Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" Synopsis and Comments - A husband kills his wife for allegedly having an affair. A controversial work that stirred up controversy on both sides of the issue.
I would like to introduce "Kreutzer Sonata" written by Tolstoy between 1887 and 1889. I read "Kreutzer Sonata" in the Shinchosha edition, translated by Takuya Hara in "Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil.
Let's take a quick look at this work.
Whoever looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.
--Matthew 5:28
A man who killed his wife talks about the horror and sinfulness of sexual desire.The Kreutzer Sonata," a penetrating account of a man who killed his wife out of jealousy and a scathing critique of society's corruption of sexuality, and "The Devil," a confession of a true incident and his own bitter experiences in the past. The Devil," a confessional essay that combines his own bitter past experiences with real-life incidents, and "The Devil," a novel in which he expresses his extremely stoic views on sexuality and the ideal of absolute purity, believing that sexual desire is the source of all the evils, misfortunes, and tragedies of human life.
Over the age of 60, Tolstoy continued to write works on the theme of sexuality. In his "Afterword," Tolstoy wrote, "Five things I wanted to say through the 'Kreutzer Sonata'" (see the commentary to this book). It gives an idea of Tolstoy's views on sexuality.
Table of Contents
Kreutzer Sonata
devil
Translator's CommentaryFrom "Kreutzer Sonata" included in this book
AmazonProducts Page.
I am a man of integrity. I'm a child of two great parents. I've dreamed of a happy family life all my life, and I've never once cheated on my wife. ...... And yet, I wonder! With five children, that woman would be embraced by a musician like that just because she has red lips! No, she is not a human being! She's a bitch, a bitch with a light on her! She pretended to love her children all this time, and now she's sitting next to them in their room. And then you write me a letter like that! And then she shamelessly bites my jugular! (p. 155 of this book)
The plot of this novel is about a jealous husband who kills his wife for alleged adultery, and it's just an untenable novel...
I will discuss the reasons for this later, but as you read this work, you should definitely know the background of its creation.
How did this tragic work come about?
In fact, Tolstoy's own family disintegration and the gap between his ideals and reality had a lot to do with it.
This is a bit long, but let's take a look at the details from "The Intellectual Heritage of Mankind 52: Tolstoy," by Kaori Kawabata.
(From the early 1880s *blog author's note) The gap between Mrs. Sofia and Tolstoy, who loved society and city life, gradually deepened. Although she was no less sympathetic to the poor than her husband, Tolstoy, who saw in every human being something human about himself, felt pain at the horror of even one human being's situation, hated social injustice, and came to regard his own wealth as a crime, became increasingly distant from her. He became more and more distant from Madame Sofiya.
Sofiya was a healthy and ordinary housewife. Therefore, she could no longer keep up with her husband. In the spring of 1883, he compromised with his wife and entrusted her with the management of his property, but Tolstoy, who believed that wealth was taken from the people, suffered from the contradiction between his claims and his actual life.
In June 1884, Tolstoy had a violent argument with his wife and ran away from home. His third daughter, Alexandra, was born at this time and later became his father's most faithful disciple and secretary.
Intensifying the discord in the family was the appearance of Chertkov, who was described as Tolstoy's highbrow disciple. Chertkov was the first Tolstoyist, along with his friend Biryukov, author of the "Biography of Tolstoy.
Chertkov, a practically skilled and accomplished propagandist, created the publishing house "Posladenik" (Mediator), which published books for the masses, with Tolstoy's full cooperation. Tolstoy cooperated fully with the company, which published such works as "Prisoners of the Caucasus" and "Why Do People Live?
Although Chertkov and Sofiya were close friends at first, their disagreement became more and more critical when Chertkov gradually began to exert influence over Tolstoy, elevating him to the position of guru and forcing him to faithfully carry out his doctrines in his own life.
In 1886, Tolstoy made a concession to his wife, dividing his assets between her and their children and also giving her the right to publish his complete works. This was a long-planned move by Sofiya, who knew that Mrs. Dostoevsky was publishing her works in the same way, in order to support the large Tolstoy family. (omitted).
In the summer of 1887, his son Sergei played Beethoven's "Kreutzer Sonata" with the violinist Liaisotta, and while listening to the presto section, Tolstoy, moved by the charm of the music, got up, looked out the window at the garden and sky, and sighed. Although there are various other witnesses and witnesses to the formation of the "Kreutzer Sonata" who contradict each other in terms of timing, it seems certain that he heard the "Kreutzer Sonata" repeatedly in the following year.
Tolstoy had discovered through family discord and tragic experiences that the greatest enemies he had to defeat were love and sexual desire, which formed the basis of the family.
The Kreutzer Sonata is thus the most desperate book ever written about love.
Written in the form of a confession by a man who murdered his adulterous wife by playing the "Kreutzer Sonata" with her and then fornicating with the violinist (murder by passion, the so-called "Italian divorce," which was exonerated in court), the novel was censored and banned, but hundreds or thousands of copies were made and read. The novel, written in the form of a confession (murder by lasciviousness, the so-called "Italian divorce", was exonerated in court), was censored and forbidden to be published.
Even the Czar and Empress read it, and the controversy about the work spread to all classes of the Russian population. Chertkov argued that what is said in the monologue of the work's protagonist should be made clearer and a clear moral should be given to the reader. The "Afterword," written in accordance with these ideas, is marked by extreme hostility toward women and asceticism, but Madame Sofiya also feels another sign of pregnancy when she explains that for moral reasons husbands and wives should live like brother and sister in marriage without being sexually defiled.
Readers assumed that the blatant attacks on marriage and women in this work were based on Tolstoy's own dissatisfaction with his marriage. The situation was extremely unfavorable for Madame Sofiya. In order to fight against such a public assessment, which was made at her expense, she personally met with the Czar and petitioned him to lift the ban on the Kreutzer Sonata. This was on April 13, 1891. Alexander III, who had appreciated the novel, gladly granted the request. In her diary, Sofiya's meeting with the emperor is movingly described.
Kodansha, Kaori Kawabata, The Intellectual Heritage of Mankind 52: Tolstoy, p. 108-113
Some line breaks have been made.
How about this? At this point I feel quite undone.
Not much is known about what Tolstoy's home life was like, but it was far more tragic than one might imagine. His last runaway incident is well known, but in fact, his life before that was no less painful.
It always pains me to learn about the real life of Tolstoy, who preached "what we must do to live better."
It is quite symmetrical that Dostoevsky, who suffered hellishly from his youth, dies in his last days with a happy family life. (For more on Dostoevsky, see the following articleAnna Dostoevskaya, "Dostoevsky in Recollection," a memoir by Dostoevsky's wife.for more information).
Now it is time to get into the contents of the work itself.
In this novel, Tolstoy expresses his extremely stoic views on sexuality and his ideal of absolute purity, as can be seen in his works. He divides the sexual relationship between a man and a woman into three stages.
The first stage is the subjugation of women to men, where women are dominated by male sexual desire and demand absolute chastity.
The second stage is women's rebellion against men, where women demand equal rights and freely indulge their sexual desires.
The third stage is morality masquerading as hypocrisy, where there is no longer any spiritual connection between the two sexes, but only the gratification of an ugly sexual desire through inertia.
Tolstoy believed that sexual desire was the source of all kinds of evil, misery, and tragedy in human life. In his "Afterword" to "The Kreutzer Sonata," which is more than ten pages long, Tolstoy listed the following five things he wanted to say through "The Kreutzer Sonata.
㈠ The idea that sexual activity is necessary for health is false, and man must restrain his sexual desires by moderation in alcohol, extravagant food, etc., and by hard work. One must understand that sexual activity under conditions that attempt to free oneself from the possible consequences of sexual activity, i.e., children, or that place the burden solely on the woman or prevent the consequences from occurring, is a despicable practice.
㈡, we must stop treating sexual union between loved ones as a poetic, lofty bliss.
㈢, the idea that children are an obstacle to the continuation of a love relationship, we must never contracept or make our bodies incapable of producing children, and we must refrain from sexual intercourse during pregnancy and during the period when we are breast-feeding our children.
㈣ Children must be raised in a quality and healthy manner, because raising them extravagantly and indulgently will only result in unnecessarily increasing the suffering of adolescence.
㈤, we must understand that union with the object of our love can only make it difficult for us to achieve our proper human ends: service to God, humanity, our country, learning, art, etc.
As can be seen from these five points, Tolstoy believed that the most desirable thing was to maintain absolute purity, and if this was impossible, he would thoroughly adhere to the principle of monogamy and would not tolerate even the slightest fornication. He knew from his own experience how violent sexual desire was and how it could lead people into error, which is why he could not help but present such a thorough and extreme argument.
Shinchosha edition, Tolstoy, translated by Takuya Hara, Kreutzer Sonata, The Devil, p. 266-268
Some line breaks have been made.
In the afterword to his work, Tolstoy expressed these as the ideas that run through the novel.
These are views so stoic, so extreme, that they are not easily nodded at by the people of the time, or even by those of us living today.
Moreover, the story of this work is also very strong.
The main flow of the film is simple: a man who has killed his adulterous wife tells his story, but I don't know how to describe it anymore...
I can still understand if the unfaithful wife was killed by her husband after doing a lot of bad things without regard for him.
In reality, however, their relationship was broken to begin with.
Husbands have an ideal of what women should be like from the beginning, and they do not break away from their attitude that their wives should be the same way. He builds up his own ideals, accumulates dissatisfaction with his wife who does not conform to his ideals, and then his heart is gradually pulled away from her, saying, "This is not how it was supposed to be. He never tried to approach his wife.
Since this piece is "narrated by the husband," we do not know how the wife felt about the situation. Yes, she may have had some bad aspects as a wife, but it is very one-sided.
Naturally, as this happens, the wife's mind will drift away, and the two sides will be in a cold war, neither trying to understand the other.
In such a situation, it is not surprising that a wife may have such a relationship with another man to soothe her unfulfilled heart.
Sure enough, the affair begins.
But here, strangely enough, the husband who had been bad-mouthing his wife so much becomes furiously angry. Is this jealousy? If it is jealousy, it is because he loves his wife. This is a matter for the reader to decide, but at any rate, the husband becomes furiously angry.
How dare a wife betray her husband!"
Frankly, I thought to myself, "How can you say that? He has bad-mouthed my wife a lot and has never tried to compromise with her, but when he finds out about the affair, he is the victim and the other party is the villain. I feel sorry for my wife.
The husband, in a fit of rage, stabs his wife to death with a knife. The wife cursed her husband as she drew her last breath.
My heart ached as I thought to myself, "This is the worst...the worst...this novel..." To be honest, I had been quite damaged by Tolstoy's religious writings before reading this work, and this was the coup de grace for me.
I don't follow Tolstoyism..."
Unfortunately, I did not seem to have the qualities of a Tolstoyist.
It is often said that it can only be one of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy, and I agree with that from the bottom of my heart. The two are too different.
Now, I have said some bad things about "Kreutzer Sonata," but this is just my opinion. It does not mean that this work is bad or anything.
As a work itself, it has received rave reviews since its time, and as a work, its inspirational power is terrifying, and the fact that it has caused huge controversy among people proves the powerful power of this work. In fact, I was also horribly moved by it. If it had been an unimportant work, it would not have been so damaging.
And to cut and discard this work on the basis of modern ethics and my personal feeling of things is nonsense.
On top of that, I can only say that for me personally, this work was demanding.
I am learning Tolstoy this way in order to learn Dostoevsky.
If reading is just for pleasure as a hobby, there is no need to read books that make you suffer.
But if you want to "learn about the person," you must face the author, even if it is painful.
I think that feeling that you and this person are not a good fit is an important aspect of learning.
In that sense, "Kreutzer Sonata" was a work that left a strong impression on me in my study of Tolstoy.
In terms of understanding Tolstoy's fierceness, this book is a very suitable work.
The above is a summary of "Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata" - A Husband Kills His Alleged Adulterous Wife. A controversial work that stirred up controversy".
Next Article.
Click here to read the previous article.
related notes
