SOURCE: “Later Short Novels,” in Introduction to Tolstoy's Writings, University of Chicago Press, 1968, pp. 146-53.

In the following excerpt, Simmons regards Master and Man as a successful embodiment of Tolstoy's ideal of religious art.

I

In addition to the short story, Tolstoy also devoted a substantial amount of creative effort, after War and Peace and Anna Karenina, to that longer type of fiction which he had attempted in his earlier period—the short novel. Though they vary a great deal in length, no one of them could properly be regarded as either a short story or a novel. For like the earlier short novels, each involves a number of characters and a frame of reference too extensive for the concentrated focus of the short story but not extensive enough for the expansive structure of the full-length novel. Among these eight remaining short novels are several of his most...