Love and Death

About to be executed for a crime he never committed, Boris Grushenko recalls how he got into his present predicament. Initially scheduled to die at 5:00 am, Boris receives leniency—a delay in execution until 6:00 am. While his brothers Ivan and Mikhail are brawny and athletic, Boris is scrawny and 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) tall. Since childhood, Boris has been in love with his cousin Sonja, with whom he has deep philosophical conversations. Sonja tells Boris that she yearns for a man who embodies the three essential aspects of love: intellectuality, spirituality, and sensuality. Thinking that she is confessing her love for him, Boris is devastated when Sonja reveals she has been in love with the dim-witted Ivan all her life. When Napoleon invades Austria during the Napoleonic Wars, Boris, a pacifist who would rather write poetry than go to war, is branded a coward by everyone, including his parents and Sonja, who force him to enlist in the Russian army. When Ivan announces his intention to marry Anna Ivanova, a desolate Sonja impulsively announces that she will marry 81-year-old Sergei Minskov, who immediately dies from a heart attack. Sonja then marries Leonid Boskovic, the herring merchant, who amuses himself with herring while Sonja dallies with a musician. Boris completes military training, including a "hygiene play" on condoms and venereal diseases. During a three-day furlough, Boris attends the opera in Saint Petersburg and flirts with the beautiful Countess Alexandrovna, whose current lover has killed several of her admirers in duels. Unhappy in her marriage to Boskovic, Sonja recounts a long list of lovers. Boris offers to take her away, but Sonja only asks after Ivan. At the front line the next day, Boris inadvertently becomes a war hero when he falls asleep inside a large cannon and is fired into the French command tent, killing the officers. The regiment that started with 12,000 men in battle thins down to 14 survivors. Ivan, a battle fatality, is bayonetted to death by a Polish conscientious objector. A Turkish cavalry officer impugns Sonja's chastity. Boskovic dies accidentally while cleaning his pistol in preparation for a duel to defend her honor. Sonja laments she was not kinder to him, believing she could have had sex with him even once, but quickly moves on and grieves over Ivan's death with Anna. After the Countess has sex with Boris in gratitude for his heroic efforts, her lover, Anton Lebedokov, challenges him to a duel. On the night before the duel, Boris proposes to the widowed Sonja, who promises to marry him, predicting that he will die in the duel. To her surprise and dejection, Boris survives the duel. Their marriage is filled with philosophical debates. Sonja believes that sex without love is an empty experience, to which Boris replies, "Yes, but as empty experiences go, it's one of the best." As time passes, he wins Sonja's heart. As French troops occupy Moscow, Sonja conceives a plot to assassinate Napoleon at his headquarters in Moscow. They debate the matter with philosophical doublespeak, and Boris reluctantly agrees. At an inn en route to Moscow, they encounter Don Francisco and his sister, emissaries from Joseph Bonaparte to Napoleon. Boris and Sonja waylay the Spaniards, taking their place. Unknowingly, they meet with Napoleon's impostor, who attempts to seduce Sonja but is knocked out by her after Boris fails various attempts. Over the unconscious body, Sonja and Boris debate the ethics of killing Napoleon. While Boris vacillates, another intended Napoleon assassin shoots the impostor. Sonja escapes, but Boris is arrested for the murder. Despite being told by an angelic vision that he will be pardoned, Boris is executed. At home, while sharing her philosophical insights on love and suffering with her friend Natasha Petrovna, Sonja sees Boris' ghost outside her window, standing with Death. Sonja tells Boris that he was her one great love. Boris soliloquizes about his thoughts on God, death, and love before dancing away with Death.

Plot from Love and DeathCC BY-SA 4.0