Pózdnyshev, the protagonist of this intense story, explains to a traveling companion the reasons that impelled him to kill his wife. Through this narrative, Tolstoy attacks the hypocrisy of bourgeois values, a veil of illusion that barely conceals the dark impulses and violence underlying human relations. The crime of Pózdnyshev finds its symbolic expression in the striking initial chords of the Sonata to Kreutzer de Beethoven; Interpreted in a bourgeois hall "among ladies low", unleash a whirlwind of forces capable of transforming the soul of the listener. The music acts like the assassin's knife: both tear the veil of appearances, opening a crack through which powers impossible to control.
