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Resurrection Leo Tolstoy Louise Shanks Maude Books

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Resurrection Leo Tolstoy Louise Shanks Maude Books

This is a very strange version of Tolstoy. I suspect it is a computer generated translation. At any rate, do not buy it. After seeing how weird the language was, I ordered the classic version and compared the two. Amazon should not even sell this. It is outrageous. Tolstoy is great, but this is a substandard translation, and my understanding is that there is only one legitimate translation (Maude). So Amazon is selling a strange, probably computer generated and not legitimate version of a great book. Do read the book! Just not this one.


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Resurrection Leo Tolstoy Louise Shanks Maude Books Reviews

This was a book that moved me quite a bit and was a very timely read in terms of things that I have been considering lately in my own life. As a result, I may like it better than it actually deserves. Or I may not. I thought that it was brilliant, honestly. But I see that many find it wanting next to the more thickly plotted Anna Karenina or War and Peace.

Resurrection is a layered look at the concepts of atonement, amends, and forgiveness. The story is fairly simple in its lines. Prince Nekhlyudov is a weak but well-meaning nobleman who has lost his early ideals in the excitement and practicality of his every day life. As the book opens, he is serving his jury duty when he realizes with horror that one of the women on trial for robbery and murder was a serving girl (Maslova) who he had once seduced and abandoned. It is clear from the chance meeting that after he was done with her, she fell into a life of prostitution and poverty. In response to her situation and in his great dismay, Nekhlyudov quickly compounds his one great mistake with a second. In sorrow and regret, he decides that he will dedicate his life to making amends to Maslova.

What Prince Nekhlyudov discovers is that atonement is nothing so simple as mending the personal situation. His self-examination leads him to criticize the system that left him with the ability to so simply ruin a woman's life. Class, religion, money, land, power, gender, politics, enfranchisement, punishment, rehabilitation, security, rights-- he cannot adequately treat with her without questioning every aspect of his person and society.

I talked about this book in someone else's blog before I read had read enough of it to really comment. At that point, I thought that the book was going to be about the impossibility of amends. Maslova is quite scornful of Nekhlyudov initially. She accuses him of using her for her body in his youth and for his salvation in his middle age. She asserts that what he had done cannot be undone, and she is inevitably correct.

If I had read further, I would have realized that Tolstoy's point does not end with the impossibility of amends. Atonement may well be impossible, but it is also-- this text argues-- essential. Nekhlyodov realizes that she is right, he cannot undo his damage, but he doggedly tries and follows the path where it may go-- even as it leads him away from everything that he has ever understood. At the end of the book, he has not (of course) managed to return Maslova to any kind of pristine state. But he has found a thread of meaning that allows his own resurrection. Moreover, he submits himself to her to allow her to choose her own destiny (within the available choices).

The book never flinches from the complication of its characters. Prince Nekhlyudov is not perfect. His path is not smooth. Maslova is not a saint. They both have and retain their flaws. I also find that while the book is deeply concerned with issues of ethics and morality, it doesn't preach. Even the ending which features a meditation on the Christian commandments feels more like the natural conclusion of his personal journey than anything forced.

Very highly recommended. A great note for me on which to end the 2008 reading year.
The criticisms of this novel are largely misdirected. There are no more digressions or polemical passages than there are in War and Peace which, if one were to delete all of the pontification and historiography and theological interpretation, would probably be half as long as it is. The novel is inferior to War and Peace and Anna Karenina primarily because it lacks the laser precision those novels have of penetration into the souls of a variety of characters. Tolstoy is God in those novels, within and without all of the characters. In Resurrection, he has become enamored of his role as prophet and, therefore, feels he has the license and duty to present his, Tolstoy's, philosophy as the obvious rectification of the characters' moral and societal dilemmas. On the positive side, however, Resurrection, like its great predecessors, has a prose style that flows like a mountain stream. This quality remains apparent throughout various translations, like a composer's unerring gift for melody. The novel is worth reading if one has already read and admired War and Peace and Anna Karenina and some of the stories. The non-Tolstoy fan would probably wonder why this windbag of an author is being accorded the status of a titan. Henry James described War and Peace as a 'loose, baggy monster' and so it is according to his very precise criteria for crafted fiction. He would probably see Resurrection as a somewhat smaller, less baggy, less monstrous creature. The Tolstoyan stream flows where it will, however, disregarding the dictates of Henry James or any other literary theoretician. There is brilliance and beauty and one appreciates it most when one simply enjoys the journey.
As the editor of Tolstoy’s Resurrection points out, Tolstoy published this novel late in life, and did so for the money. He had long given up writing, lived as a simple peasant like existence, and gave away the royalties to his books. Resurrection was written, or more correctly updated for publication from an older manuscript to support the emigration of a “heretic” Russian religious sect to Canada.

Hence Resurrection, definitely a Tolstoy production, is a late work. The mastery of the form of the novel that we find in War and Peace and Anna Karenina is not present in this book. Yet despite this, Resurrection is a fascinating cluttered, confusing;novel; it is full of long ruminations on human nature, God, and government. So intense are these debates, that they are appealing. This dark vision of Russia this novel provides is unflinching. In its depictions of all social ills, corruption, crime, avarice, vice, economic injustice, indifference and inhumanity, the reader can see the roots of the Russian Revolution. The society of Resurrection could not continue as it was without a bloody upheaval. It was simply too hopeless and dark a place .

So I imagine an older, shaggy Tolstoy, brimming with rage over the conditions in Russia, more than slightly misanthropic as a result, pouring out his social and religious theories and ideas while composing this novel. If this is kept in mind, then reading this novel becomes less of a chore and more of a delight. Here was an author with nothing more to prove; he used this novel for his social propaganda, with rich results.
This is a very strange version of Tolstoy. I suspect it is a computer generated translation. At any rate, do not buy it. After seeing how weird the language was, I ordered the classic version and compared the two. should not even sell this. It is outrageous. Tolstoy is great, but this is a substandard translation, and my understanding is that there is only one legitimate translation (Maude). So is selling a strange, probably computer generated and not legitimate version of a great book. Do read the book! Just not this one.