Twenty-Three Tales by Tolstoy

By -
Twenty-Three Tales by Leo Tolstoy

I found this great little book of Tolstoy at work.  It's one of the old Oxford World's Classics titles, back when they were tiny little hardbound volumes (price, 8s. 6d.).  I don't think it exists anymore as an Oxford title--they have probably changed it around quite a bit--but this old book is a collection of 23 short stories or tales.

Many of these stories are moral in tone, and offer a philosophy of life that extolls the Russian peasant way of life.  A simple life working the earth, without wealth or luxury, each producing what he needs, is the ideal here, and many of the tales predict dire consequences to people who get too greedy.  Several are retold folktales, or else folktale-like stories.  Some of them are some of Tolstoy's own favorites, such as God Sees the Truth, But Waits, and A Prisoner in the Caucasus, and were written as teaching stories for children.

The flavor is overwhelmingly moral, pastoral, and pleasant.  They are nice to read.  They are also easy to read and would probably be a good introduction to Tolstoy, unless the reader is turned off by the preaching.  Because honestly it is pretty preachy, but I enjoyed it anyway.  If you read it one story at a time instead of all at once, it would probably be fine.


Comments

  1. AmyJanuary 3, 2014 at 4:10 PM

    He certainly idealized the pastoral life in Anna K as well. That one didn't feel preachy to me though, even with its spiritual theme. These weren't aimed a children, were they?

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanJanuary 3, 2014 at 8:12 PM

    Some of them certainly were--maybe most of them.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more