The Forged Coupon (1912) [Paperback]

Leo Tolstoy (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 18, 2009

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: AFTER THE DANCE "— And you say that a man cannot, of himself, understand what is good and evil; that it is all environment, that the environment swamps the man. But I believe it is all chance. Take my own case . . ." Thus spoke our excellent friend, Ivan Vasilie- vich, after a conversation between us on the impossibility of improving individual character without a change of the conditions under which men live. Nobody had actually said that one could not of oneself understand good and evil; but it was a habit of Ivan Vasilievich to answer in this way the thoughts aroused in his own mind by conversation, and to illustrate those thoughts by relating incidents in his own life. He often quite forgot the reason for his story in telling it; but he always told it with great sincerity and feeling. He did so now. " Take my own case. My whole life was moulded, not by environment, but by something quite different." " By what, then? " we asked. " Oh, that is a long story. I should have to tell you about a great many things to make you understand." " Well, tell us then." Ivan Vasilievich thought a little, and shook his head. " My whole life," he said, " was changed in one night, or, rather, morning." " Why, what happened? " one of us asked. " What happened was that I was very much in love. I have been in love many times, but this was the most serious of all. It is a thing of the past; she has married daughters now. It was Varinka B——." Ivan Vasilievich mentioned her surname. " Even at fifty she is remarkably handsome; but in her youth, at eighteen, she was exquisite — tall, slender, graceful, and stately. Yes, stately is the word; she held herself very erect, by instinct as it were; and carried her head high, and that together with her beauty and height gave her...

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation) --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 104 pages
• Publisher: General Books LLC (August 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0217951198
• ISBN-13: 978-0217951197
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,523,918 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) wrote two of the great novels of the nineteenth century, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What goes around..., May 27, 2001

By 

"ygraine" (Phoenix, Arizona USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Forged Coupon (Paperback)

Short, simple, and yet truly profound, The Forged Coupon reads like Tolstoy's last wish for humanity; compassion, kindness, and responsibility toward our fellow man/woman.

Young Fedor Mikhailovich needs money to repay a debt. After his father angrily refuses to give him any more money, Fedor simply changes a $2.50 note to read $12.50. What follows is an intricate tale of how one evil deed, one selfish act, affects the lives of dozens of others. Tolstoy wrote this novella in his last years, after his excommunication, and he relishes the chance to unveil the pseudo-piety and hypocrisy of organized religion. Yet, his belief in the individual's capacity to find truth is unwavering. Regardless of the theological overtones, however, this novella is priceless for its Aesopian message...that every act, good or bad, goes out into the world like so many ripples.

I give The Forged Coupon four stars only because The Death of Ivan Illych is superior. Still, I wouldn't want my bookshelf to be without this work from the master.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars for every action there is a reaction, October 22, 2007

By 

A. G. Plumb "Greg Plumb" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Forged Coupon (Hesperus Classics) (Paperback)

This brief novel, which does rather diminish into a sermon, nevertheless introduces a rich and varied range of characters. All of them are shown in terms of what they do or what happens to them. In either case there may be good, there may be evil. Regardless of which, there will always be reactions, responses, outcomes. And it's not necessary that evil actions beget evil responses, or that good actions have fortunate outcomes.

The story also spreads across the continent and, like the famous butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the world, the impacts are far-reaching and unanticipatable.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Temptations of purity, November 29, 2009

By 

Joanne Marinelli (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Forged Coupon (Kindle Edition)

vgraine's summary of the novella's plot line doesn't have to be repeated, but the collection as a whole is very nicely done for a free download, and even if one disagrees with Tolstoy's premise, as I do, his metaphysical pushback against material gratification is somehow necessary, at least for the Russian soul. I have my issues with Tolstoy, and do not care for the message of Anna Karenina in its entire, but this quiet collection in his maturity asks us, I believe, not to be so grounded in certainty--and here the woman with the child out of wedlock survives, as opposed to throwing herself under a train--perhaps Tolstoy's realization that on balance, Levin and Anna were not given the same opportunities to pull themselves through.

More than anything else, The Forged Coupon reconciles me, in small doses, to Tolstoy's stubborn insistence that a Christianty based on humbled peasant simplicity is somehow incorruptible. All religions are human systems, and he comes closest to remembering that here.