Death Upon the Land

Written after his conversion to “primitive” Christianity and fundamental anti-authoritarianism, Leo Tolstoy wrote about a man’s search for adequacy among the peasantry of old Russia, by way of land-ownership, in “How Much Land Does a Man Need”. “If I had plenty of land, I shouldn’t fear the Devil himself!” proclaims Pahóm at the realization that quality of life is directly related to the expanse of your homestead, not fully aware he just unwittingly made a deal with the Devil. It is this theme of the power of death, or the temptation of sin, that Tolstoy intends to convey with the appearance of the Devil. It’s in this vein that the story is rather dark and gloomy, apparently written by a depression-struck Tolstoy.

I think the fact that Pahóm was never fully satisfied with his newly-acquired land shows greed, which would be a quality that had probably been bestowed by the Devil; he always needed more, even though what he had newly-acquired was already much larger than his previous land. It is this greed that causes him to over-walk his land and over-estimate his endurance in his final push towards the ‘hillock’, falling mere inches from his target. I think the story was ended very well and truthfully with, “Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.” In the end, how much land we need is no more than our bodies can occupy.