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What Men Live By

Leo Tolstoy

Tolstoy's first great popular story, based on a legend collected in Olonets province. A poor shoemaker, Semyon, takes in a naked man by a chapel: he is the angel Michael, punished by God to live among men until he learns three truths, the last of which is that men live by love. Published in 1881 in the magazine Children's Recreation. It belongs to the popular stories Tolstoy wrote after his conversion for the Posrednik press, in plain language and with the structure of a parable.