Collected Shorter Fiction, Vol. 1 Book

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.