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Lucerne
A short story by Leo Tolstoy describing an incident from his visit to Lucerne in July 1857. First published in September 1857.
46 pages, Paperback
First published July 18, 1857
4 people are currently reading
65 people want to read
About the author
Leo Tolstoy
7,995 books28.6k followersLev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian: Лев Николаевич Толстой; most appropriately used Liev Tolstoy; commonly Leo Tolstoy in Anglophone countries) was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist fiction. Many consider Tolstoy to have been one of the world's greatest novelists. Tolstoy is equally known for his complicated and paradoxical persona and for his extreme moralistic and ascetic views, which he adopted after a moral crisis and spiritual awakening in the 1870s, after which he also became noted as a moral thinker and social reformer.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal twentieth-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
August 29, 2022
Lucerne is a story from a diary, narrating the story of a man traveling to Lucerne, meeting a poor street singer who has been mocked and deciding to help him. It gives a strick critique on the basis of good and bad, social status, poverty and aristocracy.
It contains lushious descriptions of scenaries and situations, and a straightforward plotline.
It contains lushious descriptions of scenaries and situations, and a straightforward plotline.
November 2, 2024
Great short story raising important question of inequality.
This topic aside, I loved how Tolstoy described one of the dinners (i read it in original, translation is taken from one of the online websites, it doesn’t seem to be entirely correct, but it conveys the idea):
„Individual tourists, whether men or women, sat beside one another in silence, and did not even seem to see one another. If it happened occasionally that, out of this five-score human beings, two spoke to each other, the topic of their conversation was certain to be the weather, or the ascent of the Righi.
<…>
Such dinners always depress me: I dislike them, and before they are over I become blue. It always seems to me as if I had done something wrong; just as when I was a boy I was set upon a chair in consequence of some naughtiness and bidden ironically, "Now rest a little while, my dear young fellow." And all the time my young blood was pulsing through my veins, and in the other room I could hear the merry shouts of my brothers.
I used to try to rebel against this feeling of being choked down, which I experienced at such dinners, but in vain. All these dead-and-alive faces have an irresistible influence over me, and I myself become also as one dead. I have no desires, I have no thoughts; I do not even observe.
At first I attempted to enter into conversation with my neighbors; but I got no response beyond the phrases which had probably been repeated in that place a hundred thousand times, a hundred thousand times by the same persons.
And yet these people were by no means all stupid and feelingless; but evidently many of them, though they seemed so dead, led self-centered lives, just as I did, and in many cases far more complicated and interesting ones than my own. Why, then, should they deprive themselves of one of the greatest enjoyments of life,--the enjoyment that comes from the intercourse of man with man?
How different it used to be in our pension at Paris, where twenty of us, belonging to as many different nationalities, professions, and individualities, met together at a common table, and, under the influence of the Gallic sociability, found the keenest zest!
There, immediately, from one end of the table to the other, the conversation, sandwiched with witticisms and puns, though often in a broken speech, became general. There every one, without being solicitous for the proprieties, said whatever came into his head.
There we had our own philosopher, our own disputant, our own bel esprit, our own butt,--all common property.
There, immediately after dinner, we would move the table to one side, and, without paying too much attention to rhythm, take to dancing the polka on the dusty carpet, and often keep it up till evening. There, though we were rather flirtatious, and not overwise or dignified, still we were human beings.“
This topic aside, I loved how Tolstoy described one of the dinners (i read it in original, translation is taken from one of the online websites, it doesn’t seem to be entirely correct, but it conveys the idea):
„Individual tourists, whether men or women, sat beside one another in silence, and did not even seem to see one another. If it happened occasionally that, out of this five-score human beings, two spoke to each other, the topic of their conversation was certain to be the weather, or the ascent of the Righi.
<…>
Such dinners always depress me: I dislike them, and before they are over I become blue. It always seems to me as if I had done something wrong; just as when I was a boy I was set upon a chair in consequence of some naughtiness and bidden ironically, "Now rest a little while, my dear young fellow." And all the time my young blood was pulsing through my veins, and in the other room I could hear the merry shouts of my brothers.
I used to try to rebel against this feeling of being choked down, which I experienced at such dinners, but in vain. All these dead-and-alive faces have an irresistible influence over me, and I myself become also as one dead. I have no desires, I have no thoughts; I do not even observe.
At first I attempted to enter into conversation with my neighbors; but I got no response beyond the phrases which had probably been repeated in that place a hundred thousand times, a hundred thousand times by the same persons.
And yet these people were by no means all stupid and feelingless; but evidently many of them, though they seemed so dead, led self-centered lives, just as I did, and in many cases far more complicated and interesting ones than my own. Why, then, should they deprive themselves of one of the greatest enjoyments of life,--the enjoyment that comes from the intercourse of man with man?
How different it used to be in our pension at Paris, where twenty of us, belonging to as many different nationalities, professions, and individualities, met together at a common table, and, under the influence of the Gallic sociability, found the keenest zest!
There, immediately, from one end of the table to the other, the conversation, sandwiched with witticisms and puns, though often in a broken speech, became general. There every one, without being solicitous for the proprieties, said whatever came into his head.
There we had our own philosopher, our own disputant, our own bel esprit, our own butt,--all common property.
There, immediately after dinner, we would move the table to one side, and, without paying too much attention to rhythm, take to dancing the polka on the dusty carpet, and often keep it up till evening. There, though we were rather flirtatious, and not overwise or dignified, still we were human beings.“
January 8, 2025
Are hierarchies inevitable?
December 20, 2013
В этом произведении Лев Николаевич Толстой в очередной раз преподносит нам урок того как даже наиболее интеллигентное, воспитанное и образованное общество, возможно даже "его цвет", в постоянном выражении общепринятого и напускного беспокойства о глобальных проблемах, при этом же, зачастую могут оставаться не только равнодушными к страждущим, а то и быть даже безжалостными к тем людям, которым внимание и помощь бывает так необходима, возвышаться над ними, и даже унижать их...
Именно по таким примерам можно и следовало бы ценить то или иное общество людей на предмет его подлинного морального облика и их ценностей.
Именно по таким примерам можно и следовало бы ценить то или иное общество людей на предмет его подлинного морального облика и их ценностей.
December 19, 2019
Absolutely amazing story featuring an equally amazing and poignant conclusion.
"In your pride you thought you could separate yourself from the universal law. But you, too, with your mean and petty indignation at the waiters, have been playing your necessary part in the eternal and infinite harmony."
"In your pride you thought you could separate yourself from the universal law. But you, too, with your mean and petty indignation at the waiters, have been playing your necessary part in the eternal and infinite harmony."
January 23, 2026
Mission 2026: Binge reviewing all previous Reads, I was too slothful to review back when I read them.
Rereading and binge reviewing Tolstoy in 2026
‘Lucerne’ is Tolstoy at his most quietly ferocious. This short piece looks innocuous—almost like a travel sketch—but it is actually a moral ambush. Nothing “happens” in the conventional sense. No plot fireworks, no melodrama. And yet by the end, Tolstoy has dismantled bourgeois aesthetics, exposed class cruelty, and left the reader slightly ashamed of their own comfort.
Efficient. Ruthless. Very Tolstoy.
Set in the picturesque Swiss town of Lucerne, the story follows a refined, well-to-do narrator (very Tolstoy-coded) who encounters a poor Tyrolean singer performing in front of a luxury hotel. The singer’s music is raw, soulful, and unmistakably human. The response of the wealthy guests? Polite irritation, awkward avoidance, and finally dismissal. Beauty is welcome—’only if it arrives sanitized, curated, and class-approved.’
This is where Tolstoy twists the knife. The natural world is sublime, the music transcendent, and yet the social world remains grotesquely small-minded.
The guests pride themselves on culture, refinement, and “taste,” but recoil when art confronts them in a form that reminds them of inequality, vulnerability, and shared humanity. Tolstoy doesn’t shout; he observes. And that restraint makes the indictment lethal.
What’s remarkable is how ‘Lucerne’ turns aesthetics into ethics. The story asks: ‘What is beauty worth if it cannot disturb us?’ The singer embodies art unmoored from privilege, and that is precisely why he is rejected. Tolstoy exposes the hypocrisy of a civilization that claims to love beauty while refusing to honor the human cost behind it.
Stylistically, ‘Lucerne’ is precise and coldly elegant. Tolstoy’s sentences move like clear alpine air—clean, sharp, revealing everything. There’s a barely suppressed moral rage under the calm surface, a sense that civilization itself has failed a basic test of decency.
This is not the Tolstoy of grand historical panoramas; this is the Tolstoy who stares at a single moment until it confesses its sins.
Rereading ‘Lucerne’ now, it feels disturbingly contemporary. Replace the hotel guests with elite audiences, curated cultural spaces, or algorithm-approved art, and the dynamic remains unchanged. We celebrate “authentic voices” in theory, but flinch when they disrupt comfort or demand accountability.
Why should one read the story in the 21st century?
Because ‘Lucerne’ exposes the moral limits of taste. In a world where culture is branded, streamed, filtered, and monetized, Tolstoy asks a question that still stings: ‘‘do we love art, or do we love the version of ourselves that art allows us to perform?’’
The story challenges the modern obsession with “high culture” divorced from human responsibility. It reminds us that admiration without empathy is hollow, that beauty stripped of ethics becomes decoration, and that comfort is often the enemy of conscience.
Tolstoy shows how easily refinement slips into cruelty when it refuses to see the human being behind the performance.
In the 21st century—where inequality is visible yet normalized, and suffering is aestheticized from a safe distance—’Lucerne’ forces a reckoning. It asks whether we are truly moved by art, or merely entertained by it. Whether we listen, or merely consume.
Read ‘Lucerne’ today because it strips culture of its excuses.
It insists that beauty, if it means anything at all, must recognize dignity—even when it makes us uncomfortable.
Highly recommended.
Rereading and binge reviewing Tolstoy in 2026
‘Lucerne’ is Tolstoy at his most quietly ferocious. This short piece looks innocuous—almost like a travel sketch—but it is actually a moral ambush. Nothing “happens” in the conventional sense. No plot fireworks, no melodrama. And yet by the end, Tolstoy has dismantled bourgeois aesthetics, exposed class cruelty, and left the reader slightly ashamed of their own comfort.
Efficient. Ruthless. Very Tolstoy.
Set in the picturesque Swiss town of Lucerne, the story follows a refined, well-to-do narrator (very Tolstoy-coded) who encounters a poor Tyrolean singer performing in front of a luxury hotel. The singer’s music is raw, soulful, and unmistakably human. The response of the wealthy guests? Polite irritation, awkward avoidance, and finally dismissal. Beauty is welcome—’only if it arrives sanitized, curated, and class-approved.’
This is where Tolstoy twists the knife. The natural world is sublime, the music transcendent, and yet the social world remains grotesquely small-minded.
The guests pride themselves on culture, refinement, and “taste,” but recoil when art confronts them in a form that reminds them of inequality, vulnerability, and shared humanity. Tolstoy doesn’t shout; he observes. And that restraint makes the indictment lethal.
What’s remarkable is how ‘Lucerne’ turns aesthetics into ethics. The story asks: ‘What is beauty worth if it cannot disturb us?’ The singer embodies art unmoored from privilege, and that is precisely why he is rejected. Tolstoy exposes the hypocrisy of a civilization that claims to love beauty while refusing to honor the human cost behind it.
Stylistically, ‘Lucerne’ is precise and coldly elegant. Tolstoy’s sentences move like clear alpine air—clean, sharp, revealing everything. There’s a barely suppressed moral rage under the calm surface, a sense that civilization itself has failed a basic test of decency.
This is not the Tolstoy of grand historical panoramas; this is the Tolstoy who stares at a single moment until it confesses its sins.
Rereading ‘Lucerne’ now, it feels disturbingly contemporary. Replace the hotel guests with elite audiences, curated cultural spaces, or algorithm-approved art, and the dynamic remains unchanged. We celebrate “authentic voices” in theory, but flinch when they disrupt comfort or demand accountability.
Why should one read the story in the 21st century?
Because ‘Lucerne’ exposes the moral limits of taste. In a world where culture is branded, streamed, filtered, and monetized, Tolstoy asks a question that still stings: ‘‘do we love art, or do we love the version of ourselves that art allows us to perform?’’
The story challenges the modern obsession with “high culture” divorced from human responsibility. It reminds us that admiration without empathy is hollow, that beauty stripped of ethics becomes decoration, and that comfort is often the enemy of conscience.
Tolstoy shows how easily refinement slips into cruelty when it refuses to see the human being behind the performance.
In the 21st century—where inequality is visible yet normalized, and suffering is aestheticized from a safe distance—’Lucerne’ forces a reckoning. It asks whether we are truly moved by art, or merely entertained by it. Whether we listen, or merely consume.
Read ‘Lucerne’ today because it strips culture of its excuses.
It insists that beauty, if it means anything at all, must recognize dignity—even when it makes us uncomfortable.
Highly recommended.
Read
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To SEE a WORLD in a Grain of Sand,
And a HEAVEN in a Wild Flower,
Hold INFINITY in the palm of your hand
And ETERNITY in an Hour"
~ William Blake ~
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Form is not different than Emptiness;
Emptiness is not different than form
~ Heart Sutra ~
Like the ocean and its waves,
inseparable yet distinct
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
" I and The Father are one,
I am The Truth,
The Life and The Path.”
Like a river flowing from its source,
connected and continuous
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
Thy kingdom come.
Let the reign of divine
Truth, Life, and Love
be established in me,
and rule out of me all sin;
and may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind
A mighty oak tree standing firm against the storm,
As sunlight scatters the shadows of night
A river nourishing the land it flows through
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~
~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~
~}--- :}|{:-:}|{:- * FOLLOW 4 FOLLOW * -:}|{:-:}|{: ---{~
~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~
~}--------:}|{:-:}|{:- * LINKS * -:}|{:-:}|{:----------{~
~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
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~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
* -:}|{}|{:- * SUMMARY * -:}|{}|{:- *
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
* -:}|{:- * RATING * -:}|{:- * /10 * -:}|{:- *
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
* -:}|{}|{: =EXPERIENCES=&=DISCERNMENTS= :}|{}|{:- *
* -:}|{}|{: = ? = }|{}|{:- *
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
* -} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VWrl... {- *
* -:}|{}|{:=:}|{}|{:- *
* -} Gestalt Psychology Simplified with Examples and Principles {- *
* -:}|{}|{: = MY SYNTHESISED ( ^ GESTALT ^ ) OF THE * -:}|{}|{:=:}|{}|{:- * ( WAY THE AUTHOR FRAMES = HIS WRITING PERSPECTIVES ) & ( POINTERS & IMPLICATIONS = the conclusion that can be drawn IMPLICITYLY from something although it is not EXPLICITLY stated ) = :}|{}|{:- *
* -:}|{}|{: = ? = }|{}|{:- *
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~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
To SEE a WORLD in a Grain of Sand,
And a HEAVEN in a Wild Flower,
Hold INFINITY in the palm of your hand
And ETERNITY in an Hour"
~ William Blake ~
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
“Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows.” Nisargadatta Maharaj
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Form is not different than Emptiness;
Emptiness is not different than form
~ Heart Sutra ~
Like the ocean and its waves,
inseparable yet distinct
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
" I and The Father are one,
I am The Truth,
The Life and The Path.”
Like a river flowing from its source,
connected and continuous
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
Thy kingdom come.
Let the reign of divine
Truth, Life, and Love
be established in me,
and rule out of me all sin;
and may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind
A mighty oak tree standing firm against the storm,
As sunlight scatters the shadows of night
A river nourishing the land it flows through
~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~
~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~
October 17, 2023
One of Tolstoy's most beautiful and underrated stories. It's a first-person account of a wealthy man on vacation in Switzerland encountering a young Gypsy singer. He is impressed by his talent, but the aristocratic tourists mock him and insult him. The narrator befriends the Gypsy and learns of his tragic upbringing, all the while the wealthy tourists continue to berate him because of his poverty and eccentricity. The rage inside the narrator builds up until he explodes in an internal monologue at the end, cursing the wealthy classes and all their preaching of modern values of freedom, tolerance and equality which none of them actually adhere to. Over a century later, nothing has changed about them.
What is so deeply moving about the story is the realization the narrator comes to. After all of the narrator's ranting, after all of his justifiable anger, he realizes that hatred is not a viable response to the injustices of the modern world. One cannot be as hypocritical as the elite classes are if you want to genuinely stand in opposition to them. The love the narrator felt for the Gypsy man is ultimately greater than his hatred towards the oppressors. A life defined by judgement and resentment will only doom us. The true answer in all this contradiction, gluttony and chaos is God. It's through loving God and loving one another that our hearts can be tranquil. If we are frustrated with living in this murderous global civilization of blood, money and oil, then let us look past the temporary conditions which oppress the soul and squander our potential for common prosperity. If the finite can't satisfy us then we can only look to the Infinite, the Eternal. Tolstoy tells us that our time is wasted looking for answers in these wastelands of materialism. Instead, look upwards to the shining moonlight, the perfect harmony of the cosmos; appreciate the fragrant spring flowers and the fresh air which facilitates our lives. God has given us life in this oasis of confusion and peace can only be found at returning to the Source.
It's a profound message and a wonderful story that set the seeds for Tolstoy's later turn towards Christianity and social criticism.
What is so deeply moving about the story is the realization the narrator comes to. After all of the narrator's ranting, after all of his justifiable anger, he realizes that hatred is not a viable response to the injustices of the modern world. One cannot be as hypocritical as the elite classes are if you want to genuinely stand in opposition to them. The love the narrator felt for the Gypsy man is ultimately greater than his hatred towards the oppressors. A life defined by judgement and resentment will only doom us. The true answer in all this contradiction, gluttony and chaos is God. It's through loving God and loving one another that our hearts can be tranquil. If we are frustrated with living in this murderous global civilization of blood, money and oil, then let us look past the temporary conditions which oppress the soul and squander our potential for common prosperity. If the finite can't satisfy us then we can only look to the Infinite, the Eternal. Tolstoy tells us that our time is wasted looking for answers in these wastelands of materialism. Instead, look upwards to the shining moonlight, the perfect harmony of the cosmos; appreciate the fragrant spring flowers and the fresh air which facilitates our lives. God has given us life in this oasis of confusion and peace can only be found at returning to the Source.
It's a profound message and a wonderful story that set the seeds for Tolstoy's later turn towards Christianity and social criticism.
January 16, 2026
Записи о нахождении в Люцерне Лев Толстой оформил в виде рассказа «Из записок князя Нехлюдова». Писал он скоро, проделав всю работу в течение трёх дней. Он в той же манере описывал красоту здешних мест, особое внимание уделяя природе. Что касается самого города, отметил излишнее количество англичан. При этом повествование шло от первого лица. Читатель может удивиться, почему использовалась фамилия Нехлюдова, памятная по произведению «Утро помещика». Это тот же самый князь? В некоторой сущности то не имеет значения. Главное понять, сказ вёлся от лица совестливого человека, ратующего за справедливое отношение к себе и к другим. Главный герой повествования ходил по окрестностям, ничего важного не осуществляя. Проще говоря, искал место, где ему можно будет прислониться, дав покой ногам.
Ключевым моментом в рассказе становится беседа князя с бродячим певцом. Читатель должен был узнать, насколько тяжело бродячему певцу заниматься своим ремеслом. Певец вынужден постоянно находиться в дороге, тогда как уже успел постареть, и ему стало тяжело ходить. Больше его огорчала бесплотность труда. Если он где давал концерт, с ним редко рассчитывались. Более того, в Швейцарии за такую деятельность он мог быть помещён в тюрьму. Где же ему более нравилось выступать? В Италии. Там с пониманием относятся к его труду, за тем лишь исключением, что сами итальянцы в большей своей части артистичны.
Слушая бродячего певца, перед читателем появляются мысли уже не князя Нехлюдова, а Льва Толстого, который видел среди слушателей англичан. Понимая их надменность, памятуя про их повадки по годам Крымской компании, главный герой так и говорит, будь сейчас война, он бы бросился на них в атаку и всех бы перерубил. И потому читатель скорее внимал рассказу именно Толстого, а Нехлюдов вынесен в название одной цели ради — не иметь обвинений от англичан.
(c) Trounin
Ключевым моментом в рассказе становится беседа князя с бродячим певцом. Читатель должен был узнать, насколько тяжело бродячему певцу заниматься своим ремеслом. Певец вынужден постоянно находиться в дороге, тогда как уже успел постареть, и ему стало тяжело ходить. Больше его огорчала бесплотность труда. Если он где давал концерт, с ним редко рассчитывались. Более того, в Швейцарии за такую деятельность он мог быть помещён в тюрьму. Где же ему более нравилось выступать? В Италии. Там с пониманием относятся к его труду, за тем лишь исключением, что сами итальянцы в большей своей части артистичны.
Слушая бродячего певца, перед читателем появляются мысли уже не князя Нехлюдова, а Льва Толстого, который видел среди слушателей англичан. Понимая их надменность, памятуя про их повадки по годам Крымской компании, главный герой так и говорит, будь сейчас война, он бы бросился на них в атаку и всех бы перерубил. И потому читатель скорее внимал рассказу именно Толстого, а Нехлюдов вынесен в название одной цели ради — не иметь обвинений от англичан.
(c) Trounin
July 20, 2023
С уверенностью можно сказать, что автор не умный человек. Не был им может быть никогда. Или в такой империи-махине архитрудно раскрыть в себе истинный, человечный ум совсем без оков. Гораздо хуже всего этого то, что такой человек есть писатель и он может совсем потерять голову и не осечь себя от пространной писанины из-за простого, не важного, случайного и неудачного факта, произошедшего где нибудь в развитой, настоящей, свободной стране а не в отвратительной имперский губернии или уезде. С детства хорошо зная этого писателя, прочитав и услышав про него тысячи предложений, хвалебных и не совсем, видя эго фотографии, узнавая факты из его жизни и прочитав десятки его произведений, все равно, достоверно и крепко можно сказать, что он действительно не был умным человеком или не был умным тогда, когда писал конкретные его произведения с откровенно шовинистскими, империалистскими, неправильным, неадекватными, не нормальными и нечеловечными текстами. Вот в этом рассказе, прочитайте ещё раз место про республику, про Англичан и рубилово в траншеях, ещё раз посмотрите как автор напутал все про Швейцарию, Англичан, про республику, про лакеи, кельнеры, швейцары, про чистоту и грязь, про цивилизацию, про толпу, общество, справедливость, про благо, зло, политику и вообще почти про все. И вы должны тогда понять это, понять все. В самом последнем абзаце этот писатель вроде показывает, что он все-таки может быть и справедливым и догадывается, в действительности что к чему, но это по моему совсем не факт.
June 1, 2024
Первое что приходит на ум что эта повесть вполне могла бы быть написана Достоевским, уж очень эти авторы любят описывать обиженных и угнетенных, вот так и в этом произведении, через выдуманного князя Нехлюдова автор размышляет о судьбе простого человека, который обязательно скромен, честен и всеми гоним.
Повесть и саму историю еще можно рассматривать как канву для философских взглядов самого автора, хотя сама история вроде, как и не выдумана, а написана на реальном впечатлении автора от пребывания за границей.
Повесть не понравилась, слишком много громких слов и философствования о том, что человек человеку друг и брат.
Повесть и саму историю еще можно рассматривать как канву для философских взглядов самого автора, хотя сама история вроде, как и не выдумана, а написана на реальном впечатлении автора от пребывания за границей.
Повесть не понравилась, слишком много громких слов и философствования о том, что человек человеку друг и брат.
February 4, 2024
"Civilization is good, barbarism is evil; freedom, good, slavery, evil. Now this imaginary knowledge annihilates the instinctive, beatific, primitive craving for the good which is in human nature. And who will explain to me what is freedom, what is despotism, what is civilization, what is barbarism?
"Where are the boundaries that separate them? And whose soul possesses so absolute a standard of good and evil as to measure these fleeting, complicated facts? Whose intellect is so great as to comprehend and weigh all the facts in the irretrievable past? And who can find any circumstance in which good and evil do not exist together? And because I know that I see more of one than of the other, is it not because my standpoint is wrong? And who has the ability to separate himself so absolutely from life, even for a moment, as to look upon it independently from above?’’
"Equality before the law? Does the whole life of a people revolve within the sphere of law? Only the thousandth part of it is subject to the law; the rest lies outside of it, in the sphere of the customs and intuitions of society.
"But in society the lackey is better dressed than the minstrel, and insults him with impunity. I am better dressed than the lackey, and insult him with impunity. The Swiss considers me higher, but the minstrel lower, than himself; when I made the minstrel my companion, he felt that he was on an equality with us both, and behaved rudely. I was impudent to the Swiss, and the Swiss acknowledged that he was inferior to me. The waiter was impudent to the minstrel, and the minstrel accepted the fact that he was inferior to the waiter.’’
"Where are the boundaries that separate them? And whose soul possesses so absolute a standard of good and evil as to measure these fleeting, complicated facts? Whose intellect is so great as to comprehend and weigh all the facts in the irretrievable past? And who can find any circumstance in which good and evil do not exist together? And because I know that I see more of one than of the other, is it not because my standpoint is wrong? And who has the ability to separate himself so absolutely from life, even for a moment, as to look upon it independently from above?’’
"Equality before the law? Does the whole life of a people revolve within the sphere of law? Only the thousandth part of it is subject to the law; the rest lies outside of it, in the sphere of the customs and intuitions of society.
"But in society the lackey is better dressed than the minstrel, and insults him with impunity. I am better dressed than the lackey, and insult him with impunity. The Swiss considers me higher, but the minstrel lower, than himself; when I made the minstrel my companion, he felt that he was on an equality with us both, and behaved rudely. I was impudent to the Swiss, and the Swiss acknowledged that he was inferior to me. The waiter was impudent to the minstrel, and the minstrel accepted the fact that he was inferior to the waiter.’’
October 18, 2021
It's an interesting book that reflects on the nature of people set in Lucerne, he is simultaneously disgusted and amazed by Lucerne, the Rude English tourists yet the beautiful landscape, quite reflective and philosphical
October 18, 2023
Hace tiempo que no leia a Tolstoy, historia corta que intenta darnos la leccion de que todos somos iguales y las injusticias del sistema capitalista que permite poner por encima a personas dependiendo su nivel económico.
October 3, 2021
Great Story
Amazing short story, I like every creation of Tolstoy. Endless struggle between material and spirit, beautifully described by author in my opinion.
Amazing short story, I like every creation of Tolstoy. Endless struggle between material and spirit, beautifully described by author in my opinion.
March 12, 2023
175 years old and yet able to summarize everything wrong in the world in the shortest amount of pages.
June 26, 2021
“This is the strange fate of art, I reflected, having grown a little calmer. All seek it and love it. It is the one thing everybody wants and tries to find in life, yet nobody acknowledges it’s power. Nobody values this greatest blessing in the world, nor esteems or is grateful to those who give it to mankind.”
August 13, 2013
A trilogy formed of semi-attached parts about landlord Nekhlyudov (A Landlord's Morning 2.6/5, Lucerne 3/5, A Billiard Marker's Notes 2.2/5) contains rather pessimistic philosophical thought. Lucerne's theme in particular reminds me of an Eddie Vedder song Society.
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