Family Happiness
Autor: Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Horror
Erschienen: 1920
Verlag: Amazon
Seiten: 625
Buchformat: Hardcover
Klappentext
The story concerns the love and marriage of a young girl, Mashechka (17 years old), and the much older Sergey Mikhaylych (36), an old family friend. The story is narrated by Masha. After a courtship that has the trappings of a mere family friendship, Masha's love grows and expands until she can no longer contain it. She reveals it to Sergey Mikhaylych and discovers that he also is deeply in love. If he has resisted her it was because of his fear that the age difference between them would lead the very young Masha to tire of him. He likes to be still and quiet, he tells her, while she will want to explore and discover more and more about life. Ecstatically and passionately happy, the pair immediately engages to be married. Once married they move to Mikhaylych's home.
Rezension
"I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor—such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps—what more can the heart of man desire?"
Another passage is also quoted in the book Into the Wild: “ I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love. I felt in myself a superabundance of energy which found no outlet in our quiet life.”
which had been found highlighted in the book Family Happiness among Chris McCandless's remains. ”
The last page of the story is also quoted in full in the Philip Roth novel The Counterlife.
The Mountain Goats song "Family Happiness" takes its name from the novella and includes the line "Started quoting Tolstoy into the machine/I had no idea what you meant".