critique essay of the two brothers

Summary, Theme, Character Analysis, and Connection of “The Two Brothers” by Leo Tolstoy – Lilia, Grade 5

The Summary of “The Two Brothers” 

The story “The Two Brothers” by Leo Tolstoy is about two brothers who are hiking in a forest. They find a rock that tells them to go on a quest for happiness. The younger brother decides to go, but the older brother does not think it will bring great happiness. So the younger one sets off on the quest and becomes a king of a city. A few years later he is driven out by another king and he becomes a wanderer. The younger brother finds his older brother living peacefully in a village. They are happy to find each other at last, and in the end, both have found their type of happiness.

The Character Analysis of The Younger Brother in “The Two Brothers”

The younger brother in “The Two Brothers” by Leo Tolstoy comes across as brave, curious, and independent. The younger brother is brave because he is not afraid of all the things that could go wrong. This is because even when his older brother says, “no one can know whether what is written on this stone is the truth,” he still decides to go. The younger brother is also curious because when he reads the message on the stone, he is willing to put himself in danger to find out what great happiness he can find. Lastly, he is independent because even when the older brother tells him not to go, he thinks for himself and believes that he will find great happiness. He also shows that he is independent because he leaves his older brother to go alone. Overall, the younger brother in “The Two Brothers” by Leo Tolstoy comes across as brave, curious, and independent. 

The Theme of “The Two Brothers” by Leo Tolstoy

In the story, “The Two Brothers,” Leo Tolstoy aims to convey the message that everybody has their own opinion of what happiness means to them. This is shown in the story when the younger and the older brother find a rock that tells them how to find great happiness. They go on different paths because the younger brother believes that it is worth it to follow the rock’s directions while the other doesn’t think it is worth it. The younger brother finds happiness and becomes a king for six years, but later on, he is defeated. When the younger brother finds the older brother living in a village, they are happy to be reunited. The older brother says, “I was right. Here I have lived quietly and well, while you, though you may have been a king, have seen a great deal of trouble.” But the younger brother says, “I may have nothing now, but I shall always have something to remember, while you have no memories at all.” So the resolution of the story shows that although they take different paths, they both have found their happiness.

Text to Self Connection

The way both brothers had different paths in “The Two Brothers” reminds me of when my French class was playing a game called Jeopardy. There were different groups. If your group pressed the card with the larger number, the question would be harder. If they pressed the smaller number on the card, they would get an easier question but fewer points. During the game, many people choose to pick the harder cards so they can win. Other people decided to go on a safer path by choosing the easier questions with fewer points. This is like how the younger brother decided to take a risk more to find great happiness, while the older brother decided that it wasn’t worth the risk and that he would still find happiness. Neither brother was wrong, because they both had different types of happiness. It’s similar to how either of the groups in Jeopardy was wrong because if a group made a mistake on a hard question, another team would have a chance to win. But if you chose the easier questions and others didn’t, you couldn’t win.

Literary Theory and Criticism

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Analysis of Leo Tolstoy’s Stories

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on November 25, 2019 • ( 0 )

Leo Tolstoy’s (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) ego embraces the world, so that he is always at the center of his fictive creation, filling his books with his struggles, personae, problems, questions, and quests for answers, and above all with his notion of life as an ethical search as strenuous as the pursuit of the Holy Grail. He does not try to puzzle or dazzle; his work is not a clever riddle to be solved or a game to be played but a rich realm to be explored. He disdains the kind of exterior purism practiced by Gustave Flaubert and Henry James among others, which concentrates on the inner lives of individuals— although he is superbly skilled at psychological perception. His aim, rather, is to discover, as far as he can, the essential truth of life’s meaning, the revelation to be gained at the core of the vast mesh of human relations. What energizes his work is his conviction that this truth is good, and that, once discovered, it will resolve the discords and conflicts that plague humanity.

In Tolstoy’s art, the natural, simple, and true is always pitted against the artificial, elaborate, and false, the particular against the general, knowledge gained from observation against assertions of borrowed faiths. His is the gift of direct vision, of fundamental questions and of magical simplicity—perhaps too simple, as a distinguished historian of ideas has indicated. Isaiah Berlin, in a famous essay titled “The Hedgehog and the Fox,” sees Tolstoy as torn between his pluralism (the fox, perceiving reality as varied, complex, and multiple) and monism (the hedgehog, reducing life’s fullness to one single truth, the infinity of sensory data to the finite limits of a single mind). Tolstoy, Berlin concludes, was a pluralist in his practice but a monist in his theory, who found himself unable to reconcile the foxiness of his multifarious awareness with his hedgehoglike need to discover one all-embracing answer to its myriad problems.

Tolstoy’s first stories are set in the Caucasus, where he spent the years 1851 to 1854, with many of the officers and soldiers who he met serving as thinly disguised models. In “Nabeg: Razskaz volontera” (“The Raid: A Volunteer’s Story”), he poses several problems: What is the nature of courage? By what tests does one determine bravery or cowardice? What feelings cause a man to kill his fellow? The firstperson narrator discusses these questions with a Captain Khlopov (derived from a Captain Khilkovsky in Tolstoy’s diary) and illustrates different types of courage among the military characters. Tolstoy deflates warfare, emphasizing ordinary details and casual, matter-of-fact fortitude rather than dashingly proud heroism. His descriptions of nature are simple, concrete, and expert. The story’s most powerful scene has a dying young ensign pass from carefree bravado to dignified resignation as he encounters his end.

Sebastopol Sketches

The element of eyewitness reportage is carried over from the Caucasian tales to the three Sebastopol sketches, which are fiction passing as war dispatches. Tolstoy took part in the Crimean War (1854-1856) as a sublieutenant, with Russia fighting a complex series of actions against a multiple enemy composed of not only Turkish but also some British, French, and Sardinian troops. Although aggressively patriotic, he was appalled by the disorganization of his country’s military forces, with the average Russian peasant soldier poorly armed, trained, and led, while many company commanders nearly starved their men by pocketing much of the money allocated for their food.

“Sevastopol v dekabre” (“Sebastopol in December”) has no characters and no particular topography. The first-person narrator constructs a guidebook homily out of lived experience, familiarly addressing readers, inviting them to listen to his frontline experiences as he wanders from Sebastopol’s bay and dockside to a military hospital filled with shrieking, often multilated soldiers. Says the speaker,

. . . you will see war not as a beautiful, orderly, and gleaming formation, with music and beaten drums, streaming banners and generals on prancing horses, but war in its authentic expression—as blood, suffering and death.

Tolstoy concludes this sketch with a stirring salute to the epic heroism of Sebastopol’s residents and Russian defenders. Yet a somber awareness of death’s imminence, as the surgeon’s sharp knife slices into his patients’ flesh, pervades the sketch.

In “Sevastopol v mae” (“Sebastopol in May”), Tolstoy sharply denounces the vainglory of militarism, stressing the futility of the fighting and the madness of celebrating war as a glorious adventure. The passage describing the death by shellfire of an officer is a superb tour de force, with the author using interior monologue to have the lieutenant crowd his many hopes, fears, memories, and fantasies into a few seconds. The speaker comes to consider war as senseless, horrifying, but also—given human nature—almost inevitable. He concludes that the only hero he can find is the truth. This is perhaps the finest of Tolstoy’s military tales, anticipating the battle and death scenes of War and Peace.

In the third narrative, “Sebastopol in August,” Tolstoy uses well-developed characters to unify an episodic plot. He focuses on two brothers whose personalities contrast but who are both killed in action. He also strikes a note of shame and anger at Russia’s abandonment of the city and the consequent waste of many thousands of lives. He celebrates, however, the quiet heroism of countless common soldiers who risked and often met death with calm nobility.

Two Hussars

Before Tolstoy began War and Peace in 1863, he wrote a number of long stories or novellas, which he called povesti, defined as “A literary narrative of lesser size than a novel.” Their compass is usually too small to accommodate the didacticism that his longer works absorb painlessly. One successful story that avoids moralizing is “Dva gusara” (“Two Hussars”). Its first half is devoted to the officerfather, the second to his son. Twenty years apart, they enact the same sequence of card playing, drinking, and philandering, in the same small town, meeting the same people. Their characters, however, differ drastically. The father is gallant, generous, honorable, charming. The son is mean, cold, calculating, cowardly. The father’s temperament is natural and open. The son’s is contrived and devious, corrupted by decadent society. As always with Tolstoy, he gives his allegiance to the authentic and intuitive, while sardonically scorning the artificial and scheming.

Family Happiness

In Family Happiness, Tolstoy treats a problem to which he was to return throughout his career: the place of women, both at home and in society. He had courted a much younger and very pretty girl, Valerya Arseneva, but had become irritated by her fondness for high society and had broken off the relationship. He transforms the experience into a narrative by the young woman, Masha, in the fashion of Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847), which he had read and admired. Now married and a mother, Masha recalls, in the story’s first half, her courtship by a man who knew her dead father, considered himself her guardian as she grew up, and was thirty-five to her seventeen when they married. Tolstoy magnificently captures the rapturous chemistry of first love as the girl awakens to womanhood. By the story’s second half, however, he undermines her dreams of romantic happiness as she becomes addicted to the whirl of urban high society, driving her husband into rural retreat and seclusion. Toward the end, at home in the country after disillusionments in the city, she and he agree to a different sort of marriage than they envisioned at its start, basing it not on passion but on companionship and parenthood. Tolstoy has here sounded some of his most pervasive notes: Sophistication is evil, simplicity is good; the city is decadent, the country is healthy; and romance is dangerous, often a “charming nonsense,” while marriage, though a necessary institution, should never be sentimentalized.

The story now called “Kholstomer” (“Strider”) was originally translated into English as “Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse,” because Tolstoy modeled his equine, first-person narrator on a horse by that name celebrated for his enormous stride and speed. The author humanizes his outcast animal, which is consistently stigmatized as a piebald and a gelding, in a keenly compassionate manner, with Strider’s sorrowful life made a parable of protest against unjust punishment of those who are somehow different. “He was old, they were young. He was lean, they were sleek; he was miserable, they were gay; and so he was quite alien to them, an outsider, an utterly different creature whom it was impossible for them to pity.” Strider’s victimization by greedy, selfish owners enables Tolstoy to lash the evils of private property, using an equine perspective to expose its immorality.

The second phase of Tolstoy’s production of short fiction follows his two great novels and the tremendous spiritual crisis chronicled in A Confession. It was an extremely profound change for an author. The sublime artist comes to repudiate almost all art; the nobleman now lives like a peasant; the wealthy, titled country gentleman seeks to abandon his property, preaching humility and asceticism; the marvelous novelist and story writer prefers the roles of educational reformer, religious leader, social sage, cultural prophet. Yet Tolstoy’s artistic instincts refuse to atrophy, and he manages to create different yet also masterful works, less happy and conventional, uncompromising, sometimes perverse, always powerful, preoccupied with purity, corruption, sin, sex, and death. His late stories express his Rousseauistic hostility to such institutions as the state, which forces citizens to pay taxes and serve in the military; the church, which coerces its communicants by fear and superstition; private property, whereby one person owns another; and modern art, which is elitist. The creative gold nevertheless continues to flow from Tolstoy’s pen, despite his moralistic resistance to aesthetics, in such novellas as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and the story “Master and Man.”

The Death of Ivan Ilyich

The Death of Ivan Ilyich, perhaps his finest story, was Tolstoy’s first published work after his conversion. It is more schematic and deliberate than the earlier tales, more selective and condensed in the choice of descriptive and analytic detail. It is a parable of a life badly lived, with Tolstoy here allying his highest art with an exigent passion for establishing the most profound and encompassing truths.

Ivan Ilyich is a cautious, correct, typical representative of his social class. He has achieved success in his profession of judge, in love, in marriage, in his family, and in his friendships, or so appearances indicate. Yet when he reviews his past, confronted with the inescapability of a cancer-ridden death, he slowly arrives at the realization that he has led a life of selfishness, shallowness, smugness, and hypocrisy. Significantly, his surname, Golovin, is derived from the Russian word for “head.” He has excluded any deep feelings, as he has lived according to principles of pleasantness and propriety, conforming to the values of his upper-middle-class social sphere in his striving for status, materialism, bureaucratic impersonality and power, decorous appearance, and pleasure.

In part 1, which begins with the announcement of Ivan Ilyich’s death, Tolstoy’s tone is caustically satiric. Ivan’s wife/widow, Praskovya Fedorovna, defines the nature of his loveless home life, grieving formally for her loss and accepting colleagues’ condolences while really concerned with the cost of the grave site and the possibility of increasing her widow’s pension. Ivan Ilyich, however, deserves no better. He is shown as a prisoner of his cherished possessions who wanted Praskovya primarily for her property, secondarily for her correct social position and good looks. The density of things dominates Ivan Ilyich’s feelings and conduct, pain and pleasure, happiness and misery. His highest moment comes with the furnishing of a new house; and his fall comes from reaching to hang a drape when he is on a ladder. Symbolically, his fall is one from pride and vanity.

The physicians enter to examine Ivan Ilyich’s bruised side. They pursue their profession much as he does, from behind well-mannered, ritualistic masks. Ivan Ilyich soon discovers that not only his doctors but also his wife, daughter, colleagues, and friends all refuse him the empathy and compassion that he increasingly needs; they act on the same principle of self-interested pleasure that he has followed. As his physical suffering grows, he experiences the emotional stages that modern psychology accepts as characteristic of responses to lingering terminal illness: denial, loneliness, anger, despondency, and, finally, acceptance. He begins to drop his protective disguises and to realize that his existence has consisted of evasions of self-knowledge, of love, of awareness of the deepest needs of others. His fall into the abyss of death thus brings him to spiritual birth.

At the nadir of Ivan Ilyich’s suffering, partial grace comes to him through the care of his servant, Gerasim. He is, like Platon Karataev in War and Peace , one of those simple, spontaneous, kindly souls whom Tolstoy venerates. In contrast to the sterile pretensions of Ivan Ilyich’s social circle, Gerasim, modest and strong, personifies the Tolstoyan principle of living for others. He is in every sense a “breath of fresh air,” showing his master unstinting compassion as he exemplifies the health of youth and naturally loving behavior.

Inspired by Gerasim’s devotion, Ivan Ilyich becomes capable of extending compassion to his wife and son. When his condition takes a final, fatal turn, as he feels himself slowly sucked into the bottom of death’s sack, he comes to the realization that his life has been trivial, empty, worthless. Two hours before his death, he stops trying to justify it and instead takes pity on his wife, son, and himself. He dies loving rather than hating, forgiving rather than whining, at last surrendering his egoism. Both the story and Ivan Ilyich’s life thus end on a note of serenity and joyous illumination. Tolstoy shows that profound consciousness of death can bring one to the communion of true brotherhood. Through his relentless pain, Ivan Ilyich discovers the truth about himself, akin to Prince Andrey in War and Peace.

The Kreutzer Sonata

The Kreutzer Sonata, like The Death of Ivan Ilyich, is a condensed masterpiece of harrowing intensity, a poem of the poignant pains of the flesh. Tolstoy presents the nature of marriage more directly and comprehensively than any other writer. In Family Happiness, he tries to define its benefits and banes; in War and Peace, he celebrates it; in Anna Karenina , he upholds yet also questions it; in The Kreutzer Sonata, he denounces it vehemently. Though he previously advocated marriage as the morally and socially legitimate release for sexual needs, by the late 1880’s, his new views on morality, as well as his own increasingly burdensome marriage, caused him to equate sexuality with hostility and sinfulness and to regard sexual passion as degrading, undermining human beings’ spiritual self.

The novella’s protagonist, Pozdnyshev, confesses on a train journey that he murdered his wife on suspicion—groundless, as circumstances indicate—of her adultery with an amateur violinist with whom she, a pianist, enjoyed playing duets—such as Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Kreutzer Sonata.” In the spring of 1888, a performance of this work did take place in Tolstoy’s Moscow residence. He proposed to the great realistic painter also present, Ilya Repin, that the artist should paint a canvas, while he would write a story, on the theme of marital jealousy. Although Tolstoy fulfilled the bargain, Repin did not. The tale was submitted to the state censor in 1888; Czar Alexander III, who read a copy, issued an imperial banning order. Sonya Tolstoy thereupon removed some of the story’s sexual explicitness, and the czar permitted its publication, in bowdlerized form, in 1891. Not until the 1933 Jubilee Edition of Tolstoy’s works was the text issued in its original form. Yet even in its toned-down version, it aroused a storm of controversy among readers.

Pozdnyshev relates his conduct to a lightly sketched narrator. His dramatic monologue is powerful and polemical, although his arguments are often exaggerated and inconsistent. The point of his narrative is that sex is sinful, that those who submit to its drives often become vicious and, in Pozdnyshev’s case, murderous. Even in marriage, the protagonist insists, sex is ugly, repulsive, and destructive. Despite the deranged character of Pozdnyshev and the manifest injustice of many of his views, the story is disturbing, forceful, and gripping, as he shows how his sexual lust degraded his character and ruined his marriage. Some critics have interpreted the structure of the tale as equivalent to the sonata form, falling into three movements with a slow introduction and the final chapter as a coda. Tolstoy was himself an accomplished pianist.

In a long, uncompromising afterword to the story, Tolstoy addresses the controversy it caused and clearly links Pozdnyshev’s views—but not his pathological personality— to his. He argues that carnal love lowers human beings to animalistic conduct, advocates chastity within as well as outside marriage, denounces society for featuring erotic allure, and dismisses marriage itself as a trap for humanity’s finest energies. Men and women should replace conjugal relations “with the pure relations that exist between a brother and a sister.” Only thus would they behave as true Christians. Tolstoy thus dismisses sex as relevant—let alone fundamental—to human behavior. Rather, he regards it as a diabolic temptation sent to divert human beings’ purpose from seeking the kingdom of God on earth.

Master and Man

In his moralistic monograph, What Is Art?, Tolstoy asks for writing that is easily understandable, whose subject matter is religious, situations universal, style simple, and technique accessible. None of his successful works embodies these criteria more faithfully than “Master and Man,” which is essentially a morality play based on the New Testament. The master is Vasíli Andréevich Brekhunov: selfish, overbearing, coarse, rich, rapacious, the biblical gatherer of wealth who neglects his soul. The servant is Nikíta, a reformed drunkard, who is humane, sensitive, skilled in his work, strong, meek, kindly, rich in spirit though poor in pocket. The contrast between them is stark, with Tolstoy stressing the unambiguous and heavily symbolic nature of the novella: two opposed sorts of men, two opposed sets of moral values, and the conversion of the master to the ethics of his man. The man of flesh and the man of spirit join in the journey of life and the confrontation with death.

Brekhunov, a merchant proud of his ability to drive a hard bargain, sets off with Nikíta on a business trip to make a down payment on a grove. He can consider nothing but his possessions and how to increase them; his relationships to others are governed by materialistic calculations. On their trip, the pair find themselves immersed in a raging snowstorm, which obliterates all landmarks and turns the landscape into a perilous Wood of Error, a moral Wasteland, through which they must make life’s passage. Tolstoy masterfully uses the storm for its emblematic qualities. It “buries” the travelers in snowdrifts, is cold like death, turns the substantial into the spectral and vice versa. They lose their way as Brekhunov insists on movements to the left, since men find their reward only on the right hand of God. As Brekhunov urges his horse away from the sled, after having (temporarily) deserted Nikíta, he can only come around in a circle to the same spot, marked by wormwood stalks—wormwood being identified with sin and punishment in Revelation. He is ritualistically confronted with himself in the person of a horse thief, for Brekhunov has been cheating Nikíta of his wages and has stolen a large sum of money from his church to buy the grove.

Nikíta accepts his master’s wrong turns without anger or reproof, resigns himself to the snowstorm, and patiently prepares to wait it out when they are forced to settle down for the night in their sled. Around midnight, ill-clad and half-frozen, meekly awaiting likely death before morning, Nikíta asks his master to give the wages owed him to his family and to “Forgive me for Christ’s sake!” Finally, moved to pity by Nikíta’s words, Brekhunov opens his heavy fur coat and lies down on top of his servant, covering Nikíta with both his coat and body as he sobs.

Just before dawn Brekhunov has a visionary dream, in which “it seemed to him that he was Nikíta and Nikíta was he, and that his life was not in himself but in Nikíta.” He wonders why he used to trouble himself so greatly to accumulate money and possessions. At noon the next day, peasants drag both men out of the snow. Brekhunov is frozen to death; Nikíta, though chilled, is alive.

Some critics have faulted the story’s ending because Tolstoy has inadequately prepared the reader for Brekhunov’s sudden adoption of Christian humility, brotherhood, and self-sacrifice, since he has previously shown not the slightest inclination toward moral regeneration. Be that as it may, most of the tale is enormously impressive in the power of its sensuous description as the snowstorm isolates the couple from ordinary existence, strips them of external comforts, exposes them to the presence of death, forces them to encounter their inmost selves.

Tolstoy’s celebration of Brekhunov’s redemption through fellowship is his answer to a universe that he has feared all of his life as he confronts the horror of nonexistence conveyed by death. Master and man—or man and man, or man and woman— should cling to each other, love each other, forgive each other. Will such conduct vault their souls into immortality? Tolstoy desperately hopes so.

Other major works Children’s literature: Azbuka, 1872; Novaya azbuka, 1875 (Stories for My Children, 1988); Russkie knigi dlya chteniya, 1875; Classic Tales and Fables for Children, 2002 (includes selections from Azbuka and Novaya azbuka). Plays: Vlast tmy, pb. 1887 (The Power of Darkness, 1888); Plody prosveshcheniya, pr. 1889 (The Fruits of Enlightenment, 1891); I svet vo tme svetit, pb. 1911 (The Light Shines in Darkness, 1923); Zhivoy trup, pr., pb. 1911 (The Live Corpse, 1919); The Dramatic Works, pb. 1923. Novels: Detstvo, 1852 (Childhood, 1862); Otrochestvo, 1854 (Boyhood, 1886); Yunost’, 1857 (Youth, 1886); Semeynoye schast’ye, 1859 (Family Happiness, 1888); Kazaki, 1863 (The Cossacks, 1872); Voyna i mir, 1865-1869 (War and Peace, 1886); Anna Karenina, 1875-1877 (English translation, 1886); Smert’ Ivana Il’icha, 1886 (The Death of Ivan Ilyich, 1887); Kreytserova sonata, 1889 (The Kreutzer Sonata, 1890); Voskreseniye, 1899 (Resurrection, 1899); Khadzi-Murat, wr. 1904, pb. 1911 (Hadji Murad, 1911). Miscellaneous: The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy, 1904-1905 (24 volumes); Polnoye sobraniye sochinenii, 1928-1958 (90 volumes); Tolstoy Centenary Edition, 1928- 1937 (21 volumes). Nonfiction: Ispoved’, 1884 (A Confession, 1885); V chom moya vera, 1884 (What I Believe, 1885); O zhizni, 1888 (Life, 1888); Kritika dogmaticheskogo bogosloviya, 1891 (A Critique of Dogmatic Theology, 1904); Soedinenie i perevod chetyrekh evangeliy, 1892-1894 (The Four Gospels Harmonized and Translated, 1895-1896); Tsarstvo Bozhie vnutri vas, 1893 (The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1894); Chto takoye iskusstvo?, 1898 (What Is Art?, 1898); Tak chto zhe nam delat?, 1902 (What to Do?, 1887); O Shekspire i o drame, 1906 (Shakespeare and the Drama, 1906); The Diaries of Leo Tolstoy, 1847-1852, 1917; The Journal of Leo Tolstoy, 1895-1899, 1917; Tolstoi’s Love Letters, 1923; The Private Diary of Leo Tolstoy, 1853-1857, 1927; “What Is Art?” and Essays on Art, 1929; L. N. Tolstoy o literature: Stati, pisma, dnevniki, 1955; Lev Tolstoy ob iskusstve i literature, 1958; Last Diaries, 1960. Bibliography Bayley, John. Leo Tolstoy. Plymouth, England: Northcote House, 1997. Bloom, Harold, ed. Leo Tolstoy. New York: Chelsea House, 1986. Gustafson, Richard F. Leo Tolstoy, Resident and Stranger: A Study in Fiction and Theology. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986. Jahn, Gary R. The Death of Ivan Ilich: An Interpretation. New York: Twayne, 1993. May, Charles E., ed. Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition. 8 vols. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 2004. Orwin, Donna Tussig. Tolstoy’s Art and Thought, 1847-1880. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. Seifrid, Thomas. “Gazing on Life’s Page: Perspectival Vision in Tolstoy.” PMLA 113 (May, 1998): 436-448. Smoluchowski, Louise. Lev and Sonya: The Story of the Tolstoy Marriage. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987. Steiner, George. Tolstoy or Dostoevsky: An Essay in the Old Criticism. 2d ed. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1996. Wasiolek, Edward. Tolstoy’s Major Fiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978.

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The two brothers, - by leo tolstoy.

"Untitled" by Samuel Zeller is in the public domain.

Once upon a time, in the days long since gone by, there dwelt at Jerusalem two brothers; the name of the elder was Athanasius, the name of the younger John. They dwelt on a hill not far from the town, and lived upon what people gave to them. Every day the brothers went out to work. They worked not for themselves, but for the poor. Wherever the overworked, the sick were to be found-wherever there were widows and orphans, thither went the brothers, and there they worked and spent their time, taking no payment. Thus the brothers went about separately the whole week, and only met together in the evening of the Sabbath at their own dwelling. Only on Sunday did they remain at home, praying and conversing together. And the Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. On the Monday they separated again, each going his own way. Thus did the brothers live for many years, and every week the Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. One Monday, when the brothers had gone forth to work, and had parted their several ways, the elder brother, Athanasius, felt sorry at having had to part from his beloved brother, and he stood still and glanced after him. John was walking with bent head, and he did not look back. But suddenly John also stopped as if he perceived something and continued to gaze fixedly at it. Presently he drew near to that which he had been looking upon, and then suddenly leaped aside, and, not stopping for another instant, ran towards the mountain and up the mountain, right away from the place, just as if some savage beast were pursuing him. Athanasius was astonished, and turned back to the place to find out what his brother had been so afraid of. At last he approached the spot, and then he saw something glistening in the sun. He drew nearer-on the grass, as if poured out from a measure, lay a heap of gold. And Athanasius was still more astonished, both at the sight of the gold and at the leaping aside of his brother. "What was he afraid of, and what did he run away from?" thought Athanasius. "There is no sin in gold, sin is in man. You may do ill with gold, but you may also do good. How many widows and orphans might not be fed therewith, how many naked ones might not be clothed, how many poor and sick might not be cared for and cured by means of this gold? Now, indeed, we minister to people, but our ministration is but little, because our power is small, and with this gold we might minister to people much more than we do now." Thus thought Athanasius, and would have said so to his brother, but John was by this time out of hearing, and looked no bigger than a cockchafer on the further mountain. And Athanasius took off his garment, shovelled as much gold into it as he was able to carry, threw it over his shoulder, and went into the town. He went to an inn, gave the gold to the innkeeper, and then went off to fetch the rest of it. And when he had brought in all the gold he went to the merchants, bought land in that town, bought stones, wood, hired labourers, and set about building three houses. And Athanasius abode in the town three months, and built the three houses in that town; one of the houses was an asylum for widows and orphans, the second house was a hospital for the sick, the third house was a hospice for the poor and for pilgrims. And Athanasius sought him out three God-fearing elders, and the first elder he placed over the refuge, the second over the hospital, and the third over the hospice for pilgrims. And Athanasius had three thousand gold pieces still left. And he gave a thousand to each of the elders that they might have wherewith to distribute among the poor. And all three houses began to be filled with people, and the people began to praise Athanasius for all that he had done. And Athanasius rejoiced thereat, so that he had no desire to depart from the town. But Athanasius loved his brother, and, taking leave of the people, and not keeping for himself a single coin of all this money, he went back to his dwelling in the selfsame old garment in which he had come to town. Athanasius was drawing near to his mountain, and he thought to himself: "My brother judged wrongly when he leaped aside from the gold and ran away from it. Haven't I done much better?" And Athanasius had no sooner thought this than suddenly he beheld standing in his path the Angel who had been sent to bless them, but now looked threateningly upon him. And Athanasius was aghast and could only say: "Wherefore, my Lord?" And the Angel opened his mouth and said: "Depart from hence! Thou art not worthy to dwell with thy brother. That one leap aside of thy brother's was worth more than all that thou hast done with thy gold." Athanasius began to talk of how many poor and how many pilgrims he had fed, and of how many orphans he had cared for. And the Angel said to him: "That same Devil who placed the gold there in order to corrupt thee, hath also put these big words into thy mouth. And then the conscience of Athanasius upbraided him, and he understood that what he had done was not done for God, and he wept and began to repent. Then the Angel stepped aside from the road, and left free for him the path in which John was already standing awaiting his brother. And from thenceforth Athanasius yielded no more to the wiles of the Devil who had strewn the gold in his path, and he understood that not by gold, but by good works only, could he render service to God and his fellow-man. And the brethren dwelt together as before.

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The Two Brothers Story

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Written stories, the two brothers, illustrator, listen to the story here.

Once upon a time two brothers called Kabelo and Lefa lived in a little village deep in a valley. They had two younger sisters, so their mother had four children to feed. She worked day and night, cooking and cleaning, sewing and mending, and digging and weeding her vegetable garden.  

There was never enough money for everything the family needed. “You two boys are old enough to go to the city to look for work,” their mother said one day. So Kabelo and Lefa packed up the few things they owned, put them in their old backpacks and set off for the city.  

“I’m going to be the richest man in Africa,” Kabelo boasted as they walked along the dirt road that wound up into the hills. “I am so clever and so handsome that it won’t take me long to become wealthy.”  

“That’s good,” said Lefa.  

“I suppose you’ll find a job, if you’re lucky,” Kabelo said. “Maybe you can sweep the city streets.”  

“That will be good,” said Lefa. “As long as I have something to send home to Mama and my younger sisters, I will be happy.”  

They had been walking all morning, and the sun was very hot. By lunchtime the brothers were very tired and hungry.  

Suddenly they saw an old man with a white beard walking along the road towards them. He was bent over under the weight of the heavy sack he was carrying on his back.  

“Good day, young men,” the old man said when he reached them. “Where are you going?”  

“None of your business,” snapped Kabelo. “What is in your sack, old man?”  

“Just rocks,” the old man said. “Now where are you two walking to?”  

“We are going to the city to make some money,” Lefa said politely.  

“Perhaps I can help you,” the old man said. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a leather bag filled with gold coins. “Now, which one of you would like this bag?” he asked.  

“Me, me!” cried Kabelo. “I want it.”  

“Here you are then,” said the old man, and he gave the leather bag to Kabelo, who quickly hid it in his backpack. Then he looked at the old man greedily to see what else he was carrying.  

The old man put his hand into his other pocket. This time he pulled out a small brown leather box.  

“What’s in there?” asked Kabelo, his eyes glinting.  

The old man flipped open the lid of the box. Inside was an enormous diamond. It shone and sparkled in the light, and Lefa thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.  

“Which one of you wants this diamond?” the old man asked.  

“Me, me!” shrieked Kabelo. “I want it. Give it to me.” So the old man gave Kabelo the diamond and Kabelo hid it deep in the pocket of his trousers.  

The old man picked up his heavy sack again. “Which one of you wants to help me carry this sack of rocks to your village?” he asked, trying to heave the sack over his skinny old shoulders. “It’s so heavy, and I’m very tired.”  

“Not me!” cried Kabelo. “We’re not going to the village. We’re going to the city. I don’t have time to help you.”  

Lefa looked back at the long road they had walked that morning. “You can’t walk all that way alone, Tata,” he said. “It’s too far for you to walk with that heavy sack before the sun sets. Let me walk with you. I will carry your sack.”  

“Don’t be stupid!” Kabelo shouted at Lefa. “Don’t think I’m going to wait for you. You’re going to walk all the way back to our village, just to help this old man? You’ll never make money like that!”  

Lefa was worried. He wanted to go with his brother, but when he saw the old man groaning under the weight of the sack, he couldn’t leave him.  

“You go ahead, Kabelo,” he said. “I’ll catch up. I’ll run all the way back to you.”  

“Well, I’m not waiting for you,” said Kabelo. “I have to get to the city and sell my shiny new diamond.” And off Kabelo went, whistling happily.  

Lefa heaved the sack onto his shoulders. It was so heavy it made his bones creak.  

“Come along, Tata,” he said with a smile. “Let’s try and get to the village before sunset.”  

All afternoon they trudged. Every step they walked the sack seemed to get heavier. Soon Lefa was wet with sweat. But still he walked on, carrying the sack for the old man.  

At last they reached the village. It was almost dark.  

“Where are you staying, Tata,” Lefa asked. “Do you need somewhere to shelter for the night? My family does not have a lot, but I know my mother would be happy to share our meal with you, and she will give you a place to sleep tonight.”  

The old man sat down on a tree stump. “This is far enough,” he said.  

“But you can’t stay here,” Lefa said. “It’s not safe. Someone might steal your sack.”  

“Take it,” the old man said. “Go home to your mother, and give her the sack.”  

“No, no,” exclaimed Lefa. “I can’t take your sack. You need it.”  

“It is my gift to you,” said the old man.  

Lefa undid the knot at the top of the sack and peered inside. Something glinted in the fading daylight. Lefa reached inside the sack and took it out. It was a diamond. Then he opened the sack some more – the whole sack was filled with precious diamonds!  

“Thank you, thank you!” said Lefa. But when he looked around, the old man had disappeared. There was no sign of him anywhere. Only the sack of diamonds remained.  

It was a joyful meal that evening in Lefa’s home. He hadn’t been gone long, but already he had made lots of money for his family! His mother and sisters were so happy that they danced and sang until late into the night.  

Many months later, greedy Kabelo came back to the village empty-handed to show off his new car and fancy clothes. He found his family feasting on the finest food in their big new house. And around his mother’s neck, was a necklace of beautiful diamonds.  

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Leo Tolstoy Archive

The Two Brothers and the Gold

Written: 1885 Source: Translated by Robert Nisbet Bain Transcription/Markup: Andy Carloff Online Source: RevoltLib.com ; 2021

Once upon a time, in the days long since gone by, there dwelt at Jerusalem two brothers; the name of the elder was Athanasius, the name of the younger John. They dwelt on a hill not far from the town, and lived upon what people gave to them. Every day the brothers went out to work. They worked not for themselves, but for the poor. Wherever the overworked, the sick were to be found—wherever there were widows and orphans, thither went the brothers, and there they worked and spent their time, taking no payment. Thus the brothers went about separately the whole week, and only met together in the evening of the Sabbath at their own dwelling. Only on Sunday did they remain at home, praying and conversing together. And the Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them. On the Monday they separated again, each going his own way. Thus did the brothers live for many years, and every week the Angel of the Lord came down to them and blessed them.

One Monday, when the brothers had gone forth to work, and had parted their several ways, the elder brother, Athanasius, felt sorry at having had to part from his beloved brother, and he stood still and ​glanced after him. John was walking with bent head, and he did not look back. But suddenly John also stopped as if he perceived something and continued to gaze fixedly at it. Presently he drew near to that which he had been looking upon, and then suddenly leaped aside, and, not stopping for another instant, ran towards the mountain and up the mountain, right away from the place, just as if some savage beast were pursuing him. Athanasius was astonished, and turned back to the place to find out what his brother had been so afraid of. At last he approached the spot, and then he saw something glistening in the sun. He drew nearer—on the grass, as if poured out from a measure, lay a heap of gold. And Athanasius was still more astonished, both at the sight of the gold and at the leaping aside of his brother.

"What was he afraid of, and what did he run away from?" thought Athanasius. "There is no sin in gold, sin is in man. You may do ill with gold, but you may also do good. How many widows and orphans might not be fed therewith, how many naked ones might not be clothed, how many poor and sick might not be cared for and cured by means of this gold? Now, indeed, we minister to people, but our ministration is but little, because our power is small, and with this gold we might minister to people much more than we do now." Thus thought Athanasius, and would have said so to his brother, but John was by this time out of hearing, and looked no bigger than a cockchafer on the further mountain.

And Athanasius took off his garment, shoveled as much gold into it as he was able to carry, threw it ​over his shoulder, and went into the town. He went to an inn, gave the gold to the innkeeper, and then went off to fetch the rest of it And when he had brought in all the gold he went to the merchants, bought land in that town, bought stones, wood, hired laborers, and set about building three houses. And Athanasius abode in the town three months, and built the three houses in that town; one of the houses was an asylum for widows and orphans, the second house was a hospital for the sick, the third house was a hospice for the poor and for pilgrims. And Athanasius sought him out three God-fearing elders, and the first elder he placed over the refuge, the second over the hospital, and the third over the hospice for pilgrims. And Athanasius had three thousand gold pieces still left. And he gave a thousand to each of the elders that they might have wherewith to distribute among the poor. And all three houses began to be filled with people, and the people began to praise Athanasius for all that he had done. And Athanasius rejoiced thereat, so that he had no desire to depart from the town. But Athanasius loved his brother, and, taking leave of the people, and not keeping for himself a single coin of all this money, he went back to his dwelling in the selfsame old garment in which he had come to town.

Athanasius was drawing near to his mountain, and he thought to himself: "My brother judged wrongly when he leaped aside from the gold and ran away from it. Haven't I done much better?"

And Athanasius had no sooner thought this than suddenly he beheld standing in his path the Angel ​who had been sent to bless them, but now looked threateningly upon him. And Athanasius was aghast and could only say:

"Wherefore, my Lord?" And the Angel opened his mouth and said: "Depart from hence! Thou art not worthy to dwell with thy brother. That one leap aside of thy brother's was worth more than all that thou hast done with thy gold."

Athanasius began to talk of how many poor and how many pilgrims he had fed, and of how many orphans he had cared for.

And the Angel said to him: "That same Devil who placed the gold there in order to corrupt thee, hath also put these big words into thy mouth.

And then the conscience of Athanasius upbraided him, and he understood that what he had done was not done for God, and he wept and began to repent.

Then the Angel stepped aside from the road, and left free for him the path in which John was already standing awaiting his brother. And from thenceforth Athanasius yielded no more to the wiles of the Devil who had strewn the gold in his path, and he understood that not by gold, but by good works only, could he render service to God and his fellow-man.

And the brethren dwelt together as before.

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The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin audiobook review – from the civil rights frontline

Law & Order’s Jesse L Martin narrates two powerful essays examining the Black experience in the US, the first in a series marking the author’s centenary year

F irst published in 1963 at the height of the US civil rights movement, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time comprises two astonishing essays examining the Black experience in the United States and the struggle against racial injustice.

The first, My Dungeon Shook, takes the form of a letter to Baldwin’s 14-year-old nephew, and outlines “the root of my dispute with my country … You were born into a society which spelled out with brutal clarity, and in as many ways as possible, that you were a worthless human being. You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.”

The second, Down at the Cross, is a polemic examining the relationship between race and religion, and finds Baldwin reflecting on his Harlem childhood, his encounters with racist police, and a spiritual crisis at the age of 14, which, triggered by his fears of getting drawn into a life of crime, “helped to hurl me into the church”. There, he was filled with anguish “like one of those floods that devastate countries, tearing everything down, tearing children from their parents and lovers from each other”.

The essays are narrated by the Law & Order actor Jesse L Martin, who highlights the rhythmic nature of Baldwin’s prose, and channels his anger and devastation at the unceasing suffering of Black Americans. This audiobook is one of several new recordings of Baldwin’s writing being published over the next few months, to mark the influential author’s centenary year, which also include Go Tell It to the Mountain, Another Country, Giovanni’s Room and If Beale Street Could Talk.

Available via Penguin Audio, 2hr 26min

Further listening

Fire Rush Jacqueline Crooks, Penguin Audio, 11hr 3min Leonie Elliott narrates this coming-of-age story set in the late 1970s about the daughter of a Caribbean immigrant who finds kindred spirits and thrilling new sounds at an underground reggae club.

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Two Sisters Blake Morrison, Harper Collins, 10hr 28min A tender account of the life of Gill, Morrison’s younger sister who died from heart failure caused by alcohol abuse, and his half-sister, Josie. Read by the author.

• James Baldwin
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Joseph Epstein, conservative provocateur, tells his life story in full

In two new books, the longtime essayist and culture warrior shows off his wry observations about himself and the world

Humorous, common-sensical, temperamentally conservative, Joseph Epstein may be the best familiar — that is casual, personal — essayist of the last half-century. Not, as he might point out, that there’s a lot of competition. Though occasionally a scourge of modern society’s errancies, Epstein sees himself as essentially a serious reader and “a hedonist of the intellect.” His writing is playful and bookish, the reflections of a wry observer alternately amused and appalled by the world’s never-ending carnival.

Now 87, Epstein has just published his autobiography, “ Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially if You’ve Had a Lucky Life ,” in tandem with “ Familiarity Breeds Content: New and Selected Essays .” This pair of books brings the Epstein oeuvre up to around 30 volumes of sophisticated literary entertainment. While there are some short-story collections (“The Goldin Boys,” “Fabulous Small Jews”), all the other books focus on writers, observations on American life, and topics as various as ambition, envy, snobbery, friendship, charm and gossip. For the record, let me add that I own 14 volumes of Epstein’s views and reviews and would like to own them all.

Little wonder, then, that Epstein’s idea of a good time is an afternoon spent hunched over Herodotus’s “Histories,” Marguerite Yourcenar’s “Memoirs of Hadrian” or almost anything by Henry James, with an occasional break to enjoy the latest issue of one of the magazines he subscribes to. In his younger days, there were as many as 25, and most of them probably featured Epstein’s literary journalism at one time or another. In the case of Commentary, he has been contributing pieces for more than 60 years.

As Epstein tells it, no one would have predicted this sort of intellectual life for a kid from Chicago whose main interests while growing up were sports, hanging out, smoking Lucky Strikes and sex. A lackadaisical C student, Myron Joseph Epstein placed 169th in a high school graduating class of 213. Still, he did go on to college — the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign — because that’s what was expected of a son from an upper-middle-class Jewish family. But Urbana-Champaign wasn’t a good fit for a jokester and slacker: As he points out, the president of his college fraternity “had all the playfulness of a member of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers.” No matter. Caught peddling stolen copies of an upcoming accounting exam for $5 a pop, Epstein was summarily expelled.

Fortunately, our lad had already applied for a transfer to the University of Chicago, to which he was admitted the next fall. Given his record, this shows a surprising laxity of standards by that distinguished institution, but for Epstein the move was life-changing. In short order, he underwent a spiritual conversion from good ol’ boy to European intellectual in the making. In the years to come, he would count the novelist Saul Bellow and the sociologist Edward Shils among his close friends, edit the American Scholar, and teach at Northwestern University. His students, he recalls, were “good at school, a skill without any necessary carry-over, like being good at pole-vaulting or playing the harmonica.”

Note the edge to that remark. While “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” is nostalgia-laden, there’s a hard nut at its center. Epstein feels utter contempt for our nation’s “radical change from a traditionally moral culture to a therapeutic one.” As he explains: “Our parents’ culture and that which came long before them was about the formation of character; the therapeutic culture was about achieving happiness. The former was about courage and honor, the latter about self-esteem and freedom from stress.” This view of America’s current ethos may come across as curmudgeonly and reductionist, but many readers — whatever their political and cultural leanings — would agree with it. Still, such comments have sometimes made their author the focus of nearly histrionic vilification.

Throughout his autobiography, this lifelong Chicagoan seems able to remember the full names of everyone he’s ever met, which suggests Epstein started keeping a journal at an early age. He forthrightly despises several older writers rather similar to himself, calling Clifton Fadiman, author of “The Lifetime Reading Plan,” pretentious, then quite cruelly comparing Mortimer J. Adler, general editor of the “Great Books of the Western World” series, with Sir William Haley, one of those deft, widely read English journalists who make all Americans feel provincial. To Epstein, “no two men were more unalike; Sir William, modest, suave, intellectually sophisticated; Mortimer vain, coarse, intellectually crude.” In effect, Fadiman and Adler are both presented as cultural snake-oil salesmen. Of course, both authors were popularizers and adept at marketing their work, but helping to enrich the intellectual lives of ordinary people doesn’t strike me as an ignoble purpose.

In his own work, Epstein regularly employs humor, bits of slang or wordplay, and brief anecdotes to keep his readers smiling. For instance, in a chapter about an editorial stint at the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Epstein relates this story about a colleague named Martin Self:

“During those days, when anti-Vietnam War protests were rife, a young woman in the office wearing a protester’s black armband, asked Martin if he were going to that afternoon’s protest march. ‘No, Naomi,’ he said, ‘afternoons such as this I generally spend at the graveside of George Santayana.’”

Learned wit, no doubt, but everything — syntax, diction, the choice of the philosopher Santayana for reverence — is just perfect.

But Epstein can be earthier, too. Another colleague “was a skirt-chaser extraordinaire," a man "you would not feel safe leaving alone with your great-grandmother.” And of himself, he declares: “I don’t for a moment wish to give the impression that I live unrelievedly on the highbrow level of culture. I live there with a great deal of relief.”

In his many essays, including the sampling in “Familiarity Breeds Content,” Epstein is also markedly “quotacious,” often citing passages from his wide reading to add authority to an argument or simply to share his pleasure in a well-turned observation. Oddly enough, such borrowed finery is largely absent from “Never Say You’ve Had a Happy Life.” One partial exception might be the unpronounceable adjective “immitigable,” which appears all too often. It means unable to be mitigated or softened, and Epstein almost certainly stole it from his friend Shils, who was fond of the word.

Despite his autobiography’s jaunty title, Epstein has seen his share of trouble. As a young man working for an anti-poverty program in Little Rock, he married a waitress after she became pregnant with his child. When they separated a decade later, he found himself with four sons to care for — two from her previous marriage, two from theirs. Burt, the youngest, lost an eye in an accident while a toddler, couldn’t keep a job, fathered a child out of wedlock and eventually died of an opioid overdose at 28. Initially hesitant, Epstein came to adore Burt’s daughter, Annabelle, as did his second wife, Barbara, whom he married when they were both just past 40.

Some pages of “Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life” will be familiar to inveterate readers of Epstein’s literary journalism, all of which carries a strong first-person vibe. Not surprisingly, however, the recycled anecdotage feels less sharp or witty the second time around. But overall, this look back over a long life is consistently entertaining, certainly more page-turner than page-stopper. To enjoy Epstein at his very best, though, you should seek out his earlier essay collections such as “The Middle of My Tether,” “Partial Payments” and “A Line Out for a Walk.” Whether he writes about napping or name-dropping or a neglected writer such as Somerset Maugham, his real subject is always, at heart, the wonder and strangeness of human nature.

Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life

Especially if You’ve Had a Lucky Life

By Joseph Epstein

Free Press. 304 pp. $29.99

Familiarity Breeds Content

New and Selected Essays

Simon & Schuster. 464 pp. $20.99

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