DOCSLIB.ORG

Walk in the Light & Twenty-Three Tales Walk in the Light & Twenty-Three Tales

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Walk in the Light & Twenty-Three Tales Walk in the Light & Twenty-Three Tales Walk in the Light & Twenty-three Tales Walk in the Light & Twenty-three Tales LEO TOLSTOY Translated from the Russian by Louise and Aylmer Mau Translated from the Russian by Louise and Aylmer Maude Please share a link to this e-book with your friends. Feel free to post and share links to this e-book, or you may e-mail or print this book in its entirety or in part, but please do not alter it in any way, and please do not post or offer copies of this e-book for download on another website or through another Internet-based download service. If you wish to make multiple hard copies for wider distribution, or to reprint portions in a newsletter or periodical, please observe the following restrictions: • You may not reproduce it for commercial gain. • You must include this credit line: “Copyright 2011 by The Plough Publishing House. Used with permission.” Walk in the Light While There is Light andTwenty-Three Tales were translated from the Russian by Louise and Aylmer Maude. Cover art (wood cut of Tolstoy) by Karl Mahr, for Gemeinschafts-Verlag Eberhard Arnold, Sannerz/Leipzig. This e-book is a publication of The Plough Publishing House, Rifton, NY 12471 USA (www.plough.com) and Robertsbridge, East Sussex, TN32 5DR, UK (www.ploughbooks.co.uk) Copyright © 2011 by Plough Publishing House Rifton, NY 12471 USA Contents Walk in the Light While There Is Light A Talk among Leisured People ................................................2 Walk in the Light While There Is Light ..............................6 Twenty-three Tales Part i Tales for Children......................................................... 51 God Sees the Truth, but Waits ............................................ 52 A Prisoner in the Caucasus................................................... 59 The Bear-Hunt ...................................................................... 82 Part i i Popular Stories .......................................................... 90 What Men Live By ................................................................. 91 A Spark Neglected Burns the House .................................110 Two Old Men ........................................................................123 Where Love Is, God Is ..........................................................143 Part iii A Fairy Tale .................................................................154 The Story of Ivan the Fool.................................................. 155 Part iv Stories Written to Pictures .................................... 179 Evil Allures, but Good Endures ........................................ 180 Little Girls Wiser than Men .............................................183 Ilyas......................................................................................... 185 Part v Folktales Retold ........................................................190 The Three Hermits ................................................................ 191 C o n t e n t s iv The Imp and the Crust ....................................................... 197 How Much Land Does a Man Need? .................................. 201 A Grain as Big as a Hen’s Egg ..............................................215 The Godson ..........................................................................218 The Repentant Sinner ......................................................... 234 The Empty Drum ................................................................. 237 Part vi Adaptations from the French ..................................244 The Coffeehouse of Surat ................................................. 245 Too Dear! ..............................................................................252 Part vii Stories Given to Aid the Persecuted Jews ............ 256 Esarhaddon, King of Assyria ............................................. 257 Work, Death, and Sickness: A Legend .............................. 262 Three Questions ................................................................. 265 Wa l k I n t h e L i g h t Wa l k i n t h e L i g h t W h i l e T h e r e I s L i g h t A Talk among Leisured People An Introduction to the Story that Follows Some guests assembled at a wealthy house one day happened to start a serious conversation about life. They spoke of people present and absent, but failed to find anyone who was satisfied with his life. Not only could no one boast of happiness, but not a single person considered that he was living as a Christian should do. All confessed that they were living worldly lives con­ cerned only for themselves and their families, none of them thinking of their neighbors, still less of God. So said all the guests, and all agreed in blaming themselves for living god­ less and unchristian lives. “Then why do we live so?” exclaimed a youth. “Why do we do what we ourselves disapprove of? Have we no power to change our way of life? We ourselves admit that we are ruined by our luxury, our effeminacy, our riches, and above all by our pride –our separation from our fellow men. To be noble and rich we have to deprive ourselves of all that gives man joy. We crowd into towns, become effeminate, ruin our health, and in spite of all our amusements we die of ennui, and of regrets that our life is not what it should be. “Why do we live so? Why do we spoil our lives and all the good that God gives us? I don’t want to live in that old way! I will abandon the studies I have begun–they would only bring me to the same tormenting life of which we are all now complaining. I will renounce my property and go to the country and live among the poor. I will work with them, will learn to labor with my hands, and if my education is of any use to the poor I will share it with them, not through institutions and books but directly by living with them in a brotherly way. “Yes, I have made up my mind,” he added, looking inquiringly at his fa­ ther, who was also present. “Your wish is a worthy one,” said his father, “but thoughtless and ill-con­ sidered. It seems so easy to you only because you do not know life. There A Ta l k A m o n g L e i s u r e d Pe o p l e 3 are many things that seem to us good, but the execution of what is good is complicated and difficult. It is hard enough to walk well on a beaten track, but it is harder still to lay out a new one. New paths are made only by men who are thoroughly mature and have mastered all that is attainable by man. It seems to you easy to make new paths of life only because you do not yet understand life. It is an outcome of thoughtlessness and youthful pride. We old folk are needed to moderate your impulsiveness and guide you by our experience, and you young folk should obey us in order to profit by that experience. Your active life lies before you. You are now growing up and developing. Finish your education, make yourself thoroughly conversant with things, get on to your own feet, have firm convictions of your own, and then start a new life if you feel you have strength to do so. But for the present you should obey those who are guiding you for your own good, and not try to open up new paths of life.” The youth was silent and the older guests agreed with what the father had said. “You are right,” said a middle-aged married man, turning to the youth’s father. “It is true that the lad, lacking experience of life, may blunder when seeking new paths of life and his decision cannot be a firm one. But you know we all agreed that our life is contrary to our conscience and does not give us happiness. So we cannot but recognize the justice of wishing to escape from it. “The lad may mistake his fancy for a reasonable deduction, but I, who am no longer young, tell you for myself that as I listened to the talk this evening the same thought occurred to me. It is plain to me that the life I now live cannot give me peace of mind or happiness. Experience and reason alike show me that. Then what am I waiting for? We struggle from morning to night for our families, but it turns out that we and our families live ungodly lives and get more and more sunk in sins. We work for our families, but our families are no better off, because we are not doing the right thing for them. And so I often think that it would be better if I changed my whole way of life and did just what that young man proposed to do: ceased to bother about my wife and children and began to think about my soul. Not for nothing did Paul say: ‘He that is married careth how he may please his wife, but he that is unmarried careth how he may please the Lord.’” But before he had finished speaking his wife and all the women present began to attack him. “You ought to have thought about that before,” said an elderly woman. Wa l k I n t h e L i g h t A Ta l k A m o n g L e i s u r e d Pe o p l e 4 “You have put on the yoke, so you must draw your load. Like that, everyone will say he wishes to go off and save his soul when it seems hard to him to sup­ port and feed his family. That is false and cowardly. No! A man should be able to live in godly fashion with his family. Of course it would be easy enough to save your own soul all by yourself. But to behave like that would be to run contrary to Christ’s teaching. God bade us love others; but in that way you would in His name offend others. No. A married man has his definite obliga­ tions and he must not shirk them.It’s different when your family are already on their own feet. But no one has a right to force his family.” But the man who had spoken did not agree. “I don’t want to abandon my family,” he said. “All I say is that my family should not be brought up in a worldly fashion, nor brought up to live for their own pleasure, as we have just been saying, but should be brought up from their early days to become accustomed to privation, to labor, to the service to others, and above all to live a brotherly life with all men.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Tolstoy's Short Fiction, Ed. by Michael R. Katz
    BOOK REVIEWS: Michael R. Katz, ed. Tolstoy's Short Fiction. New York: W.W. Norton & co., 1991. 503 pp. Like Homer, Tolstoy is homo duorum librorum. But if the hazards of transmission prevented even the Roman world from knowing more of Homer's creation, except by wistful hypothesis, Tolstoy's legacy beyond the two epics is bounteous and diverse, disengaged from the shadow of the major works while yet offering, as Homer's lost Margites apparently did, a commentary on them. outside the novels, Tolstoy's stories comprise the amplest and the most influencial body of fiction he produced. Like his admired predecessor, Tolstoy gave us a long work about society in the moment of finding its heroes, and a comparable study of society disconnected from heroism and the means of achieving it. The stories, in contrast, tend to deemphasize the dialectic between polis and person. Characters more often observe themselves than others, and the intense moments of bearing witness from which characters in the novels profit--Levin seeing his brother die, Pierre watching the downfall of his wife--are presented to the reader undigested by a second textual consciousness which the narrator esteems. This lack of a significant internal audience to action creates a fiction very different from War and Peace and Anna Karenina. The connection which Tolstoy believed art must demonstrate between people is demonstrated between reader and text. Michael Katz's Norton critical Edition brings together much of Tolstoy's best short fiction: "Sevastopol" (December, May), "Three Deaths," "Family Happiness," "God Sees the Truth, But Waits," "The Death of Ivan Ilych," "The Three Hermits," "The Kreutzer Sonata," "Master and Man," and "Alyosha the Pot." Except for the last story, translated by S.A.
    [Show full text]
  • The Northumbria Community Newsletter CAIM How Shall We Sing the Lord’S Song in a Strange Land?
    Issue 61 Summer 2012 The Northumbria Community Newsletter CAIM How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? An invitation from Trevor Miller: CAIM is the Celtic Pray as you can, not as you can’t word meaning One foundational aspect of prayer taught by the Church ‘encompassment’ Fathers is so basic that it can easily become a case of or ‘encircling’ ‘familiarity breeding contempt’. It is this: in seeking to understand prayer the spiritual masters were more interested in the state of the heart before God rather than the techniques used and so would summarise it something like this: By far the most important thing for us, if we want to pray, is to seriously undertake to become the kind of people who can pray, who have room in their lives for a Inside this issue: God to whom they can pray; then “pray as you can, not as you can’t.” Pray As You Can 1 This well used maxim from the ‘Spiritual letters of Dom John Chapman’ is a great Journeying With example of the kind of authentic prayer expression encouraged in the Northumbria Community. Henri Nouwen in his L’Arche journal ‘The Road to Daybreak’ gives a Hild 4 really helpful example of this by quoting a summarised version of ‘The Three Story of a Hermits’ story written by Leo Tolstoy in the 19th century, that for me gets to the very heart of prayer. Walled Garden 5 “Three Russian monks lived on a faraway island. Nobody ever went there, but one day IBTS visit 6 their bishop decided to make a pastoral visit.
    [Show full text]
  • On Insanity. Written in 1910 the Year of Tolstoy's Death and Now Published
    On Insanity Leo Tolstoy 1910 translated by Ludvig Perno C.W. Daniel Co. Ltd., London, 1936 Source: Collection of the State Library of Victoria, Australia I In the course of many months, and particularly of late, I have been receiving daily two or three letters ftJ which young people, especially young ladies, write to me saying that they have 1ecided to do away with themselves. For some reason or other they refer to me, hoping that I, by some advice of mine, shall save them from this. These letters are of three different types. The first, the most common type, is either that of a village schoolmistress who for the sake of serving common people wishes to give up her occupation to go to college, obviously thinking that the standard of her education is not high enough to enlighten the common people, and she imagines her desire to be so strong and elevated that she has decided to do away with herself if ft cannot be realised; of an exalted youth threatening to commit suicide if nobody comes forward to help him to develop his, as he feels, wonderful talents; of an inventor wishing to confer a blessing on mankind; of a poet feeling himself to be a genius; of a young lady preferring to die if she is unable to go to college; of a woman who has fallen in love with the husband of somebody else; or of a man who has fallen in love with a married woman. The writers of these letters differ according to their sex, age, or social position, but they all have one thing in common, namely, the blind, crude egoism which blots out everything else for them except their own personality.
    [Show full text]
  • In the Image of God
    IN THE IMAGE OF GOD The Rev. J. Donald Waring Grace Church in New York Trinity Sunday + June 7, 2020 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27) Leo Tolstoy was a 19th and early-20th century Russian author who is widely acclaimed to be one of the greatest writers of all time. Tolstoy is perhaps best known for his novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina. But in 1886 he published a short story entitled The Three Hermits. The story goes that a bishop on a sea voyage comes upon a small island where three elderly hermits live alone, praying for the salvation of their souls and for the souls of others. The bishop, believing it is his calling to teach the Christian faith, persuades the ship’s captain to stop so he can meet the hermits and instruct them. Once ashore he finds the three ancient, godly men, but quickly realizes that their understanding of Christian doctrine is rather inadequate, even heretical. When the bishop asks them how they pray, one of the hermits replies, “We pray like this: ‘Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us!’” Then all three of them raise their eyes to heaven and repeat, “Three are ye, three are we, have mercy upon us!” The bishop smiles at their childlike prayer, saying, “Obviously, you’ve heard something about the Holy Trinity, but you don’t pray correctly.” So the bishop spends the rest of the day painstakingly teaching them to pray the Our Father.
    [Show full text]
  • Twenty-Three Tales by Tolstoy
    TWENTY-THREE TALES BY TOLSTOY TRANSLATED BY L. AND A. MAUDE Originally published by FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY NEW YORK 1907 Scanned and edited by Harry Plantinga, 1995 This etext is in the public domain. PREFACE THIS volume is divided into seven parts. First we have Tales for Children, published about the year 1872, and reminding us of the time when Tolstoy was absorbed in efforts to educate the peasant children. This section of the book contains the two stories which of all that he has written Tolstoy likes best. In What is Art? he claims no place among examples of good art for any of his own productions 'except for the story God sees the Truth, but Waits, which seeks a place in the first class (religious art), and A Prisoner in the Caucasus, which belongs to the second (universal art).' In the first of these the subject (a favourite one with Tolstoy) is the forgiveness of injuries. The second deals with the simplest feelings common to all men: fear and courage, pity, endurance, &c.' expressed with that individuality, clearness, and sincerity, which Tolstoy says are the signs of true art. Part II contains a series of stories written for the people; and among them What Men Live By, probably the most widely circulated of all Tolstoy's tales. It is founded on the oft-repeated legend of an angel sent by God to live for a while among men. Part III consists of a Fairy Tale, Iván the Fool, which contains in popular form Tolstoy's indictment of militarism and commercialism.
    [Show full text]
  • Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17
    “Making the Trinity Personal” Richmond’s First Baptist Church, May 30, 2021 Trinity Sunday John 3:1-17 When I first told the story of Nicodemus to my son, it was very familiar to me, and being a storyteller, I thought I told it pretty well. He was four years old. When I finished, he said, “Mom, why does Jesus give the Pharisees such a hard time? They were just a group of boys trying to follow the rules.” Suddenly schooled by a four year old, I knew I wasn’t telling the story right. I had to go back to the beginning and think it out for myself. Maybe I’d got the story wrong. I mentioned this to Rabbi Jack Spiro at dinner at Richmond Hill one night. I learned as a girl in Jerusalem that to talk to people of other faiths invigorated my own and deepened my respect for others. My Muslim and Jewish friends did not need me to be Muslim or Jewish. They need me to be a good and thoughtful Christian. Rabbi Spiro said that my four year old was right to be dismayed. The Pharisees were a learned and respected group. Jesus himself may have been a Pharisee. The Apostle Paul certainly was. The Pharisees set the foundation for lively rabbinic study as we know it today. I had to go back to this story with fresh eyes--never a bad idea when it comes to scripture. I have been fascinated by the story of Nicodemus ever since. The way I now see it, It was a dark yet cloudless night.
    [Show full text]
  • Tolstoy and Bloomsbury
    TOLSTOY AND BLOOMSBURY GALYA DIMENT, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON .... of the three great Russian writers, it is To Istoi who most enthralls us and most repels. Virginia Woolf For most of members of the circle which came to be known as the "Bloomsbury Group, ,,1 Tolstoy, unlike Dickens or Thackeray, was more of a contemporary than a writer from the previous era. Their connection with Tolstoy was constantly kept alive by those among them who were most active in England's burgeoning Tolstoy "industry" in the beginning of this century: David ('Bunny') Garnett's mother, Constance, was one of Tolstoy's English translators; Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster were instrumental in presenting Tolstoy to post-Victorian generations; and Woolf's husband, Leonard, even attempted to learn Russian in order to translate and publish Gorky's Reminiscences of Tolstoy. 2 In their writings, letters, diaries, and public statements, Bloomsbury's writers, critics, historians and even painters often appeared to engage in a direct dialogue with Tolstoy and to formulate their own ideas by actively arguing or agreeing with his. This "intimacy" with a foreign writer may seem particularly strange if one remembers that these same people frequently had little more than disdain for Tolstoy's counterparts and contemporaries in their own llterature. 11 am using the term loosely, mostly applying it to Virginia Woolf and her large circle of friends and acquaintances. It is not my purpose here either to define what "Bloomsbury" was or to argue who rightfully "belonged" to it. I am aware that E.M. Forster is usually seen as having been but on the "periphery" of Bloomsbury while Katherine Mansfield, although on friendly terms with at least some of the "essential" members of the group (i.e.
    [Show full text]
  • The Gospel in Tolstoy: Selections from His Short Stories,Spiritual
    Leo Tolstoy This is a preview. Get entire book here. The Gospel in Tolstoy Selections from His Short Stories, Spiritual Writings, and Novels Leo Tolstoy Edited by Miriam LeBlanc With Artwork by Fritz Eichenberg Plough Publishing House This is a preview. Get entire book here. Published by Plough Publishing House Walden, New York Robertsbridge, England Elsmore, Australia www.plough.com Copyright © 2015 by Plough Publishing House All rights reserved. PRINT isbn: 978-0-87486-670-4 epub isbn: 978-0-87486-671-1 mobi isbn: 978-0-87486-672-8 pdf isbn: 978-0-87486-673-5 Cover woodcut by Karl Mahr, 1923 for Gemeinschafts-Verlag Eberhard Arnold, Sannerz / Leipzig Artwork in the book interior is wood engravings by Fritz Eichenberg. The artwork on the frontispiece and on page 140 is from Eichenberg’s illustrations for Tolstoy’s Resurrection (New York: The Heritage Press, 1963). Eichenberg prepared the other engravings (on pages 2, 50, 106, 208, and 252) for the Catholic Worker newspaper. Artwork is copyright © 2015 by the Estate of Fritz Eichenberg. Used with permission. Translations are by Louise and Aylmer Maude, Constance Garnett, and David Patterson, as described in “Note on the Translations” (page 326). The extract from David Patterson’s translation of Tolstoy’s Confession (W. W. Norton, 1983) is copy- right © 1983 by David Patterson and used with permission. This is a preview. Get entire book here. To the Reader Although more than a century has passed since his death, for millions of readers the works of Leo Tolstoy (1828– 1910) have only grown in their power and appeal.
    [Show full text]
  • Economies of Salvation in English Anchoritic Texts, 1100-1400
    University of South Florida Scholar Commons Graduate Theses and Dissertations Graduate School April 2019 Economies of Salvation in English Anchoritic Texts, 1100-1400 Joshua Edward Britt University of South Florida, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, and the Medieval History Commons Scholar Commons Citation Britt, Joshua Edward, "Economies of Salvation in English Anchoritic Texts, 1100-1400" (2019). Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7751 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Graduate Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Economies of Salvation in English Anchoritic Texts, 1100-1400 by Joshua Edward Britt A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Florida Major Professor: Giovanna Benadusi, Ph.D. Anne Koenig, Ph.D. William Murray, Ph.D. Jennifer Dukes-Knight, Ph.D. Date of Approval: April 15, 2019 Keywords: Medieval English Anchorites, Salvation, Mysticism, Hermits, Twelfth-Century Vitae Copyright © 2019, Joshua Edward Britt Dedication To my parents, Bruce and Linda; and my in-laws, Kathy, Ken, and Judy. Without your support, this project would not have been possible. To my children, Ella, Claire, and Griffin. You shared your dad with this seemingly endless work. Most of all, this is dedicated to my wife, Kimberly. Your sacrifices and patient, steadfast love truly made this project possible, and any honors for its completion belong as much to you (if not more) as to me.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermits and Hermitages
    HERMITS AND HERMITAGES The purpose of this accounting is to remind those who seen in WALDEN a piece of escape literature that, were the significant and unique thing about Thoreau the fact that he chose for a period to live alone close to nature, there are persons other than he, actual hermits, who would be more primarily relevant to our interest. “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Hermits and Hermitages HDT WHAT? INDEX HERMITS AND HERMITAGES “Meeting a Hermit I FOUND in one of my rambles up the hills a real hermit, living in a lonesome spot, hard to get at, rocky, the view fine, with a little patch of land two rods square. A man of youngish middle age, city born and raised, had been to school, had travel’d in Europe and California. I first met him once or twice on the road, and pass’d the time of day, with some small talk; then, the third time, he ask’d me to go along a bit and rest in his hut (an almost unprecedented compliment, as I heard from others afterwards.) He was of Quaker stock, I think; talk’d with ease and moderate freedom, but did not unbosom his life, or story, or tragedy, or whatever it was.” — Walt Whitman THE THREE HERMITS BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS THREE old hermits took the air By a cold and desolate sea, First was muttering a prayer, Second rummaged for a flea; On a windy stone, the third, Giddy with his hundredth year, Sang unnoticed like a bird: “Though the Door of Death is near And what waits behind the door, Three times in a single
    [Show full text]
  • Wittgenstein on War and Peace1
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE 161 provided by Repositori d'Objectes Digitals per a l'Ensenyament la... NICOLÁS SÁNCHEZ DURÁ WITTGENSTEIN ON WAR AND PEACE1 In the title of this essay there is an immediate echo of Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel. However, before taking this Russian writer as the leitmotiv for my point of view, I will make some comments about the legitimacy of using the notes, letters, diaries, conversations and testimonies of the author of the Tractatus as a basis for reconstructing what he thought about this matter, since the texts by him that were published or intended to be pub- lished do not enable us to do so. Luigi Perissinotto has urged this caution concerning the use of private texts in the case of religion.2 With regard to war and peace, or pacifism, the question is even thornier because we do not even have notes for his classes, or all the remarks about religion that he jotted down in On Certainty, for example. All the same, I think it is legitimate to reconstruct Wittgenstein’s thoughts about war by commenting on texts of this kind because, in the first place, I consider that philosophy is an authorial genre. To put it in the terms used by Michel Foucault in Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur, I think that phi- losophy is a genre in which the “author function” is of fundamental impor- tance – as in the case of literature – as opposed to those texts – scientific or administrative texts, for example – in which authorship is erased, silenced or concealed.
    [Show full text]