[dan-robertson]

In case you skimmed the article after the first few paragraphs, note that the point is not that the stories are sad or grim but that they are only sad or grim. There is no moral or hate that leads to things happening. The characters just lives who’ve are sad.

I also read the article as lighthearted and humorous and so assumed some things may have been exaggerated it embellished slightly for effect.

[ginko]

Knowing Tolstoy's other writings I get the feeling that these one paragraph summaries don't do his prose justice.

[romwell]

I read the original story for "The Lion and the Puppy", and indeed, the summary doesn't do the story justice.

The story is more grim and heart-wrecking.

And there is no obvious take-away, everything just sucks.

But it's a story of a loss that one can relate to. Depressed people are known to listen to sad songs, and get relief from that.

I'm not in a very good place now, and reading the Lion and the Puppy story in Russian somehow was a relief. It melted the numbness away.

And that's what Tolstoy was going for, perhaps. No ham-fisted morals. Just carefully crafted vignettes of grim life.

I do think that Tolstoy never had an appreciation of the many dimensions of human happiness. "Every happy family is alike, but unhappy families are miserable in their own ways", he wrote. I disagree; I see commonality in misery, and it's the path to happiness that has to be crafted and often ends up unique. But I digress.

[harryf]

> And that's what Tolstoy was going for, perhaps. No ham-fisted morals. Just carefully crafted vignettes of grim life.

Which is great and a meaning in itself. Much of what’s grim in life happens without deeper meaning. Terrible things happen to those that don’t deserve it and terrible people don’t get what they deserve. The only thing is to accept that that’s how it often is. Which is not a bad thing to expose children to IMO