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The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories (Penguin Classics) |  | Author: Leo Tolstoy
Creators: David McDuff, Paul Foote, Donna Orwin
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $11.00
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Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 101577
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0140449604
Dewey Decimal Number: 891.733
EAN: 9780140449600
ASIN: 0140449604
Publication Date: May 27, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
Our ambitious program of new Tolstoy editions continues with two collections of powerful stories
The violent spiritual crisis in Tolstoys life that inspired his last period of creativity produced the stories in this compelling and startling collection. They portray the multifaceted nature of desire, from idealistic romance to sexual jealousy, from desperate lust to relentless longing. The K reutzer Sonata caused a public sensation with its indictment of so-called Christian marriage, a theme echoed in Family Happiness. In The Devil, a young man finds it impossible to resist a beautiful peasant woman with whom he had an affair before his marriage. And Father Sergius shows a man going to increasingly desperate ends in order to avoid the temptations of the flesh.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
 A Tale of Obsesssion July 20, 2009
Asmah (USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
What's the meaning of love? June 4, 2009
Eric S. Kim (Southern California)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
A Mix of Realism and Religion June 29, 2008
Jamie Elliott (Madison, WI USA)
Tolstoy's ability to capture the humanity of his characters is displayed in this collection of novellas as it is in all of his work. Tolstoy's characters practically are human, tortured with guilt and doubt, selfish, full alternatively of naïve delight and jaded disgust, aspiring to be something more. This feeling of reality is prominent in three of the novellas: Family Happiness, The Cossacks, and Hadji Murat. The Kreutzer Sonata, on the other hand, is full of Tolstoy's religious convictions and is basically a warning against the dangers of carnal love, even between a man and his wife. I have always loved Tolstoy's novels, and it is always a little jarring for me to run into the deep Christianity that characterizes some of his work. Although I am not a Christian myself, I can appreciate that Tolstoy's religious feeling is very pure and very biblically based, a completely different being from the ritual based displays of the church. This set of novellas is interesting then, it that it shows that Tolstoy was just as complicated and contradictory as his characters so often are.
Cynical and honest October 18, 2006
Mark S. Hatmaker
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
not simply autobiographical September 12, 2006
B. Whitacre
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I think that the reviews here are a little bit off and essentially betray themselves by insulting the writer, and without reason praising his earlier works as a means of battering this later one. first of all, nobody who wants to simply spew out his own life and endoctrinate his readers puts his own views into the mouth of a character who is carefully portrayed as out of his mind. calling Tolstoy Pozdnischef would be like calling the Underground man or prince Mishkin Dostoevsky...similarities, yes just like there are always similarities between a great idea and a stupid one [or put it the other way around]. True, the kreutzer sonata is very autobiographical, but not in a self serving way, and the killer is not tolstoy. The story does not argue for abstinence necessarily either and there is a very high regard for ideal marraige... only tolstoy has to show what he thinks that is by counter example. the kreutzer '' resembles in no way the sort of fundamentailist, "we know you are going to hell and there is no arguing with us", techniques we hear about in the news which other reviewers have it sounding like [why can reviewers do this so easily today concerning late Tolstoy?..because it is easy to bash anykind of sexual morality today unless it happens to be the morality of not getting physically, and hence physically demonstrably, sick]. tolstoy shows [rather than sheethes in political language]the flaws of an institution [marraige]which, as current debates and troubles with marraige show, are very on spot or at least of major interest; if he is wrong in the story the kreutzer sonata, then it should be clear to readers from a quick look at current marraige and life in practice [ i don't know anybody who seriously thinks marraige in general is in a good state right now]. at best the story is not just an unmasking of rhetorical figures, but a careful psychological portrait of decline into mental instability, much easier to follow than say Raskolnikov's. if tolstoy eventually did adopt extremist views, at least in the story here he shows you the problem; that's all he can do--and you don't have to draw the same conclusions that tolstoy may have drawn to appreciate his depiction of something...which he also happens to tell with great passion and drama, and with considerable insight into the working of art, including his own work. just for the heck of it i'll add that i don't share tolstoy's late life philosophy but admire any day a writer who could take a very great piece of music like the kreutzer sonata and translate it's unique intensity into a perhaps equally great novella.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 16
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