The Bear Hunt
"The Bear Hunt" (Russian: Охота пуще неволи) is a short story by Leo Tolstoy written in 1872. It was translated as Desire Stronger than Necessity in 1888 by Nathan Haskell Dole.
Composition
The text is commonly republished with the popular collection Twenty-Three Tales, and it comes with this note:
"The adventure here narrated is one that happened to Tolstoy himself in [December] 1858. More than twenty years later he gave up hunting, on humanitarian grounds."[1]
The timing of Tolstoy's renunciation of hunting also coincided with his advocacy of Vegetarianism, Pacifism, and other progressive social ideas.
During this hunt, with his friend Gromeka, Tolstoy was armed with a German, double-barreled shotgun, but even so, the expedition nearly cost him his life.[2] According to historian Arthur Stanley Turberville, after firing both of his barrels, and mortally wounding a mother bear protecting her cubs, he was charged, and bitten above and below the eye.[3] But his shot was mortally-wounding, and he ended up using the snow to help reduce inflammation of his wound.
According to Barbara Lonnquist, in the Bear Hunt, a bear skin is treated as a ceremonious, good-luck charm by traditional Russian folklore, and, as according to Russian peasant tradition, it is used to give good luck to a marriage ceremony.[4]
See also
- Bibliography of Leo Tolstoy
- Twenty-Three Tales
References
- ^ Leo Tolstoy (1924). "3". Twenty Three Tales. H. Milford; Oxford University Press. p. 40.
- ^ Pavel Biri︠u︡kov, ed. (1911). Leo Tolstoy, His Life and Work: Autobiographical Memoirs, Letters, and Biographical Material. Vol. 1. C. Scribner's Sons. p. 260.
- ^ Arthur Stanley Turberville (1908). Leo Tolstoy. E. Dalton. p. 105.
- ^ Barbara Lonnquist (2002). Donna Tussing Orwin (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Tolstoy. Cambridge University Press. p. 92.
External links
- Original Text
- The Bear Hunt, from RevoltLib.com
- The Bear Hunt, from Marxists.org
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- War and Peace (1869)
- Anna Karenina (1878)
- Resurrection (1899)
- Childhood (1852)
- Boyhood (1854)
- Youth (1856)
- Family Happiness (1859)
- Polikúshka (1860)
- The Cossacks (1863)
- The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886)
- The Kreutzer Sonata (1889)
- The Devil (1911)
- The Forged Coupon (1911)
- Hadji Murat (1912)
- "The Raid" (1852)
- "The Cutting of the Forest" (1855)
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- "Recollections of a Billiard-marker" (1855)
- "The Snowstorm" (1856)
- "Two Hussars" (1856)
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- "Lucerne" (1857)
- "Albert" (1858)
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- "The Porcelain Doll" (1863)
- "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" (1872)
- "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1872)
- "The Bear Hunt" (1872)
- "What Men Live By" (1881)
- "Diary of a Lunatic" (1884)
- "Quench the Spark" (1885)
- "An Old Acquaintance" (1885)
- "Where Love Is, God Is" (1885)
- "Ivan the Fool" (1885)
- "Evil Allures, But Good Endures" (1885)
- "Wisdom of Children" (1885)
- "The Three Hermits" (1886)
- "Promoting a Devil" (1886)
- "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886)
- "The Grain" (1886)
- "Repentance" (1886)
- "Croesus and Fate" (1886)
- "Kholstomer" (1886)
- "The Two Brothers and the Gold" (1886)
- "A Lost Opportunity" (1889)
- "A Dialogue Among Clever People" (1892)
- "Walk in the Light While There is Light" (1893)
- "The Coffee-House of Surat" (1893)
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- "Three Questions" (1903)
- "Alyosha the Pot" (1905)
- "Father Sergius" (1911)
- "After the Ball" (1911)
- The Power of Darkness (1886)
- The First Distiller (1886)
- The Light Shines in the Darkness (1890)
- The Fruits of Enlightenment (1891)
- The Living Corpse (1900)
- The Cause of It All (1910)
- A History of Yesterday (1851)
- Confession (1882)
- The Gospel in Brief (1883)
- What I Believe (1884)
- What Is to Be Done? (1886)
- The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894)
- What Is Art? (1897)
- "A Letter to a Hindu" (1908)
- The Inevitable Revolution (1909)
- A Calendar of Wisdom (1910)
- The Decembrists (1884)
- "Posthumous Notes of the Hermit Fëdor Kuzmich" (1905)
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- Departure of a Grand Old Man (1912 film)
- Lev Tolstoy and the Russia of Nicholas II (1928 documentary)
- Lev Tolstoy (1984 film)
- The Last Station (1990 novel)
- 2009 film)
- Story of One Appointment (2018 film)
- A Couple (2022 film)
- Tolstoy Farm
- Tolstoj quadrangle
- crater
- The Triumph of the Farmer or Industry and Parasitism (1888)
- Vladimir Chertkov
- Aylmer and Louise Maude
- Translators of Tolstoy
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