Master and Man - A Short Story by Leo Tolstoy - 1895 -translated 2009 by RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY

Master and Man - A Short Story by Leo Tolstoy - 1895 -translated 2009 by  Richard  Pevear and Larrisa  Volokohonsky

Leo Tolstoy

September 9, 1828

War and Peace- 1869

Anna Karenina - 1877

"Master and Man" - 1895

November 20, 1910

A few days ago I was watching a very interesting program on YouTube (https://youtu.be/gLXpYJDdEUI), Dickens Versus Tolstoy: The Battle of the Great 19th Century Novelists.   Simon Schama is the advocate for Tolstoy, not long ago I read the first two volumes of his History of the Jewish People.  (Volume Three is coming in 2021.)

Schama is deeply into the famous novels of Tolstoy and I was a bit shocked when he suggested one of his short stories, "Master and Man" well might be his best work.  

"Master and Man" is set on a country estate.  Russian serfs were freed in 1861 but most were still tied to estates.  Some serfs had become affluent land owners but most were still dependent on their old masters. (The thinking in Russia in 1895 was that if you want something done, employ a freed serf.)

There are two central characters in the story, the owner of a country estate.  this short story, a land owner named Vasily Andreyevich Brekhunov takes one of his ex-serfs, for a short journey in a one horse sleigh. It is in the middle of the Russian winter. They are traveling to visit another landowner so that Vasily Andreyevivh can purchase a forest. People advise Brekhunov to wait until the snow storm ends but he wants to be the first to bid.

The power of the storm and the foolishness of this trip quickly become clear.  They have lots of problems but luckily stumble on an estate.  Nikita wants to stay the night but his master wants to push on.  The storm gets worse, the poor horse struggles on.

I won't spoil the ending.  

Tolstoy has shown us the social world of the story.

I read this story in The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories, translated by Richard  Pevear and Larrisa  Volokohonsky. This is fairly priced at $4.95 in Kindle format.

If you have read Tolstoy's major novels, these would be a fine edition for you.  If you want to get started in Tolstoy through his shorter works, then this is perfect.

Ambrosia Bousweau

Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy (composed from 1896 to 1904-first published1912) - translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. 2009

"Hadji Murad  is my personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world, or at least the best that I have ever read".  Harold Bloom in The Western Canon 

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War and Peacec1869

Anna Karenina 1877

I am behind in my posting due partially to a now remedied equipment issue so a few of my posts will more or less reading journal notes, until I catch up.

Having just completed "The Death of Ivan Illyich", in translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, I decided now is the time to read his novella Hadji Murad.  I have great respect  for Harold Bloom and I recalled that he considered it one of the most sublime works of all literature.  Tolstoy worked on Hadji Murad for eight years.  It was not published in full until 1917 due to imperial censorship.

Hadji Murad was a figure from 19th century Russian history, a Chehen tribal leader.  

Chencen, or as it sometimes called Chechnya, was a largely Muslim territory frequently in r volt against and always with an un say relationship with his Christian overlord, Russia.  Hadji Murad was a Muslim leader who through a complex series of maneuvers lead his people against the Russians while knowing they are too powerful to attack directly.  This is still a politically troubled part of the world.  It was very interesting to learn about the tribal society of Murad.  This is a complex story about conflicts of loyalty, personal integrity.  Murad first betrays the Russians, then his own people, he kills without remorse and is quite at home in a very violent culture.  He strictly follows his perception of Islamic dictates.  The heroes of Tolstoy's great classics are very different from Hadji Murad.  

Hadji Murad is a very powerful work of art in which the full depth of the world's greatest novelist at the end of his career, after he had repudiated much of his work in What is Art, shows through.

In Wikepedia, which has a good article on the novella, the plot is compared to Pushkin's novella, The Captain's Daughter, which I am currently reading.  

Mel u

The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (1886, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. 2009)

            Leo Tolstoy. 1828 to 1910

            At 76.                                    While an Officer in the Russian

                                                          Army during the Crimean War, at 20

Since beginning The Reading Life in July 2009 I have read  War and Peace, Anna Karenina as well as a few short stories by Leo Tolstoy.  Having recently watched an episode of the BBC adoption of   War and Peace, I have taken on a desire to read it for the forth time, hopefully this year.  

In addition to the major novels, the highly regarded translation team of Richard  Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have published a volume including "The Death of Ivan Illyich" (some treat it as a novella) and ten other short works of fiction. 

Ivan Illyich is a moderately successful Russian official working in the judiciary, in the provinces.  He is reasonably happy in his marriage, sometimes enjoys the petty power his job gives him, enjoys a good meal and a drink and loves to play cards.  He is also dying.  No one, especially his wife, wants to acknowledge this.  The story is  a disturbing very insightful look at the metamorphoses that often accur in a long marriage.  Tolstoy has a very deep understanding of the marriage of Ivan and his wife.  

We see Ivan trying to come to terms with his mortality.  We also learn a good bit about the politics of the life of a judge in Czarist Russia.  

This is a very fine  work of art, worthy of the world's greatest novelist.  If you have been married a while you will be pushed into pondering your relationship.  I am so glad I have experienced "The Death of Ivan Illyich".  

Mel u 

       

"After the Ball" by Leo Tolstoy (1903, translated by Richard Peaver and Larissa Volokhonsky, 2009)

My Posts on Tolstoy

Over the last five years I have posted on several short stories and the major novels of Leo Tolstoy (1828 to 1910).  This morning I was looking for a "change of pace" short story and I looked over a collection of recently translated Tolstoy short works, Ivan Ilyich and other Stories and decided to read one of the briefer works in the collection, "After the Ball".  Like a lot of older short stories it is structured as one man telling a story about his life to another person or group.  The story is at the heart  about the dual nature of people.

The story begins with a man in his fifties telling a story about a day when his views of people and his life totally changed forever.  It was thirty years ago, he was a handsome young army officer.  He meets a beautiful young woman at a ball, very well described, falls in love with her and at once wants to marry her.  He meets her father, a kindly old man who he likes at once and who takes to him.  (Spoiler alert)

The next day he sees a Tarter "running the gauntlet" for having tried to escape military service.  He is being dragged through a double sided line of members of his regiment each of whom beats him on his bare back with a whip as he passes.  The young man is horrified to see the man who he thought would be his future father-in-law leading the punishment drill, actually hitting a soldier in the face with a whip for not striking the man hard enough.  The older man, a colonel in the Russian army, sees in the shock on his possible son-in-law's face less of a man than he wants for his daughter and other man sees brutality and cruelty in a man he was ready to call his father.  The marriage never happens.  

"After the Ball" is very much worth reading.  I guess it should not be surprising that the one world's greatest novelists could write wonderful short stories.

Mel u

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy 1869

My Posts on Tolstoy

Yesterday I completed my third read of War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.  I first read it about forty years ago, and prior to yesterday I completed it on February 25, 2009.   As I finished it yesterday I wondered if I will complete it for a forth time.  

War and Peace is the consensus choice among list makers as the best novel ever written.  Adding my voice to this, I would only say if it is not then there is nothing that clearly deserves that title. It is not a difficult or obscure work,  the only obstacle it presents to some potential readers is the length.  I would suggest you try to read it through in a week or so if possible.  Many say that Tolstoy gets better as you get older.  My experience confirms this.  

I decided not to recast any of the plot,the themes etc.  if you need this information for school to avoid reading the book, check Wikipedia.  

"Alyosha the Pot" by Leo Tolstoy (1905, TRANSLATED BY RICHARD PEVEAR AND LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY)

In his very interesting introduction to The Death of Ivan Illyich and other Stories by Leo Tolstoy, Richard Pevear says that there might be a typical Chekhov or O. Henry Store (fill in your own authors) but there is no way a typical Tolstoy short story.  It is not hard to guess that the author of the cosensus world's greatest novel could write a wonderful shorter work.  The stories in The Death of Ivan Illyich and other Stories by Leo Tolstoy are very different from each other.   Some are highly sophisticated technically innovative works and some, like "Alyosa the Pot"  are near folk tales in their feel. 

The figure of the "holy fool" is important in Russian literature and culture.   Pevear  says this story is based on what we would now see as a mentally challenged serf who was part of Tolstoy's estate.  The father of Alyosa beeches the master to take on Alyosa as house servant, saying he will do all work without complaint.  He says if he ever causes any problems he will personally beat him into total submission.  Alyosa turns out to be a perfect servant.  Serfs were close to slaves.  He loves his master and lives to do any job he is given.  He is an adult and he begins to have a purely chaste romance with a serving woman.  He approaches his master with a request to marry.   The master calls in Alyosa's father and tells him to tell his son to forget the girl and tell him he is forbidden to marry.  Alyosa accepts this directive and tells the woman that their master knows best and looks out for them and goes on being the perfect house serf until he falls of the roof and dies.  

The story is small work of perfect marriage of form and content.  It carries a deep message about the meaning of being a serf, about slave societies.  I will read, I hope, by year end 2014, all the eleven works in the collection.