When Marshal of the Nobility Pozdnyshev suspects his wife of having an affair with her music partner, his jealousy consumes him and drives him to murder. Controversial upon publication in 1890, The Kreutzer Sonata illuminates Tolstoy's then-feverish Christian ideals, his conflicts with lust and the hypocrisies of nineteenth-century marriage, and his thinking on the role of art and music in society. The Kreutzer Sonata is a convincing artistic study of jealousy and ill tempered polemic against society's sexual education of young men and women.
Toltoy's short novel, Family Happiness was written in 1858, before Tolstoy was married, in the aftermath of his courtship of a young woman named Valeriya Arsenyova. In this story, Tolstoy describes what he believed would have happened had he and Valeriya married. As it turns out, it is a startling forecast of the early years of his marriage to Sofiya Behrs. This is the first of Tolstoy's in-depth portraits of marriage. The evolution of his views of marriage and what constitutes family happiness is a central theme of Tolstoy's life, both artistic and personal.
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"late tolstoy is obsessed with sex, death and the question of the good life. the latter i found the best: that is, the death of ivan ilyich, master and man, the forged coupon. hadji murat is just a great story. translation is crunchy at times, but modern. " — Julia (5 out of 5 stars)
"late tolstoy is obsessed with sex, death and the question of the good life. the latter i found the best: that is, the death of ivan ilyich, master and man, the forged coupon. hadji murat is just a great story. translation is crunchy at times, but modern. "
" I love Tolstoy but found little to like in the Kreutzer Sonata. Most sounds like a rant by an old man on the treachery of women. Family Happiness is a little better. I listened to the audiobook. Might be better to look for a free e-book on Project Gutenberg. "
" On the emptiness of performance and the consequences of regret; haunting. "
" The story of Ivan Ilych's life was of the simplest, most ordinary and therefore most terrible.-Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych "
" I stopped reading this book because I didn't like it. I read Happily Ever After and The Death of Ivan Ilych, but not The Cossacks. I would not recommend it. And don't plan to read any more books by Leo Tolstoy. (Maybe War and Peace.) "
" Not all the stories are equally good, but "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" and "Master and Man" on their own are wonderful enough to give this a 5-star rating "
" use each semester in World Lit 2.Amazing insights. "
" Full review coming, but this was a stunning, eye-opening, incredibly powerful collection. Some of the best fiction I think I've ever read. Highly recommended - particularly in the P&V translation. "
Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was born about two hundred miles from Moscow. His mother died when he was two, his father when he was nine. His parents were of noble birth, and Tolstoy remained acutely aware of his aristocratic roots, even when he later embraced doctrines of equality and the brotherhood of man. After serving in the army in the Caucasus and Crimea, where he wrote his first stories, he traveled and studied educational theories. In 1862 he married Sophia Behrs and for the next fifteen years lived a tranquil, productive life, finishing War and Peace in 1869 and Anna Karenina in 1877. In 1879 he underwent a spiritual crisis; he sought to propagate his beliefs on faith, morality, and nonviolence, writing mostly parables, tracts, and morality plays. Tolstoy died of pneumonia in 1910 at the age of eighty-two.
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