The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories

by TOLSTOY, LEOPEVEAR, RICHARD

• ISBN13: 9780307268815
• ISBN10: 0307268810
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-11-17
• Publisher: Knopf

Summary

Here are some of Tolstoyas extraordinary short stories, from aThe Death of Ivan Ilyichaain a masterly new translationato aThe Raid, a aThe Wood-felling, a aThree Deaths, a aPolikushka, a aAfter the Ball, a and aThe Forged Coupon, a all gripping and eloquent lessons on two of Tolstoyas most persistent themes: life and death. More experimental than his novels, Tolstoyas stories are essential reading for anyone interested in his development as one of the major writers and thinkers of his time.

Author Biography

Leo Tolstoy was born in central Russia in 1828. He died in 1910.

Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky live in Paris.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. vii
The Prisoner of the Caucasus	p. 3
The Diary of a Madman	p. 28
The Death of Ivan Ilyich	p. 39
The Kreutzer Sonata	p. 92
The Devil	p. 164
Master and Man	p. 209
Father Sergius	p. 255
After the Ball	p. 297
The Forged Coupon	p. 307
Alyosha the Pot	p. 368
Hadji Murat	p. 374
Glossary Of Caucasian Mountaineer Words	p. 489
Notes	p. 491
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

Hadji Murat

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I was returning home through the fields. It was the very middle of summer. The meadows had been mowed, and they were just
about to reap the rye.

There is a delightful assortment of flowers at that time of year: red, white, pink, fragrant, fluffy clover; impudent marguerites; milk-white “love-me-love-me-nots” with bright yellow centers and a fusty, spicy stink; yellow wild rape with its honey smell; tall-standing, tulip-shaped campanulas, lilac and white; creeping vetch; neat scabious, yellow, red, pink, and lilac; plantain with its faintly pink down and faintly perceptible, pleasant smell; cornflowers, bright blue in the sun and in youth, and pale blue and reddish in the evening and when old; and the tender, almond-scented, instantly wilting flowers of the bindweed.

I had gathered a big bouquet of various flowers and was walking home, when I noticed in a ditch, in full bloom, a wonderful crimson thistle of the kind which is known among us as a “Tartar” and is carefully mowed around, and, when accidentally mowed down, is removed from the hay by the mowers, so that it will not prick their hands. I took it into my head to pick this thistle and put it in the center of the bouquet. I got down into the ditch and, having chased away a hairy bumblebee that had stuck itself into the center of the flower and sweetly and lazily fallen asleep there, I set about picking the flower. But it was very difficult: not only was the stem prickly on all sides, even through the handkerchief I had wrapped around my hand, but it was so terribly tough that I struggled with it for some five minutes, tearing the fibers one by one. When I finally tore off the flower, the stem was all ragged, and the flower no longer seemed so fresh and beautiful. Besides, in its coarseness and gaudiness it did not fit in with the delicate flowers of the bouquet. I was sorry that I had vainly destroyed and thrown away a flower that had been beautiful in its place. “But what energy and life force,” I thought, remembering the effort it had cost me to tear off the flower. “How staunchly it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life.”

The way home went across a fallow, just-plowed field of black earth. I walked up a gentle slope along a dusty, black-earth road. The plowed field was a landowner’s, a very large one, so that to both sides of the road and up the hill ahead nothing could be seen except the black, evenly furrowed, not yet scarified soil. The plowing had been well done; nowhere on the field was there a single plant or blade of grass to be seen—it was all black. “What a destructive, cruel being man is, how many living beings and plants he annihilates to maintain his own life,” I thought, involuntarily looking for something alive amidst this dead, black field. Ahead of me, to the right of the road, I spied a little bush. When I came closer, I recognized in this bush that same “Tartar” whose flower I had vainly picked and thrown away.

The “Tartar” bush consisted of three shoots. One had been broken off, and the remainder of the branch stuck out like a cut-off arm. On each of the other two there was a flower. These flowers had once been red, but now they were black. One stem was broken and half of it hung down, with the dirty flower at the end; the other, though all covered with black dirt, still stuck up. It was clear that the whole bush had been run over by a wheel, and afterwards had straightened up and therefore stood tilted, but stood all the same. As if a piece of its flesh had been ripped away, its guts turned inside out, an arm torn off, an eye blinded. But it still stands and
does not surrender to man, who has annihilated all its brothers around it.

“What energy!” I thought. “Man has conquered everything, destroyed millions of plants, but this one still does not surrender.&rdq

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Excerpted from The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Larissa Volokhonsky, Leo Tolstoy
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.