Excerpt from La FamineParmi les tentatives d'organisation de secours aux affamés qui, dès le début, ont particulièrement réussi et attiré l'attention, a'ntaut'en Russie qu'à l'étranger, on a déjà signalé les réfectoires gratuits du comte Léon Tolstoï, L'activité philanthropique de l'éminent écrivain russe a même eu l'honneur d'une mention spéciale dans le rapport publié par le Messager officiel de...

La Famine

Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his dying so much as a passing thought. But one day, death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise, he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth?This short novel was an artistic culmination of a profound spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life, a nine-year period following the publication of Anna Karenina during which he wrote not a word of fiction.A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.

La Mort d'Ivan Ilitch

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith. Dmitry Andreich Olenin, in the hope of escaping the hollowness of his privilege, joins the army and heads to the Caucasus. There among the foothills he will meet the Cossacks: a people he considers to be at one with the land. In their company he will hunt, he will drink, he will fall in love and, slowly, he will begin to understand that between people, between cultures, there is often a space that cannot be traversed...'It is the richness of Tolstoy's genius that strikes us most in this story' Virginia Woolf

The Cossacks

I have not always been possessed of the religious ideas set forth in this book. For thirty-five years of my life I was, in the proper acceptation of the word, a nihilist,—not a revolutionary socialist, but a man who believed in nothing. Five years ago faith came to me; I believed in the doctrine of Jesus, and my whole life underwent a sudden transformation. What I had once wished for I wished for no longer, and I began to desire what I had never desired before. What had once appeared to me right now became wrong, and the wrong of the past I beheld as right. My condition was like that of a man who goes forth upon some errand, and having traversed a portion of the road, decides that the matter is of no importance, and turns back. What was at first on his right hand is now on his left, and what was at his left hand is now on his right; instead of going away from his abode, he desires to get back to it as soon as possible. My life and my desires were completely changed; good and evil interchanged meanings. Why so? Because I understood the doctrine of Jesus in a different way from that in which I had understood it before.

Ma Religion

Widely considered a pinnacle in realist fiction, Tolstoy considered Anna Karenina his first real novel and Dostoevsky declared it to be "flawless as a work of art". His opinion was shared by Vladimir Nabokov, who especially admired "the flawless magic of Tolstoy's style", and by William Faulkner, who described the novel as "the best ever written". The novel is currently enjoying enormous popularity, as demonstrated by a recent poll of 125 contemporary authors by J. Peder Zane, published in 2007 in The Top Ten, which declared that Anna Karenina is the "greatest novel ever written".

Plot:

A bachelor, Vronsky is willing to marry her if she would agree to leave her husband Karenin, a government official, but she is vulnerable to the pressures of Russian social norms, her own insecurities and Karenin's indecision. Although Vronsky eventually takes Anna to Europe where they can be together, they have trouble making friends. Back in Russia, she is shunned, becoming further isolated and anxious, 

while Vronsky pursues his social life. Despite Vronsky's reassurances she grows increasingly possessive and paranoid about his imagined infidelity.

About Constance Garnett: the classical translator of great Russian literature:

Constance Garnett's translation of Anna Karenina is still among the best. Some scholars feel that her language is closer to the 19th-century sense of the original. Garnett translated seventy volumes of Russian prose for publication, including all of Dostoyevsky's novels. A friend of Garnett's, D. H. Lawrence, was in awe of her matter-of-fact endurance, recalling her "sitting out in the garden turning out reams of her marvelous translations from the Russian. She would finish a page, and throw it off on a pile on the floor without looking up, and start a new page. That pile would be this high--really, almost up to her knees, and all magical."

Anna Karenina - Translated 1901 by Constance Garnett

Extrait:F ortunes'petits mougiks, un brave homme de barine est venu, qui leur a dit: Qu'est - cc que tu fais de tes bras et de tes Jambes? Sur quels objets portes - tu les yeux? A quelles perceptions appliques - tu ton intelligence eveillee'? De quoi ris - tu, toi qui ris de si bon coeur? Qu'aimes - tu, toi qui aimes si bien? Les petits mougiks lui ont montre des bancs etroits, ranges devant des pupitres noirs, dans une chambre triste, nue, sans air, sans jour, et, tout au bout, un etre en nuyeux, menacant, vitre de lunettes et bran dissant une ferule, qui tracait sur un tableau d'ardoise des alphabets de langues mortes Alors le brave homme de barine les a emmenes se promener dans la campagne, et, chemin fai sant, il leur a presente la nature.

L'École de Yasnaïa Poliana

Plusieurs amis s’étaient réunis sous le toit hospitalier d’un homme riche. Il arriva un jour que la conversation prit une tournure sérieuse, la Vie Humaine en devint le thème.Ils parlaient d’eux-mêmes et des personnes absentes, mais, parmi tous leurs amis et leurs connaissances, ils ne pouvaient pas en désigner un seul qui fût satisfait de son genre de vie. Non pas que ces personnes eussent des raisons de se plaindre de la fortune : elles étaient dans des positions aisées, mais aucune d’elles ne pouvait regarder la vie qu’elle suivait comme digne d’un chrétien. Elles avouaient toutes qu’elles gaspillaient leur existence, que leurs pensées ne s’attachaient qu’aux choses temporelles, qu’elles s’intéressaient seulement à elles-mêmes et à leurs familles, enfin, qu’elles pensaient à peine à leurs voisins et encore moins à Dieu....

Marchez pendant que vous avez la lumière: Récit du temps des premiers chrétiens

Towards the end of 1880, when he was fifty-two, Tolstoy one day approached the young tutor who lived in his house at Yasnaya Polyana, and in great agitation asked him to do him a service. The tutor, seeing Tolstoy so moved, asked what he could possibly do for him. In an unready voice Tolstoy replied: "Save me, I am falling!" The tutor, in alarm, inquired what was the matter, to which Tolstoy replied: "I am overcome by sexual desire and feel a complete lack of power to retrain myself. I am in danger of yielding to the temptation. Help me!"

"I am a weak man myself, " replied the tutor. "How can I help you?"

"You can, if only you won't refuse!"

"But what must I do to help you?"

"This! Come with me on my daily walks. We will go out together and talk, and the temptation will not occur to me."

The Devil

"En ecoutant Tolstoi" de Leon Tolstoi. 1873-1877.

La Famine

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