Skip to main content
Modern Philosophers
All books

Book

Available now

Youth

Leo Tolstoy · translated by C. J. Hogarth

The story is narrated by a young protagonist reflecting on his transition from childhood to adolescence, focusing on his thoughts about morality, self-improvement, and the exuberance and confusion that accompany youth.

"Youth" by Leo Tolstoy is a semi-autobiographical novel. The story is narrated by a young protagonist reflecting on his transition from childhood to adolescence, focusing on his thoughts about morality, self-improvement, and the exuberance and confusion that accompany youth.

This edition is the English translation by C. J. Hogarth.

What you get

  • The book as EPUB, PDF, delivered to your library after payment.
  • Bought on its own: yours to keep.

Read a passage

I have said that my friendship with Dimitri opened up for me a new view of my life and of its aim and relations. The essence of that view lay in the conviction that the destiny of man is to strive for moral improvement, and that such improvement is at once easy, possible, and lasting. Hitherto, however, I had found pleasure only in the new ideas which I discovered to arise from that conviction, and in the forming of brilliant plans for a moral, active future, while all the time my life had been continuing along its old petty, muddled, pleasure-seeking course, and the same virtuous thoughts which I and my adored friend Dimitri (“my own marvellous Mitia,” as I used to call him to myself in a whisper) had been wont to exchange with one another still pleased my intellect, but left my sensibility untouched. Nevertheless there came a moment when those thoughts swept into my head with a sudden freshness and force of moral revelation which left me aghast at the amount of time which I had been wasting, and made me feel as though I must at once—that very second—apply those thoughts to life, with the firm intention of never again changing them.

It is from that moment that I date the beginning of my youth.

Contents

  1. 01I. What I Consider to Have Been the Beginning of My Youth
  2. 02II. Springtime
  3. 03III. Dreams
  4. 04IV. Our Family Circle
  5. 05V. My Rules
  6. 06VI. Confession
  7. 07VII. The Expedition to the Monastery
  8. 08VIII. The Second Confession
  9. 09IX. How I Prepared Myself for the Examinations
  10. 10X. The Examination in History
  11. 11XI. My Examination in Mathematics
  12. 12XII. My Examination in Latin
  13. 13XIII. I Become Grown-Up
  14. 14XIV. How Woloda and Dubkoff Amused Themselves
  15. 15XV. I Am Feted at Dinner
  16. 16XVI. The Quarrel
  17. 17XVII. I Get Ready to Pay Some Calls
  18. 18XVIII. The Valakhin Family
  19. 19XIX. The Kornakoffs
  20. 20XX. The Iwins
  21. 21XXI. Prince Ivan Ivanovitch
  22. 22XXII. Intimate Conversation with My Friend
  23. 23XXIII. The Nechludoffs
  24. 24XXIV. Love
  25. 25XXV. I Become Better Acquainted with the Nechludoffs
  26. 26XXVI. I Show Off
  27. 27XXVII. Dimitri
  28. 28XXVIII. In the Country
  29. 29XXIX. Relations Between the Girls and Ourselves
  30. 30XXX. How I Employed My Time
  31. 31XXXI. “Comme Il Faut”
  32. 32XXXII. Youth
  33. 33XXXIII. Our Neighbours
  34. 34XXXIV. My Father’s Second Marriage
  35. 35XXXV. How We Received the News
  36. 36XXXVI. The University
  37. 37XXXVII. Affairs of the Heart
  38. 38XXXVIII. The World
  39. 39XXXIX. The Students’ Feast
  40. 40XL. My Friendship with the Nechludoffs
  41. 41XLI. My Friendship with the Nechludoffs
  42. 42XLII. Our Stepmother
  43. 43XLIII. New Comrades
  44. 44XLIV. Zuchin and Semenoff
  45. 45XLV. I Come to Grief

About this edition

Author
Leo Tolstoy
Translator
C. J. Hogarth
Era
Modern (c. 1800–1945)
Reading level
Advanced: for close, demanding reading
Formats
EPUB, PDF
Length
195 pages
This edition
Modern Philosophers