Adamovich "Tolstoy as an artist"

George says that he was an artist and an enemy of art, the kind that justified itself for its own sake and was why T and Turgenev never got along. In his creative work he was essentially searching for pravda, translated as truth and justice. He tried to write without using a single word for adornment. He had a gift for detecting in others the desire to show off and it turned him off from others. 140 He felt an innate need to be truthful and to use the same basis with his characters. The motto of W and P is "there is no greatness with out simplicity , goodness and truth." he held the same view of literarure and even the idea of goodness is a prerequesite to beauty and perfection.
T never wrote "beautiful" or "musical" prose and if he ever did he would destoy it. He listened to the speech of simple folks who knew no grammar and found a freshness and expressiveness which he believed that educated people had lost. 141 T could turn trite literary devises into greatness. Anna's death symbolized with a candle is such and although old and tired sounds as if T were the first person to use it. 143 In What is Art, T treats all the other writes in it poorly and was unjust to those that could have been his allies. His search for truth made him short-sighted and his own mind full of his own impressions was not always open to others. 146

Baylen "A letter and K. Sonata"

K. Sonata is a work "exposing the conventional illusion of romantic love." T wanted to show how a marriage could be deprived of its "first condition" by "the substitution of romantic love, a fever born of carnal passion, for true Christian love, which is born of identity of sentiment, similarity of idea, and the friendship of the soul. "
Isabel Hapsgood was given permission to translate an abridged version of the sonata in April, 1890 - a year before it appeared in Russia. Despite the ban put on its publication there were endless copies of the novel circulated on lithograph. It was first published in Russia in 1891. Tolstaya reports that her father thought "the story is not at all fit to be read by young girls, although the chief idea of it is moral.

Tolstoy's "Confessions"

Chapter 1
He starts of with an examination of his own falling out of the christain faith and describes how it happens in his class of people. 20 T replaced his beliefs with a quest for perfection. 23
Chapter 2
He talks about wanting to be good and moral as a child, but being praised for his bad habits. His aunt wanted him to have an affair with a married woman. T lived this way for 10 years. He then became a member of the writers groups and took on the role of teacher and moralizer like other writers, but didn't know the answers any more than they did and took on too much pride.
Chapter 3
He lived this way for six more years until he was married. he traveled and followed the belief in Progress above all else. While abroad he saw a man executed and his own brother died leaving him scarred. He came back and opened schools for the peasants. However he was constantly fighting the belief that he was teaching, but didn't know what he was teaching. He became a father and continued writing, but left off the questions of the meaning of life until five years before he wrote this. They kept coming back up and became like a disease with him until he could solve these questions.
Chapter 4
He continues to struggle with these thoughts and has suicidal thoughts if he cannot solve his problems.
Chapter 5
He struggles more and delves into other great minds, but finds nothing or is just not satisfied. He ends up understanding that one of his questions is what is to come of his life? He brings scientific thoughts about the meaning of life and still comes up with nothing.
Chapter 6
T continues to the same search with philosophy and science. He brings in Socrates and questions of death as a way to understand life. And Solomon and and Indian writer and Buddha. Death is better than life.
Chapter 7
Four ways for people of his type to deal with the problems of finding out the answers to life's questions. 1 ignorance - obviously no good. 2 epicureanism - all of T's circle live this way, but they don't understand that it is an accident of fate that they have and others do not. 3 strength and energy - suicide. 4 weakness - waiting for something better out of life, although there is none. T could not make sense of it all, so he must in some way be mistaken about his theories.
Chapter 8
T realizes that he has forgotten all the other people that make up humanity and that he does not even know them. He understood that he had to come to know them and understand why they were still living, despite the poor conditions. He realizes that he must reject his reason and logic in order to understand the full meaning of humanity and life.
Chapter 9
Because science does not answer all the questions in life with reason there must be something else. The something else is God. God is the irrational idea that gives life meaning.
Chapter 10
T started to spend time with the poor peasants and found that their faith and religion was based on many superstitions, but they were less dissatisfied than the rich people of T's circle. He cast off the life of the rich people and took up the life of the peasant and understood it as truth.
Chapter 11
He came to realize that he was looking at all of his theories through himself and not through mankind. His examples of an evil life were not the same as those for all of mankind. Instead of questioning why God wants us to do something we should do it and move closer to his plan. Like the peasant with the master.
Chapter 12
T starts to pray and search for God as he feels a power over himself that he doesn't understand.
Chapter 13
T understands that he must live according to God's plan - to live otherwise is not to live. According to God's plan we are to live to save our soul. He starts to take on the faith in whole, but cannot understand everything and why it is done, but sees that his faith and reason can choose what parts of the rituals of faith to hold on to and which to discard.
Chapter 14
He cannot understand everything and understands that there are somethings that he doesn't believe and won't and this causes him some torment when he goes to communion. When he spoke with the lower classes he began to understand what it all meant.
Chapter 15
He noticed the Orthodox and other religions insistence that they were the one and only true church and that all others were heretics. Thus theology was driving people apart instead of together, the very thing it should be doing.
Chapter 16
He now sees truth in the teachings of all the churches, but not all the teachings. What he once saw as completely false he now seeks to find the truth in each and weed out the false. He has a dream.

Tolstoy's "Kreutzer Sonata"

Depravity is freeing yourself from the restraint you have with women. 18 The man fell because he followed what he was told by the rest of society and that society felt that what he was doing with women was the natural thing to do. He did not even realize that he had had a fall. 21 A man shows he is a libertine by the way that he looks at a woman, and so he became a libertine. 22 had the man only been eating what he should have he would not have had all the impulses to act as he did with women. It is from a result of the extra calories and energy that he took in and could not use up that he needed to use it with women. 29 The problems in the world all stem from the dominant power of women in the world, despite their lack of formal rights. 31 The strongest passion in life is sexual. It serves as the safety valve. 39 The man with whom his wife had the affair was a musician, but not professional. 69 The man and his wife are in a series of arguements daily when the musician comes to them. The man plays the violin, but badly and the wife still plays and well. The musician and the wife began to talk of music and they made plans to play together. They started to flirt with each other and make as if all they wanted was music. 78 The man could have spoken so that the musician never would have come back again, but instead he made it look as if he was not afraid of the musicaian and invited him over the next day to play. 79 They play together and all this makes the man more jealous and petty becuase he knows the game they are playing because it is the fame he used to play when he was a bachelor. They cannot determine what music to play and so ask him. 82 Especially because of music and the proximity that people must be to each other, men and women, that there is the greatest adultery in the world. One must not be jealous of people when they stand that close to eahother, but...83 They get really mad at each other and he appologizes to her and he tells her that he is jeaolous of the musician, but she tells him that she is only interested in his music. The man sees through her and sees that she is putting on a show of being indignant at the thought and telling that he is nothing. He says that everything went against her including the music. 88 The musician and the wife got together for the show that they were to put on and they played Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata. 89 He tells that people state that music elevates people, but he doesn't believe this. He states that music makes him do and be and feel unnaturally and that this is a bad thing. 90 Music of many kinds has a purpose, in church, miltary, etc., but Beethoven has no purpose and so you don't know what to do with it and the feelings that it brings up. 90 Music is too powerful to put in the hands of anyone, maybe immoral, that will wield it. 91 The man went away on business, but upon hearing that the musician dropped off some music with his wife while he was away, he became incensed and went back home. All the trip he was a rising anger and then when delayed he fortified himself with vodka. He knew what he was going to do and assumed that his wife was having an affair. 101 He comes home and finds that the musician is there and his wife is with him. He gives voice to all of his rage and feels relief from the knowledge that he will be free from her forever. 105 He runs through all possibilities. Are his kids his own? Is she doing it in sight of the children, have they been doing it all along? Is she trying to kill him? 107 He took off his shoes and grabbed a knife and when he caught them sitting close to each other, he gave vent to all his anger that had built up since the last fight they had. He attacked her, but the musician kept him off her, he ran for the M, but she kept him back. He would have run after the M if her were not in his socks - he didn't want to look ridiculous. 110 His madness was reaching a similar crescendo as a song. 111 He chocked, then stabbed her. 111 He went to his study to shoot himself, but fell asleep. Then her sister came and he almost went to her, but he felt foolish because of not having shoes on. 115 He still feels that she is to blame and that she will ask his forgiveness, but doesn't. He wants to ask her forgiveness, but is too cowardly, but does so in the end. Only at the funeral does he understand that he has killed her and that he is wrong. Not wrong to have killed her necessarily, but wrong in having married her or anyone. 118