The Cossacks: A Tale of 1852
At twenty-four, Tolstoy already possessed the fierce eye of a master. The Cossacks is his raw, electric debut: the story of a young Russian aristocrat who flees the empty parlors of Moscow for the rugged Caucasus, seeking something real. Dmitri Olénin trades fashionable disillusionment for a Cossack village where life is brutal, honest, and governed by forces older than society. He hunts, drinks, rides across steppes that make his old world feel like a masquerade. Then he meets Maryanka, a Cossack woman whose vitality shatters his romantic notions of noble sacrifice. What follows is a fierce internal war: between the abstract ideal of living for others and a desire that demands everything for itself. Tolstoy renders the landscape with the verve of a man in love with the world, while exposing the illusions that bind both aristocrats and primitives. It is a novel about the violence we do to ourselves, and the freedom we might find if we stopped.
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“A man is never such an egotist as at moments of spiritual ecstasy. At such times it seems to him that there is nothing on earth more splendid and interesting than himself.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“He meditated on the use to which he should put all the energy of youth which comes to a man only once in life. Should he devote this power, which is not the strength of intellect or heart or education, but an urge which once spent can never return, the power given to a man once only to make himself, or even – so it seems to him at the time – the universe into anything he wishes: should he devote it to art, to science, to love, or to practical activities? True, there are people who never have this urge: at the outset of life they place their necks under the first yoke that offers itself, and soberly toil away in it to the end of their days.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“Is it possible to love a woman who will never understand the profoundest interests of my life? Is it possible to love a woman simply for her beauty, to love the statue of a woman?””
— Leo Tolstoy
“I do not live my own life, there is something stronger than me which directs me. I suffer;but formerly I was dead and only now do I live.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“Olenin always took his own path and had an unconscious objection to the beaten tracks.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“He speaks passionately, waving his arms. But it is clear that he is searching for words, and that the words which come to him seem inadequate to express what moves him.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“What are you talking about?' cried Lukashka. 'We must go through the middle gates, of course.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“Here's what the happiness is: it's living for the others.””
— Leo Tolstoy
“كل ما اخشاه ان اترك هذا العالم دون ان اعمل خير””
— Leo Tolstoy
