Short Fiction Tolstoy, Leo: Father Sergius. v1, 15 Nov 2016

[AlexBell]

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian writer regarded as one of the greatest authors of realist fiction.

His parents died during his infancy, and he was brought up by relatives. As a young man he drank and gambled heavily, and failed at university. In 1851 he joined the army and served in the Caucasus and the Crimea, and began to write. In 1862, at age 34, he married Sofya (Sonya) Behrs, aged 18, who bore him 13 children, eight of whom survived childhood. Their early married life was happy, and she acted as his secretary, proofreader, and financial manager. In the 1870s he experienced spiritual conversion, and renounced many of his previous beliefs in favour of ascetic religious beliefs including pacifism and celibacy. His marriage deteriorated, and shortly before his death at age 82 he absconded from the family home in the depths of winter and died soon after of pneumonia.

Father Sergius was published in 1898, and is a complex and ambiguous short story which seems to demonstrate that men do not change, and that their natures are stronger than their wills.

The text was taken from the University of Adelaide ebook library, and checked against Great Short Works of Leo Tolstoy introduced by John Bayley. I have silently corrected typos, curled quotes, replaced italics and diacritics, used British English, made changes to spelling and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com, and added endnotes.

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