The Complete Works of Count Tolstoy/Volume 1
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BOYHOOD
YOUTHTHE INCURSION
By COUNT LEV N. TOLSTÓY
Translated from the Original Russian and Edited by
Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages at Harvard University
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DANA ESTES &
COMPANY PUBLISHERS
The present new translation of Tolstóy has the following distinctive features:
The translator was born and educated in Russia, and the scenes and the life depicted, and the ideas evolved by the author, are familiar to him as to a native; on the other hand, his later youth and his manhood have been passed in America, where for twenty years he has taken active part in the educational and the literary movements of Anglo-Saxon life. Thus he is enabled correctly to interpret the workings of the greatest Russian mind both from the standpoint of a Russian and of an American. Still further to ensure literary accuracy, all the manuscript has been read by Miss Carrie A. Harper, herself an English authoress, whose advice has been invaluable to him.
The translator has treated the author with sympathetic love, which in many instances is due to a common bond of practices of life and of ideas: the translator is a vegetarian and teetotaler of even longer standing than the author, and shares his educational ideas both in theory and in practice. At the same time, the translator is absolutely free from any personal bias, and in dealing with Tolstóy brings to bear a critical spirit, born of the blending of the Russian and the Anglo-Saxon concepts of life.
No liberties are taken with either the language or the expression of the author’s diction, which in unconscious artistic moments is sublimely poetical and sonorous, and in the piling up of Cyclopean thoughts lacks the binding mortar. In such cases the translation leaves him in his original gigantic ruggedness. No attempt has been made to correct Tolstóy’s style, which is so frequently practised by his other translators. The last volume will contain a sketch of Tolstóy’s life and works, an analysis of all his productions, a complete index to his thoughts, a chronological table of the incidents in his life, and a bibliography of English, French, and German books and magazine articles dealing with all possible aspects of Tolstóy and his works. The copious illustrations accompanying the present translation are mainly from Russian sources, many of them rare, and invariably illustrate the scenes represented; wherever possible, existing illustrations to Tolstóy by native artists have been given.
The present translation contains everything given in the Russian complete edition published in Russia, with such authorized corrections of passages mutilated by the censor as have appeared abroad, and all the publications of Tolstóy’s prohibited works which have appeared in Switzerland and in England. The only works omitted are those which Tolstóy himself translated from other languages. In the matter of text, the last reliable source has been given, the corrections in various instances reaching the translator just as the translations were going through the press. No attempt has been made to give older readings or readings mutilated by the censor, as the time for a critical edition has not yet come. Many of the manuscripts, in their correct form, were sent by Tolstóy to the Ryumántsev Museum, with the proviso that they be made public only ten years after his death; and the publications that have appeared abroad sometimes rest on unreliable manuscripts. The dates given for each production are not those of their publication (which will be given in the chronological table), but of their writing.
EDITION DE LUXE
Limited to One Thousand Copies, of which this is
No. 411
Copyright, 1904
By Dana Estes & Company
Entered at Stationers' Hall
Colonial Press: Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co., Boston, Mass., U. S. A.