"Master and Man" and "The Death of Ivan Ilych"

"Master and Man" says less about those statuses than I'd expected. Instead, its message echoes that of "The Death of Ivan Ilych": don't live for materialism or monetary gain, but for other people.

The difference in this later story is that the apparent master of the story, Andreev, gives his life to save the peasant Nikita whom he finally acknowledges as a fellow human being. With that in mind the English title of the story suggests that "master" and "man" are exclusive categories. Someone can be either one or the other but not both.

This retread of a the theme of "The Death of Ivan Ilych," but in a much bleaker setting fits perfectly as the final story in this collection. Not just because it's chronologically the last written among this collection's four, but because it works as denouement after the emotional action-thriller that is "The Kreutzer Sonata."

But taken on its own, I don't think "Master and Man" is Tolstoy's best work. Trading in the tight third person perspective of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" for split attention between Andreev and Nikita and a more or less omniscient narrator brings both of these characters close to being caricatures of their particular social stations.

Yet, the situation of the story, two men and a horse getting lost in a snowstorm who are given several chances to rest in town until morning but refuse and wind up stuck in the middle of nowhere, seems all to realistic considering the coincidences involved. It's a structure that mirrors the strange happenings of life too closely to be written off as mere contrivance.

And that's what sets "Master and Man" apart from the other three stories in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. It is the only one in which characters take a back seat to plot and setting.

Moving from Russian literature to something lighter, the next book on the list is Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions.

"Master and Man" begins

"Master and Man" is unlike any of the other stories in The Death of Ivan Ilych and Other Stories. For the first time in this collection Tolstoy writes about a peasant.

Every other story features the lives and problems of members of the middle class. Peasants and other labourers are mentioned, but never at any length. They're just the ones keeping the basis of society running. "Master and Man," no doubt to make a point in the end, instead puts Nikita, one of these labourers, front and center.

The style of Tolstoy's writing has also changed over the six years between The Kreutzer Sonata and "Master and Man." No longer does Tolstoy explicitly dwell on the interior lives of his characters. Instead, things are more active (the main action of "Master and Man" being a sledge trip to a nearby village in a light snowstorm), and characters are drawn less through description than through action.

Nonetheless, after over twenty pages I have the same sense of disorientation as the main characters (likely in part due to my utter lack of knowledge of Russian geography).

Noting this lost feeling might sound backhanded, but it's very clear that being so lost is part of the story's point.

Putting his characters, Andreev (the master) Nikita (the man), into a snowstorm is putting them into a liminal space. A space in which not even the snow-laden landscape is stable, try as people might to make it so with markers and signs.

In such a space it's hard to say how Tolstoy will make his point (whatever it is), and that spurs me on.

Tolstoy on the madness of a jealous heart

In an earlier entry I wrote that Tolstoy's "The Kreutzer Sonata" reminded me of Poe stylistically. Having finished the story, I can now say why.

It's because it focuses entirely on the emotional state of a single person while calling attention to the stability and reliability of that person.

Podnyshev is not saint turned from a pure life to one of hatred and vileness by some temptress or temptation.

Throughout the retelling of his life story he mentions the fact that he had lived a life of debauchery, like the men that he grew wary of as his wife stopped having children (after having five) and started focusing more on making herself noticeably beautiful, before marriage and thus knew their thoughts and feelings when they looked upon her.

Podnyshev also admits to being a jealous husband. Much of the final quarter of "The Kreutzer Sonata" is spent in his comparing this jealousy to a beast that he had to shackle to keep in check.

This combination of assumption and jealousy makes for a narrator who is much too much in his own head. So much so that there isn't enough room for readers to get in there with him. Yet, his thinking that his wife is having an affair with a travelling violinist is nonetheless something that we can see but that we doubt and hope against as much as he does.

We're lead to ask questions like "as an admitted owner of a jealous heart, surely he is remembering something incorrectly or embellishing words and actions, right?"

Probably.

Maybe.

Whatever the truth of the matter is, after having finished this story, I don't see it as Tolstoy's raging against the establishment of marriage or the ideals of love. I see it more as a cautionary tale.

Before you can love another in the ideal way you need to not be Podnyshev with his rushing into marriage. Nor can you be someone who sees the opposite sex as simply objects for animal release. Instead, you need to slowly build a relationship with another person in which you recognize and acknowledge that they are, in fact, another person.

I think that could be seen as a pro for pornography. As much as it denigrates its subjects, it also separates them from the people that you interact with every day, leaving you with the room to realize that those other people in your life are people. Ultimately, you could then go on to see those performing for the boudoir camera as people too, but that's much less likely, speaking generally.

Podnyshev's problem isn't that love as the poets sing of it doesn't exist, but that he has closed himself off from it making women into objects of sexual desire first rather than regarding them as fellow human beings.

Tolstoy's granting him this revelation in the climax of his story seals this interpretation for me. If you go down the road of Podnyshev, the only way you'll realize that the opposite sex are people too is if you exercise the ultimate power over one of them and look into his/her eyes as you plunge a dagger into his/her chest. Otherwise jealousy, a product of possessiveness, will lead you to madness. The madness that breeds murder in the mind.

Though that internal struggle is ultimately what makes "The Kreutzer Sonata" so much like Poe's stories in my mind. To the point where I have to highly recommend it, in fact.

Tolstoy's mad man on a train

"You know I am a sort of lunatic" (190).

Unlike most people on the far right, Tolstoy's Pozdnyshev (I'm reading it "Paused-nyeh-shev") at least admits to his madness. And he certainly lives up to his own admission.

Claiming that the Jews pull the strings of business in Russia. Claiming that love is perverse because, despite all of the ideals spoken of around it, its end is sex. Claiming that marriage is selfish. Claiming that children are a nearly intolerable source of worry and sparking point for spousal strife. Claiming that doctors conspire together to cure things that need no curing in any other animal. Claiming that the end of humanity is to come to a peaceable generation in which point the selfish and passionate need to love and be loved will cease and humanity will end. 

I won't say that it's all crazy. As a mouthpiece for Tolstoy's own beliefs about marriage and love, his thinking that love and marriage are at the least curious alternatives to what we still hear of the ideals of love on all media fronts. 

Though Pozdnyshev's reasons for believing what he does are to be found in his own experience - and there alone. That is, he does so, and readers are free to do so as well. His experience has not been very positive, however. 

He rushed into a marriage with a women that he really only had physical interest in. 

Not knowing much about her own desires he was left with little choice other than to agree reluctantly to having children with her. 

And these things done, his opinion of the doctors with whom he interacted fell to that of leeches. 

To top it all off, he has extrapolated from his own experience and painted everyone else with the same brush. 

So this short story about a random pulling aside our nameless "reader-stand-in" character and sharing his story has changed from being about someone pulling you aside to tell you about their day to being about someone pulling you aside to tell you how the world is run by lizard people via supersonic frequencies emitted by smartphones. 

Another random, another tale-telling

"The Kreutzer Sonata" is, to my pleasant surprise, not at all about music. Yet. I mean, it's hard to tell after 1/4 of a short story what will or won't come up over its course. I can say with certainty, that Tolstoy did improve ever so slightly in the few years between this story and "The Death of Ivan Ilych."

I also have to admit that I was pretty excited when I realized that this story takes place on a train. Sort of.

The main character is travelling when he meets a man who ends up sharing his experience of love, and, in so doing, takes over the story. So, of course, what I wrote about how the apparent pointlessness of the early part of "The Death of Ivan Ilych" and being talked to by a random definitely applies to "The Kreutzer Sonata."

Though any tale about the complications of love and its definitions has a place in my heart. It's just so easy to take the concept of love for granted. Reading something philosophical on the topic reminds me that there's so much more to it.

Though the gender relations and perceptions of just what is debauchery in nineteenth century Russia do not age well. I'm not sure I'd have otherwise learned that there were doctors in charge of inspecting prostitutes at contemporary Russian brothels to keep STIs in check, though.

There's also a certain charm to nineteenth century nested stories. The in-story narrator gets characterized with such fine detail that readers really get an insight into him. Not to mention the fact that it allows a writer to bring his narrator's authority into question. And there's the language. Aylmer Maude and J.D. Duff's translation reminds me of Poe in its style.

I would have liked it a bit more, though, if the nineteenth century word for a morphine addict wasn't "morphinist" but simply "morphiend."

Ivan Ilych's death before his death

Well, it didn't end quite as I had expected but "The Death of Ivan Ilych" certainly deserves its title.

After getting through the details of his life and the cause of his eventually fatal illness, the last third of the story is spent in Ivan's head. Things become quite introspective and as bleak as Russian literature is said to be.

In his throes of agony, Ivan looks back on his life and wonders if he has lived properly. Up until the story's end this question plagues him and he denies it consideration although doubts constantly bring it to the fore of his mind.

Was Ivan Ilych living his life properly, always keeping to whatever middle path appeared before him?

It's a question that anyone can ask of themselves, but I think that the only answer can be found in a They Might Be Giants lyric: "Who can say what's wrong or right?/Nobody can" ("Spiralling Shape").

Though Tolstoy doesn't give any definite answers himself, he does end his story on an up note. All of Ivan's wondering about whether or not he lived his life properly really reminded me of P.D. Ouspenky's The Strange Life of Ivan Osokin. Ouspensky's novel is about a man who's given a chance to relive his life with the aim of improving it thanks to his awareness of where he went wrong.

The influence of G.I. Gurdjief's teachings about the Fourth Way and self-remembering were also brought to mind as I finished "The Death of Ivan Ilych." In my mind, Ivan's reflections suggest that his death isn't just the event that closes the story, but something that happened to him once he entered the world of officialdom at his law school. From that point, his life became more regular and predictable, or, as Gurdjief would have it, mechanical.

That is, all of the organic happenings of Ivan Ilych's life were slowly leached out of him until he reached the point where he moved into the same sort of house that others of his social standing owned and he decorated it in the same way as those others. To my mind, Ivan's injuring himself during this decorating is his time of death. From then until near the end of his broken body's existence he is dead and only in his final hours does he regain lively clarity through the nagging question: "What if my whole life has really been wrong?" (148).

So, "The Death of Ivan Ilych" is definitely quite a bit richer than "Family Happiness." As "The Kreutzer Sonata" is started, we'll see just how much Tolstoy's changed over a much shorter span of time: a mere three years.

Cold reading a different culture

Since flashing back to the period before the death of Ivan Ilych, Tolstoy has not yet gone back. However, we have learned what probably started his illness off.

A little stumble while he was caught up in micromanaging the organization of his new home in a new city.

Or municipality.

Along with all of the personal names that are being thrown around (including the variations different characters use for the same person), nineteenth century Russian geography is not entirely clear for me.

However, rather than just going and looking up such things, I've decided to see how the work stands on its own.

Perhaps that's just a danger of having a readily available translation: Anyone, even those unfamiliar with the original language and culture of a work, can read it and misunderstand much. Although an unprepared peek into another culture can shake loose thoughts and ideas. That jolt to perception and conceptions of what is usual can be pretty useful.

Such a jolt may or may not have shaken loose an idea for a short story about wary parents giving their children a certain kind of pet.

At any rate, now 2/3 through "The Death of Ivan Ilych," I've read through his breakdown and am confident that I'll learn why Tolstoy is telling this story by its end. I really doubt that it'll be left open-ended on that front.

Why are you telling me this, Mr. Tolstoy?

"The Death of Ivan Ilych" really cracks along.

As in "Family Happiness," Tolstoy is covering a lot of time, but he handles it very differently in this story. He's stepped back to the third person perspective, for starters, and has taken an omnipotent position over his subject.

Once more, the story is broken into several parts. The first deals with the aftermath of Ivan's death, and the second is the first of a sequence detailing Ivan's life and characteristics. If this all sounds mundane, it is. But I find it strangely compelling as well.

I'm reminded of Infinite Jest, actually. Not because Tolstoy is writing in a mode that could be considered hyper realism, but because the whole story is made up of mundane details.

It's not a story that's interesting because it's about a particularly interesting subject (unless civil servants who like a good a decorous time and find marriage to be a minefield are your cup of tea), but because you really wonder why it's being told in the first place.

It's like something that a random person comes up and relates to you while you're out in public.

That person needs to tell that anecdote or share that thought, but you're never explicitly told why. This being a short story, though, I imagine Tolstoy will reveal why the death of Ivan Ilych matters come the end. Until then, I'm definitely fine with reading on.

The end of "Family Happiness"

"Family Happiness" ends by making the reason its title is what it is abundantly clear.

Having finished the book, I feel like I'm justified in writing that Tolstoy wasn't just trying to write from the perspective of a woman. On the whole, "Family Happiness" is instead about the ways in which happiness changes as people age. Or, specifically in the case of this story, gain experience.

On the whole, I quite enjoyed it, and if this single Tolstoy short story is anything to go by I'll enjoy the rest of this collection. Perhaps Russian literature will hold more interest for me than the Victorian canon ever has, even.

However, I found the thematic and emotional climax of "Family Happiness," a little stilted.

Maybe it's Aylmer Maude and J.D. Duff's translation, maybe it's just the way that Russians of the time expressed emotion, but it comes out in blocks rather than English Victorian writers' rivulets.

On the level of the page, what I mean is that each emotion that Masha expresses and feels as she pours out her heart to Sergei appears to be trapped in its paragraph. The emotions in what I've read by Jane Austen and Ellen Wood instead flows from paragraph to paragraph, contained only within the character experiencing them.

Perhaps such blocky emotional expression is just the mark of a man attempting to write as a woman. I doubt that the same was done in "The Death of Ivan Ilych," but we'll soon see how a decades older Tolstoy handles writing women (and in general).

Tolstoy, "Family Happiness," and types

Having left behind the matter of their age difference, Tolstoy returns to writing Masha as more of a young woman in part two of "Family Happiness."

However, as this is the part of the story where their marriage begins to break apart and is rife with emotional conflict, I'm back to questioning Tolstoy's choice of writing in the female voice.

Because Masha is significantly younger than Sergei, it's understandable that she's bored by the dull country life they lead in Nikolskoe. There's also nothing really particularly wrong with Tolstoy's use of Masha's introduction into society life in Petersburg as the catalyst for their conflict. Yet, I'm not sure he really captures the feminine voice in the same way that the female English Victorian authors did.

But I also don't think that's what he was attempting.

In taking on a voice that is not at all his own, Tolstoy's stretching himself out into humanity. As such, rather than presenting a single female voice that represents a generation of women's hidden thoughts and feelings, he makes Masha and Sergei into types. In very broad strokes they are the young and inexperienced, and the old and experienced respectively.

But those are broad strokes.

Though, even with such generalizations (maybe moreso on my part, who knows what Tolstoy was trying to do with "Family Happiness"), I think the reason I'm enjoying "Family Happiness" more than any of the Victorian novels I've read is because he seems to be striving more directly towards expressing human issues rather than happening to do so through self-expression.

Though, there's also something in Tolstoy's indirect way of going about his direct project.

In choosing to write in a female voice, the voice of the Other, Tolstoy is trying to show that the Other is still relatable despite surface differences.

Writing for myself, I definitely relate to Masha and can see why she stands where she does in her marriage to Sergei. After all, at the heart of her concerns is the matter of how much you can really truly know another person and their motivations, thoughts, and feelings.

All a matter of experience

Masha and Sergey are now married. But such was not a psychologically easy undertaking for Masha. 

I feel that Tolstoy's handling of the female psyche took a bit of a dive once it turned to the matter of marriage. He had a lot to work with because of the age and experience gap, but Masha's worry and concern over feeling things that she'd not felt before when with and thinking of Sergey seem slightly overwrought to me. 

I've lost the impression that Masha is particularly a woman being written by a man. This sense has since been replaced with knowledge of a person with very little experience of the world entering into a commitment with another who has a great deal of experience of the world. 

However, some of Masha and Sergey's talks circle around Masha's fears about their marriage. And, in doing so, it's possible that some of her anxieties were implanted, or perhaps just encouraged, by Sergey's questions to her. 

I imagine that part two (where my bookmark currently sits) of this story will be much like act two in a play. We'll rejoin the characters after some time has passed and see just what their marriage has come to.

Starting into "Family Happiness"

Leo Tolstoy is the last person I'd expected to write a short story that feels as though it's familiar to fans of the Brontë sisters or Jane Austen.

Of course, my knowledge of Russian history and literature (of anything historically Eastern European in fact) is pretty sparse. Awareness of what that region's literary legends did definitely falls into the category of such knowledge.

But what I find particularly curious as I read "Family Happiness" is that Tolstoy's Mashechka doesn't sound like she's written by a man. No more than Jane Eyre or Elizabeth Bennet does. It's much clearer to me now how nineteenth century readers so easily assumed books written by women were actually done by men.

What I'm reading is a collection of four of Tolstoy's short stories. The first of these is "Family Happiness." It's as dour as everyone says Russian literature is, with its heroine going on frequent late night walks alone and being called out for the affecting happiness only in the presence of others. Where I've left things, the main character, Mashechka, expects her confession of love to the quite older Sergey Mikhaylych to go well.

I've not read much Russian literature before this, but I have read enough to know that something's going to go awry. Based on Sergey's dwelling on his calling Mashechka Masha, I'm willing to guess that this is either Mashechka's mother's name, or the name of some previous lover. If things get really interesting, it will be the name of Mashechka's father. Alternately, and possibly most disappointingly, it could just be a matter of calling her by a familiar form of her name. Without proper understanding of Russian names, it's hard to guess with certainty.

Actually, the age gap between these lovers-to-be is kind of startling. Mashechka is seventeen and Sergey is 36. So Mashechka definitely fails the "half-your-age-plus-seven" rule.

The mid nineteenth century was a different time, I know, but still. Under the auspices of that rule, Mashechka's a full eight years too young.

If things do go as wrong as I expect them to, I'll be sure to chalk it up to this disparity in age.