The Godson (short story)

"The Godson" ("Крестник"; Romanized as "Krestnik"[1]) is a short story by Leo Tolstoy published in 1886. Inessa Medzhibovskaya, professor of English at New School for Social Research, describes it as the tale of a godson who is forbidden to open a certain sealed room in his godfather's palace, but then opens it and is banished, leading to his need for redemption.[1]

Interpretation

Pacifism

According to psychologist Anatol Rapoport, the work has been considered inspirational to the Pacifism movement, due to a sub-plot where a robber is killed and the killer then must take on all the sins and transgressions of the robber, who had been absolved by his own murder.[2] According to Ernest A. Baker, a literary critic in the early 1900s, this is another brilliant, moral tale of Tolstoy's, which teaches the uselessness in trying to correct evil.[3]

As a Moral Story

According to famed Tolstoy translator Aylmer Maude, who had interviewed Tolstoy, this is a work that relies on "Divine interference in mundane affairs," which strays from "Tolstoy's usually rational outlook on life."[4] According to the Cambridge Companion on Tolstoy, this was actually a story that was meant just to formally present and teach simple morals.[5] According to Ernest Joseph Simmons, a contemporary literary critic, the main message to take away from this story is that one should care for others more than one's self.[6]

Publication History

According to a work edited by Andrew Donskov and dealing with Tolstoy, the Tsarist Censorship Board had examined the work for more than seven months, finally conclude with rejecting it for publication in November, 1886.[7]

The story is included in numerous Tolstoy collections, such as "Where Love is God Is, and Other Stories" (1897),[8] "Twenty Three Tales" (1924),[9] and "Tolstoy: Tales of Courage and Conflict" (2009).[10]

See also

References
  1. Inessa Medzhibovskaya. Tolstoy and the Religious Culture of His Time: A Biography of a Long Conversation, 1845-1887. Lexington Books. p. 280. ISBN 9780739125335.
  2. Anatol Rapoport, ed. (2020). The Origins of Violence: Approaches to the Study of Conflict. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781000679915.
  3. Ernest A. Baker (1913). A Guide to the Best Fiction. Macmillan. p. 631.
  4. Aylmer Maude (1910). The Life of Tolstoy. 2. University of Minnesota. p. 298.
  5. Donna Tussing Orwin (2002). The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy. Cambridge University Press.
  6. Ernest Joseph Simmons (2014). Tolstoy. Taylor & Francis. p. 147.
  7. Andrew Donskov, Liudmila Gladkova, ed. (2019). Leo Tolstoy in Conversation with Four Peasant Sectarian Writers: The Complete Correspondence. Translated by John Woodsworth. University of Ottawa Press. ISBN 9780776627816.
  8. Leo Tolstoy (1897). Where Love Is, There God is Also. The Godson. Two Stories, Etc. London.
  9. Leo Tolstoy (1924). Twenty Three Tales. Humphrey Sumner Milford; Oxford University Press. p. 227.
  10. Leo Tolstoy (2009). Tales of Courage and Conflict. Cooper Square Press. p. 419.


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