This is even better than The Death of Ivan Ilyich. What a genius this man is
>>24926118Hell yeah I love it. I hope you read it because I recommended it in a recent thread but if not that's fine too :)
>>24926118>What a genius this man isEternalist, eh?
>>24926186I like it more because it has a redemptive element to it, I teared up at the ending
>>24926118Tolstoy is weird because you'll stumble across works by him that are objective masterpieces like Master and Man or Prisoner of the Caucuses or Hadji Murad, but no one ever talks about them, they aren't anywhere near as popular as Dostoevsky for example. Only 3 of his works are really well-known by everyone and 2 of them are massive novels. So it just makes you wonder why people aren't more privy to reading his much shorter works that are also magnificent
>>24926118I plan on reading War & Peace and Anna Karenina this winter. >>24926270Thanks for the advice.
>>24926283Should also mention that they're also significantly easier to read than most others writers including Dostoevsky. As much as I love Dosto it's no secret that he's quite awkward in translation and rambles a lot. But Tolstoy's language is super clear and simple, even in his doorstopper novels he's easy to read and he abandoned his emphasis on long books after Anna Karenina anyways. So it's just another layer of confusion as to why these stories are not that well known today
>>24926296nta I imagine there is only so much that can be carried from the past to the future. How many great Victorian novels/novelists have been forgotten? It is a shame but it does allow the past to feel like a mystery to be discovered.
>>24926296>he abandoned his emphasis on long books after Anna Karenina anywaysYou mean as an aesthetic philosophy?
>>24926320After his mid life crisis (which produced Anna K) he repudiated War & Peace and Anna Karenina as being for more elite classes, supposedly evidenced by their massive length and subject matter focusing on aristocrats. So the rest of his works were either short stories or novellas that focused more on morality and the peasantry with a few exceptions like Resurrection which is another long novel albeit shorter than the other 2 and Hadji Murad which is similar to his early works. In his lifetime it was these short stories and Christian nonfiction books that made him so internationally beloved, but nowadays it's his 2 major novels everyone likes more
>>24926534This is a strange perspective because Hadji Murad is infinitely more sophisticated and profound than either of his novels
>>24926862It’s “similar” to his earlier works in the sense that it doesn’t have the same Christian moralfagging as his later works, and it’s a war story set in the Caucasus like a lot of his early stuff. He wrote it in secret and knew it was a masterpiece which pained him because it was much different from the other stuff he was writing in his last years
>>24926283>I plan on reading War & Peace and Anna Karenina this winter.Based, me too. Good luck and hopefully you'll make a thread about it.
>>24926118>>24926270Any other brilliant Tolstoy works that are under the radar?
>>24926270>but no one ever talks about themI posted about Hadji Murat in multiple Tolstoy threads and even in the specific context that you refer to.
>>24926862> infinitely more sophisticated and profoundI loved HM but like, not really. It's very blunt.
>>24926270is hadji murad really that great? what made you love it so much?i also read resurrection and found it overwhelming
>>24927429>is hadji murad really that great?Wondering this too. Even Harold Bloom said this about it>my personal touchstone for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world
>>24926270aren’t his long works that way because he was paid by the word or something? also, i loved ivan ilyich, are his other short works really worth it?
>>24926270Redpill: his massive novels are more well-known because they're better for adapting into movies/series. No one actually reads them, but they can reference them because the on-screen adaptations have given them a passing familiarity with the plot and characters
>>24927705Hadji Murat is the most “cinematic” thing he wrote though. All narrative, no filler, very panoramic >>24927533It really is a masterpiece, it’s astonishing how many different perspectives and aspects of life he fills into 100 pages, some chapters were just a gut punch I’ll never forget
>>24926118i'm like 100 pages in in anna karenina. will discuss with you guys when i finish it.
>>24926118>>24926186I want to read it now
>>24927705the actual redpill is that his bigger novels have a wider appeal to women and children/teenagers than which is what makes them so readily accessible despite their length
>>24926296https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5P6MNns97cozoomers still get filtered by him nonetheless. really baffles me -- they love austen, dickens and dostoevsky but tolstoy is too hard for them? really? there isn't anything in war and peace that's nearly as taxing as many portions of The Idiot or Bleak House
>>24926118this book still dumbfounds me since i read it, why would he put his own opinions in the mouth of a character who's an insane murderer
>>24927328alyosha the pot is imo the shortest objective masterpiece in world literature
>>24928959Really made me sad, that one
>>24928959"After the Ball" is a 7 page short story and it's absurdly good. He just understood artistic composition better than anyone. A few pages is all he needs to stuff a story with a million different layers
>>24927328The Cossacks
>>24927335Ah, a fellow occasional Hadji Murat poster
Bump
