I promised, and inquired whether it was in a condition for me to read.

But one evening last July, during a visit I made to Yasnaya Polyana, at the Countess's invitation, the Count spoke to me of his story as being near completion, and asked me to translate it when it should be finished. I asked no questions when I made the Count's acquaintance a year later. So much seemed to be known in well-informed circles.

When I first reached Russia, in the autumn of 1887, I heard that Count Tolstoi was writing a new tale: it began on the railway, and a man murdered his wife, and it was to be of the searching psychological type exemplified by Ivan Ilyitch. One has occasion to reflect upon this topic rather frequently in these days of 'psychological' romances but it is not often necessary, I think, to meditate so seriously as one is forced to do over Count Lyoff Tolstoi's last story.

But books? On the whole, although a sensational realistic book may never reach as many people as an article published in the popular newspaper, it probably produces as much effect because of the weight and respectability which the binding and comparatively high price give to it. The same thing is true in the case of crimes which are minutely described in the newspapers.

What are the legitimate bounds of realism? To what point is it permissible to describe in repulsive detail the hideous and unseemly things of this world, simply because they exist, when it is quite impossible to say what the effect will be upon thousands of people to whom such description conveys the first knowledge of the existence of evil? It has been proved that public executions, far from inspiring horror of the deeds which led to them, and deterring others from the commission of like deeds, through fear of the result thus presented, actually give rise to crimes copied after those which are thus brought to general attention. 415995 Tolstoy's 'Kreutzer Sonata' - Book Review Isabel Florence Hapgood NIEDERDORF, TYROL, March 29, 1890

The kreutzer sonata book