About this audiobook
Yevgeny Irtenev tries to build an orderly life around the responsibilities of his estate and marriage. An earlier relationship with Stepanida remains a disturbing presence within the future he wishes to imagine. His efforts to control his thoughts reveal a conflict between desire, self-judgement and the wish to appear morally secure.
Leo Tolstoy brings the reader close to a mind that repeatedly explains and condemns its own impulses. Social arrangements make some choices appear ordinary while leaving their emotional consequences unresolved. Irtenev's certainty about what he should do does not provide a simple way to understand the force of what he feels.
The novella explores responsibility, temptation and the danger of treating another person as the source of an inner conflict. Its psychological tension invites attention to the stories through which people defend an image of themselves, and to the difference between acknowledging a troubling desire and responding honestly to its consequences for others.
