylan Days Art Competition in Hibbing. It was one of many impressive works that he shared at The Red Mug during Duluth Dylan Fest in 2015. When I asked for permission to share the painting he also supplied some commentary about the piece.

 

The full title is "Motorcycle Black Madonna With Grey Flannel Dwarf."

Of course the inspiration for this piece was from the lyrics, "The motorcycle black madonna, two wheeled gypsy queen, and her silver studded phantom cause the grey flannel dwarf to scream as he weeps to wicked birds of prey that pick up on his breadcrumb sins."

Like so many Dylan song lyrics, these words painted a picture in my mind, and this was one of those Dylan-inspired pictures I wanted to put on canvas.

I used a variety of materials to create it: cotton fabric, burlap, leather, wood dowel rods, rope for the motorcycle tires, doll eyes for the madonna, a glass eye and water buffalo teeth for the horse-headed phantom on the front fender, a crying doll head for the dwarf, and pieces of sponge for the breadcrumb sins.

Dylan's lyrics often have a surreal sense that produces concrete images while concealing or veiling deeper things. For example, the line from the following stanza  "While paupers change possessions, each one wishing for what the other has got" explicitly describes envy, one of Catholicism's Seven Deadly Sins.

This is immediately followed by "And the princess and the prince discuss what's real and what is not." Here we now stand in the midst of a whirl of ambiguity, because, "It doesn't matter inside the Gates of Eden."

You can read my 2015 interview with the artist here.

To see more of Botkin's art online, visit http://danielbotkin.com/

Poland's Black Madonna (1990 NYTimes story)