Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature - Episode 3: Thou shalt not copulate Artwork

Matters of Humanities

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Arabist Maurits Berger talks about the history of the Islam in Europe: going back to the first Muslim who set foot in Europe, and seeing what kind of interactions have taken place between Muslims and Europeans since then.

Season 2: Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature
Senior lecturer Otto Boele examines eight notorious texts in Russian literature, paying particular attention to the commotion that they created.

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Matters of Humanities

Scandal and Controversy in Russian literature - Episode 3: Thou shalt not copulate

May 15, 2024 • Leiden University Faculty of Humanities • Season 2 • Episode 3

The third episode of the podcast is about The Kreutzer Sonata by Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910), published in 1890. This novella is one of the most confusing and controversial texts in Russian literature. Apart from arguing that modern marriage is a form of prostitution, Lev Tolstoy seems to implore us to abstain from any form of sex. Concerned readers flocked to their pens and asked their teacher for clarification, but Tolstoy also had some explaining to do within his own family. His wife, who bore him thirteen children, was appalled at the hypocrisy of her husband, who preached total abstinence on paper, but in practice did not abide to his own rules. Episode 3 unravels the scandal of The Kreutzer Sonata, the tensions in Tolstoy's marriage and his increasingly radical ideas about sex and art.

Sources used in this episode of "Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature":

- Engelstein, Laura. 1992. The Keys to Happiness. The Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press).

- Møller, Peter Ulf. 1987. Postlude to the Kreutzer Sonata. Tolstoj and the Debate on Sexual Morality in Russian Literature in the 1890s (Leiden: Brill).

List of translations used in this episode of "Scandal and Controversy in Russian Literature":

- Tolstaya, Sophiya. 2014. “Whose Fault Is It?” Translated by Michael R. Katz. In: The Kreutzer Sonata Variations: Lev Tolstoy's Novella and Counterstories by Sofiya Tolstaya and Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

- Tolstoy, Lev. 2014.“The Kreutzer Sonata” Translated by Michael R. Katz. In: The Kreutzer Sonata Variations: Lev Tolstoy's Novella and Counterstories by Sofiya Tolstaya and Lev Lvovich Tolstoy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014).

All other translations were done by Otto Boele.