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A character in The Kreutzer Sonata

Pozdnyshev

A landowner who killed his wife in a fit of jealousy, was acquitted, and now tells his story to strangers on trains.

What they want

He wants the narrator to understand that the murder began long before the night of the stabbing.

The book

The Kreutzer SonataLeo Tolstoy, 1890

On a night train, a man tells a stranger how jealousy, a violinist and a Beethoven sonata led him to kill his wife.

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Who they are in the book

Spoiler-free

Pozdnyshev is a nervous man of uncertain age who keeps to himself on the train until the talk turns to love. Then he cannot stop.

He blames his upbringing, doctors, society, women's dress and music for what he did, and in the end himself.

How Pozdnyshev Is Portrayed

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

  • On the trainIn Chapter I he is a short, very nervous gentleman with bright, darting eyes, who answers curtly and stares out of the window.
  • I am PozdnyshevIn Chapter II, when the lawyer mentions the Pozdnyshev affair, he says it is no great pleasure and tells them his name.
  • The Paris sideshowIn Chapter XI he compares the honeymoon to a Paris booth where he paid a franc to see a bearded woman and was too ashamed to say it was a fraud.
  • Jealous at onceIn Chapter XXI he watches the violinist and his wife at their first meeting and feels a current pass between them.
  • The sonataIn Chapter XXIII he hears his wife and the violinist play the Kreutzer Sonata and feels for a while that jealousy is trivial.
  • The daggerIn Chapter XXVI he comes home an hour after midnight, takes off his boots, and takes a curved Damascus dagger from the wall.

Pozdnyshev quotes

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

They played Beethoven's 'Kreutzer Sonata.' Do you know the first presto? Do you know it? Ah!
— Pozdnyshev · Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, Chapter XXIII, translated by Benjamin R. Tucker (1890)
A terrible thing is that sonata, especially the presto! And a terrible thing is music in general.
— Pozdnyshev · Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, Chapter XXIII, translated by Benjamin R. Tucker (1890)
Music makes me forget my real situation. It transports me into a state which is not my own.
— Pozdnyshev · Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, Chapter XXIII, translated by Benjamin R. Tucker (1890)
All 5 Pozdnyshev quotes
Their ending, and the commentary — spoilers aheadHow the book leaves them, what happened after, and what the record says. Open when you're ready.

He kills his wife, spends eleven months in prison, and is acquitted. He says he understood what he had done only when he saw her dead face in the coffin.

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