First Edition
Original Language: Russian
Publisher: New York. Penguin 60s Series 9.
Country: USA
Publication Date: 1995
ISBN: 0146000897
Page Count: 96
Synopsis
These three stories of Tolstoy's maturity show him increasingly grappling with fundamental issues of religion and morality. In "Master and Man", he depicts an employer, bent on closing a business deal, travelling with his servant through the swirling snow - little realizing how soon he may have to settle his accounts with his maker. "Father Sergius" portrays a priest tormented beyond endurance by the longings of his body, while "Hadji Murat" dramatizes the divided loyalties of a leading figure in Russia's struggle to subdue the Caucasus. With a compelling combination of moral seriousness and extraordinary sympathy and understanding, these stories reveal Tolstoy as a writer at the height of his creative powers.
Review
The novella Master and Man is considered one of the more notable works from the later stage of Tolstoy's illustrious literary career. Critics often compare it to his earlier classic story, Smert Ivana Illyicha (The Death of Ivan Ilych; 1886), in that both short novels are concerned with protagonists facing impending death and undergoing a profound spiritual transformation.
A land owner, Vasili Andreevich, takes along one of his peasants, Nikita, for a short journey to another town. He wishes to get to the town quickly ‘for business’. They find themselves in the middle of a blizzard, but the master in his avarice wishes to press on. They eventually get lost off the road and they try to camp. The master’s peasant soon finds himself about to die from hypothermia. The master leaves him on the horse to stubbornly try to find the road. When he returns, he attains a spiritual/moral revelation, and Tolstoy once again repeats one of his famous themes: that the only true happiness in life is found by living for others.
This tale of tragedy, written in 1895, gives us a world so real, you hang on every twist and turn in the plot. Tolstoy presents a view of Russian aristocracy and peasantry in diametric conflict. As in Anna Karenina, the story is told from the omnipotent viewpoint, i.e. the author gets into the minds and personalities of the two principal characters, via mental ruminations and dialogue.
The story also underscores class differences, as the two men's social standing informs their reaction to the crisis: Nikita, the servant, humbly accepts his fate; Brekhunov, the master, attempts to command his own destiny. When Brekhunov confronts death and accepts its utter inevitability, he embraces a master greater than the self
In this tale, you can feel the wind blowing against your face as it does to the characters. You can imagine the smell of the forest, and the bone-chilling cold of the night in a vast wilderness. The fear of death by freezing, you feel, as Nikita stumbles and slides in the snow, you do too. The increasing sense of desperation Nikita and Andreevich sense, you feel as you follow them into ever greater danger. Tolstoy uses his descriptive powers to bring this environment and persons alive to the reader.
Summary
As wonderful as any of Tolstoy's short works, this one can actually be read in a sitting. It's very wintry. Someone comes across a fence overgrown with dead vines in the middle of a field in the night in rural Russia and has a sort of premonition that the fence is a border that separates him from the afterlife, and I seem to remember the fence shaking in the wind, and it's a really quick moment but it's one that lasts.
Reading level
Adult
Rating
4 stars
