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A review by uosdwisrdewoh
The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy
5.0
Tolstoy’s a literary titan for a good reason. His work looms over Western literature, but unlike other major figures like Proust or Shakespeare, he’s utterly approachable. Everyone should read some Tolstoy in their life to make sure they’re not missing its many pleasures, and this is a great place to start. Whereas when you read Dostoevsky, you’re cast into a completely foreign world of extreme passions and histrionic emotions, Tolstoy presents scenes that make the world of the late nineteenth century come alive. His characters feel entirely fully realized and grounded, living in a world that, while different from today, is utterly concrete to the reader.
The exceptions to these deep characterizations, probably these works’ biggest flaws, are the female characters, who carry more broad strokes. Whereas the men are overstuffed with finely crafted character traits, emotions, and contradictions, the women mostly fall into types. There’s the horrible shrews like Ivan Ilyich’s wife. There’s the innocent woman, like the wife in “The Devil,” and then there’s the foul temptress, like the other woman in that story. The women in “Hadji Murat” come off better, but even then they are barely present in what is very much a story about men. Perhaps his early work is different, but it’s the one trait here that betrays these stories’ era.
And to be fair, not every story in this collection succeeds equally. The ones in this book's middle stretch suffer by comparison, nestled between the classics “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Hadji Murat.” The device of “The Kreutzer Sonata” being told completely to the narrator by a fellow passenger on the train, for instance, strains the believability that Tolstoy usually earns so easily. Other stories are driven by a Christian strain of moralism that suffused the end of Tolstoy’s life, one that was radical in its day, but seems quaint now and gives the stories a didactic, slightly preachy, tone. But that said, that same moralistic streak underlies “Master and Man,” which is nevertheless one of the greatest stories I’ve read in my life.
The translation is, as far as I can tell, lucid and careful. At times, though, it’s tough to determine if the occasional stilted turns of phrase are the fault of the translation or an accurate translation of Tolstoy’s words; that is to say, should this read like 19th century English literature, with its sometimes archaic and obscure words? A glance at other translations shows that Peaver and Volokhonsky have cleaned up a lot of stodgy Victorian language that persists in the original translations, leaving Tolstoy’s lapidary prose to retain its quiet power across the ages. If they sometimes seem to choose an odd word that best describes, say, a piece of 19th century farming equipment, then perhaps that’s closer in spirit to Tolstoy’s original work than other translations which try to briefly describe the same object in more familiar terms. This is all conjecture on my part, though, as it’s hard to judge without fluency in Russian to compare it, and I leave it to the reams of heated expert writings one can find on this couple’s translations.
Overall, though, this is a wonderful introduction to Tolstoy’s work for those who might be intimidated by the massive page counts of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. With only these stories and novellas, Tolstoy has instantly become my favorite canonical writer (sorry Joyce), and I’m adding his major work to my reading list.
The exceptions to these deep characterizations, probably these works’ biggest flaws, are the female characters, who carry more broad strokes. Whereas the men are overstuffed with finely crafted character traits, emotions, and contradictions, the women mostly fall into types. There’s the horrible shrews like Ivan Ilyich’s wife. There’s the innocent woman, like the wife in “The Devil,” and then there’s the foul temptress, like the other woman in that story. The women in “Hadji Murat” come off better, but even then they are barely present in what is very much a story about men. Perhaps his early work is different, but it’s the one trait here that betrays these stories’ era.
And to be fair, not every story in this collection succeeds equally. The ones in this book's middle stretch suffer by comparison, nestled between the classics “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and “Hadji Murat.” The device of “The Kreutzer Sonata” being told completely to the narrator by a fellow passenger on the train, for instance, strains the believability that Tolstoy usually earns so easily. Other stories are driven by a Christian strain of moralism that suffused the end of Tolstoy’s life, one that was radical in its day, but seems quaint now and gives the stories a didactic, slightly preachy, tone. But that said, that same moralistic streak underlies “Master and Man,” which is nevertheless one of the greatest stories I’ve read in my life.
The translation is, as far as I can tell, lucid and careful. At times, though, it’s tough to determine if the occasional stilted turns of phrase are the fault of the translation or an accurate translation of Tolstoy’s words; that is to say, should this read like 19th century English literature, with its sometimes archaic and obscure words? A glance at other translations shows that Peaver and Volokhonsky have cleaned up a lot of stodgy Victorian language that persists in the original translations, leaving Tolstoy’s lapidary prose to retain its quiet power across the ages. If they sometimes seem to choose an odd word that best describes, say, a piece of 19th century farming equipment, then perhaps that’s closer in spirit to Tolstoy’s original work than other translations which try to briefly describe the same object in more familiar terms. This is all conjecture on my part, though, as it’s hard to judge without fluency in Russian to compare it, and I leave it to the reams of heated expert writings one can find on this couple’s translations.
Overall, though, this is a wonderful introduction to Tolstoy’s work for those who might be intimidated by the massive page counts of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. With only these stories and novellas, Tolstoy has instantly become my favorite canonical writer (sorry Joyce), and I’m adding his major work to my reading list.