/lit/ - Literature

Why is he so perfect /lit/?

What is your favorite work by him and why?

I've just started reading Tolstoy, not War and Peace or Anna Karenina mind you, just a few of his shorter works, namely Family Happiness and The Death of Ivan Ilych and I've just started on The Kreutzer Sonata.

>Family Happiness:
I feel like this is something I'll come back to several times throughout my life. The idea of happiness is several forms as Tolstoy portrays it can be interpreted differently depending on where the reader is at in his life and whether or not the reader is happy. For instance I thought the happiness experienced by Masha towards the beginning of the book both in her peaceful life with Katya and Sonya and in her religious exuberance and passion for helping others is my idea of "ideal" happiness as opposed to the first few years of her marriage or the more "mature" form of happiness she's left with at the end of the book. I also can't say right now whether I believe that last form of happiness is truly happiness, though this is where I get the feeling that my opinion will change as I age and perhaps find myself and my situation becoming more aligned with Masha and her husband.

>The Death of Ivan Ilych:
This was pretty stellar. The book was legitimately hilarious at points in the first half and I found myself laughing out loud at some of the lines and situations. Yet as the story progressed, the humor gradually gave way to sorrow to the point where you feel true pity for Ivan Ilych's ceaseless suffering.

What did you think of these novellas?

Oh my god, whatever.

amiright? [serious]

Why is he so great /lit/?

I want to read Tolstoy but I was wondering where I should start and if I should read anything before tackling him on?

Also, Tolstoy general

>>4197483
You forgot your pic.

Can anyone recommend me any of Tolstoy's work? I'm not really christian but open minded to christian literature if that helps at all.

>>4069459 cont

I think it is more important to ask yourself why read at all.

And I don't mean this to take the merit out of reading, on the contrary. There is no expectation from my part to get an answer for it just like that, and there is no room for using a generic functionalistic excuse here either. The great thing here is to think on what pushes you towards reading (in general and that book in particular). So, because we are talking here about drive, will, call, desire (whatever your name for it), one cannot expect a straight answer.

Some people has it at the tip of their tongues though. To be entertained, or to get some sort of knowledge from it, etc. But is it that truly? Or could that be just a disguise for ulterior motives that you are not even aware? Perhaps to escape, to nourish a certain fantasy, maybe one is endlessly searching for one single answer in all the books one has read.

To put some thought on that raises your conscience about what you're doing with your time. Again, harm and help are relative. I can't say your reasons are vain, but most of the answers we fabricate for that question are not really the issue. In this sense, there is always this reason to read: to understand why you read at all. And is it helping you? On what? Could it be hurting you in some way? How were the relationships transformed by it?

cont

Tolstoy is my favourite author. Every summer for the lastt couple of years I've read Anna Karenina or War and Peace.

I could read both but I don't think I will.

Which should I read this time, /lit/? Last summer I read Anna Karenina.

>>3469230
I can't blame you, books are so expensive, but you're making the lives of readers horrible ya know ?

>>3123399
>not good-looking but someone compares me to a second jesus

>>3026392
I love it, it's one of those books that I always keep on the bedside.
The only book that can "reverse" Oblomov

Some time ago, I bought Anna Karenina and War and Peace, Wordsworth classics editions, translated by Aylmer and Louise Maude. Are the translations ok or should I get the Pevear-Volokhonsky version?

dat beard

>>2878411
>>2878414
>>2878416
u mad

>>2860088
Who should I be for you to listen to me? A friend? A teacher? Your father? A girlfriend? Tolstoy? Yourself?

Read for yourself and make your call.

>>2860095
I see it in this way: if he listens to me, he listens to me, if he doesn't, he doesn't. If others listen to me, great, if not, it's okay too.

It's not as if I went to his door and said these things. He mentioned it here, I felt like giving my anonymous opinion and try to help.

I've heard OP's question a lot of times before.

The education of women will always correspond to men's opinion about them. Don't we know how men regard women: Wein, Weib und Gesang, and what the poets say in their verses? Take all poetry, all pictures and sculpture, beginning with love poems and the nude Venuses and Phrynes, and you will see that woman is an instrument of enjoyment; she is so on the Truba and the Grachevka, and also at the Court balls. And note the devil's cunning: if they are here for enjoyment and pleasure, let it be known that it is pleasure and that woman is a sweet morsel. But no, first the knights-errant declare that they worship women (worship her, and yet regard her as an instrument of enjoyment), and now people assure us that they respect women. Some give up their places to her, pick up her handkerchief; others acknowledge her right to occupy all positions and to take part in the government, and so on.

About to go into town and buy War and Peace.

What does /lit/ think is the best translation to buy?

Pic related: it's the only colour photograph of Tolstoy

Psychological realism, is it bound to the characters being realistic, where they fit established clinical diagnoses, and the best psychological realistic works would be biographies? (although it could be argued that the respective writers would never be honest enough for it to be correct).

Or is psychological realism only a term used for writings that simply put a major emphasis on the minds of the characters, realistic or not?

>"I remember the astonishment I felt when I first read Shakespeare. I expected to receive a powerful esthetic pleasure, but having read, one after the other, works regarded as his best: "King Lear," "Romeo and Juliet," "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," not only did I feel no delight, but I felt an irresistible repulsion and tedium... Several times I read the dramas and the comedies and historical plays, and I invariably underwent the same feelings: repulsion, weariness, and bewilderment. At the present time, before writing this preface, being desirous once more to test myself, I have, as an old man of seventy-five, again read the whole of Shakespeare, including the historical plays, the "Henrys," "Troilus and Cressida," "The Tempest", "Cymbeline", and I have felt, with even greater force, the same feelings,—this time, however, not of bewilderment, but of firm, indubitable conviction that the unquestionable glory of a great genius which Shakespeare enjoys, and which compels writers of our time to imitate him and readers and spectators to discover in him non-existent merits,—thereby distorting their esthetic and ethical understanding,—is a great evil, as is every untruth." Tolstoy on Shakespeare.

What did Tolstoy sound like?

I am tired and disgusted from reading Leo Tolstoy's short stories. I lost all the huge respect that I had for him. Almost every short story by him ends up the same: GOD IS GREAT AND HE LOVES YOU!

What is the best English translation of War and Peace?