The Devil

Leo Tolstoy's The Devil follows Evgeny Irtenev, a young landowner who seems to have everything under control. He's educated, principled, newly married to a woman he loves, and committed to managing his estate responsibly. Before marriage, he maintained a physical relationship with a peasant woman, viewing it as satisfying a natural need without emotional entanglement, practical and controlled. Now married, he's confident he'll be faithful. He's rational, moral, and clear-eyed about right and wrong. Then circumstances bring the peasant woman back into his orbit, and everything he thought he controlled reveals itself as a dangerous illusion.

What follows is Tolstoy's most psychologically precise study of obsession. Evgeny tries everything to resist: he reminds himself he loves his wife, recognizes the stupidity of what he's contemplating, analyzes his compulsion with perfect clarity. None of it helps. The desire grows stronger precisely because he's fighting it, operating completely independently from reason, affection, or moral conviction. He considers drastic measures to escape temptation, but can't justify them. He throws himself into being an attentive husband and responsible landowner. The woman isn't even pursuing him—his torment is entirely self-generated. Tolstoy shows with merciless honesty how knowledge of right and wrong provides zero defense against appetite.

Written during Tolstoy's own later-life struggle with desire despite his philosophical commitment to chastity, The Devil is his most uncomfortably autobiographical work, a confession disguised as fiction. So uncertain was Tolstoy about how this crisis could resolve that he wrote two different endings, both shocking, both tragic. Published posthumously because of its raw honesty, this brief, intense novella refuses to lie about human weakness, including Tolstoy's own. It explores the terrifying gap between moral understanding and actual behavior, showing how a good man with complete self-awareness can still be destroyed by compulsion he fully comprehends yet cannot master. For anyone who's ever failed to live up to their own principles despite knowing better, this novella is uncomfortably, devastatingly recognizable.

About the author

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was one of Russia’s most celebrated novelists and thinkers, renowned for his deep philosophical inquiries and unparalleled storytelling. His masterpieces, including War and Peace and The Death of Ivan Ilyich, continue to captivate readers for their profound insight into the human condition and their sweeping portrayals of life’s triumphs and tragedies.