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Unit 5: The Spark Neglected Burns the House by Leo Tolstoy

By,” “Where Love Is, There Is God Also,” “The Tale of Ivan the Fool,” and several others. Plot Notes
in these stories does not take on the complex forms with which Tolstoy experimented in such
non-popular late works as The Death of Ivan Il’ich and Resurrection (Voskresenie), with their use
of flashbacks and shifting points of view on the events described.
The “Stories for the People” are united thematically by the Christian teaching as Tolstoy had
come to understand it in the late 1870s and 1880s. In his long essay What I Believe (V chem moia
vera, 1882) he reduced Christianity to five moral imperatives, derived from the “Sermon on the
Mount” (Matt. v-vii and parallels). Briefly stated, the five commandments are: (1) do not be
angry; (2) do not lust; (3) do not swear—that is, do not, through an oath, surrender free moral
choice to the will of others; (4) do not resist the evil doer with force; and (5) love all people
alike. These commandments, their corollaries and the effects of disobeying them (or, more
generally, the will of God which they represent) provide a complete thematic summary of the
“Stories for the People.”
The commandment to avoid anger is prominent in “Evil Allures, But Good Endures,” “A
Spark Neglected Burns the House,” and “Little Girls Wiser Than Their Elders”; its corollary,
forgiveness, is the theme of “The Repentant Sinner.’’ The injunction against lust never appears
in the stories for the people. We may surmise that Tolstoy discerned no need to preach this
commandment among the people, and, judging by the frequency of the sexual theme in the
non-popular late works (Father Sergius (Otets Sergii), The Kreutzer Sonata (Kreicerova sonata),
Resurrection, and others), he regarded infractions of it as an essentially upper-class phenomenon.
The injunction against oath-taking appears as a theme in “The Tale of Ivan the Fool” when the
devil is unable to raise an army in Ivan’s kingdom because the people refuse to promise
allegiance. In “Two Old Men,” Elisei, the morally superior of the two characters, attaches little
importance to the vow he has sworn to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when it conflicts
with an obligation to assist others who are in need. The fourth commandment, not to resist
evil with force, is the subject of “The Candle,” “The Tale of Ivan the Fool,” and “The Godson.”
The only positive commandment, to love all people alike, is at the heart of most of the best
known stories for the people: “What Men Live By,” “Two Old Men,” “The Three Hermits,”
and “Where Love Is, There Is God Also.”
The five remaining stories deal with the evil that comes from ignorance of or disobedience to
the Christian teaching. Their theme is excess. In “How Much Land Does a Man Need,” it takes
the form of greed for more land than needed; in “The Imp and the Crust”—the misuse of a
bumper crop of grain to produce strong drink; in “Il’ias—the contrast between the hero’s
current contentedness with poverty and his former anxiety with wealth. “Two Brothers and
the Gold” and “A Grain As Big As a Hen’s Egg” condemn the use of money as a replacement
for active human concern.
The stylistic unity of the stories for the people is the product of a number of linguistic and
larger structural devices which they share. Proverbs, sayings, and other bits of popular wisdom
were incorporated into the stories. As early as 1862, Tolstoy stated that he intended to write
a series of brief stories, each of which was to be inspired by, and offer an explanation of, a
striking popular saying (8:302). Often such sayings were used as the titles of stories, for
example. “Gde liubov’, tam i Bog” (“Where Love Is, There Is God Also”), “Bog pravdu vidit,
da ne skoro skazhet” (“God Sees the Truth, But Waits”), “Vrazh’e lepko, a Bozh’e krepko”
(“Evil Allures, But Good Endures”), and “Upustish’ ogon’—ne potushish’” (“A Spark Neglected
Burns the House”).
The majority of the stories rework existing popular narratives, such as those of the famous
Skazitel’ (“teller of tales”), VP Shchegelenok, from whom Tolstoy obtained the subjects of
“What Men Live By” and “Two Old Men.’’ Another familiar model used by Tolstoy was the
lubok or illustrated text. Not itself a form of folklore, it was well-known to the popular audience.

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