The Cossacks (27 page)

5. Describe the traditional roles of men and women in the Cossack community that Tolstoy portrays in such detail. How might this compare to the typical behaviors and responsibilities of men and women in Moscow society in the second half of the nineteenth century? Would you expect the rules of courtship to differ?

6. “A Cossack bears less hatred for a Chechen warrior who has killed his brother than for a Russian soldier billeted with him to defend his village, and who has blackened the walls of his hut with tobacco smoke,” writes Tolstoy (p. 17). Which scenes in
The Cossacks
best exemplify these cultural tensions? What are the root causes of the hostility and discomfort that these groups feel when they interact with each other?

7. Why is Uncle Eroshka so successful at getting along with his fellow Cossacks, the Russian soldiers, and (according to his own stories) the Chechens?

8. Tolstoy was a young man when he began writing
The Cossacks
in 1852, and he finished the short novel a decade later. Does it feel like the work of a young man? How would you compare his later works with this early, semiautobiographical novel?

9. After Lukashka has been wounded in the confrontation with the Chechens, Olenin approaches his beloved Maryanka and she shouts, “Go away, I hate you!” Why does Maryanka react this way?

10. In Chapter 20, Olenin sets out on a solo hunting expedition in the forest. There, he finds himself “gripped by such a strange feeling of groundless joy and love for everything that, in a habit he had had from childhood, be began crossing himself and expressing his thankfulness” (p. 82). What sparks this extraordinary feeling in Olenin, and what conclusion does he draw from it? Does he undergo a permanent change in the course of his year in the Caucasus, or is it just temporary? How would you describe this transformation?

11. In her Introduction, Cynthia Ozick invites readers to “set aside the somber claims of history, at least for the duration of this airy novel.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
pays no heed to the Spanish Armada;
Pride and Prejudice
happily ignores the Napoleonic Wars;
The Cossacks
is unstained by old terrors.” Is it the responsibility of fiction writers to incorporate a moral consciousness and sense of history into their narratives? What are some major literary classics or popular contemporary works that accomplish this feat?

PETER CONSTANTINE
was awarded the 1998 PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for
Six Early Stories
, by Thomas Mann, and the 1999 National Translation Award for
The Undiscovered Chekhov
. He is one of the editors of
A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900–2000
. Widely acclaimed for his recent translation of the complete works of Isaac Babel, he also translated Gogol’s
Taras Bulba
and Voltaire’s
Candide
for the Modern Library. His translations of fiction and poetry have appeared in many publications, including
The New Yorker, Harper’s
, and
The Paris Review
. He lives in New York City.