So, I’ve now read my first Tolstoy. Not War and Peace. I haven’t the strength
yet. I read a collection called The
Kreutzer Sonata, which contains three longish short stories: "How Much
Land Does a Man Need," "The Death of Ivan Ilych," and "The
Kreutzer Sonata.”
Before I talk about the stories, some folks might ask
me why I waited so long to read Tolstoy. I’m nearing my sixth decade. I blame
high school English and literature classes. I already loved reading before I
started Junior high. I read a bit of everything but particularly enjoyed animal
stories, football tales, westerns, and SF/Fantasy. I hadn’t really been
introduced to the “classics,” but in school we read such offerings as “The
Grapes of Wrath,” “Silas Marner,” “The Great Gatsby,” and “The Scarlet Letter.”
Grapes was about farmers, which my family was. It was long, with no action, and
the settings were very familiar. When I reread it as an adult I appreciated it.
But not as a teenager. As for “Silas Marner,” I still think it’s one of the
worst books I’ve ever read. Gatsby was actually rather enjoyable because it
introduced me to a world I didn’t know, but it still didn’t have the excitement
I craved. And Scarlet Letter was much the same, interesting, but not a page
turner. I decided after these experiences that the “classics” were generally unimaginative,
long, dealt strictly with internal rather than external experiences, and, worst
of all, were boring.
In my mid-twenties I came back to the “classics” when
I started reading Hemingway and realized that things ‘can’ happen in classic
tales. “The Old Man and the Sea” is a great example. I also came to appreciate
internal experiences more, and since that time I’ve read a lot of the classics
but have certainly not caught up with everything I should read.
And now for Tolstoy and this collection. Seeing as how
this is a translation, I can’t make much judgement about Tolstoy’s prose directly.
These tales are well and simply told. There’s not much beauty in the prose—in the
translation, but there is excellent scene setting and Tolstoy seems able to
involve you in the tale quickly. The stories are long and a bit slow for modern
readers, but it’s not unbearable and the interesting things that happen keep
you reading. I gave the collection four stars, which is pretty darn good. With
the exception of “How Much Land,” and the ending of “The Kreutzer Sonata,”
these stories are almost exclusively “internal experiences.” Almost no action,
mostly telling, with very little showing. Despite these negatives, the tales
are compelling, especially “Ivan Ilych” and “Kreutzer.” They are compelling
because they lay out moment by moment high level emotional destruction of a
human being, and they are paced nearly perfectly to wring the most out of the
reader.
“The Death of Ivan Ilych” is just that, a story about
one man coming to grips with his impending death. The fears, the hopes, the pleading.
They are all there in superb detail. I found the ending excruciating and was
glad of it. “The Kreutzer Sonata” is about the destruction of a marriage
through jealousy. The last sections of that are also excruciating but pretty
close to ‘page turning’ intensity. The internalized experiences of the
characters in these stories rang absolutely “true” to me, and that is the mark
of a very good observer of human behavior. Tolstoy certainly hit the mark square
center. I highly recommend this collection.
I’ve already picked up another collection of Tolstoy’s
short stories and will start reading that soon. And then? Maybe War and Peace.
