Childhood. Adolescence. Youth

The story “Childhood”, first published in 1852 in the magazine “Contemporary”, became a literary debut of L. N. Tolstoy, an outstanding Russian writer and thinker, a classic of domestic literature. Based on children"s memories and diary notes, Tolstoy, however, wrote not an autobiography and not memoirs. The author tried to reveal the universal laws of the development of the human soul, its mysterious changeable “dialectics”, “express such secrets that cannot be said by a simple word”, which is precisely the main goal of art, as the author believed. Subsequently, the story “Childhood” along with “adolescence” (1852–1854) and “Youth” (1855–1857) connected in the trilogy and became “not only a piggy bank of future literary plans, but also a certain absolute point on the way, once and for all an open continent On the map of the Tolstoy world ”(I. N. Sukhikh)