Collected Shorter Fiction: Volume I

Collected Shorter Fiction #1

by Leo Tolstoy, Aylmer Maude (Translator), Nigel J. Cooper (Translator)

The only comprehensive hardcover edition of Tolstoy's shorter fiction; —57 stories and novellas, including two that have never before appeared in English.

In these two handsome volumes, every aspect of Tolstoy's art and personality is reflected: his experiences as a soldier in the Caucasus, his married life, his passionate interest in the peasantry, his belief in truth and simplicity, and above all, his growing preoccupation with religion. Ranging in scope from the short novels Hadj Murad and The Kreutzer Sonata to folktales only a few pages long, they bring us intimately into the world of the great Russian novelist.

Genres: Classics, Fiction, Short Stories, Russian Literature, Russia, Literature, 19th Century

848 pages, Hardcover

First published August 7, 2001

About the author

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.

His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Reviews

[Chris Dech · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of quality short stories by Leo Tolstoy. The average story is rather good, but these stories are really better the longer they are. The Maude translation, I think, properly captures the grace and detailed wonder of Tolstoy, and I am eager to read Volume II.

Tolstoy continues to explore themes of societal pressure, the trappings of luxury, the value and importance of faith and religion, loving one's fellow man, and righteous, fulfilling purpose. In this collection, these are each expressed thoroughly but succinctly whenever they appear.

Favourite stories:
Sevastopol Sketches
Two Hussars
Family Happiness
Strider: The Story of a Horse
Polikushka
What Men Live By

[Steve R · Rating 4 out of 5]

A somewhat uneven collection of seventeen stories, some of which are based on the author's personal experiences as a soldier,a landlord and a hunter. The 'novel' Family Happiness, and the stories Lucerne and Polikushka are to be highly recommended. Individual analyses - some of which contain minor spoilers - follow:

The Raid 45pp
Insightful, character-driven exploration of what is means to be a soldier – that is, to have to kill other human beings. Individualized described include the captain, who ‘had one of those calm, Russian faces which are easy and pleasant to look straight in their eyes’; the young officer who acts in a dare-devilish manner, shaping his life on the heroes of Lermentov and Marlinsky and the general, who ‘possesses all that Russians strive after – rank, riches and distinction, and a day before the battle in which he may be killed, calmly agrees to meet a young lady afterwards for tea. Many eloquent descriptions of the fields, trees, rivers, mountains and winds highlight the real contrast drawn between ‘nature’s pacifying beauty and power’ and ‘the feelings of hatred, vengeance and desire to exterminate’. Good.

The Wood-Felling: A Cadet’s Story 50 pp.
Again, a character-driven description of a group of soldiers sent near to the Tartar forces to cut down trees. Tolstoy observes that there are three types (and two subsets each) of soldiers – the submissive (either calm or bustling), the domineering (either stern or diplomatic) and the reckless (either amusing or vicious). The impulsive, strange Velenchuk, the bipolar Maksimov, the amusing, irreverent Chikin, an unnamed boy recruit and the calm, collected veteran ‘Daddy” Zhdanov are led by General Ermolov, who observes that ‘after ten years in the Caucasus, an officer either takes to drink or marries a loose woman’. More a series of descriptive tableaux than of any overt narrative action, the death of one of their number does provide a rather sad conclusion to the story.

Sevastopol 104pp.
The French have besieged the town of the story’s title, and the responses of a series of Russian soldiers to their imminent death – bullets and bombs from both cannon and mortars are constantly flying – are detailed. The faces of the defenders are ‘ terrible and lamentable, solemn and amusing, but astounding and soul-elevating’. Their stalwart defense of the city for almost a year before their eventual retreat exemplifies ‘the chief characteristic of the Russian – his simplicity and obstinacy’. The craven fear of the ‘aristocrats’ among the officer class is well portrayed, while the various reactions of the common soldiers is best exemplified by the Kozeltsev brothers, Mikhail and Vladimir, who meet their common fate is quite a divergent manner. The desire to gain advancement through promotion or the awarding of medals is present in almost all minds, as is the wonderment that they can survive in such a truly perilous situation. The only hero, Tolstoy argues, that he is trying to portray is Truth. Thus, the censor cut numerous sections, which are indicated in the edition I read.

The Billiard Marker’s Notes 15 pp.
A painful description of the main character – Nekhlyudov, who will reappear as the first person narrator of Resurrection – and his descent into the abyss of addiction to gambling and debt.

The Snow Storm: A Short Story 26 pp.
Setting off one afternoon, a passenger, his driver, their horses and carriage and two or three accompanying troikas spend the entire night and part of the next morning seeking their destination in a very heavy snow storm. Told in first person narration by the passenger, the story is oddly short of natural details , which Tolstoy excels at in his other writings. Instead, the focus is on the mannerisms of the men involved, and especially the reflections of the narrator, the most poignant of which involves his memory of the drowning of a peasant that occurred when he was a youngster. The parallel between drowning and freezing to death is rather pointed, but not unlike Conrad’s Typhoon, this story left me kind of cold (no double entendre intended) – it could have been better.

Two Hussars 54pp.
A story of a father and son in the early part of the nineteenth century, both hussars and both titled Counts. Although the father is classed as ’impetuous, passionate and admittedly depraved’ while the son on the other hand supposedly has ‘culture, intelligence, propriety, reasonableness and prudence’, they are both markedly alike in the manner in which they disdain all others as their inferiors. Whether it is the father beating his manservant, or the son desiring to fight a duel with his subordinate officer who has called him a scoundrel, they are equally animated by an overriding selfishness and almost voluptuous desire for pleasure. Other men look up to them, women seem to swoon over them. Only when the father seeks to redeem the losses of a poor gambling addict to a card sharper does either of these two specimens of vainglorious self-worth at all redeem themselves morally. Very astute character analysis – more of the doting blindness of those around them than of the narcissistic Counts themselves.

A Landlord’s Morning 71pp.
A very discouraging, depressing, frustrating and probably very realistic account of a young idealistic landlord who sets out to do good and runs smack dab into an impenetrable wall of ignorance, lassitude, superstition, selfishness and inertia. Once again, the character from Resurrection, Nekhlyudov, seeks to follow his typically Tolstoyan epiphany on one spring morning: ‘to be happy I must do good’. However, with his successive visits to the overworked and broken down Ivan, the lying, lazy, deceitful drinker Epifan, the sedentary, listless, totally hopeless David and the selfish, well-to-do but patently ungenerous Dutlov, Nekhlyudov comes to realize that his aunt, who had tried to dissuade him from giving up his university studies to help his peasants, had probably been right all along. While he had looked for moral satisfaction, all he experiences is ‘weariness, shame, helplessness and remorse.’ Supposedly Tolstoy himself made a crack at improving things on his family’s estates, and one comes away from this story with the absolute disbelief that the physical and psychological constraints of feudalism could ever be overcome. Very, very well written.

Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment 26pp.
(from Prince Nekhlyudov’s Caucasian Memoirs)
The pathetic story of one Guskov, a high society officer whom a regrettable incident (omitted from Nekhlydov’s account) has caused to be reduced to the rank of a private. Sent to the Caucasus, he finds the officer class there of an aristocratic nature beneath that which he is used to, and also bitterly resents his status as a private. Perpetually in debt, disinherited by his father, relying on relatives for transfers in the military, behaving like a coward under fire and boasting to acquaintances: there is absolutely nothing to admire about this overly class-conscious narcissist. Brilliantly detailed description of a truly loathsome character whom one senses one would meet far too often in that historic milieu.

Lucerne 23 pp. (again, from Nekhlyudov’s Memoirs)
Nekhlyudov is outraged at the shabby treatment of an itinerant Tyrolean singer outside a hotel in the city of the title, when its rich English clientele refuse to give the poor singer anything after listening to him for half an hour. The enraged Nekhlyudov brings the singer back to the hotel, and argues with waiters and a porter about their poor treatment of the man. Tolstoy falls into straight polemic for the last half dozen pages of this short ‘story’, alternating between his identification of an ‘eternally evil side of human nature’ and the manner by which God has made an ‘eternal and infinite harmony’. From Pierre Bezhukov through Constantine Levin to Dmitri Nekhlyudov in these stories and in Resurrection, Tolstoy’s own persona comes through, with its profound moral questioning of what is good and proper in both interpersonal human relations and in the inner human soul. Of authors I’ve read, only Dostoevsky and Conrad came as close as Tolstoy to such a minute inspection of what is good in life and making their narrative fictions close to philosophical treatises.

Albert, A Tale 23pp.
Quite similar to ‘The Billiard Marker’s Notes’, only this time the addiction is to alcohol, not gambling. The plights of the gifted violinist of the title and the well-meaning but ultimately useless efforts of the well-wishing Delesov make for frustrating reading, particularly when the alcoholic succumbs to hallucinatory delusions. Good.

Family Happiness, A Novel 83pp.
A classic description of the curve of love, capturing exactly its successive stages: the building elation consequent on realizing one is in love, the pure ecstasy of that love being requited, the blissful – albeit short lived – idyll of consummation of the mating of souls, and the inevitable, painful, agonizing, frustrating drift apart from one another. Complicated in this case by the May-December relation of the bride and her husband (she’s 17, he’s 36 when they marry), by the woman’s obsession with her own personal beauty, and by the contrasts between the Russian country estate, St. Petersburg and the German city of Baden, Tolstoy nonetheless exquisitely nails the inevitable arc of love on its very head. As this is the only work of his – to my knowledge – with a female first person narrator makes his achievement even the more outstanding. The crowning feature of this insight into the psychology of romantic relations is its solution: that once the initial flame of the candle of love has inevitably been extinguished, a new, calmer, more long-lived, and more family- than personal-related love can take its place. Truly an exceptional achievement of analysis.

Three Deaths, A Tale 13pp.
A very slight effort, describing the death of Mary from consumption – a demise which she steadfastly believes could be avoided had only she got abroad or her husband found ‘simple women who can heal’, of Theodore who, with his insides ‘all rotten’ has spent a month on top of a stove where he eventually passes after securing the promise of a stone from a driver to whom he gave his new boots. Later, when the stone still has not been secured, the driver cuts down a tree- the third death - in order to erect a cross for Theodore. Rather pointless.

Strider: The Story of a Horse 33pp.
The reader is introduced to Strider only as a piebald gelding – that is, a multicolored horse that has been castrated –rather late in his life, when he is persecuted by the younger, sleeker horses. At night, he tells the rest the story of his life. His mother quickly rejected him; although he was faster than any other horse, his piebald status prompted his owner to give him to the head groom. When his speed was discovered he was sold away and drifted through several different owners, the most sentimental of which in his memory was Nikolai Serpukhovskoy, a young hussar who treated him well until one passionate day he nearly rode him to death. This man returns later in the story, and doesn’t even recognize Strider when he sees him. Consumed by debts, failures and alcoholism, he passes away after Strider is done in by the knacker, providing meat for a litter of baby wolves. A wistfully sad story, remarkable for its vision – as in Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels - of horses having a better understanding of the true nature of reality than humans – who, in the words of Strider, judge things by words not by deeds, and their favorite word being ‘mine’ – hence, the greediness of mankind.

The Porcelain Doll (A Fragment) 5pp.
A strange, fanciful letter from Tolstoy to his sister-in-law in which he describes how his wife seemingly turns into a porcelain doll and shrinks in size, only to become human again when outsiders arrive. She then reverts to the porcelain state when they depart. She loses a part of a leg, when the doll falls off the table, and Tolstoy requests his sister-in-law to send some special glue. Weird, eh?

Polikushka 51pp.
A very engaging story of the problems faced in a village when three recruits are required for military service. The title character, Polikey (Polikushka is a nickname) is a reformed thief who still cannot help helping himself to articles which are ‘carelessly left lying around’. The mistress, or landlord, has berated him in the past, hence his reformation. Dultov has two sons and a nephew, and therefore more eligible young men than any other household. His nephew, Elijah, is chosen to be conscripted. Polikey is entrusted with the retrieval of a substantial sum of money. A suicide, the death of a baby, the hysterics of a wife, a fortuitous discovery, the distraught refusal of a powerful personage to accept a boon she feels tainted, a supernatural incursion and a timely buyout bring the story to a close with Tolstoy’s usual mastery of characterization and plot development. I particularly enjoyed his descriptions of a couple of minor characters who debated the issue of who should be conscripted. Garaska Kopilov is young, round-faced, square-headed, bearded and thickset. Theodore Melnichy is tall, thin, yellow-faced, round-shouldered, young, with a scanty beard, small eyes and is always gloomy and embittered. One can almost see them so keen and detailed is the brush with which Tolstoy paints even his minor characters. The story is absolutely first rate – never falling into the sad despair of a Balzac or the unreal happy endings of an Austen and such, much more real.

Three Tales for Children 39pp.
In ‘God Sees the Truth, But Waits’, a dire foreboding, an unjust verdict, a young family torn apart, a life wasted, an act of mercy, a heartfelt confession and a death highlight a poignant tale of a miscarriage of justice. ‘A Prisoner in the Caucasus’ tells of Zhilin and Kostilin, two Russian soldiers captured by Tartars and held for ransom under relatively benign conditions; that is, until they are recaptured trying to escape. The contrast in the manner in which the two prisoners react to their circumstances is telling. ‘The Bear Hunt’, supposedly based on an actual experience Tolstoy had in 1858, has as its climatic moment the narrator, held down on his back by the large bear’s paws on his shoulders while the creature tried to get his victim’s entire head in his mouth. A very thrilling story, and as with all of Tolstoy, very detailed in its descriptions. Good stories, though I wonder at the ‘for children’ tag in their title.

What Men Live By 17pp.
This most religious of all Tolstoy’s writings I’ve read to date concerns a fallen angel who must come to understand the vital importance of communal love and understanding in human life. One can see Tolstoy, with his white hair and beard, leaning on a podium in a church and telling the entrancing story of Simon the shoemaker, his wife Matroyna and Michael their humble worker whom Simon discovered naked one wintry day beside a shrine. The interludes concerning the rich man and the woman who has raised twin girls are merely points to bring out the theme that God is love and love is God. Beautifully written, even if it is a bit polemical, even for Tolstoy.

Memoirs of a Madman 12 pp.
An interesting effort to out-do Dostoevsky in an examination of psychological breakdown. The narrator finds a crushing depression overwhelming him when on journeys away from his estate: the mole on a landlord’s face or the square (or oblong) design of a room seem to be able to bring about the most fundamental sense of discomfort. Prayer and loss of interest in his financial speculations seem to help to a degree, and by the far-too-abrupt end of this story, the narrator is giving away his money to help alleviate the sufferings of the poor. Should have been flushed out and filled in much more, since it holds the kernel of Tolstoy’s search for spiritual solace.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

In some ways, reading Tolstoy’s shorter fiction in chronological order has been more satisfying than reading his longer novels. We get to see his evolution as a writer from early military stories to family and peasant dramas and finally to tales of religious and existential musings. The stories read almost like diary entries and many are indeed highly autobiographical. We can see Tolstoy grappling with everything from his gambling obsession to his conflicting moral obligations to his serfs. There are so many striking moments that one would almost have to write a review for each story. Instead, I’ll just offer some highlights that I found particularly memorable:


- The stunning opening story of The Sebastopol Sketches, in which Tolstoy becomes a Virgil-like guide descending into the hell of the city under siege.

- An aristocrat’s frightening night of being lost in a snowstorm as his driver tries to find his way back to the road, which is symbolic of all our struggles to navigate the difficult paths of life.

- A landlord’s noble (and naive) attempt to give his serfs all the land and material they need backfires as he realizes that serfs have been conditioned by generations of servitude to depend on him.

- Several stories grappling with the artist as outcast.

- A story bordering on a “weird tale” in which an old gelding tells his fellow horses his life story: the noble life of a hardworking horse who is slowly beaten down by foolish, lazy, wasteful humans. Another comment on the master/serf relationship.

- A stunning tale of a hunter almost having his face eaten off by a bear, which is practically an autobiographical account of Tolstoy’s real-life hunting accident.

At this point, I need to stop, or I’ll just be giving blurbs for every story in the collection. I was most surprised by some of Tolstoy’s weird tales, including a cobbler’s encounter with an angel and a surreal, dream-like fragment of a human-turned porcelain doll. Each tale ended with a moral lesson, but I never felt as if Tolstoy were preaching. Instead, I got the impression of one who desires to reveal moral truths for those willing to take the journey with the narrator.

I enjoyed exploring this collection over the last month, and look forward to reading the second volume, as well as Tolstoy’s other philosophical and religious writings.

[Singleton Makin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Had read volume two years ago and some of this version
But was not that focused as it dealt with Wars in Crimea and my attention was more on the fables of vol 2

However this time around I read from cover to cover and found it encouraging, inspiring and full of realism, idealism, and parables only Tolstoy can create!

Eventually I wish to own this and volume 2 ;(rare things but can be bought direct from publisher still)

The library has them which I am grateful as a collection which is rather spread out in random places or individual books. Making this two volume set a must have for Tolstoy collectors, and anyone who has avoided him afraid if huge length novels , this will appeal to those who desire a taste of Russian literature but in bite size portions!

[Illiterate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mainly realist studies of war, hunting, landowning, art, addiction. Highlights: Sevastopol, Family, and also Hussars, Lucerne, Polikushka.

[Kurt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aside from Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, this was my first in-depth reading of Tolstoy; his status as a classic writer couldn't be more evident. While the stories cover the spectrum from his military service to the experiences of everyday society, Tolstoy excels in displaying the human element in its purest form. With Volume 2 to follow, I anticipate nothing short of amazement.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories, mostly translated by the Maudes in the early 20th c. document the early years when Tolstoy began, about half a century before, and just a few years before Dostoevsky began publishing, the predominantly straightforward first steps on his long career. As John Bayley critiques in his sharp introduction, mastery of Tolstoy's craft had yet to happen. He tends towards too much telling, not enough showing. He explains needlessly. He doesn't have pacing down. He can sound limp in print.

And the reliance we must continue to have on these translated versions, being public domain, limits our options, contrasted with his famous novels. For instance, Peter Carson's powerful Death of Ivan Ilych (and Confession) nearly a decade ago conveyed the prose memorably. And the Maudes as was their style fall into a Victorian barracks-room slang that hasn't aged well. Lots of the content, based on the author's experiences in the military, naturally sounds of its time. The Sebastopol sketches, all the same, offer us gritty and often censored dramatizations of the Crimean port under French siege.

I didn't get too invested in some of these 1850s narratives, as even at their best, the uneven quality shows in their structure, wobbly, digressive. And as in The Raid, tedious despite the martial setting. I lack enthusiasm for gambling, hunts, and cards, so those backdrops don't draw me in. I sympathize with the moral of Lucerne, but it wears out its earnest premise. Albert echoed Bartleby, if accidentally?

Unexpectedly, Strider, partially told by the doughty horse himself, kept my attention. It's engaging to follow Tolstoy as he shifts away from humans in exposing our hypocrisy and vanity. You can sense Tolstoy formulating his concerns with brutality towards peasants, animals, and the insane, glimmers of compassion emanating from the chunky, rambling, and stolid recitals of hardscrabble rural lives.

As I reviewed David McDuff's Penguin Classics Poor Folk and Other Stories, and Alan Myers' Oxford collection A Gentle Creature the other day, it's telling how Dostoevsky stumbled through imitation of predecessors shared by Tolstoy, at nearly parallel progression. We seem to promote both men's big books, and jape at their heft. Their long-form sagas integrating intellectual investigation into fiction would produce their fuller perspective and individual opinions more efficiently, if at quite a weight.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review is for the short story, What Men Live By, by Leo Tolstoy, 24 pages.

I agree strongly with the angel's answers. However, in application, I think most men we are surrounded by are not really "living," at least not in the sense of the message the story conveys.

Favorite quotes:

"Simon said to him, 'Well, friend; the belly wants bread, and the naked body clothes. One has to work for a living. What work do you know?'
'I do not know any.'
This surprised Simon, but he said: 'Men who want to learn can learn anything'" (p. 766, ch. V).

" One may live without father or mother, but one cannot live without God" (p. 774).

"'Light shines from me because I have been punished, but now God has pardoned me. And I smiled three times, because God sent me to learn three Truths, and I have learnt them. . .'" (p. 774).

"'Children cannot live without father and mother'" (p. 775).

"'Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and What men live by. When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven'" (p. 775).

"'I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God"" (p. 776).

"'. . . In man dwells Love!'" (p. 776).

"'It is not given to man to know his own needs'" (p. 777).

"'I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves, but by love.
'It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life. Nor was it given to the rich man to know what he himself needed. Nor is it given to any man to know whether, when evening comes, he will need boots for his body or slippers for his corpse. . . . And all men live not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in man.
'I knew before that God gave life to men and desires that they should live; now I understand more than that.
' I understood that God does not wish men to live apart, therefore he does not reveal to them what each one needs for himself; but he wishes them to live united, and therefore reveals to each of them what is necessary for all.
'I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love'" (p. 778).

[Jeff Netting · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel able to rate this volume highly because I so enjoy the second half of it, but I have to admit that the early stories are a painful slog. This is before Tolstoy becomes Tolstoy. I partly got this volume because I was very interested in Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Sketches, but I actually found them a bit too long and a bit tedious. In the middle of the volume, though, as we get further along, Tolstoy matures and finds his footing. While none of these stories are as good as Tolstoy’s later masterpieces (which are, in my opinion, The Death of Ivan Ilych and Master and Man), they are still very enjoyable and have a lot to offer. I’m glad to have read this volume, in spite of the tediousness of the early stories, though all in all I have to say I enjoy the second volume much more, even though the later Tolstoy can be tedious in a different way.

[Michael Klick · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars. So many excellent short stories including: Strider: The Story of a Horse, The Porcelain Doll, God Sees the Truth But Waits, A Prisoner in the Caucasus, What Men Live By, Memoirs or a Madman, Family Happiness, Lucerne and Albert.

[Jason Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny what passed for children's stories 150 years ago.

[jimmy rostova]

BREAD AND GOD

[Gilbert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tolstoy stories What else needs be said?

[Vel Veeter]

This is a collection of “short fiction” by Tolstoy – some are like 8 pages, and some are like 200, so choose your words appropriately. For a couple of years in a row, I read Tolstoy during the weeks of state-wide testing in May at school. It’s a nice way to kind of decompress during the otherwise hectic part of the year. This year I have spent the fall reading this collection, and so who knows what I will read during testing.



The Raid and The Wood-Felling – Both of these short pieces are clearly exercises in form and content. Tolstoy said in other writing that he was fascinated with the experience of being a soldier in terms of the sensory elements around the lived experience of being in the field. If you recall from the end of War and Peace, that novel is about how the small movements in history collectively change the big movements. These are not quite even the small moments. I am terrified of war and of fighting because of how big my own life feels to me. As I was recently reading a WWII novel and even playing a WWII video game, I kept thinking about all the stupid places and ways you could die and how meaningless that would be. These kinds of sketches feel the same way for me…to be involved with a giant war only to die in a small raid or cutting trees. Hell even dying in a dumb war like the Napoleonic War instead of a “great” war feels like such a waste. How much my experience feels different now that I am older changes 100% how I feel about war.

Sevastopol Sketches – This is interesting because it more or less became War and Peace, but not hugely on its own.

A Billiard-Marker’s Notes – A treatise of a story on honesty and integrity even in realms not entirely marked by those qualities.

The Snow Storm – Snow in history and snow in literature is such a fascinating trope….thinking about how powerfully destructive and imprisoning it is as weather allows for such rich writing.

Two Hussars – Another wartime story. Young Tolstoy seems imminently fascinated with these. Because he wrote and because I read War and Peace, I am less so.

A Landlord’s Meeting – An abandoned novel. I would always rather read the whole thing than sketches.

Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance – Another meditation on war, this time focusing on running into an old friend in the throes of war. So much waiting, so much uncanny, unlifelike experiences and then a weird moment of familiarity.

Lucerne – Tolstoy’s writing, like a lot of the 19th century makes the 50 years that separate the events of War and Peace and Anna Karenina feel like a million years apart. Same is true between say Wuthering Heights and say The Picture of Dorian Gray. How very different the beginning and end of those centuries is probably an impossible task for 21st century readers, even though we have a clear distinction between 1900 and 2000. This story is so much more aligned with the later Tolstoy.

Albert – While this feels like it takes place in a fantasy novel for how alien it is in time.

Family Happiness – A singular work. Focusing heavily on marriage and other related themes. Not really a novel even though it says so because of the hyper focus on the family itself.

Three Deaths – A strange story, reminds me much of “Figure in the Carpet” by Henry James. Short shrift in terms of story, but not in thought.

Strider – A story of a horse, told by the horse, but not to reader, but to a group of men with the horse.

The Porcelain Doll -A weird little sketch in which Tolstoy the writer is also the main character.

Polikushka – Heavily focused on the impact of the landowning class on the lives of the working/serf class.

Tales for Children: “For Children” it says.

God Sees the Truth but Waits – Children loved stories of condemned men.

A Prisoner in the Caucasus – A desperate prisoners feeling guilty.

The Bear-Hunt – But I guess they love Bear Hunts

What Men Live By -A weird fable that was obvious, but maybe an early example of the trope.

Memoirs of a Mad Man – Legally every one had to write one of these. Less offensive than the Gogol story, but still less illuminating that memoirs of mental health I have recently read.

[Kirk · Rating 3 out of 5]

The military stories were good but the rest was rather boring.
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“Strider: The Story of a Horse”

The dead body of Serpukhovskoy, which had walked about the earth eating and drinking, was put under the ground much later. Neither his skin, nor his flesh, nor his bones, were of any use.
Just as for the last twenty years his body that had walked the earth had been a great burden to everybody, so the putting away of that body was again an additional trouble to people. He had not been wanted by anybody for a long time and had only been a burden, yet the dead who bury their dead found it necessary to clothe that swollen body, which at once began to decompose, in a good uniform and good boots and put it into a new and expensive coffin with new tassels at its four corners, and then to place that coffin in another coffin of lead, to take it to Moscow and there dig up some long buried human bones, and to hide in that particular spot this decomposing maggotty body in its new uniform and polished boots, and cover it all up with earth.

[Keith · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read them ...

God See the Truth, But Waits **** - A brief portrait of a man falsely accused of murder and imprisoned the rest of his life and how he comes to accept his fate after meeting the man who had actually committed the murder. The title by itself is worth four stars. It suggests a surrendering to fate and depicts the sufferings brought about by hope and the hope for justice.

[Lance · Rating 5 out of 5]

These short stories provide a fascinating look into 20th century Russia, from the military to the intelligentsia to peasant life. It is also interesting to watch Tolstoy's talent and worldview develop through the explorations of his short fiction.

[Austin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gets one into the developing mind of the world's greatest author. The reader comes away with an understanding of Tolstoy, his views, and why he held those views. I came away as a better person.