In this novella, Tolstoy tells the story of an unhappy upper-class marriage almost solely through a character's spoken recollections. An unnamed narrator begins the story with his own present-tense descriptions of a train and its passengers, but the primary narrative is quickly taken over by the dialogue of one of these passengers--an old man who tells the story of how he got to the point of killing his wife in a fit of jealous rage. While recounting the failure of his marriage, the man also expounds on his theory that sex is the corrupter of pure relations between the genders, and "love" is only lust.
In terms of style, the story begins in the middle of the action ("It was early spring, and the second day of our journey"), with short, descriptive sentences. Characters who do not play a role in the main body of the story are introduced and carefully physically described, down to straight-forward details that don't seem particularly important ("he wore an astrakhan collar"). The narrator's motives and actions are equally as simply delivered ("It seemed to me that his loneliness depressed him, and I made several attempts to converse with him.") There are frequent paragraph breaks, often based on the passing of time, with some no longer than one complex sentence; this gives the story more of a forward-moving feeling. The inclusion of lots of non-vital actions ("The tradesman began by saying that was going on to his estate, which was only one station farther on...") makes the pace of the story feel more leisurely and credible--almost as though it were being told out loud. The narrator sometimes makes generalizations ("In the way all ladies have...") but generally does little more than relate the action.
Tolstoy uses a conversation about divorce, which takes place between several train passengers, to slowly introduce Pozdnyshev (the old man) who goes on to occupy the rest of the story; he interjects at one point in the conversation, and then goes on to speak exclusively to the narrator. In this way, Tolstoy adds to the leisurely pace of the story by letting it unfold naturally, as opposed to jumping straight to the main action--in this case, the story of Pozdnyshev's disastrous marriage.
Tolstoy's dialogue doesn't aim to sound realistic. The style of Pozdynshev's dialogue as he tells the story of his marriage is very similar to the style used by the narrator of "The Death of Ivan Ilych"when telling the story of Ivan's death; the only real difference is that Pozdynshev occasionally becomes theatrical at key points in his story and sometimes directly addresses the narrator, to whom he is speaking. When many different characters are speaking in the beginning of the story, Tolstoy uses adjectives and descriptions of their actions very selectively. When Pozdnyshev is speaking, he interrupts the dialogue only a few times for brief descriptions of action, and the narrator rarely speaks. Most interestingly and effectively, Pozdnyshev changes tenses and pronouns at different points in his story: when relating the action that led up to killing his wife he switches to the present tense, and when describing one instance of the frequent arguments he had with her he uses both present tense and the pronoun "you." Though he tells his story mostly in chronological order, he does allow for many tangents to describe his current philosophical stance on a particular issue that has come up, and very rarely allows for backward-looking tangents to further explain a particular phenomenon. The story comes to a close with a brief description by the narrator of Pozdnyshev's behavior and appearance as he ends his own story, and ends with yet another line of dialogue by him ("Yes, forgive me..." he said, repeating the same words with which he had concluded his story.")
Overall, it seems that Tolstoy focuses more on hammering home his own philosophy than on crafting a beautifully written story. However, the style he employs in "The Kreutzer Sonata" could definitely be useful for a story of my own in which I also want to focus on communicating some of my own morals and ideals.
No comments:
Post a Comment