Alyosha the Pot is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 by Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

 (1905). D. S. Mirsky

D. S. Mirsky

D.S. Mirsky is the English pen-name of Dmitry Petrovich Svyatopolk-Mirsky , often known as Prince Mirsky , a Russian political and literary historian who promoted the knowledge and translations of Russian literature in Britain and of English literature in the Soviet Union.-Life:A scion of the...

considered it "a masterpiece of rare perfection."

Synopsis

Alyosha, a young child who lives in a village and obtained the nickname "the Pot" from an incident where he broke a pot in his youth, is sent to live with a merchant's family as a servant. He falls in love with Ustinja, a young girl who cooks for the merchant's family. Eventually he asks Ustinja to marry him, but his father scolds him and tells him that marriage will come when and with whom the father chooses. Later during Lent, Alyosha is clearing snow from the roof when he falls to his death.

External links

• http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/2729/
• http://az.lib.ru/t/tolstoj_lew_nikolaewich/text_0300.shtml