SOURCE: "Tolstoi's 'Kreutzer Sonata'," in The Nation, Vol. L, No. 1294, January-June, 1890, pp. 313-15.

In the following review, Hapgood summarizes the plot of The Kreutzer Sonata, noting the novella's language, style, and construction, but disparaging its moral.

What are the legitimate bounds of realism? To what point is it permissible to describe in repulsive detail the hideous and unseemly things of this world, simply because they exist, when it is quite impossible to say what the effect will be upon thousands of people to whom such description conveys the first knowledge of the existence of evil? It has been proved that public executions, far from inspiring horror of the deeds which led to them, and deterring others from the commission of like deeds, through fear of the result thus presented, actually give rise to crimes copied after those which are thus brought to general attention. The same thing is...