The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories

Fülszöveg

oxford world's classics
Leo Tolstoy i.
The Kreutzer Sonata
AND OTHER STORIES
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, and J. D. Duff Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Richard F. Gustafson
'To love him was not enough for me after the happiness I had felt in falling in love. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.'
The four stories selected here represent Tolstoy at his creative best, exploring in a specific and detailed way his characteristic themes: life understood as a journey of the discovery of identity and vocation, the meaning of one's life in the face of death, and the redemptive role of suffering and compassion. Family Happiness (1889) traces the psychology of failed married love, yet is written against the tradition of the novel of romance, marriage, and adultery. The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) recounts a husband's addictions, jealousy, sinister guilt, and subsequent isolation, while The Cossacks (18Ó3) focuses on the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

oxford world's classics
Leo Tolstoy i.
The Kreutzer Sonata
AND OTHER STORIES
Translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, and J. D. Duff Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Richard F. Gustafson
'To love him was not enough for me after the happiness I had felt in falling in love. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.'
The four stories selected here represent Tolstoy at his creative best, exploring in a specific and detailed way his characteristic themes: life understood as a journey of the discovery of identity and vocation, the meaning of one's life in the face of death, and the redemptive role of suffering and compassion. Family Happiness (1889) traces the psychology of failed married love, yet is written against the tradition of the novel of romance, marriage, and adultery. The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) recounts a husband's addictions, jealousy, sinister guilt, and subsequent isolation, while The Cossacks (18Ó3) focuses on the experiences of a young Russian whose quest for romantic love becomes one for the love of 'the whole of God's world'. Finally, the superbly crafted Hadji Murád (1912) juxtaposes the military and civilian worlds in a tale of the human violation of the natural.
Written over almost fifty years, these works display Tolstoy's changing views on art and sexuality, women and marriage, nationalism and ethnicity, war and empire, each uniquely developing the central Tolstoyan theme of love.
• introduction • textual note • bibliography
• chronology • glossary • explanatory notes Vissza