Tolstoy Leo : Death of Ivan Ilych (Sc) by Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy Gra

Tolstoy Leo : Death of Ivan Ilych (Sc) by Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy Gra

With an Introduction and Notes by Dr T.C.B.Cook.

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time.

In the early story Family Happiness, Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In The Kreutzer Sonata he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in The Devil a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality.

This volume also includes an Introduction and Notes written specially for this Wordsworth edition by Dr Tim Cook, formely lecturer in literature at the Universities of Kingston and Ulster. Previous work contributed by Dr Cook for Wordsworth includes an introduction and notes to Charles Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby.

Count Leo Tolstoy was one of the world's greatest novelists (War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and others), yet in the late middle of his life, he gave up novel-writing to pursue a personal journey toward his own spirituality. He was not satisfied with the Russian Orthodox traditions, nor with the attacks by Renan and others from the rationalist camp, on the merits or defects of Christianity. Tolstoy produced four books in his search for the true meaning of Jesus' teachings. Here's how he describes it: I found myself in the position of a person who has been given a sack of stinking filth, and after a long hard struggle has found that there really are precious pearls in this sack of filth; he realizes that he is not himself to blame for his aversion to the stinking mud, and not only is he blameless, but also those people who had gathered and saved these pearls along with the mud are worthy of love and respect. But all the same, he doesn't know what he should do with these jewels mixed in with the mud. Up to this time, I found myself in an agonizing position until I became convinced that the pearls hadn't fused with the mud and could be cleaned up.... I sought the answer to the question of life-not of theology or history-and so for me it was utterly unimportant whether Jesus Christ was god or human, and where the holy ghost comes from, and so forth, and that's why it wasn't important or necessary to know when and by whom each Gospel was written and which parable can or can't be linked to Christ. ... At the beginning of my work I still had doubts, and tried unnatural explanations, but the longer I went on, the work and unquestionable truth stood out firmer and clearer. I was like a person gathering broken bits of a statue-at the beginning there still can be doubt about whether this piece is part of a foot or hand, but when the feet come together, then already one knows that the piece isn't likely to belong to the feet-but when, against this, the piece fits with another side piece and all lines of fracture coincide with those of the lower pieces, then indeed there can't be any doubt. This present publication is a distillation of his research: biblical texts, with Tolstoy's own elegant reconstruction of Jesus' teaching, tied specifically to the lines of the Lord's Prayer. His conclusion is startling, with five specific commandments to replace the traditional ten commandments. Here is the source of the modern doctrine of non-violence.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780451516763
ISBN 10	0451516761
Title	Tolstoy Leo : Death of Ivan Ilych (Sc)
Author	Count Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy 1828-1910 Gra
Series	Signet Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Penguin Random House Australia
Year published	1987-08-01
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.