Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T04:11:57.710Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - The long short story in Tolstoy’s fiction

from Part 2 - Genres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Donna Tussing Orwin
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

The term povest' has a somewhat fluid meaning in Russian, as a term defining a work of fiction which can range in size between what is normally called a short story and what might also be a short novel. Tolstoy’s most notable fictional works of the 1880s and 1890s fall into this category. They cannot match such masterpieces of the 1860s and 1870s as War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but they are manifestly superior to the short works of fiction designed to illustrate his religious ideas and can claim our attention more readily than his dramas or his last novel, Resurrection. They owe their power chiefly to the way they focus upon a single foreground figure and portray that figure’s life as having meaning principally in the light of Tolstoy’s ideas on death, sex, and spirituality. Apparently single-voiced and lacking the multiplicity of central figures and viewpoints of the great novels, the Tolstoyan long short story can demonstrate more directly the purpose of his art as a vehicle for infecting the reader with the author’s feelings.

The Death of Ivan Ilich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Father Sergius illustrate the power of this infection in remarkable ways through depicting the experience of one individual. The psychologizing impulse in Tolstoy turns them not into tracts so much as into semi-autobiographical dramatizations of lives largely lived on false premises; and it is a falsity highlighted by one episode. Apparent authorial absence, an artful documentary objectivity, naturalistic dialogue, and a well-paced narrative drive make them models of a “moodless” povest’ form designed as parables illustrating Tolstoyan doctrine. Inevitably an air of emotional sterility or clinical exactitude suggests withdrawal of sympathy, a literal defamiliarizing of the subject-matter, and, to that extent, a degree of alienation.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×