A Confession

Starts off as a series of retrospections where Tolstoy attempts to identify the causation of previous frameworks of thought, then reproves himself about his ulterior motives or immaturity or blindsplots at the time. In the last third, he comes to an imperfect but arguably much better, wiser, and mature position than before, though still seemingly in progress. The imperfection of his position being only what a human being can hope to achieve even with years of intense contemplation and honest searching for truth and God. Tolstoy's humility and desperation is so on display, his self-awareness of how his mind processes experiences and arrives at conclusions is impressive and reassuring, a reminder how so many around us are so arrogantly show more sure of their philosophical conclusions, only to realize much later how inadequate or myopic their understanding of human existence was. I just discovered this book was originally censored out of its original publication in a Russian magazine (Russian Mind), which is both hilarious and understandable, that pragmatic dogma explained by Tolstoy in this very book. show less

Say what you will about Leo Tolstoy post-Anna Karenina. Say he completely lost it as a writer (and his marbles too), as most critics, far more subtly, say. Say the once singularly incisive and dynamic Russian master had gone out of his creative freaking mind. Say he turned his back forever on his Art at the age of fifty; turned his back on his very name that had become synonymous with Greatness; and embraced, in place of the fame and fortune and accolades, an idiosyncratic, self-styled monastic hybrid of asceticism, Christianity, and a rigorous social consciousness that abandoned the trappings and accoutrements of wealth in favor of an obsessive obedience to peasant life - to a strict adherence to "the faith of the poor" - from which he show more resurrected meaning and a sense of purpose to his life. Once his life, he realized, was no longer just about satisfying the dictates of his desires, but about living humbly among the poor, he could be happy. Apparently, all the literary success a person could ever imagine or hope for, wasn't enough (not nearly enough) to fulfill Tolstoy and to induce inner peace; rather, success and its material benefits became an albatross, in his mind, stuffed with the existential weight of meaninglessness, that nearly snuffed him out.

So, say what you want: Say he went insane (and perhaps you'd be partially correct in saying so; I mean, how could a man not be forever happy and content having composed War and Peace?), but don't say his Confession, that in 93 packed pages, explains, in harrowing, psychologically minute detail, his spiritual crisis of identity and purpose, that took him - one of the most successful and famous writers of his time (of any time) - to the brink of suicide, isn't as dramatic a reading experience as the tomes he's most famous for.

His Confession chronicles his interior transformation from high-society-minded artist to peasant, and how during the process the option of suicide became for him the most rational reaction to what he considered his "joke of a life; his empty and meaningless life," the very brilliant life, that is, that had authored two of the most renowned novels ever created, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Incredible in the light of his accomplishments, how low he'd sunk inside. His Confession outlines his emotional and philosophical descent - and eventual ascent from suicide - in terse, conversational style. Like talking to a friend, reading Tolstoy's Confession.

I think Tolstoy's Confession is one of the most fascinating psychological odysseys I've ever read, documenting a person's darkest despair and then unexpected U-turn of rebirth and revival. Based on just the writing in his Confession, I think it'd be difficult to argue that Tolstoy had gone insane, as some attest he did. For the writing is remarkably lucid and concise. His self-analysis is rational. His arguments and reasoning, logical. Granted, he wrote it after, not during his crisis, so knowing the exact state of his mind when he was literally in despair; when he was in the moment, suicidal, is probably not precisely knowable or attainable. But Tolstoy, nevertheless, painted quite the unpretty interior picture (think Edvard Munch's, The Scream) of a mind and a man about to implode.

Thank God Tolstoy lacked what he describes as "the courage" to commit suicide, but instead persevered through his year-and-a-half long crisis, and came out on the other, brighter side, maybe not as the Leo Tolstoy anybody recognized (or even wanted), but as a man, nonetheless, who in the least, drilled a great hole through the darkness of suicidal despair with his still mighty pen, and a hole big enough that maybe future others who've found themselves in similar, suicidal predicaments, might crawl, led by Tolstoy's words, through. And live.

I can't fault a man who, on the brink of suicide, finds a reason to live. I can't fault him even if his rationale for living, like Tolstoy's, seems, well, odd, or unorthodox, or counter intuitive to my sensibilities; and I can't fault him any further even if it means that man, the genius, will disappoint the masses and never output another classic again. show less

Tolstoy recounts how his faith grew out of a situation of total despair. As a youth, he was taught the tenets of religion, but by the age of eighteen he did not believe in any of them. He spent his early adult life proudly rational, a believer in progress, delighted in his own fame and cultivation. Creeping doubts, however, led him to question the meaning of everything he had devoted his life to.

"The questions seemed so stupid and simple, like questions asked by children. But the moment I faced up and tried to resolve them I became immediately convinced, first that they were not childish or stupid questions, they were the most important and profound questions in life, and, second, that however much thought I gave to them I could not, show more could not, resolve them. Before I could sort out my estate in Samara, my son's education or the writing of a book, I needed to know what I would be doing it for."

Tolstoy entered a state of total despair, convinced that life was empty and meaningless. The only way he resisted suicide was to tell himself that he needed to make a real effort to try and work out the puzzle - and that if he couldn't find a meaning, there would be plenty of time for him to kill himself in the future. "So there I was, a man favoured by fortune, removing rope from the room where every night I got undressed alone, to make sure I didn't hang myself from the beam that ran between the wardrobes".

Eventually, his effort leads him to faith, and the book moves on to the way that he developed his belief system.

A Confession is vivid, and powerfully written. I think the reason that it didn't work for me is entirely personal. I am happily and uncomplicatedly an atheist, and the fact that there is nothing outside this life does not cause me to despair. Tolstoy characterises his peers as fitting into four groups: "people who didn't understand the question; people who did understand the question, but blotted it out in an orgy of living; other people who did, and who put an end to their lives; or people who also did, but lived on in desperation, out of weakness." I guess I would be in the first category. And because of this, the tremendous repetitiveness of Tolstoy's self-examination began to get to me. I think if I was reading it as philosophy, or as a way of developing my personal views on meaningfulness, this repetition would have been a positive benefit, providing plenty of space for contemplation. And so I would certainly recommend this to anyone who would read it with those things in mind. show less

This book describes Tolstoy's struggle with depression. Though nominally Christian, he lacked belief in his early years. As he became a well-known writer, he found that people were congratulating him while he lived a life of debauchery. He is especially confused that people look to writers as teachers, while he himself does not know what he is teaching. Finding no satisfaction in life, he feels the desire to end it. Life, he feels, is a "stupid and eil practical joke someone is playing on me." When he consults philosophy, he finds the general thesis that life has no meaning. And science doesn't have much in the way of a practical answer.

For people of his social class, he says there are 4 answers: ignore it, engage in epicureanism, kill show more yourself, or live a knowingly meaningless life. But when he starts to look at how people actually live, this supposedly indubitable answer crumbles. The problem is one of comparison of different times -- life is finite but a proper meaning is (or at least feels like it should be) infinite. The only real answer to this is faith.

"Faith is the force of life. If a man lives, then he must have faith in something. If he did not believe that he had something he must live for, then he would not live."

In this light, we are parts of an infinite. Without faith, we just spin our wheels endlessly when it comes to meaning. Tolstoy finds his philosophy best represented by the "poor, the simple, the uneducated folk." They endure without question or resistance.

This is my favorite passage in the book:

"If a naked, hungry beggar should be taken from the crossroads and led into an enclosed area in a magnificent establishment to be given food and drink, and if he should then be made to move some kind of lever up and down, it is obvious that before determining why he was brought there to move the lever and whether the structure of the establishment was reasonable, the beggar must first work the lever. If he will work it, then he will see that it operates a pump, that the pump draws up water, and that the water flows into a garden. Then he will be taken from the enclosed area and set to another task, and then he will gather fruits and enter into the joy of his lord. As he rises from lower to higher concerns, understanding more and more about the structure of the establishment and becoming part of it, he will never think to ask why he is there, and there is no way he will ever come to reproach his master.

Thus the simple, uneducated working people, whom we look upon as animals, do the will of their master without ever reproaching him. But we, the wise, consume everything the master provides without doing what he asks of us; instead, we sit in a circle and speculate on why we should do something so stupid as moving this lever up and down. And we have hit upon an answer. We have figured it out that either the master is stupid or he does not exist, while we alone are wise; only we feel that we are good for nothing and that we must somehow get rid of ourselves."

The agonizing feeling Tolstoy had while he wanted to kill himself but didn't was the search for God. Then Tolstoy makes this point which always bothers me: while he believes in God, he lives and while he doesn't, he dies; therefore, he should believe in God."

Anyway, he realizes that luxury is just a shroud over life. "Man's task in life is to save his soul." He used to see faith as an arbitrary position. He saw it as "useless gibberish." But faith is something that cannot really be expressed because it is not a single answer, but as many as there are people. show less

I'm so excited to discover this little window into Tolstoy's faith! How have I missed it? I love his commonsensical approach to faith: Start from bare experience; pay attention to what works--that is, what gives meaning to life--and from there draw conclusions about the nature of God and the place of the church. Faith is a response to the questions of life (64), not a social construct or a proscribed creed. I wish more writers laid bare their inner struggles with such clarity.

"But I do want to understand in order that I might be brought to the inevitably incomprehensible; I want all that is incomprehensible to be such not because the demands of the intellect are not sound (they are sound, and apart from them I understand nothing) but show more because I perceive the limits of the intellect. I want to understand, so that any instance of the incomprehensible occurs as a necessity of reason and not as an obligation to believe."
--Tolstoy, Confession, 91 show less

Fascinating! Tolstoy here reflects on the emptiness of his early life--military service, writing ambition, strength frenzy, etc.--and his simultaneous loss of God. He does not see how he can go on in midlife without both the materialistic and spiritual philosophies denied him. What follows is a contemplation of death---a horror floridly expressed. He touches on both the fear and the inevitability in such a way that this reader felt terribly sorry for himself and all of his fellow earthling's final indignity. A CONFESSION touches on so many of the great themes of literature: man's inhumanity to man, the vanity of worldly ambition, the meaning of life. Highly recommended. P.S. What a wonderful surprise Hesperus Classics has turned out to show more be. I think I will check out their catalog. show less

Starting with the question, “What is the meaning of life?”, Tolstoy manages to reason himself into “life is evil”, may as well commit suicide. The tortuous twists of reasoning to get to such an answer seemed UNreasonable to me. But it’s HIS confession, so be it. Only in the last pages does he get to the part of his life where his reason leads him to faith. Interesting to look into the great mind.