Here true story Pozdnyshev, told by him that same night to one of his fellow travelers, is the story of how he was led by this very love to what happened to him. Pozdnyshev, a landowner and university candidate (he was even the leader) lived before his marriage, like everyone else in his circle. He lived (in his current opinion) depravedly, but, living depravedly, he believed that he was living as he should, even morally. He was not a seducer, did not have “unnatural tastes”, did not make debauchery the goal of his life, but gave himself to it sedately, decently, rather for the sake of health, avoiding women who could tie him up. Meanwhile, he could no longer have a pure relationship with a woman; he was, as they say, a “fornicator,” like a morphine addict, a drunkard, and a smoker. Then, as Pozdnyshev put it, without going into details, all sorts of deviations began. He lived like this until he was thirty, not abandoning, however, the desire to arrange for himself the most elevated, “pure” family life, looking closely at girls for this purpose, and finally found one, one of the two daughters of a bankrupt Penza landowner, whom he considered worthy of himself.
One evening they rode in a boat and returned home at night, by moonlight. Pozdnyshev admired her slim figure, covered in jersey (he remembered this well), and suddenly decided that it was her. It seemed to him that she understood at that moment everything that he was feeling, and he, as it seemed to him then, was thinking the most sublime things, and in fact, the jersey especially suited her, and after spending the day with her he returned home in delight , confident that she was “the pinnacle of moral perfection,” and proposed the next day. Since he did not marry for money or connections (she was poor), and besides, he had the intention of maintaining “monogamy” after his marriage, his pride knew no bounds. (I was a terrible pig, but I imagined that I was an angel, Pozdnyshev admitted to his traveling companion.) However, everything immediately went awry, the honeymoon did not work out. It was disgusting, embarrassing and boring all the time. On the third or fourth day, Pozdnyshev found his wife bored, began asking questions, hugged her, she began to cry, unable to explain. And she felt sad and heavy, and her face expressed unexpected coldness and hostility. How? What? Love is a union of souls, but instead this is what! Pozdnyshev shuddered. Has love been exhausted by the satisfaction of sensuality and they have remained complete strangers to each other? Pozdnyshev did not yet understand that this hostility was normal and not a temporary state. But then another quarrel occurred, then another, and Pozdnyshev felt that he was “caught,” that marriage was not something pleasant, but, on the contrary, very difficult, but he did not want to admit it to himself or others. (This anger, he later reasoned, was nothing more than a protest of human nature against the “animal” that suppressed it, but then he thought that his wife’s bad character was to blame.)
At the age of eight they had five children, but life with children was not joy, but torment. The wife was child-loving and gullible, and family life turned out to be a constant salvation from imaginary or real dangers. The presence of children gave new reasons for discord, and relations became more and more hostile. By the fourth year they were talking simply: “What time is it? It's time to sleep. What's lunch like today? Where to go? What is written in the newspaper? Send for the doctor. Masha’s throat hurts.” He watched her pour the tea, raise the spoon to her mouth, slurp, sucking in the liquid, and he hated her for that very reason. “It’s good for you to grimace,” he thought, “you’ve tormented me with scenes all night, and I have a meeting.” “You feel good,” she thought, “but I didn’t sleep with the baby all night.” And they not only thought so, but also spoke, and would have lived like this, as if in a fog, not understanding themselves, if what had happened had not happened. His wife seemed to have woken up since she stopped giving birth (the doctors suggested remedies), and constant anxiety about the children began to subside, it was as if she woke up and saw the whole world with his joys, which she forgot about...
Lev Tolstoy
Kreutzer Sonata
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Matthew, V, 28
His disciples tell him: if such is a man’s duty to his wife, then it is better not to marry.
He said to them: Not everyone can receive this word, but to those who have been given it.
For there are eunuchs who were born like this from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Whoever can contain it, let him contain it.
Matthew, XIX, 10, 11, 12
It was early spring. We traveled for the second day. People traveling on board entered and exited the carriage. short distances, but three people were traveling, just like me, from the very place where the train departed: an ugly and middle-aged lady, smoking, with a haggard face, in a half-man’s coat and cap, her acquaintance, a talkative man of about forty, with neat new things, and still holding on apart from him, a small gentleman with impetuous movements, not yet old, but with obviously prematurely gray curly hair and with unusually brilliant eyes, quickly darting from object to object. He was dressed in an old, expensive tailor's coat with a lambskin collar and a tall lambskin hat. Under the coat, when it was unbuttoned, one could see an undershirt and a Russian embroidered shirt. Another peculiarity of this gentleman was that he occasionally published strange noises, similar to clearing a throat or to a started and broken laugh.
During the entire journey, this gentleman diligently avoided communication and acquaintance with passengers. He answered his neighbors' entreaties briefly and sharply, and either read, or looked out the window, smoked, or, taking provisions from his old bag, drank tea, or had a snack.
It seemed to me that he was burdened by his loneliness, and I wanted to talk to him several times, but every time our eyes met, which happened often, since we were sitting diagonally opposite each other, he turned away and took up a book or looked out the window. .
During a stop, before the evening of the second day, at a large station, this nervous gentleman went for hot water and made myself some tea. The gentleman with neat new things, a lawyer, as I later learned, with his neighbor, a smoking lady in a half-man's coat, went to have tea at the station.
During the absence of the gentleman and the lady, several new faces entered the carriage, including a tall, shaven, wrinkled old man, obviously a merchant, in an ilk fur coat and a cloth cap with a huge visor. The merchant sat down opposite the lady's seat with the lawyer and immediately entered into a conversation with a young man, who looked like a merchant clerk, who also entered the carriage at this station.
I sat diagonally and, since the train was stationary, I could hear their conversation in fits and starts in those moments when no one was passing. The merchant first announced that he was going to his estate, which was only one station away; then, as always, they first started talking about prices, about trade, they talked, as always, about how Moscow trades now, then they started talking about the Nizhny Novgorod fair. The clerk began to talk about the carousings of some rich merchant known to both at the fair, but the old man did not let him finish and began to talk about the former carousings in Kunavin, in which he himself had participated. He was apparently proud of his participation in them and with visible joy told how he and this very acquaintance once did such a thing when drunk in Kunavin that it had to be told in a whisper and that the clerk laughed throughout the whole carriage, and the old man also laughed, baring his teeth two yellow teeth.
Not expecting to hear anything interesting, I got up to walk around the platform before the train left. At the door I met a lawyer and a lady, who were talking animatedly about something as they walked.
“You won’t have time,” the sociable lawyer told me, “the second call is now.”
And sure enough, I didn’t have time to reach the end of the cars when the bell rang. When I returned, a lively conversation continued between the lady and the lawyer. The old merchant sat silently opposite them, looking sternly ahead and occasionally chewing his teeth disapprovingly.
“Then she directly announced to her husband,” the lawyer said, smiling as I walked past him, “that she could not, and did not want to live with him, because...
And he began to tell me something further that I could not hear. More passengers followed me, the conductor passed, the crewman ran in, and for quite a long time there was noise, because of which the conversation could not be heard. When everything calmed down and I heard the lawyer’s voice again, the conversation obviously moved from a particular case to general considerations.
The lawyer talked about how the issue of divorce was now occupying public opinion in Europe and in our country, the same cases appeared more and more often. Noticing that his voice was the only one heard, the lawyer stopped his speech and turned to the old man.
– This wasn’t the case in the old days, was it? – he said, smiling pleasantly.
The old man wanted to answer something, but at that moment the train started moving, and the old man, taking off his cap, began to cross himself and read a prayer in a whisper. The lawyer, averting his eyes, waited politely. Having finished his prayer and triple baptism, the old man put on his cap straight and deeply, straightened himself in place and began to speak.
“It happened before, sir, only less,” he said. – At the present time, this cannot be the case. They have become very educated.
The train, moving faster and faster, rumbled at the skirmishes, and it was difficult for me to hear, but it was interesting, and I moved closer. My neighbor, a nervous gentleman with sparkling eyes, obviously also became interested and, without getting up from his seat, listened.
– What’s so bad about education? – the lady said, smiling slightly. “Is it really better to get married like in the old days, when the bride and groom didn’t even see each other?” - she continued, following the habit of many ladies, responding not to the words of her interlocutor, but to the words that she thought he would say. “They didn’t know whether they loved, whether they could love, but they married just anyone, and suffered all their lives; So, do you think this is better? - she said, obviously addressing me and the lawyer, but least of all the old man with whom she was speaking.
“They have become very educated,” repeated the merchant, looking contemptuously at the lady and leaving her question unanswered.
“It would be nice to know how you explain the connection between education and disagreement in marriage,” the lawyer said, smiling slightly.
The merchant wanted to say something, but the lady interrupted him.
“No, that time has passed,” she said. But the lawyer stopped her:
- No, let them express their thoughts.
“Education is nonsense,” the old man said decisively.
“They marry people who don’t love each other, and then they are surprised that they don’t live in agreement,” the lady was in a hurry to say, looking around at the lawyer and at me and even at the clerk, who, rising from his seat and leaning on his back, smiling, listened to the conversation . “After all, only animals can be mated as the owner wants, but people have their own inclinations and attachments,” she said, obviously wanting to offend the merchant.
| Kreutzer Sonata | |
|---|---|
|
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| Genre | Tale |
| Author | Lev Tolstoy |
| Original language | Russian |
| Date of writing | 1887-1889 |
| Date of first publication | 1890 |
| Quotes on Wikiquote | |
"Kreutzer Sonata"- a story by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1890 and immediately censored royal authorities. The book proclaims the ideal of abstinence and describes in the first person the wrath of jealousy. The title of the story was given by Sonata No. 9 for violin and piano by Ludwig van Beethoven, dedicated to the French violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer.
Summary[ | ]
Painting by the French artist Rene-Xavier Prine “The Kreutzer Sonata”, painted in 1901
On the train main character, Vasily Pozdnyshev, intervenes in the general conversation about love, describes how in his youth he was carefreely debauched, complains that women's dresses are designed to excite men's desires. Claims that women will never get equal rights, while men perceive them as an object of passion, while describing their power over men.
Pozdnyshev describes the events leading to the murder of his wife; since he did not marry for money or connections (she was poor), and also had the intention of maintaining “monogamy” after marriage, his pride knew no bounds. However, everything immediately went wrong, the honeymoon did not work out. On the third or fourth day, Pozdnyshev found his wife bored, began asking questions, hugged her, she began to cry, unable to explain. She was sad and heavy, and her face expressed unexpected coldness and hostility. Pozdnyshev did not yet understand that this hostility was normal and not a temporary state. But then a series of quarrels occurred, and Pozdnyshev felt that marriage was not something pleasant, but, on the contrary, very difficult, but he did not want to admit this to himself or others.
His wife admires the violinist, and together they play Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. Pozdnyshev, restraining and hiding his raging jealousy, leaves on business. Returning, he finds them together. The musician escapes, and Pozdnyshev kills his wife with a dagger.
Censorship [ | ]
Due to the unusual and scandalous nature of the work for that time, the publication of the “Kreutzer Sonata” in a magazine or as a separate publication was prohibited by censorship. Only after the writer's wife Sophia Tolstaya received a personal audience with Alexander III did the Tsar reluctantly allow the story to be published in volume 13 of Tolstoy's collected works. However, the censorship ban only increased the attractiveness of the story, which, long before publication, began to be distributed in lists and read in private homes.
In 1890, the American Postal Service banned the mailing of newspapers in which the story was published. Some American publishers, to advertise the story, published excerpts from it in the form of a separate brochure and distributed them with the help of street vendors in New York for a symbolic price. Carts even appeared in the city, on which in large letters it was written: “Forbidden by the Russian government and the Postmaster General of the United States best work Tolstoy’s “Kreutzer Sonata”. US President Theodore Roosevelt later described Tolstoy as "a man of perverted sexual morality."
Contemporary assessment[ | ]
Even taking into account that the normal freedom of speech in Russia, as elsewhere in Europe, is greater than is customary in America, I find the language of the “Kreutzer Sonata” overly explicit... Description of the honeymoon and their family life almost until the very moment of the final catastrophe, like what precedes it, is obscene.
American translator of Tolstoy Isabel Florence Hapgood
Tolstoy's opinions about syphilis, educational institutions, women's aversion to copulation, etc. not only can they be disputed, but also directly expose an ignorant person who did not bother to read two or three books written by specialists during his long life.
An extended quotation from Chekhov’s letter quoted above:
Didn't you like the Kreutzer Sonata? I won’t say that it was a work of genius, eternal - I’m not a judge here, but, in my opinion, in the mass of everything that is now being written here and abroad, it is hardly possible to find anything equivalent in importance of design and beauty execution. Not to mention the artistic merits, which are amazing in places, I thank the story for the mere fact that it excites thought to the extreme. Reading it, you can hardly resist shouting: “It’s true!” or “This is ridiculous!” True, it has very annoying shortcomings. In addition to everything that you have listed, there is one more thing in it that the author does not want to forgive, namely, the courage with which Tolstoy treats what he does not know and which, out of stubbornness, does not want to understand. Thus, his judgments about syphilis, educational institutions, women’s aversion to copulation, etc. not only can they be disputed, but also directly expose an ignorant person who did not bother to read two or three books written by specialists during his long life. But still, these shortcomings fly away like feathers from the wind; in view of the dignity of the story, you simply don’t notice them, and if you notice, you will only be annoyed that the story has not escaped the fate of all human affairs, which are all imperfect and not free from stains.
But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.(Matthew, V, 28). His disciples tell Him: if such is a man’s duty to his wife, then it is better not to marry. He said to them: Not everyone can receive this word, but to those who have been given it. For there are eunuchs who were born like this from their mother’s womb... and there are eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever can contain it, let him contain it.(Matthew xix, 10, 11, 12).
