Bookstooge's Reviews On the Road: Leo Tolstoy

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Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Family Happiness (The Russians) 3.5Stars

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Title: Family Happiness
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: -----
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 111
Words: 34K

Take an age-gap love story and then Russianize it.

Things were going great. The love between Masha and Sergey was working out, against all of my expectations. I was lulled into thinking that maybe, perhaps, JUST THIS ONCE, I might be reading a happy Russian novella.

Silly me!

Tolstoy guts the reader when Masha, the young woman, is seduced by Petersburg Society, which Sergey her husband had warned her about. What makes it worse, is that he sits back and passively watches it happen. His excuse, at the end, is that “some things” just have to be experience and nobody can warn you against them.

Oh, I raged at that. I almost gave this 1star just for that. It was WRONG. While a husband and wife cannot control the other, they are no longer individuals who can just sit back and let things happen to the other. They are “one” now. Tolstoy goes against that Biblical principle of marriage on every level with this novella. His attempt to patch things up with “well, our passionate love will now be sublimated into family happiness” made me growl.

And yet, and yet I still enjoyed this more than enough to give it 3.5stars. Only a Russian could take passionate eros love and completely divorce it from the kind of love experienced by a family and say that was a good thing.

Slow claps.

Bravo Tolstoy, you’re a real barstard with this one.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia.org

The story concerns the love and marriage of a young girl, Mashechka (17 years old), and the much older Sergey Mikhaylych (36), an old family friend. The story is narrated by Masha. After a courtship that has the trappings of a mere family friendship, Masha's love grows and expands until she can no longer contain it. She reveals it to Sergey Mikhaylych and discovers that he also is deeply in love. If he has resisted her it was because of his fear that the age difference between them would lead the very young Masha to tire of him. He likes to be still and quiet, he tells her, while she will want to explore and discover more and more about life. Ecstatically and passionately happy, the pair immediately engages to be married. Once married they move to Sergey Mikhaylych's home. They are both members of the landed Russian upper class. Masha soon feels impatient with the quiet order of life on the estate, notwithstanding the powerful understanding and love that remains between the two. To assuage her anxiety, they decide to spend a few weeks in St. Petersburg. Sergey Mikhaylych agrees to take Masha to an aristocratic ball. He hates "society" but she is enchanted with it. They go again, and then again. She becomes a regular, the darling of the countesses and princes, with her rural charm and her beauty. Sergey Mikhaylych, at first very pleased with Petersburg society's enthusiasm for his wife, frowns on her passion for "society"; however, he does not try to influence Masha. Out of respect for her, Sergey Mikhaylych will scrupulously allow his young wife to discover the truth about the emptiness and ugliness of "society" on her own. But his trust in her is damaged as he watches how dazzled she is by this world. Finally they confront each other about their differences. They argue but do not treat their conflict as something that can be resolved through negotiation. Both are shocked and mortified that their intense love has suddenly been called into question. Something has changed. Because of pride, they both refuse to talk about it. The trust and the closeness are gone. Only courteous friendship remains. Masha yearns to return to the passionate closeness they had known before Petersburg. They go back to the country. Though she gives birth to children and the couple has a good life, she despairs. They can barely be together by themselves. Finally she asks him to explain why he did not try to guide and direct her away from the balls and the parties in Petersburg. Why did they lose their intense love? Why don't they try to bring it back? His answer is not the answer she wants to hear, but it settles her down and prepares her for a long life of comfortable "Family Happiness."

Thursday, October 17, 2024

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (The Russians) 3Stars

Title: The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator:
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Classic
Pages: 82
Words: 22K

While I found this engaging and well written (ie, translated), I also had issues with it on multiple levels.

On a literary level, Ilyich is an unpleasant man who becomes even more unpleasant as he sees his death approaching. I did not enjoy reading about him. And as he got sicker and became more and more unpleasant and unbearable, it was not cathartic knowing he was going to die. The story starts AFTER his death and even that was unpleasant as the people he associated with were just as unpleasant as him.

On a spiritual level, I also found this unpleasant. Ivan Ilyich is dying and somehow magically sees God’s Plan and loses all fear of death, or something like that. There wasn’t one mention of Jesus Christ or His death, resurrection and redemption of humanity. This is one ongoing issue I have with old time’y Russians who claim to be Christians. Most of their spiritually is as mystical and unknowable as any pagan religion. This was one of the more egregious examples and it totally rubbed me the wrong way.

Thankfully, at just over 80 pages it didn’t last long. I’m glad I read this but like a lot of these Russian novellas, have no plans to ever re-read it.

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia.org

Synopsis – click to open

Ivan Ilyich lives a carefree life that is “most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” Like everyone he knows, he spends his life climbing the social ladder. Enduring marriage to a woman whom he often finds too demanding, he works his way up to be a magistrate, thanks to the influence he has over a friend who has just been promoted, focusing more on his work as his family life becomes less tolerable.

While hanging curtains for his new home one day, he falls awkwardly and hurts his side. Though he does not think much of it at first, he begins to suffer from a pain in his side. As his discomfort grows, his behavior towards his family becomes more irritable. His wife finally insists that he visit a physician. The physician cannot pinpoint the source of his malady, but soon it becomes clear that his condition is terminal (although no diagnosis is ever stated by the physician.) Confronted with his terminal condition, Ivan attempts every remedy he can to obtain a cure for his worsening situation, until the pain grows so intense that he is forced to cease working and spend the remainder of his days in bed. Here, he is brought face to face with his mortality and realizes that, although he knows of it, he does not truly grasp it.

During the long and painful process of dying, Ivan dwells on the idea that he does not deserve his suffering because he has lived rightly. If he had not lived a good life, there could be a reason for his pain; but he has, so pain and death must be arbitrary and senseless. As he begins to hate his family for avoiding the subject of his death, for pretending he is only sick and not dying, he finds his only comfort in his peasant boy servant, Gerasim, the only person in Ivan’s life who does not fear death, and also the only one who, apart from his own son, shows compassion for him. Ivan begins to question whether he has, in fact, lived a good life.

In the final days of his life, Ivan makes a clear split between an artificial life, such as his own, which masks the true meaning of life and makes one fear death, and an authentic life, the life of Gerasim. Authentic life is marked by compassion and sympathy, the artificial life by self-interest. Then “some force” strikes Ivan in the chest and side, and he is brought into the presence of a bright light. His hand falls onto his nearby son’s head, and Ivan pities his son. He no longer hates his daughter or wife, but rather feels pity for them, and hopes his death will release them. In so doing, his terror of death leaves him, and as Tolstoy suggests, death itself disappears.

Thursday, May 30, 2024

The Cossacks (The Russians) 3.5Stars

Title: The Cossacks
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator:
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 230
Words: 66K

A story of a young man without a guiding hand trying to figure out the best way to live. Olenin is a rich young man who leaves the city life, with all of it’s problems, including his debts, both monetary and social, to join up with the army and be stationed in some Cossack village. He is an outsider, not knowing how to fit in with the Cossacks, or his army buddies or himself for that matter. He makes a friend of an older cossack and falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the headman of the village. The story ends with her refusing to marry him, him leaving the village and nobody caring at all that he is leaving.

What a roller coaster this was to read. I went from being totally disgusted with Olenin and his thoughts and behavior (not that he did anything bad, but he was so unsure of himself and everything) to feeling sorry for him to thinking “Boy, this guy is going to have to grow up fast if he wants to survive”. The biggest issue is that Olenin is by himself in trying to figure out how to live life in a way that suits him. He’s tried the “idle rich” of Moscow lifestyle and it didn’t work. Now he’s trying the “simple life” of a cossack peasant and by book’s end, he realizes that isn’t for him either. It made me incredibly thankful for all the mentors I had throughout the years growing up, from my teens and up into my 20’s. It’s not that I didn’t have questions, but people who had already gone through those same questions could tell me their experiences and what they found out. I didn’t need to repeat all the same mistakes, if I was willing to learn from others. But I had to be around them, I couldn’t be by myself. And that is the thing, Olenin was by himself. It was sad to see.

I found the ending to be truly sad though. He’s leaving the village and the guy who he thought was his friend just ignores him, because he’s gotten everything from him that he could. Since Olenin is leaving, there’s nothing more to be got from him and so he is no longer worth paying attention to. The issue with the headman’s daughter did leave me confused. I was under the impression that she was willing to marry Olenin, but then suddenly, she’s not. There’s a lot of unsaid stuff alluded to and I couldn’t tell if that vagueness was in the original writing or the translator’s fault. Either way, it felt like walking into a brick wall when you were expecting an open door.

Glad to have read this but I doubt I’ll ever attempt to re-read it.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia

Synopsis – Click to Open

The young idealist Dmitry Andreich Olenin leaves Moscow, hoping to start a new life in the Caucasus. In the stanitsa, he slowly becomes enamored of the surroundings and despises his previous existence. He befriends the old Cossack Eroshka, who goes hunting with him and finds him a good fellow because of his propensity to drinking. During this time, young Cossack Luka kills a Chechen who is trying to come across the river towards the village to scout the Cossacks and in this way gains much respect. Olenin falls in love with the maid Maryanka, who is to be wed to Luka later in the story. He tries to stop this emotion and eventually convinces himself that he loves both Luka and Maryanka for their simplicity and decides that happiness can only come to a man who constantly gives to others with no thought of self-gratification.

He first gives an extra horse to Luka, who accepts the present yet doesn’t trust Olenin on his motives. As time goes on, however, though he gains the respect of the local villagers, another Russian named Beletsky, who is still attached to the ways of Moscow, comes and partially corrupts Olenin’s ideals and convinces him through his actions to attempt to win Maryanka’s love. Olenin approaches her several times and Luka hears about this from a Cossack, and thus does not invite Olenin to the betrothal party. Olenin spends the night with Eroshka but soon decides that he will not give up on the girl and attempts to win her heart again. He eventually, in a moment of passion, asks her to marry him, which she says she will answer soon.

Luka, however, is severely wounded when he and a group of Cossacks go to confront a group of Chechens who are trying to attack the village, including the brother of the man he killed earlier. Though the Chechens lose after the Cossacks take a cart to block their bullets, the brother of the slain Chechen manages to shoot Luka in the belly when he is close by. As Luka seems to be dying and is being cared for by village people, Olenin approaches Maryanka to ask her to marry him; she angrily refuses. He realizes that “his first impression of this woman’s inaccessibility had been perfectly correct.” He asks his company commander to leave and join the staff. He says goodbye to Eroshka, who is the only villager who sees him off. Eroshka is emotional towards Olenin but after Olenin takes off and looks back, he sees that Eroshka has apparently already forgotten about him and has gotten back to normal life.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

A Confession (The Russians) 3.5Stars

Title: A Confession
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: Aylmer Maude
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Nonfiction
Pages: 83
Words: 25K

The synopsis from Wikipedia is filled with wild surmises and assumptions that I totally disagree with, especially all the crap about Tolstoy somehow viewing God from a pantheistic viewpoint. Someone with an axe to grind wrote that instead of someone who just wanted to factually write what the novella was about. This is why I don’t trust Wikipedia, it’s a damn cesspit. But it is easier to copy/paste that than to try to write out my own synopsis, so this is just a disclaimer that I’m using their synopsis, but under very loud and vociferous protest. But mainly because I’m lazy.

This was the journey of one man who went from a children’s belief in Christianity, to Unbelief, to Church Orthodoxy to his own belief in Jesus Christ.

Really, this was just a slightly updated version of the book of Ecclesiastes (from the Bible). In that, The Preacher (most people figure it is King Solomon) talks about his loss of faith and how useless life is and how he sets out to find the meaning of life. Tolstoy does the same thing, but in a very russian way.

My biggest issue with this was how he almost never references the Bible itself in his searchings. He goes to all these various teachers and dogmas, but not the Bible itself, which the teachings and dogmas are based on. Or if he does, he doesn’t mention it but it really doesn’t seem like he goes to the source. Another part is that I don’t have the same experience as him. I took my Christianity very seriously from the time I was twelve. By the time I was sixteen I knew that I wanted to follow Jesus Christ whole heartedly and by the time I was twenty-two I knew I was on the correct path. The last 20+ years have been my various trials, tribulations, rejoicings and victories as I’ve continued to trod that path. Tolstoy didn’t have the same foundation and thus had to travel a very different path from me. I suspect this novella might speak much louder to someone who is in the midst of their own doubts about the meaning of life.

The translator, Aylmer Maude, added several footnotes that I found very helpful. While I have no idea if his translation is correct or not (I would hope so, as he was translating some very complex theological ideas), the fact his footnotes were clear, concise, to the point and were actually helpful makes me think his translation was a good one.

To end, while I am not a subscriber to various catechisms, I do think they have their place. And in this regards, this particular catechist(?) is apropos:

What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him for ever.

That folks, is the meaning of your life and the only way to do that is through the Son of God, Jesus Christ.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia.org

Click to Open

The book is a brief autobiographical story of the author’s struggle with a mid-life existential crisis. It describes his search for the answer to the ultimate philosophical question: “If God does not exist, since death is inevitable, what is the meaning of life?” Without the answer to this, for him, life had become “impossible”.

The story begins with the Eastern fable of the dragon in the well. A man is chased by a beast into a well, at the bottom of which is a dragon. The man clings to a branch that is being gnawed on by two mice (one black, one white, representing night and day and the relentless march of time). The man is able to lick two drops of honey (representing Tolstoy’s love of his family and his writing), but because death is inevitable, he no longer finds the honey sweet.

Tolstoy goes on to describe four possible attitudes towards this dilemma. The first is ignorance. If one is oblivious to the fact that death is approaching, life becomes bearable. The problem with this for him personally is that he is not ignorant. Having become conscious of the reality of death, there is no going back.

The second possibility is what Tolstoy describes as Epicureanism. Being fully aware that life is ephemeral, one can enjoy the time one has. Tolstoy’s problem with this is essentially moral. He states that Epicureanism may work fine and well for the minority who can afford to live “the good life,” but one would have to be morally empty to be able to ignore the fact that the vast majority of people do not have access to the wealth necessary to live this kind of life.

Tolstoy next states that the most intellectually honest response to the situation would be suicide. In the face of the inevitability of death and assuming that God does not exist, why wait? Why pretend that this vale of tears means anything when one can just cut to the chase? For himself, however, Tolstoy writes that he is “too cowardly” to follow through on this most “logically consistent” response.

Finally, Tolstoy says that the fourth option, the one he is taking, is the one of just holding on; living “despite the absurdity of it,” because he is not willing “or able” to do anything else. So it seems “utterly hopeless” – at least “without God”.

So Tolstoy turns to the question of God’s existence: After despairing of his attempts to find answers in classic philosophical arguments for the existence of God (e.g. the Cosmological Argument, which reasons that God must exist based on the need to ascribe an original cause to the universe), Tolstoy turns to a more mystical, intuitive affirmation of God’s presence. He states that as soon as he said “God is Life,” life was once again suffused with meaning. This faith could be interpreted as a Kierkegaardian leap, but Tolstoy actually seems to be describing a more Eastern approach to what God is. The identification of God with life suggests a more monistic (or panentheistic) metaphysic characteristic of Eastern religions, and this is why[citation needed] rational arguments ultimately fall short of establishing God’s existence. Tolstoy’s original title for this work indicates as much, and his own personal “conversion” is suggested by an epilogue that describes a dream he had some time after completing the body of the text, confirming that he had undergone a radical personal and spiritual transformation.

Friday, September 01, 2023

Childhood (The Russians) 3.5Stars

Title: Childhood
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator:
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 135
Words: 41K

I gave Boyhood 3stars for a variety of reasons (mainly because I didn’t like the character as a teen) and so I was expecting to do the same for this volume. Thankfully, it was a bit nicer as he was still a child just entering the teen years so the hormonal urge to be a total jerk hadn’t manifested just yet.

The mother dying and the father being accused of not loving her were tough to read about. It would certainly have shaped a young man’s life to have those experiences happen to him.

It was also nice that this was only 135 pages so I didn’t have to wallow for hundreds of pages in despair. I don’t need that in my life right now 🙂

★★★✬☆

From Bookstooge.blog

We explore the life of Nikolenka as a young boy living out in the country until his father takes him and his brother to Moscow. His mother dies back in the country and the family returns to bury her. The book ends where Boyhood starts up, with the family returning to Moscow.

Sunday, May 14, 2023

The Cause of It All (The Russians) ★★★★☆

Title: The Cause of It All
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 20
Words: 5K

From Bookstooge.blog

A 2 part play about russian peasants and alcohol. The first part is about a husband spending the family’s money on drink instead of buying the stuff his wife asked for.

The second part deals with a thief who stole some food and blames his descent in life on drinking alcohol. The husband and wife get into an argument and the husband ends up giving the thief the food he stole anyway, just to spite his wife.

Being a teetotaler myself, I had zero issues with this morality play. I think drink causes more problems than any comfort or enjoyment it brings. I also believe that impairment begins with the first drink. Which is why I don’t think Christians should drink at all. We are specifically forbidden to get drunk and as such, I’ll err on the side of caution on this issue.

Not much else to say really. Tolstoy makes his feelings on the issue of alcohol pretty clear so it’s not like I have to try to interpret what he’s secretly saying.

I liked this better than Shakespeare’s plays, that’s for sure. Much shorter 😉 And honestly, that cover is pretty cool too. If I had cheekbones and a chin like that, I’d probably be ruling the Social Media World right now. And then I’d be led astray into drinking which would lead to wild debauches and eventually I’d end up on the street, a penniless homeless diabetic, one insulin shot away from death. Man, that was a close call!

★★★★☆

Tuesday, January 24, 2023

Boyhood (The Russians) ★★★☆☆

Title: Boyhood
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: Unknown
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Autobiographical Fiction
Pages: 98
Words: 28K

A quick sketch of Tolstoy’s tween and teen years. I believe this is the middle part of a trilogy (childhood, boyhood and youth) and as such, should have been read together. This just abruptly ends after a chapter and that makes it obvious this was chopped up into the 3 volumes for no good reason. Also, this “complete collection” of Tolstoy’s works are put together alphabetically and thus it will be a little bit before I get to Childhood and VERY long time before I hit Youth.

This was a bit of a tough read because Tolstoy is honest about portraying himself as a teenager and man, I always forget what self-absorbed twat-heads teenagers are. There’s a reason I don’t even attempt to help out with middle or highschool sunday school 😀 It doesn’t help that there is a good bit of class awareness going on here and that is so foreign to me that it’s very jarring. I also don’t know how much is straight biography and how much is fictional.

The ironic thing is I can identify with a LOT of what he writes, even from the teenage perspective. Self-absorbed introverts have a lot in common, no matter the country, the culture or the time they lived. Of course, I’m not going to go on and become a world famous author whose works live on to shape the future, but you know, I’m really ok with that. That would be a lot of pressure and I don’t mind saying I ain’t got no time for dat!

Judging this portion, Boyhood, on its own, I wouldn’t like Tolstoy as a person. But that’s true of most teens, so it doesn’t surprise me, hahahahaa 😀

On a final note, that cover is totally misleading. This book records him from about 12-15 or so. He’s not a child in this and I find the cover set my mind down a path of him being a child. Of course, the only other covers I could find showed him as a full adult with the big white russian beard, so that was even worse in my opinion.

★★★☆☆

Sunday, July 10, 2022

Bethink Yourselves ★☆☆☆☆ DNF@50%

Title: Bethink Yourselves
Series: (The Russians)
Author: Leo Tolstoy
Translator: Ayimer Maude
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars
Genre: Essay
Pages: 60 DNF / 30
Words: 15K DNF / 7.5K

Synopsis:

An essay against war. DNF’d at 50%.

My Thoughts:

I a not sure that I would have liked Tolstoy as a person after my attempt to read this short essay. Tolstoy and I would both agree that war is bad, but where we differ is that he didn’t believe it was necessary while I most certainly think it is (I wonder what he would have thought about Hitler?).

The reason I just quit this in disgust though was Tolstoy’s repeated attempts at categorizing war as explicitly anti-Christian, ie, there was no way to justify being a Christian AND to fight in a war. He doesn’t even address the idea of a Just War but just throws it out the window without even examining it (at least in the half of the essay I read). He repeatedly bangs the drum of “Thou Shalt Not Murder” (the 6^th Commandment given by God Himself to humanity) but ignores the fact that God sent Israel on wars of conquest as punishment against the Canaanite nations. It wasn’t so much that Tolstoy was anti-war that disgusted me but that he was proof texting (basing a conclusion on one or two Bible verses without looking at what the Bible as a whole has to say about a subject) and doing it very badly.

The movie Hacksaw Ridge shows what a lot of 7^th Day Adventists did (and do) about this situation. They are Conscientious Objectors but they still participate in a war overall. Desmond Doss was a medic in the army but wouldn’t carry a gun. Tolstoy doesn’t even consider options like this but is All or Nothing with him being on the Nothing side of the equation.

I’ve had glimpses of Tolstoy’s philosophy in his novels but this was the first time I’ve been exposed to it directly. Not a fan. I just hope this doesn’t affect my enjoyment of his novels.