Divine and Human: And Other Stories by Leo Tolstoy

by Leo Tolstoy, Peter Sekirin

Overview

Divine and Human stands apart as both a landmark in literary history and master-piece of spiritual and ethical reflection. Suppressed in turn by the tzarist and Soviet regime, the tales contained in this book have, for the most part, never been published in English until now. Emerging at last, they offer western readers fresh glimpses of novelist and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. Divine and Human consists of choice selections from The Sunday Reading Stories, the second volume in a two-part work titled The Circle of Reading. In the words of translator Peter Sekirin, "Tolstoy considered The Circle of Reading to be the major work of his life. Considering its difficult history, it is not surprising that only recently has it been rediscovered." From its sparkling vignettes to its lengthier stories, Divine and Human probes the complexities of life and faith. Its characters range the spectrum of human emotions and qualities, from hatred to love and joy to grief; from sublime nobility to grotesque self-absorption. Tolstoy's world, though far-removed from today's information age, becomes our world — indeed, has always been and always will be our world. Motor cars may have replaced horse-drawn cars, but human hearts remain the same, and questions of truth, mercy, forgiveness, devotion, justice, and the nature of God knock as insistently on the doors of our lives today as they did in Tolstoy's time. Welcome, then, to Divine and Human: a buried treasure at last unearthed, and certain to be prized by Tolstoy readers and lovers of great literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310223672
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	05/07/2000
Pages:	214
Product dimensions:	5.63(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.63(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian nobleman, philosopher, and novelist, authored such classic works as Anna Karenina and War and Peace.

Peter Sekirin was born in Russia. He received his Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Kiev, Ukraine, where he served as associate professor for several years. In December 1999 Peter obtained his Ph.D. in Russian literature at the University of Toronto. He is the author of The Dostoevsky Archive, the English translator for Tolstoy's Calendar of Wisdom, and has written numerous articles for Linguistics and History of Literature. He resides in Toronto, Ontario.

Date of Birth:

September 9, 1828

Date of Death:

November 20, 1910

Place of Birth:

Tula Province, Russia

Place of Death:

Astapovo, Russia

Education:

Privately educated by French and German tutors; attended the University of Kazan, 1844-47

Read an Excerpt

The Son of a Thief
One day the city court convened for a jury trial. Among the members of the jury were peasants, noblemen, and salesmen. The foreman of the jury was a merchant, Ivan Akimovich Belov, respected and loved by everyone for his good life: he led his business honestly, never cheated anyone, and helped others. He was an old man, in his late sixties. The members of the jury came into the courtroom, took the oath, and took their places. The defendant was brought in, a horse-thief who had stolen a horse from a peasant. But as they started the court proceedings, Ivan Akimovich stood and said, 'Excuse me, your honor, but I cannot be a member of the jury.'
The judge was surprised. 'Why is this?'
'I simply can't. Please let me go.'
And suddenly Ivan Akimovich's voice trembled, and he began to cry. He cried and cried, so hard that he couldn't even speak. When he regained control of himself, he said to the judge, 'I can't be on this jury, your honor, because my father and I were perhaps worse than this thief. How could I judge someone guilty of the same kind of evil as I am? I can't do this. I ask you, please let me go.'
The judge let Ivan Akimovich go. That night, the judge invited Ivan Akimovich to his house and asked him a question: 'Why did you refuse to be a juror?'
'Here's why,' said Ivan Akimovich, and told the following story:
You think that I am a merchant's son and that I was born in your city. That's not true. I am a peasant's son. My father was a peasant, but he was also a thief, the best thief in the neighborhood, and he died in prison. He was a kind man, but he drank, and when he was drunk, he beat my mother, became violent, and was capable of all kinds of evil deeds, and then he would repent.
One day he enticed me to steal, and on that day my happiness came to an end. My father was with other thieves in a pub, and they started to talk about where they could steal something. My father said, 'Listen, fellows. You know the merchant Belov's storehouse that faces the street. There are lots of expensive goods in this storehouse. It is hard to get inside, but I have a plan. And here's my plan: There is a small window in the storehouse, high above the ground and too narrow for an adult to get inside. But here's what I think. I have a boy, and he is a very smart boy indeed,' he said, about me. 'We'll tie a rope around him and hoist him up to the window. Once he is inside, we'll lower him down to the storehouse floor. Then we'll give him another rope, and he'll tie the expensive goods from the storehouse onto it, and we will pull it down. And when we've taken as much as we can carry, then we'll pull him out, too.'
The thieves liked this idea and they said, 'Well then, bring your son here.'
So my father came home and asked for me. My mother said, 'What do you want him for?'
'What difference does it make? I need him.'
My mother said, 'He's outside.'
'Call him inside.'
My mother knew that when he was drunk she couldn't argue with him or he would beat her. She ran outside and called me into the house. My father asked me, 'Vanka, are you good at climbing fences?'
'Oh, yes, I can climb anywhere.'
'Then come with me.'
My mother tried to talk him out of it, but he threatened to hit her and she became quiet. My father put on my coat and off we went to the pub; they gave me tea with sugar and some snacks, and we sat until night came. When it was dark, all of us there were three men went out.
We came to the merchant Belov's storehouse. Right away they tied a rope around me, gave me the other rope, and hoisted me up. 'Aren't you afraid?' they asked me.
'Why should I be afraid? I'm not afraid of anything.'
'Then get inside and get hold of the best thing you can find there. Find some furs, and tie them up with the rope you're holding. Make sure you tie the things to the middle of the rope, and not to the end, so that when we pull it out, your end of the rope will stay inside with you. Do you understand?' they asked.
Of course I understood. How could I not understand such simple things?
So they helped me up to the window, I climbed in, and they lowered me to the floor with the rope. As soon as I felt something solid under my feet, I began to feel around with my hands. It was so dark I couldn't see a thing. When I felt something furry, I fixed it to the rope not to the end but to the middle and they pulled it out. Then I pulled the rope back to me and tied more goods to it.
When we had done this about three times, they pulled all the rope to themselves. This meant enough. Then they started to pull me back out the window, while I held the rope with my small hands. They had pulled me only about halfway when boom! the rope went slack, and I fell. It was good that I fell on cushions, and was not hurt.
Afterwards, I found out what had happened: a guard saw my father and the other thieves, gave an alarm, and they let go of the rope and ran away with the stolen things, leaving me by myself.
Lying alone in the darkness, I became terrified. 'Mommy!' I cried. 'Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!' I was so tired from crying, fear, and lack of sleep that I don't remember how I finally drifted off to sleep on the cushions.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Translator’s Preface Foreword About the Stories 1. The Son of a Thief 2. The Repentant Sinner 3. The Archangel Gabriel 4. The Prayer 5. The Poor People 6. A Coffeehouse in the City of Surat 7. Kornei Vasiliev 8. A Grain of Rye the Size of a Chicken Egg 9. The Berries 10. Stones 11. The Big Dipper 12. The Power of Childhood 13. Why Did It Happen? 14. Divine and Human 15. The Requirements of Love 16. Sisters

Editorial Reviews

These 16 selections from Tolstoy's final eclectic collection of tales titled The Sunday Reading Stories represent the Russian novelist's turn away from the troubling human condition in Anna Karenina toward a growing preoccupation with moral issues. Some are brief vignettes, like "The Archangel Gabriel," "The Repentant Sinner" and "The Son of a Thief," in which a prospective juror disqualifies himself because he cannot sit in judgment on a thief when his own father committed the same crime. Several of the stories are adaptations--"Stones," from a fable by E. Poselianin; "The Power of Childhood," from Victor Hugo's "The Civil War"; and "Sisters," a poignant retelling of Guy de Maupassant's "In the Port," about a sailor's shore leave at Marseilles. "Divine and Human," set in 1870s Russia at a peak of struggle between the government and revolutionaries, centers around student Anatoly Svetlogub, who is convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the government and spends his final days reading the New Testament. With the exception of a few entries, this is the first English translation of these pieces, which were suppressed first by the czarist government and then by the Soviets. Hardly controversial in the eyes of contemporary American readers, these selections are not particularly noteworthy as critiques of either aristocracy or communism, but rather as lovely artifacts that give us further insight into Tolstoy's notions of wisdom and spirituality. Though this book is published by an evangelical house, the fragments of Tolstoyan theology Sekirin has chosen for it are best described as universalist. All in all, it is a delightful addition to any Tolstoy collection or a fine introduction to his work. (May) FYI: Coincidentally, Northwestern University Press is issuing its own translation of three of the stories included in the Zondervan edition, in a volume also titled Divine and Human. "Berries," "What For?" (titled "Why Did It Happen?" in the Zondervan edition) and "Divine and Human" are translated and introduced by Gordon Spence. Spence's introduction stresses the political import and allegory of the tales, all three of which were written around the time of the Russian revolution of 1905. All the royalties from the publication of Northwestern's edition will go to Amnesty International. ($16.95 paper 168p ISBN 0-8101-1762-2; June) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Russian writer Leo, or Lev, Tolstoy wrote a number of unpretentious and straightforward stories with a plain Christian moral for primary school children. Sekirin, a doctoral student at the University of Toronto, has translated 16 such tales. Some appear here in English for the first time, and some can be found in Tolstoy's Twenty-Three Tales, translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude (1975). Tolstoy did not originate all of these stories, though they did come from his pen: he often rewrote or adapted stories from such diverse writers as Victor Hugo, Nokolai Leskov, and Guy de Maupassant. All the tales, however, show the hand of the Master; Tolstoy is unsurpassed in making his point by letting the facts speak for themselves. Sekirin's translation reads more easily than the Maudes' volume and uses simpler grammar. Though the stories have literary value, they aim primarily at religious readers. Recommended for public and church libraries.--Bert Beynen, Des Moines Area Comm. Coll. Lib., IA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

Library Journal

Most of the 16 stories collected herein appear for the first time in English. They were written late in Tolstoy's life, as part of The Sunday Reading Stories accompanying A Calendar of Wisdom, the great novelist's anthology of the thoughts and sayings of other eminent writers and philosophers. This isn't the Tolstoy of War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Virtually all the pieces are heavily moralistic, many (like "The Repentant Sinner" and "The Requirements of Love") cast in the form of parables—whose almost uniform message seems to be "Judge not, lest ye be judged." Yet Tolstoy's matchless gifts for clarity of expression and narrative economy are vividly displayed in the several stories that do create specific situations and credible characters—notably "The Berries," "Why Did It Happen?," the long title story, and the moving "Kornei Vasiliev." Not essential Tolstoy, but in general a welcome English-language addition to one of the world's most remarkable bodies of literary work.

Kirkus Reviews