From a beautifully illustrated edition of "How Much Land Does a Man Need?" by Leo Tolstoy ("Много ли человеку земли нужно?","Mnogo li cheloveku zemli nuzhno"), written in 1886, I selected a few paragraphs about a variously disguised Devil, intent on shaping a peasant's boast into a boundless ambition. Unlike the celestial competition for a man's soul in the book of Job or in Dr.Faustus, this particular devil seemed to pertain to a dreamlike or hallucinatory realm and to behave like Vladimir Nabokov's "Frau Monde." Even their generous gifts were limited in a similar way: the quantity of land, or girls, would have had to be assembled between the early hours of sun-rise and its final setting. Frau Monde, mathematically, determined a second condition: the total of Erwin's conquests should not result in an even number.

excerpts:
"...the Devil had been sitting behind the oven...He was pleased that the peasant's wife had led her husband [Pahom] into boasting, and that he had said that if he had plenty of land he would not fear the Devil himself. 'All right,' thought the Devil. 'We will have a tussle. I'll give you land enough; and by means of that land I will get you into my power.'

After several successful deals, Pahom is invited to invest all he has in a particularly attractive acquisiton with the Bashkir. The night before he put himself to the test, he lay sleepless in his cabin and "dozed off only just before dawn. Hardly were his eyes closed when he had a dream. He thought he was lying in that same tent, and heard somebody chuckling outside. He wondered who it could be, and rose and went out, and he saw the Bashkir Chief sitting in front of the tent holding his side and rolling about with laughter [ ] But he saw that it was no longer the Chief, but the dealer who had ...told him about the land.[ and next ] he saw that it was not the dealer, but the peasant who had come up from the Volga, long ago, to Pahom's old home. Then he saw that it was not the peasant either, but the Devil himself with hoofs and horns, sitting there and chuckling, and before him lay a man barefoot, prostrate on the ground [ ]And Pahom dreamt that he looked more attentively...and he saw that the man was dead, and that it was himself! He awoke horror-struck."What things one does dream," thought he."

Even so he started early the next day to demarcate his new property, exerting himself as far as he could and. just "as he reached the hillock it suddenly grew dark. He looked up--the sun had already set...He took a long breath and ran up the hillock...Pahom remembered his dream, and he uttered a cry,:his legs gave way beneath him, he fell forward and reached the cap with his hands....Pahom's servant came running up and tried to raise him, but he saw that...Pahom was dead! His servant picked up the spade and dug a grave long enough for Pahom to lie in, and buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed."

Vladimir Nabokov' wrote "A Nursery Tale" (Skazka) forty years after Tolstoy's, a short-story that he considers a "rather artificial affair, composed a little hastily, with more concern for the tricky plot than for imagery and good taste," which "required some revamping here and there in the English version. Young Erwin's harem, however, has remained intact. I had not reread my "Skazka" since 1930 and, when working now at its translation, was eerily startled to meet a somewhat decrepit but unmistakable Humbert escorting his nymphet in the story I wrote almost half a century ago."
Nabokov doesn't explain the reason for his original haste, one that led him to overvalue the plot, in detriment to what he'd once described as the "enchanter's talent" (he may have entrusted this part to Frau Monde). The title he chose is intriguing: why is it a "nursery tale"? ( I ignore what "Skazka" means).

excerpts: (they include a trite lamplight's aura and the prediction about a gentleman who'll be hit by a tram, two themes that were recently discussed at the VN-L)

"Frau Monde...'I am offering you something. I am offering you a harem. And if you are still skeptical of my power— See that old gentleman in tortoiseshell glasses crossing the street? Let's have him hit by a tram.' Erwin, blinking, turned streetward. As the old man reached the tracks ... a tram flashed, screeched, and rolled past...The old gentleman, his glasses and handkerchief gone, was sitting on the asphalt, Someone helped him up... / 'I said 'hit by a tram,' not 'run over,' which I might also have said,' remarked Frau Monde coolly...[ ] 'I liked you immediately. That shyness, that bold imagination. You reminded me of an innocent...young monk whom I knew in Tuscany...Next Monday I plan to be born elsewhere..[ ] I intend, before going, to have a bit of innocent fun....Tomorrow, from noon to midnight you can select by your usual method' ...all the girls you fancy. Before my departure, I shall have them gathered and placed at your complete disposal. You will keep them until you have enjoyed them all..../One condition, nevertheless, must be set...Your soul I do not require. Now this is the condition: the total of your choices between noon and midnight must be an odd number. This is essential and final. Otherwise I can do nothing for you.'

Erwin stopped to rest some time after he began to build up his harem and then he "started thinking back: Number one, the Maiden in White, she's the most artless of the lot. I may have been a little hasty. Oh, well, no harm done. Then the Twins...Gay, painted young things...Then number four, Leilla the Rose, resembling a boy. That's, perhaps, the best one. And finally, the Fox in the ale-house. Not bad either. But only five. That's not very many! He lay prone for a while with his hands behind his head...Five. No, that's absurd...And I can always throw in a streetwalker at the last moment...Erwin put on his regular pair of shoes, brushed his hair, and hurried out.// He saw before him a tall elderly man in evening clothes with a little girl walking beside... He was a famous poet, a senile swan.. Erwin's glance lit on the face of the child mincing at the old poet's side; there was something odd about that face, odd was the flitting glance of her much too shiny eyes, as if she were not just a little girl... "Hey, careful," he suddenly muttered as it dawned upon him that this made twelve—an even number: I must find one more—within half an hour...

Pressed for time, Erwin felt a slight twinge of anxiety, but ..."a few minutes later he experienced the familiar delicious contraction—that chill in the solar plexus. A woman in front of him was walking along with rapid and light steps...Something beyond visible outlines, some kind of special atmosphere, an ethereal excitement, lured Erwin on and on...her black shadow would sweep up, as it entered a streetlamp's aura, glide across a wall, twist around its edge, and vanish.

"Goodness, I've got to see her face...And time is flying."... Again he was walking ten paces behind her and by then he knew, without seeing her face, that she was his main prize.../ What enticed him? Not her gait, not her shape, but something else, bewitching and overwhelming, as if a tense shimmer surrounded her: mere fantasy, maybe, the flutter, the rapture of fantasy, or maybe it was that which changes a man's entire life with one divine stroke... Once again Erwin came near...She turned her face toward him, and by the light a streetlamp...he recognized the girl who had been playing that morning with a woolly black pup on a graveled path, and immediately remembered, immediately understood all her charm, tender warmth, priceless radiance....// "Yes, I know," calmly rejoined Frau Monde. "Number thirteen turned out to be number one. You bungled the job rather badly."

Like Pahom, who wanted more than he could handle, also Erwin lost his shimmering first choice, the artless Maiden in White, because, at that time, he was unable to discern her priceless radiance. He couldn't discipline himself to stop groping for more and more. In a way his various choices (the artless lady, the fourteen year-old girl mincing by an old Humbertian poet, the boyish one, the rusty servant with unshaven armpits...) represented distinct parts of a single ideal model.

In Tolstoy's story, the character's dream, "realistically" reveals the unreality of his material life which Pahom took for granted. In Nabokov's story there's no clear separation between dream-states, hallucinations and "reality." To discover himself in his dream, Pahom had to dream inside of his dream. Unlike Pahom's tragic end, playful Frau Monde didn't exact any price from Erwin - except the changeless monotony of his destiny. Tolstoy's story might have contained a kind of moral teaching directed to ambitious proprietors of land but this is a very concrete, unispired, message. The devil, on the contrary, seemed to me as one who favored adaptation to the status-quo. Nabokov's story would have no moral in tow, of course, but it deals directly with the world of phantasy and experience from which there's always something a reader can extract...