Toltsoy's Arabic Diary: A recovery journey that has turned him into one of the world's most important novelists

Imran Abdullah

In conjunction with the 191st anniversary of his birth in September 1828, Afaq published a translation of the first part of the diary of Russian international novelist Leo Tolstoy, translated by the young Egyptian Youssef Nabil, who had previously translated novels by Tolstoy, Chekov, and others.

The diary deals with the daily lives of War and Peace and Anna Karenina in his youth, highlighting his habits, routine tasks, personal preferences, social life, factors that influenced him, and of course references to the long time he spends daily reading and writing.

Dar Afaq announced its intention to translate the entire diary to graduate in six successive parts, covering the life of the Russian moralist and philosopher as he wrote it down himself. In science, ethics and politics. "

Tolstoy's diary was described as a large amount of material, and its huge size may not have been translated into Arabic yet, especially since it has not been fully translated into English either, but selections have been made in several editions.

In his introduction, the translator considered the translation of Tolstoy's entire diary a "daunting and frightening" task, not surprising that no one did it.

Tolstoy's beginnings
1850 was difficult for Tolstoy; he suffered scholastic failures, was expelled from the University of Kazan, and entered a cycle of collapse in St. Petersburg, then in Moscow, where he drank alcohol and drowned in gambling debts.

However, Tolstoy had ambitions beyond mere belonging to the upper class of society such as his peers; he struggled to improve his personal status and express those aspirations, and he began to establish a magazine in 1847 when he was recovering in a hospital from illness.

Tolstoy's early diary, which he began on March 17, 1847 at the age of 18, seemed like a psychological and medical investigation, and the young man's plans to explore himself intensively, and on the front page he wrote (and then deleted) he said he fully agreed with Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the merits Isolation and the goal of moral meditation, Tolstoy sought to regain control of his life, considering the diary a tool to improve himself.

Tolstoy gave birth to 13 children from his wife Sophia, with whom he had a long and stormy marriage. Five of the children died young, the rest fled Russia during the Bolshevik revolution, and their offspring spread in the East and the West.

Unique Diary
But this is not all for Tolstoy the boy. Keeping diaries was like an experimental and psychotherapeutic project aimed at exploring the nature of the self and its connection with the moral high ideals. Later in his novels.

The diary of the famous Russian writer included an account of his study readings, which turned to free readings after leaving university, and his reflections on self-improvement and the purpose of human life, and analysis of personal behavior and failures.

In some diaries, Tolstoy recounts detailed memories of not studying English at the time he devoted to it, excessive laziness, a long conversation with a friend, or a lie to someone, criticizing himself with relentlessness.

Bus life
Tolstoy was born a feudal noble, and his mother, a descendant of a large dynasty, died in his early childhood. His father, Count, soon died before he was ten, and he joined Kazan University to study Eastern languages, Arabic and Turkish.

On his journey with his brother in the Russian army in the Caucasus, he participated in military battles that left their mark in his famous novel "War and Peace", and then left the Russian army and moved to Western Europe in the early thirties.

Tolstoy wrote "War and Peace" in the late 1960s, touching on many political events in Europe in the early 19th century, and Anna Karenina, which dealt with social, ethical and philosophical issues that emerged after the Industrial Revolution and translated into most of the world's languages.

Tolstoy died in 1910 at the train station in a remote village, after he fled his home and left his home and life of luxury, and refused to be buried according to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, which he opposed long.