Who thinks Leo Tolstoy was sexy as a young guy?

[Meatpie]

Leo Tolstoy is considered by many the world's greatest novelist.

I think he was good-looking as young man, photo here from 1848 when he was 20.

With his big ears and serious look he definately was a refined young gentleman destined for greatness.

Still he was far from pefect in his personal life.

Leo left Kazan university in the middle of his studies.

He had an unhappy marriage.

In 1857 Tolstoy visited Paris.

There he witnessed a public execution.

This was a pretty traumatic experience for the young writer that would mark the rest of his life.

Do you thinkg he was sexy?

If you check his later photos even as an old man he was still handsome.

I love Tolstoy, I admire him greatly.

 

[Micky]

Awwww... I'm pissed off now, I'm totally pissed off! I look in the mirror at my nerdy face, and I think about my bog-standard talentless existence, and there's HIM, and he not only wrote like a God, he LOOKED like a fucking God too. Life is so unfair!

The world's greatest novelist? Could be... But closely challenged by his compatriot Dostoievsky, and also by Zola, Mann, Dickens and Melville, and at the present day, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

As for the world's greatest novel, it's not by any of the guys above, and sadly, mere fragments of it survive, because it dates from 1400 years before the printing press was invented. It's the Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter, Nero's minister of culture. It has to be one of the sexiest books ever written, and so FUNNY. Here are three brief extracts to show those of you who haven't read it what you're missing.

"His favourite boy, a scrawny little specimen with absolutely disgusting teeth, was twirling round and round at the top of a pole, looking as though he could fall at any moment. We were all horrified, not by the possibility that the revolting creature might break his neck, but because we would be expected to lament for him if he did so."

"Lucius was parading up and down outside the bath house, drawing cries of admiration from the crowd. I grew more and more excited at the prospect of what was in store for me, because he was so generously endowed it didn't look as though his prick was attached to him, it looked as though he was a walking attachment to his prick."

"An ageing pansy came in and tried to screw us, but the cheeks of our arses were tight-clenched against his assault, and he had more chance of breaking into the citadel than he had of breaking into us. He was wearing so much makeup that, as he began to sweat, the powder ran down his cheeks and his face looked like a peeling wall in a thunderstorm."

These fragments survive because they were copied down during the Dark Ages by monks. Which says a lot about those monks!

I love reading novels, so I'll forgive Tolstoy for being so cool when I'm not.

 

[Micky]

Do you think Richard Stauss was sexy? He was possibly Germany's last truly great composer. His wife Pauline nagged him half to death, so he got his revenge by depicting himself screwing the living daylights out of her in his Sinfonia Domestica!

 

[Meatpie]

Do you think Richard Stauss was sexy?

No.

 

[deaddirty]

Do you think Richard Stauss was sexy? He was possibly Germany's last truly great composer. His wife Pauline nagged him half to death, so he got his revenge by depicting himself screwing the living daylights out of her in his Sinfonia Domestica!

Yes

 

[necrohedon]

yea, good writer

I enjoyed 'the death of Ivan Illich'

Still need to read 'war and peace'

 

[jbartonb]

Meatpie, you look like Tolstoy

 

[Micky]

Do you think Josef Stalin was sexy?