Here's some quick background on Tolstoy's "The Devil."

Leo Tolstoy married Sofya Andreyevna Bers when he was 34 and she was 18. They stayed together for almost 50 years and she bore him 13 children. Right before the wedding, in a spirt of "full disclosure and complete honesty," Tolstoy insisted that Sofya read his private diaries, which described in much detail many of his bachelor affairs with various local women. Sofya had already forgiven Tolstoy for his womanizing before they were married, but reading the diaries were reportedly very painful for her, especially with respect to one affair in particular, Tolstoy's ongoing affair with a peasant woman, Aksinya, with whom he had a son.

That particular entry reads: "Today, in the big old wood, I'm a fool, a brute. Her bronzed flush and her eyes.... I'm in love as never before in my life."

The Devil was written by Leo Tolstoy in 1889, but the story wasn't published until after his death. According to Tolstoy's daughter Aleksandra, Tolstoy set a draft of the story aside for 20 years before revising it. He was afraid that publishing the story would reignite Sofya's hurt feelings.

Another possible reason that Tolstoy set the story aside was that the ending wasn't particularly satisfying, and neither was an alternative ending he wrote later.

Both "The Devil" and "The Kreutzer Sonata" (finished 1889; published 1891) are sometimes referred to as Tolstoy's "sexual stories." Each has an autobiographical basis which is particularly evident in "The Devil"—a story of sexual obsession.

Here's a link to the story:

http://www.cyberspacei.com/jesusi/autho ... _devil.htm

And here's a good web site that talks about Tolstoy's later works.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/smartboa ... chap10.htm

I'm going to try my luck at the library tomorrow or Friday and see if this is available. Reading lots of text online hurts my eyes, but I'll read it if I don't have any luck. Thanks for posting the link again.

reader2121 wrote:I'm going to try my luck at the library tomorrow

I'll be doing this myself.

There is a variation to the ending in the link provided. Geo, do you know if this variation was writen by Tolstoy? I find this odd, a nice suprise, but odd.

Yes, Tolstoy wrote an alternative ending. I'll have more to say later. Hopefully we'll get a few people to read the story and get a good discussion going.

I took a look at this. I haven't read Tolstoy in years. I was surprised to see how contemporary his writing seems. I'll be interested to see opinions from others.

In the first part of The Devil:

6,000 rubles = $200
100,000 rubles = $3,342

*by today's conversion rates, of course

Just in time, I'm starting "The Devil" now. Someone should make a shout in the shout box about this new discussion. I'm having difficulty using the shout box.

Is Eugene Iretnev and Eugene Ivanich the same person? I'm confused?

reader2121 wrote:Is Eugene Iretnev and Eugene Ivanich the same person? I'm confused?

Strangely, it's like that in my translation as well. I have no explanation for it. But yes, Eugene Iretnev and Eugene Ivanich are one and the same.

geo wrote:Strangely, it's like that in my translation as well. I have no explanation for it. But yes, Eugene Iretnev and Eugene Ivanich are one and the same.

Odd, my version has Eugene Iretnev and Anna Karenina as being the same. However, Tolstoy did not give the reader a choice regarding Anna Karenina's fate.

Tolstoy seems to be requiring the reader to make a moral choice when he gives us two endings. Which one do we pick? We must pick one. And we have to ask ourselves, why did we choose the the ending that decides Eugene's fate?

"Phosphates justify", hmmm? I have no idea what this means. I do know that if a writer repeats certain words again and again, it must mean something.