While perhaps best known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the Russian author and religious thinker Leo Tolstoy was also a prolific author of short fiction. This Standard Ebooks production compiles all of Tolstoy’s short stories and novellas written from 1852 up to his death, arranged in order of their original publication.
The stories in this collection vary enormously in size and scope, from short, page-length fables composed for the education of schoolchildren, to full novellas like “Family Happiness.” Readers who are familiar with Tolstoy’s life and religious experiences—as detailed, for example, in his spiritual memoir A Confession—may be able to trace the events of Tolstoy’s life through the changing subjects of these stories. Some early stories, like “The Raid” and the “Sevastopol” sketches, draw from Tolstoy’s experiences in the Caucasian War and the Crimean War when he served in the Imperial Russian Army, while other early stories like “Recollections of a Scorer” and “Two Hussars” reflect Tolstoy’s personal struggle with gambling addiction.
Later stories in the collection, written during and after Tolstoy’s 1870s conversion to Christian anarcho-pacifism (a spiritual and religious philosophy described in detail in his treatise The Kingdom of God is Within You), frequently reflect either Tolstoy’s own experiences in spiritual struggle (e.g. “The Death of Ivan Ilyitch”) or his interpretation of the New Testament (e.g. “The Forged Coupon”), or both. Many later stories, like “Three Questions” and “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” are explicitly didactic in nature and are addressed to a popular audience to promote his religious ideals and views on social and economic justice.
felt tranquil and happy. At ten o’clock I said goodnight to Auntie211 (Sónya was then still as usual and said she would follow me) and I went off to bed. Through my sleep I heard her open the door and heard her breathe as she undressed. … I heard how she came out from behind the screen and approached the bed. I opened my eyes … and saw—not the Sónya you and I have known—but a porcelain Sónya! Made of that very porcelain about which your parents had a dispute. You know those porcelain dolls with bare cold shoulders, and necks and arms bent forward, but made of the same lump of porcelain as the body. They have black painted hair arranged in large waves, the paint of which gets rubbed off at the top, and protruding porcelain eyes that are too wide and are also painted black at the corners, and the stiff porcelain folds of their skirts are made of the same one piece of porcelain as the rest. And Sónya was like that! I touched her arm—she was smooth, pleasant to feel, and cold porcelain. I thought I was asleep and gave myself a shake, but she remained like that and stood before me immovable. I said: Are you porcelain? And without opening her mouth (which remained as it was, with curved lips painted bright red) she replied: Yes, I am porcelain. A shiver ran down my back. I looked at her legs: they also were porcelain and (you can imagine my horror) fixed on a porcelain stand, made of one piece with herself, representing the ground and painted green to depict grass. By her left leg, a little above and at the back of the knee, there was a porcelain column, coloured brown and probably representing the stump of a tree. This too was in one piece with her. I understood that without this stump she could not remain erect, and I became very sad, as you who loved her can imagine. I still did not believe my senses and began to call her. She could not move without that stump and its base, and only rocked a little—together with the base—to fall in my direction. I heard how the porcelain base knocked against the floor. I touched her again, and she was all smooth, pleasant, and cold porcelain. I tried to lift her hand, but could not. I tried to pass a finger, or even a nail, between her elbow and her side—but it was impossible. The obstacle was the same porcelain mass, such as is made at Auerbach’s, and of which sauce-boats are made. She was planned for external appearance only. I began to examine her chemise, it was all of one piece with the body, above and below. I looked more closely, and noticed that at the bottom a bit of the fold of her chemise was broken off and it showed brown. At the top of her head it showed white where the paint had come off a little. The paint had also come off a lip in one place, and a bit was chipped off one shoulder. But it was all so well made and so natural that it was still our same Sónya. And the chemise was one I knew, with lace, and there was a knot of black hair behind, but of porcelain, and the fine slender hands, and large eyes, and the lips—all were the same, but of porcelain. And the dimple in her chin and the small bones in front of her shoulders, were there too, but of porcelain. I was in a terrible state and did not know what to say or do or think. She would have been glad to help me, but what could a porcelain creature do? The half-closed eyes, the eyelashes and eyebrows, were all like her living self when looked at from a distance. She did not look at me, but past me at her bed. She evidently wanted to lie down, and rocked on her pedestal all the time. I quite lost control of myself, seized her, and tried to take her to her bed. My fingers made no impression on her cold porcelain body, and what surprised me yet more was that she had become as light as an empty flask. And suddenly she seemed to shrink, and became quite small, smaller than the palm of my hand, although she still looked just the same. I seized a pillow, put her in a corner of it, pressed down another corner with my fist, and placed her there, then I took her nightcap, folded it in four, and covered her up to the head with it. She lay there still just the same. Then I extinguished the candle and placed her under my beard. Suddenly I heard her voice from the comer of the pillow: “Lëva, why have I become porcelain?” I did not know what to reply. She said again: “Does it make any difference that I am porcelain?” I did not want to grieve her, and said that it did not matter. I felt her again in the dark—she was still as before, cold and porcelain. And her stomach was the same as when she was alive, protruding upwards—rather unnatural for a porcelain doll. Then I experienced a strange feeling. I suddenly felt it pleasant that she should be as she was, and ceased to feel surprised—it all seemed natural. I took her out, passed her from one hand to the other, and tucked her under my head. She liked it all. We fell asleep. In the morning I got up and went out without looking at her. All that had happened the day before seemed so terrible. When I returned for lunch she had again become such as she always was. I did not remind her of what had happened the day before, fearing to grieve her and Auntie. I have not yet told anyone but
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