Sunday, December 08, 2019

The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree

The Beggar Boy at Christ's Christmas Tree is an 1876 short story by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It reminds me of The Little Match Girl, so if you want to pass on this sad tale and find something more cheerful to read I understand completely.

You can read this story online here. It begins,
I am a novelist, and I suppose I have made up this story. I write “I suppose,” though I know for a fact that I have made it up, but yet I keep fancying that it must have happened on Christmas Eve in some great town in a time of terrible frost.

I have a vision of a boy, a little boy, six years old or even younger. This boy woke up that morning in a cold damp cellar. He was dressed in a sort of little dressing-gown and was shivering with cold. There was a cloud of white steam from his breath, and sitting on a box in the corner, he blew the steam out of his mouth and amused himself in his dullness watching it float away. But he was terribly hungry. Several times that morning he went up to the plank bed where his sick mother was lying on a mattress as thin as a pancake, with some sort of bundle under her head for a pillow. How had she come here? She must have come with her boy from some other town and suddenly fallen ill.
You can listen to it:

16 comments:

  1. Yeah, Dostoevsky's writing is depressing.

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  2. ...a sad story that still plays out today.

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    1. Yes, the more things change... You'd think we could fix a few things :(

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  3. He was not the happiest of authors. I have added it to my list, thanks. Valerie

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    1. It was a good story, just sad. It really did put me in mind of the Little Match Girl.

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  4. I think I'll pass. I have enough depressing things in my life at the moment.

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    1. Sadness at Christmas-time :( And certainly not a story like this if life has you experiencing depressing things anyway :(

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  5. I can recommend an interesting read to you by J R R Tolkien. He wrote letters to his children for Christmas (as though he was Santa) and they are a pleasure to listen to or read. It's called Letters from Father Christmas. Happy new week.

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    1. Oh, yes! I have that somewhere. I'll have to look through my Christmas books. Thanks for reminding me of it! :)

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  6. Unfortunately stories like these are far too true, far too often. While the Victorians really ramped up Christmas celebrations, the majority were not feasting & celebrating, but starving & dying. Now have said that, I say the Russians really know how to do sad stories amid plenty ... ah those Russians (said in my best Boney M voice).

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    1. Ah, those Russians, indeed. That landscape, maybe, must make writers prone to depression and despair and suffering.

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  7. What a sad story but sorrow and happiness are all part of the tapestry of life 😀. Happy wishes! Hugs, Jo x

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    1. Yes, there's tragedy all the year :(

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