Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

Leo Tolstoy

Description

On a train journey, Pozdnyshev tells his story to a stranger: how his relationship with his wife gradually deteriorated from one of love and passion to jealousy and resentfulness, culminating in a mad act of desperation while she practised Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata with her violin teacher.An uncompromising examination of lust, suspicion and infidelity which was once forbidden by censors in Russia and banned in the US due to its shocking content, Tolstoy's controversial novella - here presented in a new translation, along with 'The Prisoner of the Caucasus', 'Master and Man' and 'After the Ball' - is now considered one of the masterpieces of Tolstoy's late period.Contains: 'The Kreutzer Sonata', 'After the Ball', 'Master and Man', 'The Prisoner of the Caucasus'.

Informations

• Publié par: Alma Books
• Date de parution: 23 janvier 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780714545998
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

The Kreutzer Sonata
and Other Stories
Leo Tolstoy
Translated by Roger Cockrell

ALMA CLASSICS




Alma Classics an imprint of alma books ltd 3 Castle Yard Richmond Surrey TW 10 6TF United Kingdom www.almaclassics.com
This collection first published by Alma Classics Ltd in 2015
Translation and Introduction © Roger Cockrell, 2015 Extra Material © Alma Classics Ltd
Cover design by Will Dady
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR 0 4 YY
isbn : 978-1-84749-411-5
All the pictures in this volume are reprinted with permission or pre sumed to be in the public domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain and acknowledge their copyright status, but should there have been any unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to rectify the error in subsequent printings.
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Contents
Introduction
The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories
The Kreutzer Sonata
After the Ball
Master and Man
The Prisoner of the Caucasus
Afterword to ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’
Note on the Texts
Notes
Extra Material
Leo Tolstoy’s Life
Leo Tolstoy’s Works
Select Bibliography


Introduction
In the opening chapter of his story ‘ The Devil’ (published posthumously in 1912), Tolstoy makes the following observation: “People usually think that it is old men who are for the most part conservatives, and that it is young men who are innovators. This is not totally correct. Most conservatives are young people – young people who want to live, but who neither think nor have the time to think how they should live and who therefore take as their model the life they have always known.” Although Tolstoy goes on to apply this pronouncement to the story’s young hero, Yevgeny Irtenyev, it also offers an illuminating insight into his own mind and convictions. It reminds us of his delight in challenging received opinion, as well as of his lifelong preoccupation with the question of how one ought to live. Why was life so important, he asked, if its only goal was the achievement of one’s personal happiness, and if one lived it just for its own sake without any regard for its meaning? If, moreover, it is to have a meaning, what should be its source, and what possible models could one adopt that might act as agents of change in one’s life?
Such concerns are evident in each of the four stories that appear in this volume. When ‘ The Kreutzer Sonata’ * was first published in 1890, abstract issues of this kind were, however, overshadowed by the immediate impact of this most unusual story. Condemned as “incoherent, filthy and immoral” * and initially banned by the censor, the story was approved for publication after a personal appeal by his wife Sonya to the Tsar, but even then only as part of a complete edition of his works. This was not merely the inevitable reaction of “less enlightened” times, for ‘ The Kreutzer Sonata’ still retains the power to shock today. Within just a few pages, readers find themselves pitched into a breath-taking assault on the decadence, hypocrisy and immorality of upper-class Russian society. Dogmatic moralizing on the sins of sexuality and the consequential need for chastity goes hand in hand with the account of the breakdown of a marriage, which picks over the bones of a doomed relationship in graphic detail. All the while, the hothouse atmosphere generated within the claustrophobic setting of a railway carriage is compounded by the unsettling effect of the train’s movement over the rails.
Whose voice is this? Are these the random ravings of a semi-deranged individual, or is Pozdnyshev a mouthpiece for Tolstoy’s own opinions? In his ‘Afterword’ to the story, published in 1890 and reproduced here, Tolstoy defends the position taken by Pozdnyshev in considerable detail, making it clear he shares most of his views. But there is one major qualification: whereas Pozdnyshev sees universal chastity as an absolute requirement, Tolstoy maintains that it should not be a binding precept, but an ideal towards which human beings should strive. The fact that it might never be achieved, he argues, does not invalidate it as an idea – quite the contrary: once people start focusing on the theoretical achievement of an ideal rather than on the process of working towards it, then it loses its significance.
One of the more puzzling aspects of the ‘Afterword’ is the absence of any reference to music. This seems rather strange: after all, Tolstoy chose to name his story after a well-known Beethoven sonata, and Pozdnyshev’s attack on music’s pernicious effects in Chapter 23 is particularly impassioned. The reason for Tolstoy’s reticence may well lie in his own ambivalent attitude, reflecting the dualism in his character between a deeply ingrained asceticism and an equally profound sensuousness. There are many references in his letters and notebooks attesting to his love for music, but there is often an admixture of fear. For him, as for Pozdnyshev, “purposeless” music such as ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’ seemed to possess erotic and therefore disturbing implications; the more he was attracted by a piece of music, the more he apparently feared it, and the more he feared it, the more fiercely he condemned it.
The unsettling effect of music on the human psyche is also evident in ‘After the Ball’, although here it is expressed with greater subtlety. The narrator’s inner journey from passionate, unthinking love to conscious disillusionment is paralleled by the stark contrast between the romantic music of the ballroom and the terrifying whistle of the pipe and beat of the drum – a hauntingly incongruous accompaniment to the flogging of the unfortunate prisoner. Unlike ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, however, readers are left to come to their own conclusions, thereby increasing the force of the questions Tolstoy is implicitly asking. How can two such contrasting worlds coexist? How can society allow them to coexist? How can that colonel on the dance floor, with his fine manners and tender, affectionate smile, be the same man as the monster on the parade ground the very next day? “In order to turn someone from a human being into a beast,” Tolstoy wrote while serving in the army in the Caucasus, “you only need to take him away from his family, put a uniform on him and start beating a drum.” * This exemplary and wonderfully balanced short story, written by Tolstoy when he was in his eighth decade, is testament to his undiminished ability to startle his readers with the freshness and clarity of his vision.
With ‘Master and Man’ we move into a completely different milieu – away from ballrooms, drawing rooms and upper-class urban life, and into the apparently unchanging, and certainly more physically challenging, world of provincial Russia. The plot centres on the relationship between the “master”, Vasily Andreich Brekhunov, and his servant, Nikita, and their disastrous mid-winter journey. ‘Master and Man’ is more openly dogmatic than ‘After the Ball’: Tolstoy makes his dislike of Orthodox ritual and his preference for his own idiosyncratic version of the Gospels very plain, and the moral of the contrast that emerges between Nikita’s calm acceptance of life’s vicissitudes and Brekhunov’s obsession with status and money could hardly be more pointed. For some, Tolstoy’s uncompromising moral stance detracts from the story’s interest; for others, it is this position which gives ‘Master and Man’ the integrity it would otherwise lack. What is not open to question, however, is Tolstoy’s skill in creating such a vividly realized world. The disorientating effects of the storm, with its whirling snow and buffeting wind, the recurring images of the moaning willow trees, the mugwort and the frantically flapping line of washing assume the characteristics of a nightmare. We ride off together with Brekhunov as he dashes away on his mindless bid for freedom, and the one-to-one relationship between Nikita and the horse Mukhorty seems the most natural thing in the world. Tolstoy brings each character, however small his or her part, to life, even if only for a moment: think of the horse thief in Grishkino, of the unfailingly cheerful and semi-literate Petrukha, or of the browbeaten little pony hobbling through the snow as it strives to get the party of drunken revellers home. With such instances, the illusion that we are part of a real, rather than fictional, world becomes complete.
The final story in this collection, ‘The Prisoner in the Caucasus’ (1871–72), was Tolstoy’s response to Pushkin’s Byronic poem of the same title written some fifty years earlier. * Tolstoy recasts Pushkin’s plot by using simple, concise language and by stripping it of any romantic associations: Pushkin’s passionate Circassian maiden, who falls in love with the Russian officer and helps him to escape, is replaced by a young Tatar girl, who is motivated solely by pity. The story lacks psychological depth (it was originally intended as part of a project to educate young people), but it rises above the commonplace partly because of the unsentimental, but not entirely unsympathetic, portrayal of the Tatars and their way of life. What shines through above all, however, are the young girl’s feelings of compassion and common humanity, together with the hero Zhilin’s instinctive desire to help his fellow prisoner Kostylin, even though it is against his own best interests.
While working on an early draft of War