A spiritual crisis led to three masterpieces

After publishing War and Bao I I am Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) goes through a deep spiritual crisis and abandons literature. He begins a phase dedicated to organizing his thought into a group of articles and his social and religious concerns. But even if he decides to give up the letters, his imagination is too fertile to be stopped. In those years he turned his back on imagination, and three masterpieces were born: Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), La Kreutzer Sonata (1889) ed Hajj Murad (1896-1904). The contemplations of the great novels—love, vanity, and war—are condensed into three masterful exercises in introspection.

And in the first novels. Death of Ivan IlyichTolstoy tells us about the psychological state derived from how an incurable disease can interfere in a person and how feelings become weak in the people surrounding the patient. Criticism of the novel did not take long: Tolstoy detests the school and its disastrous consequences. Ivan Ilyich proposes the deschooling of society, the deinstitutionalization of ideas and people, and suggests that education is not a requirement for pursuing a profession or getting a job. Therefore, the school monopolizes education, but in reality it is anti-education. At best, it provides education, but by no means does it provide education. And he eventually makes everyone hate him.

Against the hypocrisy of bourgeois values

a La Kreutzer Sonata, the second of the short novels – also published this year in Flaneur, translated by Miquel Cabal-Joaro -, Tolstoy tells the story of Poznyshev, who explains to a fellow traveler the reasons that prompted him to kill his wife. Through his novel, Tolstoy accuses the hypocrisy of bourgeois values, a veil of illusion that does not cover the hidden motives and violence inherent in human relations. The protagonist’s crime finds its symbolic expression in the opening chords of the song Kreutzer Sonata By Beethoven. Music acts like a killer’s knife: both tear apart the veil of appearances. In many respects, the biographical filter is not at all thin: Tolstoy recounts the relationship with his wife, Sofya Andreevna, as well as real episodes of their shared life. Under the influence of naturalism, the book is a detailed analysis of a marital relationship shared in the sick society in which its heroes move, achieved through the critical and painful vision of a soul tormented by the mediocrity and fragility of human nature. In the epilogue, Tolstoy challenges widespread abstinence and describes chastity as an ideal that provides guidance, rather than as a fixed rule. From a purely religious point of view, he says that it was the Church, not Jesus Christ, who instituted the sacrament of marriage. Physical love, in his opinion, is an obstacle to serving God.

with Hajj Murad The author writes a fashion novel about a war in which the brave protagonist – a bandit for some, a hero for others known for his cruelty during the Holy Wars in the Caucasus against Imperial Russia – has to flee from the Russians to save his life. life. Those who betrayed him pursued him, fought him, and killed him. One of the main themes in this novel is the futility of war. Tolstoy talks about unnecessary death and the destruction it causes. Many of the events narrated are the author’s real experiences. Beginning and ending the story with the symbol of the desert thorn fighting for life, through the fortitude of the main character Tolstoy contemplates universal themes of loyalty, revenge, leadership, determinism and war.