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Customer Review: Responsibility
In the prison yard the name called out was Maslova. Her story was a common one. She was an orphan raised by maiden ladies of the land-owning class. She was spoiled and declined offers of marriage.
The nephew of the old ladies, a prince, came to stay with them when the girl was sixteen. Five months later she knew she was pregnant. The ladies let her leave pursuant to her own request. Her baby died in a foundling hospital.
Katusha as she then was called moved from position to position. By this time Katusha could go into service or enjoy the easier life as a resident of a house. Katusha Maslova chose the life of chronic sin as Tolstoy characterizes the situation. She lived this way for seven years.
Prince Dmitry Ivanovich Nekhlyuda, her seducer, was summoned to serve on the jury in criminal court. The prisoners were brought into the courtroom. The third prisoner was Maslova. The prince thought to himself, no it cannot be. He wondered, whether Katusha Maslova recognized him.
Maslova's attorney asserted that she had been led into a life of debauchery by a man who remained unpunished. Viewing her, Nekhlyudov believed that Katusha was certainly the same person she had been in her youth. Nekhlyudov felt she was innocent of both the theft and poisoning charges.
The jury made a mistake in writing out its findings for the court. As to Maslova, what was omitted was a finding negating an intent to take a life. Her sentence, therefore, was penal servitude in Siberia.
The President of the court advised Nekhlyudov to speak with the advocates to correct the mistake. Nekhlyudov felt that since he had something to do with Maslova getting on the wrong path, he must take measures to correct her situation. Once he realized that he was bad, others were no longer so disgusting to him.
Marriage with Missy, a member of his class, no longer seemed so probable. Nekhlyudov came to see that the persons being tried in the law courts were not the evil-doers he had previously supposed. Indeed, he himself was a deceiver and a rake and no one was trying to punish him. He told the procurator he wanted to follow and marry the prisoner Maslova. He stated that he now considered all judging useless, immoral.
Maslova dealt with her pain by the trick of disassociation. Nekhlyudov's initial words to her centered on his wish for forgiveness. Nekhlyudov expected Katusha Maslova to be pleased. She was not. Furthermore, it seemed she was not ashamed of her position. She is a convict and he is a gentleman and prince. She does not believe he really wants to marry her.
The prince tries to put his affairs in order to enable him to travel to Siberia if necessary. He rents the land from one estate to the peasants for a nominal rent. Maslova's position of appeal to the Senate is denied. As Nekhlyudov prepares his things to follow Maslova and the prisoners to Siberia, he perceives that he has lived through something very hard and very joyful and that he has experienced an inner change.
The description of the procedures used in the transport of prisoners are as fascinating now as when written since, inter alia, the camps of the Czar were the predecessors of the camps of Stalin. The theme is the blindness of the upper classes to the suffering of those below them.
Maslova is allowed to join the political prisoners and thereby escape the harassment of the general convicts. Maslova values and admires the political prisoners. Nekhlyudov comes to change his mind about the revolutionists, (they were being treated harshly, as if in time of war).
Through the prince's efforts, Maslova's sentence to hard labor is commuted to exile. Maslova seeks to release Nekhlyudov from his self-imposed task by marrying another person, one of the political prisoners.
Customer Review: Deep, heavy, moralistic - all the things we love about the Count
Maybe the first modern novel. In `Resurrection' Tolstoy delves down deep into the disturbed psyche of his protagonist as he struggles with his decisions, his culture, and his beliefs. Like all of Tolstoy's works the book is as deep and the prose is heavy. There are times that the book reads more like a tract than a novel and there is a moral to every story. The book is interesting, too, in that I've wondered how much personal history Tolstoy wrote into it. Readers of Troyat's biography will see many familiar scenes played out here from Tolstoy's early days as a rich dandy to his later `resurrection' as a spiritual nomad.
Not quite up to par with `Anna' or `War and Peace' but a good book and a must for fans of the Great One.
Customer Review: "My business is to do what my conscience demands of me."
Resurrection (1899) is the last of Tolstoy's great novels and unlike the previous War and Peace and Anna Karenina the architectural lines are fairly unique. Whereas in the previous novels attention is continually shifted from one hero to another, in Resurrection Tolstoy follows Dimitri Nekhlydov step by step, drilling to the core of his thoughts, commenting on his actions, analyzing his motives, evincing his engendered acts, and verbalizing the purging of his soul that inexorably manifests into a non-Christian regeneration process. Tolstoy hardly lets Nekhlydov out of sight for an instant: his conscience continually demands of him to atone for his sin. Interwoven with the flow of the story is Nekhlydov's painful realization of the demoralization that develops into such perfect madness of selfishness. If it had not been for the Doukhobors, who was accused of fighting against the spirit of God by the Orthodox Church, Tolstoy might never have finished the novel, the idea for which had been suggested to him ten years previously in order to raise fund for the sect. A nobleman, namely, Dimitri Nekhlydov, serves on a jury and recognizes the prostitute on trial for theft and poisoning a merchant as a girl he had seduced and loved when he was a young man. Katusha (Maslova), who is a yellow-card prostitute sanctioned by the government, has a checkered fate. She is wrongfully convicted as the jury inadvertently left out the phrase "no intent to take life" in the verdict. She is found not guilty in the theft but guilty of administering a powder and is sentenced to hard labor in the outlandish Siberia. As Nekhlydov embarks on the campaign to appeal for Katusha and do her justice, in the depth of his soul he becomes so conscious of all the cruelty, cowardice, and baseness - not only of this particular action of his but of his whole idle, dissolute, selfish and complacent life. The dreadful veil that has all this time, for ten years, conceals from him his sin, and the whole of his life, dictated by the religious sophisms, begins to wobble. He has to confront with his entire being that the faith of his is farther than anything else from being the right thing. One can gauge the progress of Nekhlydov's awakening by Katusha's attitude toward him. Ten years of prostitution has not completely extinguished the spiritual spark in her. This can be proven by the merchant's trust in her, the truth behind the poisoning of which she was accused, her behavior with a breath of equanimity at the trial toward the real culprits, the attitude of her fellow prisoners, and the outburst in which she would not allow Nekhlydov to gain his salvation at her expense. When Nekhlydov witnesses the cruelty of the government officials who put duties and responsibilities of office above humanity and the sufferings of the innocent people who have not in the least transgressed against justice or committed lawless acts but merely because they are an obstacle hindering the officials and the rich from enjoying the wealth they amass from the people, he repents of his selfishness and a spiritual resurrection dawns on him. Simplicity of the explanation seems very overwhelming: the officials can insensibly ill-treat others without feeling any personal responsibility for the evil they do because they are completely devoid of not only compassion but the chief human attribute, that is, love and pity for one another. As Nekhlydov becomes the mouthpiece for the innocent in Siberian prison, in whom Tolstoy expresses his own deepest aspirations and views on aspects of human existence. Nekhlydov's ambitious and heroic search to discover the purpose of life not only has become readers' striving, rekindled Katusha's love for him, but also unites with Tolstoy's ideals. Through the convoluted relationship between Nekhlydov and Katusha, Tolstoy treats the themes of love, passion and death with such compelling sincerity that one's heart is infected by pity and compulsive need to crusade against cruelty, injustice and repression. Resurrection is psychologically superb in the treatment of one man's thoughts and feelings, which stem from a study of his physical being. Tolstoy deftly builds up this "dramatis personae" line upon line, and through which he turns a highly critical eye on the law, the penal system and above all, the Church. He ridicules the usual sophisms that so inveterately dictate his hero's life, that the enlightened ones plunge the people into greater darkness with their hypocrisy and heresy. Line by line Tolstoy sets up Nekhlydov's awakening in which he must overcome the laborious path of expiation stimulated by a voluntarily moral desire to repent. This very teaching brings Tolstoy at loggerhead to the Church, whose practices of deceit and delusion Tolstoy vehemently rejects with utter intransigence. Resurrection gives us a vision that is beyond the historical reality of the given time period. A literary masterpiece it is, Tolstoy propagates his faith and moral ideals through his hero. Resurrection is an ultimate achievement of literary power that accentuates life of people in Russia. 2004 (43) ©MY
Customer Review: Resurrection
One of the great novels written by Leo Tolstoy in 1899, who, by then was already past his prime when he wrote "Anna Karilina" as well as "War and Peace". This novel differed from the previous novels he wrote in that Tolstoy focused on the sufferings of the people and description of the underground movements that existed side by side with the aristocratic class. This was unlike the novels that he wrote before, when he wrote mainly about the aristocratics.
The novel takes us to the Prince Nekhlyudov, who seduced a servant girl called Katusha(sometimes referred as Maslova) many years ago and is now shocked to see her being tried for murder on a trial which he himself is part of the jury. Katusha is no longer the innocent, loving maid that she was many years ago but is now a detestable prostitute. At once Nekhlyudov feels guilty, since his seduction was the cause of all that Katusha went through later, a baby conceded by Katusha but was soon lost. Soon Katusha's life began to fall apart. She drifted on the streets and became a prostitute. While at the same time Nekhlyudov, who once was a virtous young man and denounced private property, is now leading a degraded life.
And this is where the novel starts. As the unlikely encounter in the trial soon crossed the two people's lives once again. Later Katusha was send to Siberia for poisoning on a blatant error on the part of the juries. So decided Nekhlyudov that he needed to follow her for a chance at redemption. Thus began the resurrection for not only Nekhlyudov but also Katusha, a resurrection that would lead both of them into a new, better lives.
Tolstoy attacked the existing social order poignantly in this novel. Especially the Orthodox Church and the wealthy upper class. Tolstoy rebuked the two sides for treating the lower class people unhumanely, locking them up instead of changing the existing society to accomodate more equality. Tolstoy also placed a lot of emphasis on the moral issues concerning mankind and the society in general. Stating in the end of the book the "Heaven on Earth" that he would like to see.
Another aspect is that this book touches all kinds of people from all classes. From the palace of a countess to the jails in Siberia, and from government officials to desperado revolutionaries. Tolstoy's depiction of the suffering with peasants and revolutionaries are really deep. And almost everything that Tolstoy writes in this book seems to relate to some sort of moral ties, not only did Nekhlyudov and Katusha change in this book, but also many other characters involved with Nekhlyudov, they are changed mostly to the worse side, we see how a society can truly alter, and even destroy, some people who started out guileless but turned corrupt.
In conclusion, this was truly a classic book exploring deep into the psychialogy of each individuals with its emphasis on the power of human redemption and its blunt attacks on the existing social order. A brilliantly woven tale indeed.
Product Description
Resurrection, the last of Tolstoy's major novels, tells the story of a nobleman's attempt to redeem himself for the suffering his youthful philandering caused a peasant girl. Tolstoy's vision of redemption achieved through loving forgiveness, and his condemnation of violence dominate the novel. An intimate, psychological tale of guilt, anger, and forgiveness, Resurrection is at the same time a panoramic description of social life in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century, reflecting Tolstoy's outrage at the social injustices of the world in which he lived.
Customer Review: A "Regular People" Review
Tolstoy did not believe in art for arts sake. Had he of, this could have been truly amazing. However it still does not dissappoint. This is a good introduction to Tolstoy even though it doesn't compare to the wide variety of characters in Anna Karenina or War and Peace, It still showcases Tolstoy's habit of touching on the current social and political issues of the time when it was written (and strangly many of them still hold true today). If you can stand to be lectured a little- pick this up...and keep me updated!
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