Countess Sophia Tolstoy
Significant Others
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Sex and the Life of Tolstoy
Tolstoy lost his virginity to a sex worker at age 14. By 19, he was undergoing the first of a series of painful treatments for gonoria. At 23, he describes a sexual interlude like this: "I even hate her because i've broken my rules on her account" He would dream of waking up a different man only to spend the evening looking at all the girls. Wilson says, few artists have had a more exaggerated sense of sexual guilt. Few has been more clumsy of their handling of it in private life and creative in their literary use of it.
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