A review by leerazer
What Men Live By And Other Tales by Leo Tolstoy

4.0

Four late short stories by Tolstoy are a pleasant break from reading a Stalinist-era memoir. This collection includes a story of which James Joyce wrote: "[it] is the greatest story that the literature of the world knows". It is a rich group of parables which Tolstoy imbues with the passionate religious feeling of his later years.

The title story concerns a poor shoemaker named Simon and his wife who, moved by pity, take in a man Simon finds naked and hungry. The man rarely talks but turns out to have wonderful skill at making and repairing shoes. After six years of living and working with them the man is revealed as the angel Michael, who had disobeyed God and as a result had been sent to earth to live as a man until he learned three lessons. The first of these is what dwells in man (love); the second of these is what is not given to man (to know his own needs); and the third of these is what men live by:

I have now understood that though it seems to men that they live by care for themselves, in truth it is love alone by which they live. He who has love, is in God, and God is in him, for God is love.

The second story, "Three Questions", is a brief tale of a King who goes to see a hermit to ask him, well, three questions that occupy his mind: when is the right time to begin any action, whom it is most important to listen to, and what is the most important thing to do.

Remember then: there is only one time that is important - Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else, and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life.

The third story, "The Coffee House of Surat", is an engaging argument for religious brotherhood and tolerance that a great many people would do well to read 125 years now after it was published.

They all argued about the nature of God, and how He should be worshipped. Each of them asserted that in his country alone was the true God known and rightly worshipped...

"So on matters of faith," continued the Chinaman, the student of Confucius, "it is pride that causes error and discord among men. As with the sun, so it is with God. Each man wants to have a special God of his own, or at least a special God for his native land. Each nation wishes to confine in its own temples Him, whom the world cannot contain. Can any temple compare with that which God Himself has built to unite all men in one faith and one religion?

But in what temple is there such a font as the ocean; such a vault as that of the heavens; such lamps as the sun, moon, and stars; or any figures to be compared with living, loving, mutually helpful men? Where are there any records of God's goodness so easy to understand as the blessings which God has strewn abroad for man's happiness? Where is there any book of the law so clear to each man as that written in his heart? What sacrifices equal the self-denials which loving men and women make for one another? And what altar can be compared with the heart of a good man, on which God Himself accepts the sacrifice? The higher a man's conception of God, the better will he know Him. And the better he knows God, the nearer will he draw to Him, imitating His goodness, His mercy, and His love of man. Therefore, let him who sees the sun's whole light filling the world, refrain from blaming or despising the superstitious man, who in his own idol sees one ray of that same light. Let him not despise even the unbeliever who is blind and cannot see the sun at all."

The final story, "How Much Land Does A Man Need?", is the story so well thought of by Joyce. It tells of a peasant who is provoked by the Devil to keep seeking ever more land for himself, greed continually making him envious of those he meets who seem to have found better fortune than him, filling his heart so that he cannot be happy with that which he already has, no matter how many times he "moves up in the world", so to speak. He ends up with a nomadic tribe of Bashkirs, a Turkic people in Southern Russia, whose Chief tells him that for a thousand rubles he can have all the rich virgin land of theirs that he can encircle on foot from sun up to sun down. The catch is that if he is not back at the starting point when the sun sets, he forfeits his money. Naturally, the peasant Pahom lets his greed get the better of him and walks too far away from the start/finish point. It is a brutally hot day and he forces himself to run as hard as he can once he realizes his error in order to try to make it back to the spot where the Chief and tribe wait. He barely makes it, as the Chief sits holding his sides in laughter, but the strenuous effort was too much, and he falls dead. His grave is dug right there, all six feet of it - all the land he needs.