Page:Iván Ilyitch and Other Stories (1887).djvu/11



short stories here presented form about one-half of the twelfth volume of Count Tolstoi’s collected writings. None of them dates back more than three years. They represent the latest phase in the evolution of the author’s peculiar views,—an evolution which may be traced from Olénen in “The Cossacks,” through Pierre Bezúkhof in ‘‘War and Peace,’’ and Levin in “Anna Karénina,’’ down or up to the idealized muzhík who lives by the sweat of his brow, does good for evil, makes no resistance to violence, and comes out victorious over every temptation of the grotesque and naïve Devil and his imps. With the exception of “The Death of Iván Ilyitch,’’ which is a sombre and powerful study of the insidious progress of fatal disease, as well as a study in religious philoso-