Tuesday, January 05, 2021

How Much Land Does A Man Need? & What Men Live By (Leo Tolstoy)

Leo Tolstoy
How Much Land Does A Man Need?
What Men Live By





A couple of very short stories, the title and "What Men Live By". The title was "considered by James Joyce to be the world's greatest story" according to the back cover and although very a very readable moral little tale I'm not sure that something that takes under an hour to read can be quite that good. Good all the same. A better story to my mind is What Men Live By. Spoiler alert... Rather than a tale of greed and being snared by "the" fallen angel it's a tale of love and kindness and redemption of "a" fallen angel who learns 3 facts about man. As the angel says, "I have learned that men live not by selfishness, but by love." which is obviously what Tolstoy believed as he was both religious (although seems to be against organised religion) and held anarchist views (albeit nonviolent resistance).

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