Short Fiction by Leo Tolstoy (book reader for pc TXT) 📕
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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.
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- Author: Leo Tolstoy
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The neighbor laughed, and said:—
“Well, then, after you have burnt up your ceiling, then you will be tearing down your house. You won’t have anywhere to live; only the oven will be left, and even that will be cold!”
“Well, that is my misfortune,” said the man. “All my neighbors have firewood enough for all winter; but I have already burnt up my fences and the ceiling of my house, and have nothing left.”
The neighbor replied:—
“All you need is to have your oven rebuilt.”
But the man said:—
“I know well that you are jealous of my house and my oven because they are larger than yours, and so you advise me to rebuild it.”
And he turned a deaf ear to his neighbor’s advice, and burnt up his ceiling, and burnt up his whole house, and had to go and live with strangers.
The Great BearA long, long time ago there was a big drought on the earth. All the rivers dried up and the streams and wells, and the trees withered and the bushes and grass, and men and beasts died of thirst.
One night a little girl went out with a pitcher to find some water for her sick mother. She wandered and wandered everywhere, but could find no water, and she grew so tired that she lay down on the grass and fell asleep. When she awoke and took up the pitcher she nearly upset the water it contained. The pitcher was full of clear, fresh water. The little girl was glad and was about to put it to her lips, but she remembered her mother and ran home with the pitcher as fast as she could. She hurried so much that she did not notice a little dog in her path; she stumbled over it and dropped the pitcher. The dog whined pitifully; the little girl seized the pitcher.
She thought the water would have been upset, but the pitcher stood upright and the water was there as before. She poured a little into the palm of her hand and the dog lapped it and was comforted. When the little girl again took up the pitcher, it had turned from common wood to silver. She took the pitcher home and gave it to her mother.
The mother said, “I shall die just the same; you had better drink it,” and she handed the pitcher to the child. In that moment the pitcher turned from silver to gold. The little girl could no longer contain herself and was about to put the pitcher to her lips, when the door opened and a stranger entered who begged for a drink. The little girl swallowed her saliva and gave the pitcher to him. And suddenly seven large diamonds sprang out of the pitcher and a stream of clear, fresh water flowed from it. And the seven diamonds began to rise, and they rose higher and higher till they reached the sky and became the Great Bear.
The FoundlingA poor woman had a daughter by the name of Másha. Másha went in the morning to fetch water, and saw at the door something wrapped in rags. When she touched the rags, there came from it the sound of “Ooah, ooah, ooah!” Másha bent down and saw that it was a tiny, red-skinned baby. It was crying aloud: “Ooah, ooah!”
Másha took it into her arms and carried it into the house, and gave it milk with a spoon. Her mother said:
“What have you brought?”
“A baby. I found it at our door.”
The mother said:
“We are poor as it is; we have nothing to feed the baby with; I will go to the chief and tell him to take the baby.”
Másha began to cry, and said:
“Mother, the child will not eat much; leave it here! See what red, wrinkled little hands and fingers it has!”
Her mother looked at them, and she felt pity for the child. She did not take the baby away. Másha fed and swathed the child, and sang songs to it, when it went to sleep.
The Peasant and the CucumbersA peasant once went to the gardener’s, to steal cucumbers. He crept up to the cucumbers, and thought:
“I will carry off a bag of cucumbers, which I will sell; with the money I will buy a hen. The hen will lay eggs, hatch them, and raise a lot of chicks. I will feed the chicks and sell them; then I will buy me a young sow, and she will bear a lot of pigs. I will sell the pigs, and buy me a mare; the mare will foal me some colts. I will raise the colts, and sell them. I will buy me a house, and start a garden. In the garden I will sow cucumbers, and will not let them be stolen, but will keep a sharp watch on them. I will hire watchmen, and put them in the cucumber patch, while I myself will come on them, unawares, and shout: ‘Oh, there, keep a sharp lookout!’ ”
And this he shouted as loud as he could. The watchmen heard it, and they rushed out and beat the peasant.
The FireDuring harvest-time the men and women went out to work. In the village were left only the old and the very young. In one hut there remained a grandmother with her three grandchildren.
The grandmother made a fire in the oven, and lay down to rest herself. Flies kept alighting on her and biting her. She covered her head with a towel and fell asleep. One of the grandchildren, Másha (she was three years old), opened the oven, scraped some coals into a potsherd, and went into the vestibule. In the vestibule lay sheaves: the women were getting them bound.
Másha brought the coals, put them under the sheaves, and began to blow. When the straw caught fire, she was glad; she went into the hut and took her
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