The Kreutzer Sonata
- Downloads
- Under 100
- First published
- 1889
- Pages
- 199
Listen to The Kreutzer Sonata Audiobook Free
-
Chapter 01
12:32 -
Chapter 02
10:21 -
Chapter 03
2:15 -
Chapter 04
4:47 -
Chapter 05
6:02 -
Chapter 06
8:42 -
Chapter 07
2:32 -
Chapter 08
3:35 -
Chapter 09
4:34 -
Chapter 10
3:41 -
Chapter 11
5:00 -
Chapter 12
9:22 -
Chapter 13
9:51 -
Chapter 14
6:57 -
Chapter 15
11:47 -
Chapter 16
13:21 -
Chapter 17
10:53 -
Chapter 18
4:16 -
Chapter 19
7:36 -
Chapter 20
8:31 -
Chapter 21
14:07 -
Chapter 22
7:12 -
Chapter 23
8:52 -
Chapter 24
6:01 -
Chapter 25
9:49 -
Chapter 26
9:30 -
Chapter 27
12:40 -
Chapter 28
6:26
The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) is a public domain work.
The audio edition streams in the page. There is no audio file to download.
About this book
On a night train, a restless passenger named Pozdnyshev tells a stranger how he came to kill his wife. What follows is his long, unsparing confession, a case built against jealousy, physical desire, and the whole institution of marriage as he has known it. Tolstoy wrote it during his late religious crisis, and the story doubles as a blunt moral argument, provocative enough that Russian censors banned it. The title comes from the Beethoven violin sonata his wife plays with another man, music Pozdnyshev hears as a kind of temptation. Few short works stirred more argument in their day.
From the opening pages
Travellers left and entered our car at every stopping of the train. Three persons, however, remained, bound, like myself, for the farthest station: a lady neither young nor pretty, smoking cigarettes, with a thin face, a cap on her head, and wearing a semi-masculine outer garment; then her companion, a very loquacious gentleman of about forty years, with baggage entirely new and arranged in an orderly manner; then a gentleman who held himself entirely aloof, short in stature, very nervous, of uncertain age, with bright eyes, not pronounced in color, but extremely attractive,—eyes that darted with rapidity from one object to another.
This gentleman, during almost all the journey thus far, had entered into conversation with no fellow-traveller, as if he carefully avoided all acquaintance. When spoken to, he answered curtly and decisively, and began to look out of the car window obstinately.
Yet it seemed to me that the solitude weighed upon him. He seemed to perceive that I understood this, and when our eyes met, as happened frequently, since we were sitting almost opposite each other, he turned away his head, and avoided conversation with me as much as with the others. At nightfall, during a stop at a large station, the gentleman with the fine baggage—a lawyer, as I have since learned—got out with his companion to drink some tea at the restaurant. During their absence several new travellers entered the car, among whom was a tall old man, shaven and wrinkled, evidently a merchant, wearing a large heavily-lined cloak and a big cap. This merchant sat down opposite the empty seats of the lawyer and his companion, and straightway entered into conversation with a young man who seemed like an employee in some commercial house, and who had likewise just boarded the train. At first the clerk had remarked that the seat opposite was occupied, and the old man had answered that he should get out at the first station. Thus their conversation started.
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Public domain book This work is in the public domain and free of copyright. Anyone may read, download and share it.
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Book facts
- Author
- Leo Tolstoy
- First published
- 1889
- Reading time
- About 5 hours
- Pages
- 199
- Language
- English
- Genre
- Russian Classics
- Formats
- PDF, EPUB, Read online, Audiobook
- Audio read by
- Larry Caplan and Dorlene Kaplan