"The Bear Hunt" () is a short story by
Leo Tolstoy
Count Lev Nikolayevich TolstoyTolstoy pronounced his first name as , which corresponds to the romanization ''Lyov''. () (; russian: link=no, Лев Николаевич Толстой,In Tolstoy's day, his name was written as in pre-refor ...
written in 1872. It was translated as ''Desire Stronger than Necessity'' in 1888 by
Nathan Haskell Dole
Nathan Haskell Dole (August 31, 1852 – May 9, 1935) was an American editor, translator, and author. A writer and journalist in Philadelphia, New York City, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts, Boston, he translated many of the works of Leo Tol ...
.
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 ecember1858. More than twenty years later he gave up hunting, on humanitarian grounds."
The timing of Tolstoy's renunciation of hunting also coincided with his advocacy of
Vegetarianism
Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter.
Vegetarianism may ...
,
Pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
, 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. 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. 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.
See also
*
Bibliography of Leo Tolstoy
This is a list of works by Russian writer Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), including his novels, novellas, short stories, fables and parables, plays, and nonfiction.
Prose Fiction
Novels
*''War and Peace'' (Война и мир 'Voyna i mir'' 1869 ...
*
Twenty-Three Tales
''Twenty-Three Tales'' is a popular compilation of short stories by Leo Tolstoy. According to its publisher, Oxford University Press, the collection is about contemporary classes in Russia during Tolstoy's time, written in a brief, morality play, ...
References
External links
* Original Text
*
''The Bear Hunt'' from RevoltLib.com
*
from
Marxists.org
Marxists Internet Archive (also known as MIA or Marxists.org) is a non-profit online encyclopedia that hosts a multilingual library (created in 1990) of the works of communist, anarchist, and socialist writers, such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Enge ...
Short stories by Leo Tolstoy
1872 short stories
{{1870s-story-stub