Tolstoy: Plays: Volume II: 1886-1889

by Leo Tolstoy, Tanya Tulchinsky, Marvin Kantor, Andrew Wachtel

Overview

Although Tolstoy's fame rests on his novels, he was also a prolific dramatist. Because his plays are satirical, didactic, and colored by complex peasant dialect, earlier translations have been seriously flawed. Now noted Slavic philologist Marvin Kantor and Tatiana Tulchinsky have prepared the first complete English translation of the great writer's plays.

Tolstoy: Plays, Volume II offers two long plays written during the years 1886-1889. The Realm of Darkness is Tolstoy's best-known play, a treatment of moral issues within a community of Russian peasants. The lesser known The Fruits of Enlightenment, a comic portrait of an upper-class Russian family afflicted with various social diseases, was written to be performed for Tolstoy's family, and not intended for publication. Andrew Baruch Wachtel has added an informative introduction on this aspect of Tolstoy's art.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810113947
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	07/08/1996
Series:	European Drama Classics
Edition description:	Translated
Pages:	206
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910) wrote two of the great novels of the nineteenth century, War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

MARVIN KANTOR is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Northwestern University and the author of Dramatic Works of D. I. Fonvizin and The Origins of Christianity in Bohemia.

TANYA TULCHINSKY manages the book department at the Russian Press Service, Inc., and has translated into Russian the works of William Faulkner and D. H. Lawrence, among others.

ANDREW BARUCH WACHTEL is Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University.

Date of Birth:

September 9, 1828

Date of Death:

November 20, 1910

Place of Birth:

Tula Province, Russia

Place of Death:

Astapovo, Russia

Education:

Privately educated by French and German tutors; attended the University of Kazan, 1844-47