Many countries have marked the centenary of Leo Tolstoy's memory by publishing new books, pamphlets, and albums dedicated to his life, work, and aesthetic, religious, and philosophical views. In September 2010, in Moscow, in the publishing house "ID "Rus" - "Olympus"" published another book about Tolstoy - " Ark. The Tolstoy Family", written by the Japanese artist and writer Fumiko Davis, in an excellent translation by T. L. Sokolova-Delyusina. The book will undoubtedly take its place in the anniversary gallery of publications in 2010.

The idea for writing the book came from Fumiko Davis in Yasnaya Polyana, where she arrived decades after her first student trip to Tolstoy's homeland back in the 1970s. "I was overcome by an involuntary excitement, perhaps I did not experience such a strong one even when I entered the territory of the estate where Tolstoy lived for sixty years of his life. My breath caught in my throat, and I couldn't move. I stood for a long time, through the mist of tears that were boiling in my eyes, watching the people who came to worship Tolstoy in deep silence, one by one, lay flowers on the grave. I kept standing and standing, unable to stop my heart from fluttering, " Fumiko recalls of her first exposure to Tolstoy's world. Once again at the turn of the millennium in Russia, in Yasnaya Polyana, having met the writer's great-great-granddaughter Natalia Tolstoy in Moscow, Fumiko saw the country, the city of her youth, and the Yasnaya Polyana estate in which the great writer lived most of his life in a completely new way. But why, after all these years, did Tolstoy still leave home, from his native Yasnaya Polyana, on the night of October 28, 1910? This question nagged at Fumiko incessantly: "An eighty-year-old man suddenly leaves home on a dark, moonless night... Oddly enough, that day, as far as I can remember, I didn't have a question: why? Most likely, the university gave us some simple explanation. Caught up in the exciting world that was opening up before my eyes, I completely lost sight of this seemingly insignificant, but in fact the most important thing, and did not bother to think about it. This " why " only came up in my head thirty years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the return of the name Russia to the country." And then, in an effort to understand everything, she decided to go on an unusual journey, a journey into the world of Tolstoy...

Talking about the life of a Russian writer and thinker, Fumiko draws many participants into her narrative journey: her book features the voices of Tolstoy himself, his wife Sofya Andreyevna, daughters Alexandra Lvovna, Tatyana Lvovna, sons Sergey and Ilya Lvovich, grandson Sergey Mikhailovich, secretary Valentin Fyodorovich Bulgakov, artist Natalia Olegovna Tolstoy, Japanese researchers this undoubtedly gives the book a special style, as if we are flipping through a family album, carefully looking at the photos and comments to them. The story unfolds against the background of communication with Natalia Tolstoy and memories of Fumiko's years of study in Moscow.

The book, of course, touches, fascinates with its sincerity, warmth, sincerity, Fumiko's desire to use common sense, biblical truths and Christian science of the American contemporary and Tolstoy's correspondent Mary Baker Eddy, from a completely objective distance of a hundred years to understand all the intricacies of the life of the Tolstoy family in the last years of the great writer. Fumiko's ardent desire to protect Tolstoy and his family from all kinds of attacks and insinuations, which, alas, do not stop to this day, completely conquers her. So, she very delicately, but firmly and confidently "puts in place" an American writer (she does not mention his name, but it is known) with his unhealthy statements about A. L. Tolstoy, and Lev Nikolaevich himself and his wife! Fumiko Davis writes very emotionally and excitedly: "After all, if I hadn't had the opportunity to read the original diary of V. F. Bulgakov, Tolstoy's diaries, Sofya Andreevna's diaries, Alexandra's memoirs, all these people would have remained alive in the memory of humanity, and-it's scary to think-in my memory too , in a monstrously perverted, in a distorted form." No doubt there is some truth in her impassioned statement.

The image of the ark floating on the waves of time, filled not with any material goods, but with its spiritual content, passes through the entire book and remains on its cover in the form of a title. "All the Fat people at some point suddenly saw in front of them the ark built by their father, grandfather, great-grandfather from the fragrant gopher tree. They entered it and extracted the ideas they had in store for them. And not only did they extract it, but they gradually became aware of their own mission: download this ark for future generations, " the author concludes his journey to Tolstoy's world.

G. V. ALEKSEEVA, Candidate of Philological Sciences

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