Customer Reviews

The Kreutzer Sonata (Modern Library Classics)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The highlight of this book for me had to be re-reading "The Death of Ivan Ilych" again after all these years. I read it for the first time years and years ago as required reading in middle school and this is the first time that I have come back to it since that time. I found myself unsurprisingly better equipped to read and appreciate this story now and was exceptionally pleased to have read it again.

This edition contains three short stories that were written after Tolstoy made his conversion to intense Christian beliefs. They are interesting to read together, particularly given the common theme about characters with mistaken ideas about what will bring them contentment.

"How Much Land Does a Man Need?" is a parable which examines greed and contentment through the story of a peasant who believes that he would be satisfied with his life if only he had a little bit more land.

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" tells the history of an outwardly prosperous but spiritually empty man who dies at the age of 45 after a fall in his home.

In "The Kreutzer Sonata" a man on a train relates to a fellow passenger what the circumstances were that led to the murder of his wife.

It is, at the very least, important to read these stories. The Kreutzer Sonata is particularly important in the history of literature. At its release, it was banned throughout much of Europe for indecency and has been inspiring debate about feminist issues and women characters in literature ever since that time.

The translation used in the Dover Thrift edition is competent, but has its awkward moments and is occasionally clunky and obtuse. I might personally recommend buying a different edition if you are planning a purchase.

Just returned from Book Discussion Group. Found Dover translation to be far inferior to Penguin Classic.

Ibsen once described Tostoy as a supremely great writer, when he wasn't being mad. On the evidence of "The Kreutzer Sonata", Tolstoy was a supremely great writer EVEN when he was mad.

The Kreutzer Sonata is a fascinating study of an abusive marriage--Russian nobility style. I found it interesting if only for that, in addition to which it's only about 100 pages long, so for Tolstoy this is a quick read.

I read something funny in Tolstoy's own comments about this work. He mentions he read the manuscript to his family before it was published, and that it was very well received by everybody. Then I read some years later that his wife was upset he had written it since it could have been construed as a commentary on their own marriage.

Anyway, I hope this wasn't an autobiographical work; otherwise, I can see why he turned religious in his later years.

Tolstoy in lecture mode gives a cynical account of courting, romantic love, and a recognizably painful depiction of jealousy. While it may lack the sweep of his major works, there is still much to be mulled in this short work.

The Kreutzer Sonata is a story that should be required reading for all considering marriage. After hearing the various theories on love by his fellow passengers on a train, a man blurts out that he killed his wife because of jealousy and then relates the story of how he came to such an extreme action. His story will fill you with compassion and sadness at the state of the modern relationship between the sexes.

The stories contained in this volume (`The Kreutzer Sonata', `The Devil', `The Forged Coupon' and `After the Ball') are from Tolstoy's late period and are markedly different in tone from the great works of his early period, `The Cossacks' and `War and Peace'. Those early works are characterised by Tolstoy's enormous compassion and lust for life, while even the more troubled `Anna Karenina' is infused with the author's magnanimous wisdom, despite the grave self-doubts that were plaguing him at the time of writing. `The Kreutzer Sonata' marks a sea-change in mood for this greatest of all novelists. All of the stories here are stained with the cynicism that overtook Tolstoy in his advancing years, and the almost overwhelming sense of guilt at what he saw as the dissolute and wasted life he had led, and the hollowness of relations between men and women. The sheer joie de vivre of Natasha Rostov in `War and Peace' contrasts severely with the nihilism of Pozdnyshev in `The Kreutzer Sonata', while the misfortunes of almost every character in `The Forged Coupon' do not point to a happy or optimistic author. These are interesting stories however, which at times equal Tolstoy at his most illuminating - though even Tolstoy some way off his best is more than a match for most. Highly recommended.

Leo Tolstoy presents radical views on sex and marriage in this magnificent tale, views that raise questions and evoke thought.

Tolstoy's protagonist is mired in a marriage that disintegrates. He kills his wife because of an intense jealousy. The jealousy, in his mind, is as frenzied as the first movement of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata, the fast emotional presto. He has harsh unusual views about women and their relations with men. Some of his comments, that follow, taken from various places in the novel, reflect his bizarre thinking. But, we should ask: are his ideas entirely wrong?

He speaks about having sex with prostitutes. He admits that it is bad, but there is something, he says, that is far worse: having no relations with the person, wife, mistress or prostitute other than physical sex. "Dissoluteness does not lay in anything physical... debauchery lies precisely in freeing oneself from moral relations with a woman with whom you have physical intimacy."

A man who seeks only the physical gratification of sex, he says, "will never have those pure, simple, clear, brotherly relations with a woman."

So far, this seems rational, moral and proper. But he goes on.

Men, claims our murderer, are entranced and fooled by beauty. "A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm."

Men, he says, are so charmed by a woman's beauty, that they do not understand that love may be only an illusion: "love as we call it, depends not on moral qualities but on physical nearness and on the coiffure, and the color of the dress."

And he moves deeper, "You say that the women of our society have other interests than prostitutes have, but I say no." Even the women at the highest levels of society have the same "exposure of arms, shoulders, and breasts, the same tight skirts over prominent bustles, the same passion for little stones, for costly, glittering objects, the same amusements, dances, music, and singing. As the former employ all means to allure, so do these others." And he claims, "Millions of people, generations of slaves, perish at hard labor in factories merely to satisfy woman's caprice."

But he does not quit there. Women, our murderer continues, use sensualities, perfumes, dress, jewels, smiles, tears and other allures to dominate men. Men subjugate and humiliate them in horrid ways. But "they pay us back for their oppression by a financial domination," for they now own most of the nation's wealth. Through "sensuality (a woman) subdues him so that he only chooses formally, while in reality it is she who chooses." He imagines that he has control, while control is in the woman's hand.

Men fool themselves. They offer women "all sorts of rights equal to men, but continue to (focus on her body and) regard her as an instrument of enjoyment." This misplaced attention castrates him and leads to his downfall.

Are these Tolstoy's views or only they the ideas of his protagonist, the man who murdered his wife? Are they true? Are they somewhat true, but exaggerated? Are they the views of a sane man? Could it be that such views caused the murderer to murder? Why, indeed, did he kill his wife?

Even if the murderer's generalities are correct, was his wife the kind of woman he was describing? Or, did he fail to have a real relationship with his wife, focusing on sex rather than deep "moral relations"?

Was she unfaithful? If she was unfaithful, is this a justification for murder? Should a court let him free?

These are some of many unusual ideas in this masterpiece. These are some questions that cause the reader to think about Tolstoy's tale, that make readers partners in how the story should be understood.

A tale of obsession turned into murder, The Kreutzer Sonata follows Pozdynshev's descent into mental breakdown. The protagonist cold-heartedly calculates the means to revenge a suspected affair between his wife and his friend Trukhashevsky. The story retells the psychological and physical details of his delusion. There seem to be some affinities with Tolstoy's life. Leo and Sonya Tolstoy also spawned a large family; the title comes from Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. 9 in A Major; and, he led a profligate early life only to advise universal celibacy in the Afterword. More importantly, he is celebrated for his creative literary imagination than for his impractical philosophy.

This review is for the Oxford edition of Tolstoy's Kreutzer Sonata, which includes Family Happiness, The Cossacks, and Hadji Murad.

I don't have to tell myself that I's starting to admire Tolstoy's works. I already know that I'm starting to admire Tolstoy's works. It started with Oxford's "The Devil and Other Stories." The short stories presented there did not make me sleepy at all. Now with "The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories," the stories are longer, and are as influential as the ones in "The Devil and Other Stories." Basically, all four stories presented here deal with love, both platonic and erotic. Family Happiness deals with marital statuses and the meaning of true love, while in contrast, The Kreutzer Sonata has jealousy and madness written all over it. The Cossacks, which is the longest out of all of them, is about a young man who leaves Russia behind and searches for love and a new existence in the Caucasus. Hadji Murad is a completely different sort of story. It is based on the real-life Hadji Murad, and here we find those who follow him, and those who turn their backs on him. This sort of love is similar to admiring your favorite president or reverend.

The translations here is uneven on few occasions, with a few unnecessary modernized phrases that don't seem to work. But all that aside, I'm glad that I got a chance to read some of Tolstoy's finest short stories/short novels. Five stars for the author and his works.