"The Count of Cagliostro": a novel by A.N. Tolstoy.

Aleksey Tolstoy is a well-known Russian Soviet writer, a subtle psychologist and a psychologist, the author of socio-psychological, fantasy and historical novels. His famous trilogy, "Walking by Flours" describes the fate of the Russian intelligentsia in a dying, collapsing Russia: the novels depict events that took place from 1914 to 1941. In the work "Peter I", the writer also describes historical realities, but turns his gaze into the past, in the Petrine era. In the story "The Hyperboloid of the Engineer Garin", an adventurous utopia, Tolstoy offers his readers a version of the future in which a young ambitious swindler seizes the island in the Pacific Ocean with the help of the latest laser weapons and establishes his dictatorship. Another story, which is of undoubted interest to a wide range of readers, is Count Cagliostro.

Editions

Tolstoy himself included this work many times in compilations, but he did not immediately determine the title: thus, in 1921 the story was published under the title "Moon Moistness", later it was published as "The Happiness of Love," but later became known as "Count Cagliostro".

Content

"Count Cagliostro" can be attributed immediately to several genre varieties: the work clearly traces the mystical lines, is an adventurous and picaresque element; At the same time, some moralizing is not alien to the author. The plot of the story is simple: in the estate, lost in the Smolensk wilderness, a certain Count Cagliostro accidentally falls, as he calls himself, a magician and a wizard who knows how to create the most real miracles. At one time he made a lot of noise at the court, turning all the capital with his extraordinary talents upside down. As it turns out, in the estate, it turns out to be very useful: the young owner has long and hopelessly fallen in love with the girl, depicted in the old portrait, and categorically refuses to pay attention to the animated representatives of the fair sex. Who will help an unhappy young man, if not a mysterious stranger who creates witchcraft?

Personalities

You believe, That the character "Count Cagliostro" Tolstoy simply invented? This is not true. In fact, the mysterious count is actually a real person: his real name is Joseph Balsamo. He was born in 1743 in Palermo and became famous as the most famous adventurer and mystic. His life is rich in adventures: Cagliostro studied alchemy, traveled to the East, trying to learn the ancient secrets of the universe, engaged in healing. There were rumors in Europe that he was capable of resurrecting the dead, turning simple metals into gold and reading thoughts. Cagliostro had time to visit even in tsarist Russia where he "drove out the devil" from Vasily Zhelugin, saved the life of Count Stroganov's son and tripled the wealth of Prince Potemkin. The life of the great magician ended sadly: during the Great French Revolution he was charged with black magic (that is, in collusion with the Unclean) and fraud. The trial lasted several years, after which the count was sentenced to life imprisonment. After four years in the castle of San Leo, he passed away.

Screening

By the way, "Count Cagliostro" is a book without which the golden fund of Soviet cinema would be incomplete, because it was on its basis that the famous film "The Formula of Love" was filmed.