6 Russian writers who loved sports
These writers knew that their best lines come not only at their desks, but also during sports.
1. Leo Tolstoy
It's hard to imagine a more athletic writer than Leo Tolstoy. He loved literally all activities: He was excellent at horseback riding, played chess and ‘gorodki’ and walked long distances – he even made the journey from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana several times, covering 200 km.
Tolstoy began each morning with gymnastics. "You should have seen the enthusiasm with which he, dressed in tights, tried to jump over a horse without touching the wool-stuffed leather cone placed on its back," recalled poet Afanasy Fet. At Yasnaya Polyana, he even set up a kind of sports corner with a horizontal bar, trapeze and rings. He also involved his children in the activities.
Tolstoy was already 67 years old when he became one of the first cyclists in Moscow. He mastered cycling fairly quickly and became a regular at riding sessions at the ‘Manezh’. He even obtained a license allowing him to ride a bicycle on city streets.
2. Ivan Turgenev
"I play chess with my neighbors or even alone, I analyze chess games from books." – Ivan Turgenev had a single, all-consuming passion for sports. He spent every free moment at the board. He even once sent a letter to Daniel Garvitz, one of the best chess players in Europe at the time, proposing a match. But, he never received a reply. He did, however, often play with Tolstoy: "We played chess. He won two, I won one, but I wasn't in the mood," wrote the author of ‘War and Peace’ to his sister.
3. Alexander Kuprin
"And our writers? What are they like? It's rare to find a man among them with an upright figure, well-developed muscles, precise movements and a correct gait. Most are stooped and lopsided, their entire bodies swaying as they walk, dragging their feet or shuffling them – it's disgusting to watch." Kuprin found a solution in sports. He called it a "great and powerful force" that provides "an enormous amount of pleasure and undoubtedly enormous benefits in physical development".
He was into weightlifting and always carried a pair of dumbbells in his suitcase. He once defeated his nephew by using his mother, a rather plump woman, as a weight. He preferred swimming to all other sports, considering it a must for Russians, especially those from St. Petersburg, since they lived near the sea.
4. Anna Akhmatova
"…I jumped into the sea and swam for two hours. When I returned, I put my dress on over my wet body – the salt made it stick to me… And so, shaggy and wet, I ran home."
Anna Akhmatova fell in love with swimming at a terribly inopportune time, when it was still the prerogative of men. But the poetess found a way out. She simply allowed herself not to think about it. And, like a true mermaid, she would plunge into the water. Once, after quarreling with the children with whom she had gone on a boat to Chersonesos for watermelons, Akhmatova simply jumped overboard, thus ending the discussion.
5. Vladimir Nabokov
"I was an excellent athlete," the writer admitted. Indeed, Vladimir Nabokov learned to fence and box from childhood, with classes held in the library. There, "science and sport were pleasantly combined: the leather of bookbindings and the leather of boxing gloves". Another passion of the writer was soccer: while studying at Cambridge, he even became the student team's goalkeeper. Finding him on the field was much easier than, say, in the library!
At the Rozhdestvenno Estate near St. Petersburg, the Nabokovs had a court where Vladimir played lawn tennis. Much later, in the 1920s, this helped him stay afloat: In Berlin, he taught English and German, while also giving tennis lessons to the daughters of local businessmen.
6. Vladimir Mayakovsky
Even without knowing for sure, one can imagine the poet boxing. "A handsome, gloomy-looking young man with the bass voice of an archdeacon and the fists of a boxer." That's how Vladimir Mayakovsky was described. He did, in fact, train in a boxing club for two years. He threw hooks as decisively as he wrote poetry – once, a rag bag used as a punching bag even tore under his pressure.
Mayakovsky dedicated poems to boxing and confessed: "I don't dare fight. If I start, I'll kill someone." However, he did use his fists: He beat up one of the suitors of his beloved Lilya Brik so badly that he later showed everyone his bruised hands.
