The Kreutzer Sonata (Dover Thrift Editions)

Rating:
Summary: A Searing Read...
Review: and should be required for married couples to read together. It should make for some fascinating conversation.

Tolstoy adopts a scorched-earth policy in this novel which deflates the "sanctity" of marriage. The protagonist is a man on the edge, and it seems Tolstoy was there with him in the writing of this incandescent novella.

Chris McCandless, the ill-fated Alaskan voyager who died in a hunting shelter while trying to escape the ties of civilization, was reading this novel very close to his death. See the nonfiction "Into the Wild" for information on this...

I'm sure most of you have read the other two selections in this anthology, so I'll limit my comments to Kreutzer. This novel made my pulse race, a physical reaction I haven't had to a novel in quite a long time.

Rating:
Summary: As a suggestion....
Review: If you are looking to read the classics from a different perspective, this is an interesting story to read from a feminist theoretic perspective. I highly recommend reading "Intercourse" by Andrea Dworkin, as she includes an analysis of "The Kreutzer Sonata" in her book that provides a complex view of this story. Very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: As a suggestion....
Review: If you are looking to read the classics from a different perspective, this is an interesting story to read from a feminist theoretic perspective. I highly recommend reading "Intercourse" by Andrea Dworkin, as she includes an analysis of "The Kreutzer Sonata" in her book that provides a complex view of this story. Very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: Story great, edition not
Review: Just returned from Book Discussion Group. Found Dover translation to be far inferior to Penguin Classic.

Rating:
Summary: Three stories of despair
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The hollowness of modern life
Review: This little book contains three short stories: "How much land does a man need?", "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", and "The Kreutzer sonata". Although the stories are widely different, they share a common theme. All three expose the hollowness of modern life, with sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit reference to the Christian alternative Tolstoy espoused.

The first two are rather simple didactic tales, juxtaposing materialism, greed, and vanity with Christian sincerity and humility. I think a person's appreciation of these two stories hinges, to a great extent, on the reader's assessment of Tolstoy's solution to the unbridled greed and nauseating superficiality which he witnessed and we even moreso witness today.

The last story, The Kreutzer Sonata, is surely the best and the one with the most universal appeal. This follows from Tolstoy's uncanny ability to infiltrate human psychology and expose people for the frail and undignified beings we really are. In this story, he strives to reveal the self-deceit of marrying for "love" as opposed to marrying with an understanding of marriage as primarily an obligation to God. It seems that to Tolstoy, a life without repentance and duty to God must amount to a life where one is merely subject to the passions, a life that no one can want, just as described by "Schopenhauer and the Buddhists". Like Nietzsche, he is trying to tackle the problem of absence of meaning (posed by Schopenhauer), but he suggests the opposite of Nietsche's active nihilism. His purpose is to offer a life of sincerity, humility, and repentance; a life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.

Rating:
Summary: A Searing Read...
Review: This little book contains three short stories: "How much land does a man need?", "The Death of Ivan Ilyich", and "The Kreutzer sonata". Although the stories are widely different, they share a common theme. All three expose the hollowness of modern life, with sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit reference to the Christian alternative Tolstoy espoused.

The first two are rather simple didactic tales, juxtaposing materialism, greed, and vanity with Christian sincerity and humility. I think a person's appreciation of these two stories hinges, to a great extent, on the reader's assessment of Tolstoy's solution to the unbridled greed and nauseating superficiality which he witnessed and we even moreso witness today.

The last story, The Kreutzer Sonata, is surely the best and the one with the most universal appeal. This follows from Tolstoy's uncanny ability to infiltrate human psychology and expose people for the frail and undignified beings we really are. In this story, he strives to reveal the self-deceit of marrying for "love" as opposed to marrying with an understanding of marriage as primarily an obligation to God. It seems that to Tolstoy, a life without repentance and duty to God must amount to a life where one is merely subject to the passions, a life that no one can want, just as described by "Schopenhauer and the Buddhists". Like Nietzsche, he is trying to tackle the problem of absence of meaning (posed by Schopenhauer), but he suggests the opposite of Nietsche's active nihilism. His purpose is to offer a life of sincerity, humility, and repentance; a life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus.