The Kreutzer Sonata

[osho]

I have recently read this book by Leo Tolstoy. I have read several of his books and most of his stories and a few of his essays and the fact I like them is he is a master storyteller, unsurpassed I believe in the history of literature in consideration of the way he proceeds with narratives with each rich in imagination and characterization and plotting.

I am startled by this novella of the writer and it simply baffled me. Yet there are some indefinable and unexplainable clouts in his writing – something he adamantly argue for. That is chastity. Yes in many religions – Hinduism, Christianity and Buddhism – it has some givens and of course the more one is chaste the shorter the path one finds to Nirvana. And if we read them deeply and unflinchingly and of course uncritically – the Hindu and Buddhist texts sex is something that drowns man and dooms him to an abyss of pandemonium.

While I like Tolstoy's philosophy mostly at times I find him totally immature. Voluptuousness is despicable to him but not to most of us in nature or in human society. Promiscuity is something sounding stomach-turning to us conditioned in an orthodox social condition. My parents have stuffed my mind with a mountain of beliefs and I cannot undo them and even if I unlearn them consciously and try to erase out of my memory chamber I will unknowingly be depositing it deep down and it may again manifest in its full capacity and will gobble me up.
.
Have any of you gone through this mind boggling book?

[cacian]

Hi Osho.
I have just been wondering about the title and I figured I must look it up.
There is quite a story, a storm story about -The Kreutzer Sonata- by Beethoven.
This piece is described as firstly furious then joyful and the exuberant.
Oof what a shift in feelings I feel almost exhausted.
For one to more from anger to then joy and then finish on an exuberant feel I just could not imagine how anyone can manage all three.
Any way here is the link I think you may find it interesting.

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70889

I am not a fan of Tolstoy I find himd dense and heavy.
Politics wars and love in books I have never liked I have to admit.
His book War and Peace reminds me of the book by Borges Love at the time of Cholera. A mix of love tears and tragedies.

About the book
There are many things that stand out odd to me.
I feel that the main character Pozdnyshev comes across as 'simple' not very bright is what I mean.
Tragedy strikes again at the heart of lack of love conventions marriage adultery and hatred thus killing.
Tolstey is literally slating his own mental capacity to think outside the norms and this story is loaded with it.
The whole story feels claustrophobic almost alienating and cold.
The idea that the character only resort to a marriage that has failed is killing is desperate.
One would normally pain because his wife left him for another man ie did not love him but instead he commits the crime because she committed adultery which in a conventional marriage setting is not allowed.
This end does not justify the mean ie love is hurt, but what should have been because of outside rules.
In other words you break the rule you get punished.
This is depleating and shows Tolstoy lack of total grasp of what love and feelings are all about.
Immature is not the right word. Tragic is.

This Epilogue is chilling and says it all


Let us stop believing that carnal love is high and noble and understand that any end worth our pursuit -- in service of humanity, our homeland, science, art, let alone God -- any end, so long as we may count it worth our pursuit, is not attained by joining ourselves to the objects of our carnal love in marriage or outside it; that, in fact, infatuation and conjunction with the object of our carnal love (whatever the authors of romances and love poems claim to the contrary) will never help our worthwhile pursuits but only hinder them

Lots of carnal going on and references to homeland science art which are a very bolchevist comformed hard bearing mentality.

[Aylinn]

Have any of you gone through this mind boggling book?

I read it half a year ago. I wouldn't describe this book as mind boggling. It was rather disturbing, since it plumbs the depths of human cruelty, suffering, etc. For me the man is a sad example of a person who, by trying to adhere to social norms, is hurt and deprived of happiness. He is married, because it is expected that he should be married. The pressure to find a partner is so strong that he doesn't even consider that he shouldn't comply with them(social norms) and marry anyone, just because it is expected of him. He is disappointed by the people around him, because they cannot live up to his expectations.


I am startled by this novella of the writer and it simply baffled me. Yet there are some indefinable and unexplainable clouts in his writing – something he adamantly argue for. That is chastity.
Yeah, I didn't take it seriously, since the main character was clearly married to the wrong person. It doesn't seem to me that chastity would be a solution to him. He might have been better off if he had had the strength to remain alone, but I don't think it was his only possibility.

As far as I remember, the balls in the book are compared to market squares where girls are like commodities presented in their best dresses to potential 'buyers'. It shows that marriage is not a union of two people, but a sort of necessary transaction, everyone is expected to 'buy something.' For me he is a prisoner of this kind of thinking imposed on him by his surroundings.

I don't know if it makes any sense. I need to go to sleep.

[Des Essientes]

This novella by Tolstoy was inspired by the writer's real life experience. He heard a performance of Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata and he was so aroused that he then had sex with his wife despite being an advocate of total chastity at the time. Tolstoy was unable to stop having sex despite himself. He didn't think that chastity should be for just some people but for all people. When someone pointed out to him that his advocacy, if universally followed, would lead to the extinction of the human race, he replied that the point of existence is to attain a Christian existence in a Christian society, perpetuating the human race for its own sake is not a worthy goal. Tolstoy was a great storyteller, but his philosophy was an utterly sick nihilistic prudishness.

My favorite part of the novella is when the killer husband laments that nine tenths of humanity are wretches toiling in places like diamond and gold mines all for women's vanity and men's sex drive. It is hyperbolic, but it is true, in a way.