by Leo Tolstoy
6.
Tolstoy believed that there was a radical difference between attitudes to death in the well-to-do bourgeoisie and the impoverished peasantry. What were they? Do you think his views would still hold good for the different social classes of today?
7.
Tolstoy has a strong satirical bent. What are the objects of his satire, and why? We tend not to think of him as a humorous writer—is his satire ever funny?
8.
Tolstoy was an entirely idiosyncratic, independent freethinker. Many respected institutions were derided by him—the Church, the Law, the medical profession, even the theater. Where do you find mockery of such bodies in these stories? Why did Tolstoy attack them?
9.
Tolstoy’s style is renowned for its direct, simple truthfulness. Is this reputation justified? Is there an art in his artlessness?
10.
There is no writer, perhaps, who has understood people as well as Tolstoy. He seems to be intimate with everybody and everything—not only people but animals and even objects. Can you find striking examples of his insight in these stories? Can you compare him to any other writers with comparable psychological insight and universal sympathy—George Eliot, for instance, or James Joyce?
THE MODERN LIBRARY EDITORIAL BOARD
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Daniel J. Boorstin
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A. S. Byatt
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Shelby Foote
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Charles Frazier
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Vartan Gregorian
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Richard Howard
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Charles Johnson
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Jon Krakauer
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Edmund Morris
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Joyce Carol Oates
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Elaine Pagels
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Salman Rushdie
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Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.
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Carolyn See
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William Styron
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Gore Vidal
2003 Modern Library Edition
Biographical note copyright © 1994 by Random House, Inc. Translation, introduction, and notes copyright © 2003 by Ann Pasternak Slater
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Modern Library, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
MODERN LIBRARY and the TORCHBEARER Design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828–1910.
[Smert’ Ivana Il’icha. English]
The death of Ivan Ilyich ; and, Master and man / Leo Tolstoy ; a new translation, with an introduction and notes, by Ann Pasternak Slater.
p. cm.
I. Pasternak Slater, Ann. II. Tolstoy, Leo, graf, 1828–1910. Khoziain i rabotnik. English. III. Title: Master and man. IV. Title.
PG3366.S6 2003
891.73¢3—dc21 2003051046
Website address: www.modernlibrary.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-337-4
v3.0
