Tolstoy’s day
In the summer of 2019, when travel was possible, we went with our friends on a ten day trip to Moscow and St. Petersburg. I have always been fascinated with Russia. Growing up reading Anna Karenina, Dr Zhivago, The Cherry Orchard, and The Brothers Karamazov, I had created in my mind a romantic picture of a vast, bleak land and deeply troubled people with tragic lives. A more recent addition — Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow reinforced that impression.
On this trip we visited many museums, art galleries, historical sites, saw ballet productions by the Bolshoi and Kirov companies, stayed at the Metropol Hotel (where Count Rostov, the gentleman in Moscow was held under house arrest), and went to several places off the normal tourist itineraries. One of the museums we visited was Tolstoy’s house just outside Moscow.
This house was in a big compound in the middle of the city, a large building with many small out houses, surrounded by a garden with a walking path. He moved into it with his family in 1882 since he felt that their children would have better educational opportunities in the city.
Our tour was conducted by a russian speaking guide who talked about everything in great detail which was followed by a long translation. Tedious though it was, we learned a lot about Tolstoy’s life and times. We went through various rooms in the house, both public and private, where all the daily activities were conducted and we also heard about his very capable wife who, in addition to managing the editing, publishing and publicity of his books, ran the large household and was also a talented photographer.
We toured Tolstoy’s office tucked away in one corner of this sprawling house and saw the desk which we later viewed in his portrait by Repin at the Hermitage. In the small wardrobe hung his clothes — Russian tunics and trousers, his bicycles and dumbbells were in another corner and there were, in a small case, some shoes.
The guide then described how he spent his day. Tolstoy divided his waking hours into four “relays”, a way of switching activities which he believed were important to exercise a person’s abilities. The first of them was physical labor, the second mental labor, the third handicrafts and the fourth socializing with people and entertainment. He got his physical exercise early in the morning chopping wood and fetching water for the house (which did not have either running water or electricity). Then he worked on his writing till about mid-day. In the afternoon, he worked on his craft, which to my surprise, was making shoes, and then later in the evening he met with friends. He kept great company, playing games of chess with Maxim Gorky, listening to young Sergei Rachmaninov who played the piano and sometimes accompanied Shalyapin’s singing.
In 2019, I had left a very busy job and all of a sudden I went from a completely packed calendar to a nearly empty day. For some months, I whiled away the time with various random activities but after a while, got listless and realized that I needed structure. When I came back from Moscow, inspired by Tolstoy’s relays, I decided to emulate his day and build a similar pattern into my life.
The five relays that I have centered my life around are not too different from his: intellectual engagement, physical exercise, craft, entertainment and spending time with friends and family. Unlike Tolstoy though, I do not follow a very strict daily schedule but over a week, I ensure that I spend time on each of the activities.
I am serving on some boards, advising startups and mentoring young people; for exercise, I walk in the neighborhood or workout in our home gym; for craft, I knit, sew, cook and putter around in the yard; and for entertainment, I read, write, listen to music and watch mysteries and dramas. I visit my father every other day and help my father-in-law with his vegetable patch. Seeing family and friends and travel is limited by Covid restrictions but hopefully it will resume soon. Overlaid on all this is of course all the work of running a household and the constant chatter and endless streams of information on the phone.
We are living more than a century after Tolstoy’s time and even though a great many things are different, the underlying fundamentals are the same. We still need relays to use all of our abilities and we still need structure to anchor our days. While the activities may be different in our time, and for each person, the lesson for me is that we should strive to do a variety of challenging and interesting things, physical and mental, social and intellectual, regularly. In our early years, work consumes a large part of our lives of necessity but perhaps if we start cultivating other interests even then, when we have more leisure, we can increase the time spent on them easily. We will then not feel a vacuum when we retire and continue to live an engaged and fulfilling life.
