SOURCE: "Tolstoy the Ascetic? The Kreutzer Sonata, Father Sergius and Resurrection," in his Tolstoy: The Comprehensive Vision, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1975, pp. 137-46.

In the excerpt below, Greenwood situates the ascetic tone of The Kreutzer Sonata in the context of Tolstoy's life and art.

Aylmer Maude points out that the views approving marriage which satisfied Tolstoy in 1884 when he wrote What I Believe no longer satisfied him in 1889 when he wrote The Kreutzer Sonata. This can be brought out by considering Tolstoy's remarks on Jesus's teaching on sexual conduct in the Sermon on the Mount and his translation in The Gospel in Brief (1883) of Jesus's teaching on celibacy in the later passage in Matthew (19: 10-12). Let us first take Jesus's teaching on sexual conduct in Matthew 5: 27-32, part of the Sermon on the Mount:

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall not commit adultery'. But...