The full name of the work: The Most Beautiful Tomb in the World-A Travel to Russia in 1928, selected from Selected Excellent Foreign Prose (translated by Zhang Houren of China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Company in 1985). The writer Zweig traveled to Russia in 1928 and paid a visit to Tolstoy's tomb. He felt the compelling simplicity of entrusting the tomb and praised it as "the most beautiful tomb in the world".
2. Original text:
Nothing I saw in Russia was more magnificent and touching than Tolstoy's tomb. This sacred place of dignity, which will be worshipped by future generations forever with awe, lies alone in the shade, far from the hubbub. Walking along a narrow path, through the glades and bushes, you reach the tomb; This is just a rectangular mound. No one to guard, no one to manage, only a few big trees to shade. His granddaughter told me that Tolstoy planted these tall trees that shook slightly in the early autumn wind. When he was young, his brother Nikolai and he heard an old legend told by a nanny or a village woman that the place where trees were planted by hand would become a happy place. So the two of them planted several saplings on a piece of land in their manor, and this children's game was soon forgotten. Tolstoy remembered this childhood story and wonderful promise about happiness in his later years, and the suffering old man suddenly got a new and better inspiration from it. He immediately expressed his willingness to bury his bones under trees planted by himself in the future.
the funeral was done in this way, completely according to Tolstoy's wishes; His tomb has become the most beautiful, impressive and touching tomb in the world. It's just a small rectangular mound in the Woods, full of flowers-Nulla Crux, Nilla Corona-no cross, no tombstone, no epitaph, not even the name Tolstoy. This great man, who felt more burdened by his fame than anyone else, was buried without a name like a tramp or an unknown soldier who was occasionally found. Anyone can step into his final resting place, and the sparse wooden fence around him is not closed-there is nothing else to protect lev tolstoy from rest, only people's respect; Usually, people are always curious to destroy the tranquility of the great man's cemetery. Here, compelling simplicity imprisons any kind of leisure for viewing, and you are not allowed to speak loudly. The wind is whispering among the trees overlooking the tomb of the unknown, playing with the warm sunshine at the grave; In winter, snow gently covers this dark land. No matter whether you pass here in summer or winter, you can't imagine that this small, raised rectangle contains one of the greatest figures of our time. However, it is precisely the anonymity that is more exciting than all the marble and luxurious decorations that have been painstakingly put in: today, on this special day, not one of the hundreds of people who came to his resting place has the courage to even pick a flower from this dark mound as a souvenir. People feel again that nothing in this world is more touching than this last monumental simplicity. Napoleon's tomb under the marble dome of the retirement home for the old disabled soldiers, Goethe's tomb in the tomb of Weimar Gonghou, and Shakespeare's sarcophagus in Westminster Abbey don't look like this nameless tomb in the Woods, which has only the wind whispering and even no voice, solemn and touching, and can violently shock everyone's deep feelings.
3. About the author:
Stefan Zweig is a famous Austrian writer, novelist and biographer. He is good at writing novels and biographies, as well as poems, plays, essays and translations. It is famous for depicting humanized inner impulses, such as pride, vanity, jealousy, hatred and other simple emotions, and it is full of sensational skills. His novels mostly describe people's subconscious activities and their fate driven by passion. His works are good at portraying characters' personalities and psychology, and he prefers some dramatic plots. But he is not trying to attract readers with the twists and turns of the plot, but to set off people and things that make people linger in the plain life. In June 213, the 1th printing of the experimental teaching material of compulsory education curriculum reform in Beijing selected the text (lesson 13) "The Enlightenment I got from Rodin", the second volume of the eighth grade of Chinese published by People's Education Press selected (lesson 4) "lev tolstoy" and the second volume of the seventh grade "The Great Tragedy".