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A character in Resurrection

Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov

A rich, idle prince who finds himself on the jury trying the woman he seduced, and sets out to make amends.

What they want

He wants to undo what he did to Katusha, and to live by his conscience rather than by his class.

The book

ResurrectionLeo Tolstoy, 1899

A prince sits on a jury and recognises the prisoner as the young servant he seduced and abandoned ten years before.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Nekhlyudov is well off, expected to marry the daughter of the wealthy Korchagin family, and used to thinking well of himself. The trial breaks that.

He is sincere and a little vain about his sincerity. Maslova sees both at once.

How Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov Is Portrayed

Appearance, manner, and tone — as the book sketches them, in our words.

  • The jurorIn Book I, Chapter IX, he puts on his pince-nez to look at the prisoners and thinks, it is impossible, as the third one gives her name.
  • The student summerIn Book I, Chapter XII, the young Nekhlyudov and Katusha play at tag in his aunts' garden and he kisses her once behind a lilac bush.
  • EasterIn Book I, Chapters XIV to XVII, he comes back as an officer, goes to the Easter night service where she is, and afterwards seduces her.
  • The hundred roublesIn Book I, Chapter XVIII, he leaves, pushing an envelope with a hundred-rouble note into her hand.
  • The proposalIn Book I, Chapter XLVIII, he tells her in prison that he has made up his mind to marry her, to atone for his sin.
  • Giving up the landIn Book II, Chapters I to IX, he visits his estates and arranges to let the peasants have the land.

Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov quotes

Lines spoken by or about Prince Dmitri Nekhlyudov, each verified verbatim against the text and located in the book.

You've got pleasure out of me in this life, and want to save yourself through me in the life to come.
— Maslova, to Nekhlyudov · Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (1899), Book I, Chapter XLVIII, translated by Louise Maude
To atone for my sin, not by mere words, but in deed. I have made up my mind to marry you.
— Nekhlyudov, to Maslova · Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (1899), Book I, Chapter XLVIII, translated by Louise Maude
And a perfectly new life dawned that night for Nekhludoff, not because he had entered into new conditions of life, but because everything he did after that night had a new and quite different significance than before. How this new period of his life will end time alone will prove.
— Narration · Leo Tolstoy, Resurrection (1899), Book III, Chapter XXVIII, translated by Louise Maude
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

Maslova refuses him and goes with Simonson. In Book III, Chapter XXVIII, in a Siberian inn, Nekhlyudov reads the Gospels through the night and a new life begins for him. The book does not say what that life will be.

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