Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Sewastopol
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love eyewitness war writing, short, direct prose, and stories of courage, fear and small kindnesses under fire. It also suits anyone curious about Tolstoy before War and Peace.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Sevastopol is a set of three sketches about the siege of the Russian naval port of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. Leo Tolstoy wrote them in 1855 and 1856. He was a young artillery officer who had asked to serve in the besieged city, and he saw its bastions, hospitals and streets for himself. The sketches appeared in a Russian magazine called The Contemporary while the war was still going on.
The three pieces are Sevastopol in December, Sevastopol in May and Sevastopol in August. They are not a history of the campaign and they are not a call to glory. Tolstoy looks at fear, pride, boredom, small kindnesses and sudden death among sailors, soldiers and officers. You get a tour of a city under fire, then a sharp portrait of ambition among men who should know better, then a story of two brothers in the last weeks of the siege. First, step into the city on a winter morning.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A winter morning in a city at warFree
- 2Courage looks quiet, not heroic
- 3Officers who care more for rank than life
- 4An attack, and a truce to bury the dead
- 5Two brothers in the last weeks of the siege
- 6What the sketches are about and how they are told
Punkt 1 von 6
A winter morning in a city at war
The first sketch, Sevastopol in December, opens at dawn over the bay. The narrator speaks to you directly, as a guide would, and leads you through the town. Sailors move about, carts roll by, and the sound of guns is already in the air. Tolstoy lets you notice how quickly ordinary life carries on beside the fighting.
He takes you down to the harbour and across to the town's streets. You pass a market, a crowd of soldiers and women, and a hospital that you will soon enter. Everything is described plainly, with the eye of someone who has walked these streets. Nothing is made grander than it is.
A strange point appears early. The people of Sevastopol seem to have grown used to danger. A shell whistles over and a few heads turn, then the talk goes on. Tolstoy suggests that this calm is not courage in the way a poem would show it. It is habit, and habit can be stronger than fear.
By putting you in the second person, he also makes it hard to stand apart. You are not reading about the siege from a safe chair. You are asked to walk toward the bastions, to see what a visitor would see, and to stay with it. The tone is quiet, but the effect is of being pulled steadily toward the front line.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Sewastopol
What is Sevastopol by Tolstoy about?
It is three linked sketches about the siege of Sevastopol during the Crimean War. They show the city, its hospitals and bastions, the pride and fear of its officers, and the lives of two brothers during the siege.
Is Sevastopol a true story?
It is fiction based on what Tolstoy saw. He served as an artillery officer in the besieged city, and the setting and events are real, but the individual characters and scenes are his own creation.
What are the three Sevastopol Sketches?
They are Sevastopol in December, Sevastopol in May and Sevastopol in August. Each is set at a different time in the siege of 1854 and 1855, and each looks at war from a different angle.
When did Tolstoy write Sevastopol?
He wrote the sketches in 1855 and 1856, during and just after the siege. They appeared in the Russian magazine The Contemporary and were among his first works to bring him wide notice.
Is Sevastopol hard to read?
No. The sketches are short and the prose is plain. Tolstoy describes wounds and fear directly.