Korney Vasiliev
Submitted by Bert Stern (profile)

Title and Author: Korney Vasiliev by Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Short story
Theme: Hitting bottom, domestic violence, infidelity, anger, unintentional harm to a child, remorse, forgiveness
Class type: Best with male students, especially groups that are racially mixed.

Korney, hale and hardy in his middle age, goes off for a long business trip. When he returns, he learns that his young second wife has been having an affair with his laborer. He beats his wife and unintentionally injures his daughter's arm. The next morning at daybreak, Korney takes a train out of town. In the years that follow, the once "rich proud man" Korney becomes a mendicant, a beggar who lives on alms.

When Korney is old and ready to die, he comes home. What happens then, in scenes between Korney and his daughter and wife, is a rich exploration of the themes of anger, remorse, and forgiveness.

In the two class meetings before we read this work, we read and write and talk about fighting back and about the connections between violence and manliness. Now, for this class, we read "Korney" together with chapter 11 of Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave. Both stories lend themselves to themes of anger, hitting bottom, remorse, and forgiveness.

Douglass looks at the aspect of hitting bottom when we must choose to change ourselves whatever the cost. In his own words,

"I felt assured that, if I failed in this attempt, my case would be a hopeless one - it would seal my fate as a slave forever. I could not hope to get off with anything less than the severest punishment, and being placed beyond the means of escape. It required no very vivid imagination to depict the most frightful scenes through which I should have to pass, in case I failed. The wretchedness of slavery, and the blessedness of freedom, were perpetually before me. It was life and death with me."

So Douglas finally makes his escape from slavery.

We have watched the course of Douglass' courage from its earliest beginnings. It has come through flashing insights into the nature of slavery, "the bloody gate" as he once describes it. Douglass was always making the best of bad experience. For example, he understands in a stroke the importance of learning to read when he hears his master scolding his wife for tutoring him.

Now, this climactic moment of self-salvation for Douglass, though with the help of others, can be felt as the sum of everything that went before it. Many of our students take refuge in the examples Douglass provides in the Narrative. His story gives courage to others.

Tolstoy's Korney Vasiliev captures attention in a different way. Tolstoy's world can be recognized by our students as resembling their own. At some level, they know Korney from the start, the strong, proud rich man, who has such a terrible fall. And they can recognize the fallen Korney also as,"an old mendicant, who possessed nothing but the ragged clothes on his body, a soldier's ticket and two shirts in his bundle."

The crisis that sets the story in motion, Korney's jealousy and violence, leads to his walking out of the life he just wrecked onto a path of deeper and deeper misery.

Forgiveness is asked or granted for an act involving cruelty, and cruelty is an important theme of the course. Many of our students are in the midst of wrestling with their anger, and they know their need to forgive and be forgiven.

In Tolstoy's story, our students see such abstractions as anger and forgiveness given a face. Korney's daughter, Agafia, appears as a kind of merciful angel. Still partially crippled by the blow he gave her as a child, she encounters Korney as he comes into the village, and she takes him into her house. She tells Korney indirectly, without seeming to recognize him, that there is nothing to forgive the man who crippled her: "He is no stranger, you see, after all he is my father." She has a heart of great purity. She takes Korney in as both stranger and father.

Korney himself seeks forgiveness from his wife, Marfa, now "a withered, stringy, wrinkled old woman." He pleads, "Marfa, we shall soon be dead." She can't give him what he asks, but instead responds: "Go in God's name. There are many tramps like you prowling about the place."

Korney leaves, his heart broken, yet at the same time he experiences "a strange, gentle, exalted feeling of submission - of humility before all mankind, before his wife, before everyone; the feeling tore at his heart and with a painful sweetness." We assume at this time that Korney has found the redemption he seeks.

Marfa feels remorse after driving Korney from her door. The next day, she comes to her daughter's house to ask his forgiveness, and to forgive him, but "it was too late to forgive or to beg forgiveness, and from Korney's impassive dignified old face it was impossible to know whether he had forgiven or was still nursing his wrongs."

So the story ends, in powerful ambiguities.

Prompt for homework writing:

Tolstoy's story treats many familiar issues in our own day - alcoholism, marital unhappiness and unfaithfulness, battering, and homelessness just to name the more obvious ones.

For your writing assignment, please consider the following two responses to "hitting bottom": (1) Forgiveness and (2) Taking it out on somebody else.

Prompt for in-class writing:

Some people say you have to "hit bottom" before you can change. But it's dangerous - you might not come out of your depression. It's been compared to dying and being reborn.

Hitting bottom helps you stop feeling sorry for yourself. One problem with depression is that you can't think about anyone but yourself. This kills love. But when there's nothing more to lose, it's possible to give up your anger and pride - and then suddenly the world brightens, there's something to live for after all. You are "born again."

After he is sent to the slave-breaker, Frederick Douglass seems to hit bottom and completely give up. He becomes a mere animal, without a soul - "Behold a man transformed into a brute!" he exclaims. But then somehow he gets hold of himself. He prays for strength:

"God, deliver me! Let me be free! Is there any God? Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught, get clear, I'll try it. ... I have only one life to lose....It may be that my misery in slavery will only increase my happiness when I get free. There is a better day coming."

He summons up the strength to fight back when Covey tries to whip him again. Douglass does not dwell in self-pity. And instead of clinging to old ideas of pride, he finds a new kind of pride in resistance to injustice. This is the beginning of his freedom.

Writing exercise:

How can people survive hitting bottom? Why do some people cling to their anger, pride, or self-pity in negative ways, while others are able to find something new and positive to believe in?

Sample student responses to the exercise:

"Some people are born evil and some good. Some will not change because they are not supposed to change. While some are good and go through change. I think if you're a strong person and want more for yourself you won't cling on to negative things. You let them go and focus on the positive things."

"I got into some trouble and I ask God for forgiveness every day because I know the type of person I am and I know that if I get one more chance I will make a lot of difference that my forgiveness asks."

"People can survive hitting bottom by faith and family along with God. By hitting rock bottom it might motivate you to reach back to the top. Some people cling on to their pride or self-pity in negative ways because that's all some know. They was brought up that way or life might not be treating them fair. For the other side, positive for people, maybe because they have motivation."

"People can survive hitting rock bottom by staying strong, keeping the faith, and believing in God. I feel people cling to their anger, pride, or self-pity in a negative way because they're depressed, and it feels like your life is over, so sometimes you feel like dying. As far as people who feel the opposite, I feel they're stronger, so they can come up with some way to turn the situation into a positive one. There's always a way around something."

After the writing session at the beginning of the class, we break into small discussion groups where people read what they have written or recount it. By the time each of us has had his first say, there are plenty of cards on the table for discussing the topic.

Many of our students are, at the time they take the class, working hard to master their own anger and remorse, so discussion usually comes easily.