MASTER and MAN by Leo Tolstoy Prepared by Tracy Marks Tracy@Windweaver.Com

MASTER AND MAN by Leo Tolstoy prepared by Tracy Marks [email protected]

NOTES Petrushka=Peter Semka=Simon The name Brekhunov is similar to a Russian word meaning braggart or liar. Much of the peasants’ dialogue in Russian is characterized by malapropisms and double entendres for which there is no English equivalent. Wooden stake road markers: There were few roads in the countryside in 19th century Russia. Similar to trail markers today, tall, colorful wooden stakes were planted to indicate the direction of the road. verst=2/3 mile averst=1/3 mile sazhen=7 feet Although temperatures in northern Russia are subarctic, Russia in and including Moscow is not extremely cold. The average winter temperature rarely falls below 5 degrees Fahrenheit). Neverthe- less, because much of Russia is severely cold, and Russian winters are long, and throughout history the poor sometimes froze to death, Russian winters have a reputation of being severe, and contrib- uting to the fatalistic Russian temperament. ______

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION:

1. How would you describe the character of Brekhunov at the start of the novel? 2. In what ways is Brekhunov a thief? 3. How does the symbolism of being physically and materially weighed down relate to Brekhunov at both the beginning and end of the novella?

4. How would you describe the character of Nikita? 5. Throughout most of the story, how do Brekhunov and Nikita differ in their attitudes toward life, nature and death? 6. Why do you think Tolstoy chose the snowstorm as the setting for this story in contrast to another natural setting – the woods, a summer rainstorm etc. ? What does the snowstorm represent?

7. What mistakes does Brekhunov make in his attitude and actions regarding the snowstorm? 8. Nikita’s instincts suggest a different approach to the snowstorm than Brekhunov’s approach. In such a dangerous situation, why doesn’t Nikita insist on his own viewpoint? 9. How are Brekhunov’s attitudes and actions in the snowstorm symbolic of how he has coped during his life? 2

10. Comment on the meanings here of a) going in circles, and of moving forward rather than staying in one place when lost, and of returning to the wormwood. 11. What significant role does the horse play? How are Nikita and the horse connected in their attitude toward instinct and nature? 12. What significance if any do you find in the role of the peasant and his grandson Petrushka?

13. What Christian symbolism do you find in the novella? 14. In his essay, “Death and Meaning in Tolstoy’s Master and Man,” Professor John Hagan indicates that every one of Brekhunov’s major attitudes toward life is a violation of one of Christ’s moral strictures from the Sermon of the Mount (Matthew 5,6,7). Comments?

15. What circumstances lead to Brekhunov’s change of attitude at the end of the novella? 16. How does his attitude and responses to Nikita change throughout the novella? Does he in any way become more like Nikita? 17. Is his transformation convincing? Why or why not?

18. How do you understand Brekhunov’s thought, “Nikita’s alive which means I’m alive too”? 19. How would you conceptualize Tolstoy’s message to readers of this story? 20. How is the theme similar to or different from Death of Ivan Ilyich? 21. What life-threatening “snowstorm” have you experienced in your life (in which you may have felt you were going in circles, with little hope of getting out) and how did you cope with it? What did you learn from it?

Tolstoy’s Master and Man and The Snowstorm Michael Lydon excerpted from Time and the Writer, https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/wc/time-and-the-writer/

Last summer, I bought a Modern Library edition of Tolstoy's early short stories, one of which, The Snow Storm, he had written in 1856. That story I read first, and stopped flabbergasted: this was [almost] the same as Master and Man! Well, the same setting: a man carried in a troika this way and that through a snowy Russian night, getting lost, turning back, then setting out again, nearly freezing to death but brought safe to his destination by the skill of the peasant driver and gallant courage of the horses. Tolstoy made just such a wintry trip through the Caucasus in 1854.

Comparing the two stories gives me a chance to see how a writer treats the same theme when young and when old.

First impression: The Snow Storm contains far more detailed reporting of the exterior scene: I was struck for a moment by what seemed to be a bright light falling on the white plains; the horizon had widened considerably, the lowering black sky had suddenly vanished, and on all sides slanting white streaks of falling snow could be seen….. The head of the shaft horse with its flying mane stooped and rose rhythmically as it alternately drew the reins tight and loosened them. But all this was covered with snow even more than before. The show whirled about in front, at the side it covered the horses' legs knee-deep...

In sharp contrast, Tolstoy paints the Man and Master storm with brief touches - The snow was falling from above and whirling about below. Sometimes it seemed that they were driving uphill then down, sometimes that they were standing still and the snow-landscape was flying past them.

—that punctuate longer passages of Vassili's interior monologues: "I'm not like the rest, idle fools! I don't sleep at night. Storm or no storm, I drive out, I do my business. Some people think they can make money by fooling. Nay! Work hard and tire yourself! They think that it is a question of luck! Look at the Mironoffs with millions now; and why? They have worked and God has given. If only God gives me health!"

Yet Master and Man's snow and ice feels colder and its night looms blacker than those in The Snow Storm because the brevity of Tolstoy's mature descriptions cuts more quickly to our hearts. Four decades of writing War and Peace and Anna Karenina condensed and sharpened Tolstoy's prose.

The narrator of Master and Man has a quiet, patient wisdom; The Snow Storm's "I" is a callow youth who revels in adventure: "the desire that something extraordinary, something even tragic, should happen to us was stronger in me than fear"; he thinks that "it would not be so bad if some of us"— surely not himself!—"were to perish in the cold." When he falls asleep, he dreams not of brotherhood but of a lovely summer day: A bee buzzes not far from me in the blazing sunlight; yellow-winged butterflies fly from one blade of grass to another....In a rose bush sparrows bustle about. One hops to the ground, pecks at the ground, flies back into the bush, rustling the twigs, chirping merrily.

The summer-dream/winter-reality contrast strengthens The Snow Storm's structure, but the antithesis seems pat. I hear the young writer thinking, "If I have the guy hallucinating summer, that'll make the winter more dramatic."

Vassili's lurching states of mind have no such symmetry, but I find them more believable: He lay and thought, always of the same subject, the only aim, object, pleasure and pride of his life: how much money he had amassed, and how much more he could hope for.... A prey to his emotions, he felt he was beginning to shiver, not knowing whether from cold or from fear. He tried to cover himself and lie as before, but he could not keep still. He felt a longing to be up, to be doing something to stifle the terror within him, against which he was powerless.

Every good writer has core themes he or she returns to throughout their careers—Balzac and business, Dickens and poverty, Raymond Chandler and murder. Try reading books by your favorite writers in the order they were written, and you'll find the effects of time on each writer's spirit, just as you would find slow changes in their faces, eyes, and bodies if you slowly turned over photographs of them—or of yourself!—snapped in youth, adulthood, and old age. 4

L. N. Tolstoy's Master and Man - A Symbolic Narrative by Elizabeth Trahan, (University of Pittsburgh) American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Autumn, 1963), pp. 258-268 https://www.jstor.org/stable/305336

Good art, Tolstoy suggests (What is Art? (1897) must express universally valid religious, spiritual or at least humanitarian feelings, experienced by the author and transmitted through direct emotional trans-mission, as is accomplished in the great religious writings, in folk legends, fairy tales and folk songs.

When reviewing his own writings from this critical position, Tolstoy is forced to reject all his literary mas- terpieces. He can only find two instances of "good" art, two of his Tales for Children --"The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and "God Sees the Truth but Waits. "

Today, however, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilyich, and Master and Man are considered Tolstoy's best works. Yet, paradoxically, the bias of Tolstoy's theoretical position seems to have affected critics. Tolstoy is usually discussed in terms of his "realism" or as a moralist, and is rarely given credit for formal experimentation.

Yet already War and Peace (1865-69) and Anna Karenina (1873-77) make use of certain formal devices, such as interior monologue, free association, structural patterns based on parallels and contrasts, significant detail, even symbolic, i. e., open metaphors. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), in addition, uses "leitmotifs" very much in Richard Wagner's manner, and contains sensory associations of a directness or subtlety close to that emphasis on nuances and depth which characterizes the French Symbolists. Finally, Master and Man (1894), one of Tolstoy's last stories, is a truly modem symbolic narrative.

The juxtaposition of two contrasting characters and their ways and views of life had been a favorite device of Tolstoy's ever since Three Deaths. But only on the most immediate level is Master and Man the story of Brekhunov and his servant Nikita. While Nikita does not change throughout the story, Brekhunov under- goes a complete transformation. The indifferent churchwarden becomes a true believer; the greedy and self- confident egotist, a humble and self-effacing human being.

Master and Man is Brekhunov's story, for he emerges as both Master and Man. As a tale of moral regen- eration and religious consolation, the story is thematically close to many of Tolstoy's popular tales, and to his conception of "good" art. Moreover, the detached, simple folk idiom used, lost in translation, but gives the story the naivete and wisdom of a folk legend.

At the same time, certain words are repeated like incantations. The howling of the wind and circling of snow provide an ominous refrain. The sledge and its occupants move in circles which they seem unable to break through. The number "three" occurs fifteen times in the story, suggesting a bewitched, alien world.

Close attention to the text reveals the presence of metaphors and symbols which not only deepen and transform the surface reality of the plot, but which form connected patterns and provide additional levels of meaning. Through these symbols, Brekhunov's religious awakening becomes a pilgrimage from the village of Kresty (The Crosses) to the Cross, almost a reiteration of Christ's Road to Calvary. The personal crisis of Brekhunov, the Liar (brekhat' is "to tell lies") -becomes the experience of an existential moment, the culmination of man's struggle with nature without and within. Brekhunov's final insight not only bestows meaning upon his existence but, through the correspondence of the symbols used, reveals Brekhunov's essence to be a reflection of the essence of that external force which he had challenged. 5

The setting for the story may have been suggested to Tolstoy by a personal experience. During the winters of 1891-92 and 1892-93, he was engaged in famine relief work in Rjazan. Mme. Raevskaia, at whose estate he was staying, describes how on February 15, worried about Tolstoy's long absence during a blizzard, they set out after him and found him crossing a snowy field on foot, left behind by his horse.

Once before, Tolstoy had written a story based on his experience of a blizzard during a 22hour trip in January 1854. The Snowstorm (1856) describes realistically an all-night ride, in which the horses instinctively find their way to safety. The immediate incentive for the story must have been provided by Flaubert's Legende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier.

Tolstoy wrote Master and Man a few months before introductions to the works of Guy de Maupassant and to Semenov's Peasant Stories. Both introductions reveal Tolstoy's preoccupation with literary criticism….the significance and universality of theme, the proper relation of form to content, and the author's "sincerity."

Flaubert’s story, La Legende de Saint Julien l'Hospitalier, was as a deliberate attempt to recreate the spirit of the Middle Ages. It is filled with allegorical objects and animals, miracles and coincidences, set against the backdrop of a medieval, stable universe. The story provides an excellent example of what Erich Kahler calls "descending symbolism" -a symbolism dependent on and determined by a pre- established reality. Tolstoy's story, on the other hand, becomes modem by its emphasis on psychological character treatment and by its "ascending" symbolism.

The comparison of Brekhunov and his man, Nikita, is achieved largely by direct description, as well as Tolstoy's long favored devices of parallelism and contrast, often used to reflect ironic ambivalences. But since this comparison forms the story's basis, it must be traced at least briefly before we can turn to Brekhunov's psychological development and its symbolic significance.

Initially, Brekhunov, Church Elder and Merchant of the Second Guild, views the world entirely in terms of his personal power and economic success. Though his estate thrives, wife and child are "thin and pale. " Brekhunov's tone toward his wife is rude and condescending, and his son exists for him merely as a personal heir. Nor is Brekhunov's attitude toward Nikita positive, though he considers himself Nikita's benefactor. As shown by his taunting remarks about the cooper and by his attempt to sell Nikita a bad horse, Brekhunov is as indifferent to Nikita's feelings and to his financial plight as to his physical well-being.

Nikita's relations with his environment, on the other hand, are harmonious. The master's little boy loves him, the mistress worries whether he will be warm enough, and he pleases everyone by his cheerful and obliging manner. He has the peasant's straightforward simplicity and fatalism, his closeness to nature and animals. Nonetheless, Nikita is no saint. When drunk, he can become a veritable fiend.

But while his master freely imbibes, Nikita resists all temptation, remains sober and thus more aware of the hazards and necessities of their situation. Ironically, just as Brekhunov's two fur-lined coats do not save him while Nikita survives in his thin coat, so Brekhunov's personal energy and business acumen turn out far less effective than the simple reasoning of those around him. Nikita would have chosen the safe road, trusted the horse's instinct and, undoubtedly, spent the night safely at Taras' house.

Only upon his wife's nagging does Brekhunov take Nikita along. This step might have saved his life, had he paid attention to Nikita from the start. It saves his soul when he finally does. It is similarly ironic that, while Nikita derives real comfort from placing his sins and fate into God's hands, Brekhunov, the Church Elder, can find no consolation in religion. Instead, he vainly seeks reassurance in the memory of his achievements and his future goals. 6

We do not know whether Nikita would have survived the night without Brekhunov's self-sacrifice; but we know that he was ready for death, without any reproach toward his master or God. It almost seems a reward for his unswerving loyalty that Nikita is permitted to die his own death -the traditional solemn death of the believer, at home in his bed, surrounded by his family and with a lighted taper in his hand.

Even though the last paragraph is devoted to Nikita, Master and Man is not his story. The ending merely completes the comparison between him and his master, beyond actions and attitudes to their death experience. In many ways, Nikita is more positive. His actions and decisions, in contrast to Brekhunov's, seem appropriate and "right. " By his fatalistic acceptance of life in all its manifestations, he reminds us of Platon Karataev in War and Peace and Gerasim in The Death of lvan Ilyich.

In The Death of lvan Ilyich, the balance begins to shift. Ivan Ilyich incorporates to some extent Gerasim's humble and joyful submissiveness into his own world view. In Master and Man, the change is completed. However "right" Nikita's attitude and however peaceful his death, not he, the just man, is exalted but Brekhunov, the repentant sinner, who, after a desperate struggle with nature, submits to it and finds God.

The contrast between Nikita and Brekhunov is extended into their attitude toward nature. While Nikita accepts it in its extreme manifestation--the cold and pitiless fury of the blizzard--Brekhunov challenges it as he had challenged everything around him. But while he had imposed his will on men and animals, he suffers defeat when he confronts nature with ruthless disregard. When Brekhunov's path is blocked by the ravine, he suffers the first decisive defeat, defeat of his actions. When he vainly seeks reassurance in memories of the past and dreams of the future, he suffers the defeat of his achievements. Finally, when he, no longer master of himself but driven by fear and the instinct of self- preservation, makes one more attempt at physical escape, he suffers the defeat of his values.

Vasili Brekhunov, facing non-existence in a nightmarish and awesome no-man's land, moves step by step toward the core of his existence. He faces his existential crisis alone, weak, unable to muster the support of any ethical, moral, or religious consolations. But now, untrammeled by shackles of conventions and prejudices, a deep inner strength surges up in him. Brekhunov begins to find a new self and new values.

His attempt to revive Nikita may initially have been due to fear of being left alone, of having to submit to death and acknowledge defeat. But the "peculiar joy such as he had never felt before," the "strange and solemn tenderness" and "joyous condition" which he experiences, bear witness to the fact that a change is taking place within him. Now his thoughts circle around Nikita. The peasant's image fuses with that of the past. Finally, Brekhunov sees himself back in the past, when he is unable to react to his old environment.

That this fact does not fill him with fear or indignation, shows how he has changed. Formerly an impatient and irascible master, he is now waiting patiently and joyfully for his own Master. His submission is complete: he acknowledges the merit for the good deed as not his but Christ's and follows Him with humility. The religious theme which asserts itself powerfully at the end, is latently present from the beginning.

Brekhunov lives in a village called The Crosses and indeed in the shadow of the Cross. His challenge takes place on the second day of the feast of St. Nicholas, who is not only the saint of all Russia and specifically of peasants, merchants and wayfarers, but also of temperance-and a wonderworker. Nikita, who has taken a vow of abstinence and successfully resists all temptation on the crucial day, is obviously under the protection of St. Nicholas.

But on Brekhunov the Saint works his miracle. Initially Brekhunov is a sinner. Though a church elder, he ignores the holy day and desecrates church funds by borrowing them for private gain. In Griskino, he sits down at the head of the table for his last supper. To be sure, his three thousand rubles and his greed for gain he is still closer to Judas than to Christ. His answer to the anguished complaints of the old man about his son's greed is unconcerned. Brekhunov does not realize that his own test has begun.

A counting of heads reveals the presence of thirteen adults in Taras' house… But though such detailed account is given of all twenty-two members of Taras' household as to suggest a purpose, the allusion is blurred by the fact that only the men sit around the table -13 men at Brekhunov’s last supper.

Several other marginal references occur. The sledge which Brekhunov overtakes is driven by one Simon who, however casually encountered, might have shared Brekhunov's burden, had he chosen to accept his help. The man who opens the gate to Taras' house for them and again guides them onto their way is called Peter and, for all his willingness, turns back at the crucial moment and abandons them, if unknowingly, to their fate. These allusions gain weight, as Brekhunov recalls one Sebastian who froze to death. The name clearly evokes the Saint and the possibility of martyrdom and glory. Even more direct is the allusion to treason when Brekhunov thinks he hears a cock crow. Not much later, he abandons Nikita with the sacrilegious words: "He won't grudge his life but I, thank God, have something to live for..."

When Brekhunov sets out alone for the wilderness-the wormwood becomes its appropriate symbol-his punishment seems imminent. Though there is little resemblance between Brekhunov's flight into the snowy waste and Christ's withdrawal into the Garden of Gethsemane, Brekhunov, not unlike Christ, experiences supreme anguish. He, too, turns to prayer asking that the cup be taken away from him, only to realize the vanity of such prayer.

When Brekhunov returns to Nikita, he is ready for his burden. As he lies down on his servant with his arms spread out, he, in a sense, mounts the Cross. During the moment of extreme anguish Brekhunov recalled the recent church service and the tapers which he would sell. Lying on Nikita he recalls service and tapers, but now their images merge with that of Nikita. In sacrificing himself for this man, Brekhunov reiterates Christ's sacrifice, and in his last vision Christ comes for him in person and thereby accepts the sacrifice.

Brekhunov is a sinner who through suffering returns to love and through love to Christ. Kafka, in A Country Doctor, likewise describes a ride through a blizzard, and the doctor, too, lies down to warm a dying human being. There, however, symbols are used with savage irony. The country doctor lies down willingly, and attempts to escape as soon as he can-only to find his escape turn into a trap. Brekhunov's religious development, on the other hand, remains thematically entirely within the framework of traditional Christianity, a fitting illustration of Luke 15:7: " I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. " The symbolic presentation, however, gives Brekhunov's final gesture a scope and significance which by far transcends his actual transformation into a humble and dedicated servant of Christ.

The religious symbolism of Master and Man represents only one strand in the symbolic pattern of the story. With its use of allegorical names and its depiction of a religious vision, it remains superimposed upon the story. The nature imagery, on the other hand, becomes so intrinsic a part of the narrative, permeates it so completely and intensively that the story becomes an excellent example of what I called "ascending" symbolism. The circle becomes the key symbol of the story. It is menace and trap, futility and despair, but it also represents the unity of life and death, the Chain of Being.

The snow whirls around Master and Man, the wind circles around them, their road turns into circles. Brek- hunov, by defying the circle as long as he can, rejects every road leading out of it, until there remains only the one leading into its very center-the heart of nature and the self. Darkness and the abyss provide its signposts. Though Brekhunov fails to recognize their deeper significance, they effectively stop his outer journey, and the inner journey to the core of the self can begin. Again, Brekhunov's quest moves in circles, those of his thoughts, then those of his last trip. Finally, Brekhunov reaches the innermost circle, in which the I and the Thou merge.

The circular symbol is enhanced by the continual recurrence of the number "three, " which adds a super- natural dimension to the reality of the plot. Brekhunov starts out during the third hour, with three thousand rubles. Three times they set out. Three times Nikita takes over. Three times they see the same cluster of moaning willows, three times they pass the frozen wash, three times wormwood is mentioned. They have three encounters-with Isai the horse thief, the three peasants whom they overtake, and Taras and his household in Grishkino. Petrusha speaks of three domestic counsellors. Three times Nikita climbs out to search for the path, the third time reappearing three sazhens further. Three times Brekhunov tries to light a cigarette and, after successfully lighting three matches, he is unable to light the last three.

Other secondary images likewise extend the symbolic structure. The frozen wash which "is struggling," "fluttering desperately in the wind," and the white shirt which “struggled desperately, waving its sleeves around" -not only reflect the fury of the storm but become portents of doom, of man in distress, of a shroud, a frozen body, perhaps even a crucifixion. The willows are moaning "dismally" and "desperately," "swaying and whistling"; wormwood which is "desperately tossed about by a pitiless wind" fills Brekhunov with terror and seems to him his own reflection, as he "awaits an inevitable, swift and meaningless death. "

These images recall Job 21:18:"They are as stubble before the wind, and as chaff that the storm carries away."

A series of frightening sounds provides the aural backdrop for the visual imagery and fill the air with a clamor appropriate for Judgment Day: the wild whistling of the wind, the threatening howl of a wolf, the eerie and pitiful cry of the frightened horse. The poem which Petrusha quotes with such joy at its aptness - a colloqui- alized version of the first stanza of Pushkin's Winter Evening - expresses the Protean power of the storm: Storms with mist the sky conceals, Snowy circles wheeling wild. Now like savage beast 'twill howl, And now ' tis wailing like a child. (Tr. Maude )

Brekhunov dies only thirty sazhens (70 feet) off the road and half averst (1/3mile) from the village, trapped by the blizzard in a magic circle which he can’t break through. Nor can man break through nature's circle of life and death; he can only transcend it by leaving the realm of nature, of life. While Brekhunov follows His call, around his dead body the snowstorm asserts its symbol of the circle: "All around the snow was whirling as before. The same snow squalls were circling about, covering the dead Vasili Andrei 's fur coat."

The blizzard has lifted Brekhunov out of time and space-the time and space of his everyday life-into the vastness of nature, pure, bare, and invincible, stripped of sham values and comforts, and encompassing both life and death in close proximity. The business trip, begun with a disregard for nature's power, continued as one man's challenge, becomes a desperate struggle against the element until nature asserts itself. It forces Brekhunov to acquiesce, to accept death at its hands; but it also enables him to understand its secret and to find his own existence and essence in love. An almost mystical union with nature through a supreme act of love becomes his ultimate fulfillment.

"Nikita is alive so I too am alive, " is Brekhunov's final unreserved and unselfish affirmation of life. This is not merely a creed based on the Christian virtues of humility and brotherly love, but a belief in the eternal flow and transfer of life, a Buddhist rather than Christian concept.

Kate Hamburger, in her excellent study on Tolstoy, sees the unique accomplishment of Master and Man in this visually accomplished act of love, which by far transcends the token gesture of love made by Ivan Ilyich. Yet even Master and Man, if more faintly than Tolstoy's other works, echoes its author's own inner split. Despite his self-sacrifice, Brekhunov does not come to terms with death nor does he, in Rilke's words, "die his own death. " Of all of Tolstoy's heroes, only Prince Andrei comes close to dying his own death, aside from such "children of God, " as Natalya Savilna, Platon Krataev, or Nikita. Prince Andrei turns away from life with the same aloofness with which he had turned away from each successive phase of his life.

Neither Ivan Ilyich it nor Brekhunov dies his own death. Ivan Ilyich's dying is awful far beyond the sins of his lifetime, while Brekhunov, petty sinner that he was, dies an undeservedly beautiful and glorious death. Nor does either of them -in fact, none of Tolstoy's fictional challengers of death-ever come to terms with death. Even Prince Andrej cannot face death squarely. He turns it from an end into a beginning, "an awakening from life" - an escape.

Brekhunov's story parallels that of Ivan Ilyich. Confronted by death, both men face the crisis of their existence, and are forced to reject the values of their past. Yet neither is able to accept death - they merely dismiss or ignore it. For Ivan, death "ceases to exist," as the immense relief after an almost unbearable suffering floods his entire being till nothing else has room. Brekhunov finds a dual escape from facing death: the Christian consolation of a personal immortality and a basically contradictory emphasis on the abandonment of indiv- iduality in an identification with all life. In neither case is death accepted as part of life, as its end.

Brekhunov is much simpler than Ivan. He lives by feelings and urges rather than thoughts, and even his act of love and submission takes place on the same instinctive level, brought about by a moment of over-whelming fear rather than a crisis of consciousness. He rejects his past after he has found new values, whereas Ivan Ilyich dismissed his entire life before he had found anything to take its place. Ivan Ilyich was battered and tossed about by his pain until the last shreds of his strength and dignity were gone. Therefore, his final gesture of love might be weak, and his dismissal of death an escape, yet his courage and his suffering give him a heroic scope which Brekhunov lacks.

Ironically, though Master and Man was prompted by Tolstoy's effort to demonstrate ' sincerity, " to achieve a direct emotional transmission, the impact of the story cannot compare to the impact of Ivan Ilyich’s terrible struggle with death. Tolstoy's own fear of death proved stronger than his love of man or God.

However, aesthetically, Master and Man evokes a serenity and pleasure as none of Tolstoy's other works do. The story occupies a unique place in Tolstoy's creative output and points to an unsuspected range of his talent. Both complex and superbly simple, it becomes the most nearly perfect of his works of art.