Father Sergius

Father Sergius
Ivan Mozzhukhin as the title character in Yakov Protazanov's 1917 film, Father Sergius.

Father Sergius (Russian: Отец Сергий, translit. Otets Sergiy) is a short story written by Leo Tolstoy in 1890 and first published in 1898.

Plot

The story begins with the childhood and exceptional and accomplished youth of Prince Stepan Kasatsky. The young man is destined for great things. He discovers on the eve of his wedding that his fiancée Countess Mary Korotkova has had an affair with his beloved Tsar Nicholas I. The blow to his pride is massive, and he retreats to the arms of Russian Orthodoxy and becomes a monk. Many years of humility and doubt follow. He is ordered to become a hermit. Despite his being removed from the world, he is still remembered for having so remarkably transformed his life. One winter night, a group of merry-makers decide to visit him, and one of them, a divorced woman named Makovkina, spends the night in his cell, with the intention to seduce him. Father Sergius discovers he is still weak and in order to protect himself, cuts off his own finger. Makovkina is stunned by this act, and leaves the next morning, having vowed to change her life. A year later she has joined a convent. Father Sergius' reputation for holiness grows. He becomes known as a healer, and pilgrims come from far and wide. Yet Father Sergius is profoundly aware of his inability to attain a true faith. He is still tortured by boredom, pride, and lust. He fails a new test, when the young daughter of a merchant successfully beds him. The morning after, he leaves the monastery and seeks out his cousin Pashenka (Praskovya Mikhaylovna), whom he, with a group of other boys, had tormented many years ago. He finds her, now in all the conventional senses a failure in life, yet imbued with a sense of service towards her family. His path is now clearer. He begins to wander, until eight months later he is arrested. He is sent to Siberia, where he now works as the hired man of a well-to-do peasant.

External links


v · d · eWorks by Leo Tolstoy
Biography · Bibliography · Texts
Novels and
novellas

Childhood (1852) · Boyhood (1854) · Youth (1856) · Family Happiness (1859) · The Cossacks (1863) · War and Peace (1869) · Anna Karenina (1877) · The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886) · The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) · Resurrection (1899) · The Forged Coupon (1911) · Hadji Murat (1912)
Short stories

"The Raid" (1852) · "The Wood-Felling" (1855) · "Sevastopol in December 1854" (1855) · "Sevastopol in May 1855" (1855) · "Sevastopol in August 1855" (1856) · "A Billiard-Marker's Notes" (1855) · "The Snowstorm" (1856) · "Two Hussars" (1856) · "A Landlord's Morning" (1856) · "Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment" (1856) · "Lucerne" (1857) · "Albert" (1858) · "Three Deaths" (1859) · "The Porcelain Doll" (1863) · "Polikúshka" (1863) · "God Sees the Truth, But Waits" (1872) · "The Prisoner in the Caucasus" (1872) · "The Bear-Hunt" (1872) · "What Men Live By" (1881) · "Memoirs of a Madman" (1884) · "Quench the Spark" (1885) · "Two Old Men" (1885) · "Where Love Is, God Is" (1885) · "Ivan the Fool" (1885) · "Evil Allures, But Good Endures" (1885) · "Wisdom of Children" (1885) · "Ilyás" (1885) · "The Three Hermits" (1886) · "Promoting a Devil" (1886) · "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" (1886) · "The Grain" (1886) · "The Godson" (1886) · "Repentance" (1886) · "Croesus and Fate" (1886) · "Kholstomer" (1886) · "The Empty Drum" (1891) · "Françoise" (1892) · "A Talk Among Leisured People" (1893) · "Walk in the Light While There is Light" (1893) · "The Coffee-House of Surrat" (1893) · "Master and Man" (1895) · "Too Dear!" (1897) · "Father Sergius" (1898) · "Esarhaddon, King of Assyria" (1903) · "Work, Death, and Sickness" (1903) · "Three Questions" (1903) · "After the Ball" (1903) · "Feodor Kuzmich" (1905) · "Alyosha the Pot" (1905) · "What For?" (1906) · "The Devil" (1911)
Plays

The Power of Darkness (1886) · The First Distiller (1886) · The Fruits of Enlightenment (1891) · The Living Corpse (1900) · The Cause of it All (1910) · The Light Shines in Darkness
Non-fiction

A Confession (1882) · What I Believe (1884) · What Is to Be Done? (1886) · On Life (1887) · The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894) · The Gospel in Brief (1896) · What Is Art? (1897) · What Is Religion? (1902) · A Calendar of Wisdom (1910)
Related
articles

Tolstoyan movement · Yasnaya Polyana

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