How a Devil's Imp Redeemed His Loaf

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy · Down to Earth Series · 8 pages

A tale by Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy in Blavatsky's own translation, first published in Lucifer Vol. V No. 27 of November 1889, pages 195–98, and reprinted in Blavatsky Collected Writings XII pages 9–13 under the heading Russian Popular Tracts. The frontispiece is Vasily Dmitrievich Polenov's 1876 portrait of Nikita Bogdanov, a narrator of folk tales. An editorial note records that, contrary to her stated intention, no further stories were found in the succeeding issues of Lucifer.

Blavatsky's introductory note explains why she attempted the translation herself. The West, she writes, has appreciated the greatest novelist and mystic of Russia and his best works have all been translated, yet the Russian recognises in none of those translations the popular national spirit that pervades the originals; the tales are pregnant with popular mysticism and the spirit of theosophical altruism, and are charming but most difficult to render, since no foreign translator, however able, will do them justice unless born and bred in Russia and acquainted with peasant life — the speech of small tradesmen, peasants and labourers being ten times harder to carry across than the literary language. She announces that the Christmas numbers for December, January and February will carry further stories, naming Wherein is Love, Therein is God and God is in Right, and not in Might. The tale that follows is subtitled “the first distiller.” A poor peasant leaves for the fields without breakfast, hides his loaf of black bread under his caftan, and finds it gone when he stops to eat. An Imp has taken it and waits behind a bush for the swearing that will let him note the man down; instead the peasant reflects that whoever carried off the bread perhaps needed it, wishes him good luck, drinks at the well and goes back to his ploughing. The Imp returns to hell to report the failure, and his Chief Devil sends him back to make good the loaf.

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