This confession is deeply personal and immediately made me want to know more about Tolstoy’s biography. Some information is provided but given that the whole book is scarcely 100 pages it’s not rich in detail. The pages are dense with intense ideas and reflections on how Tolstoy’s answers to questions concerning the meaning of his life evolved over time. I empathize with much of what he writes but, in certain places, felt I couldn’t gain the same perspective or felt like Tolstoy goes much further than I would be happy to. Like the novels I have read, there are some very moving passages and hugely perceptive sections on the internal, emotional life we all lead and hide to a greater or lesser extent.
I’ll start with what biographical information there is. Tolstoy was born in 1828 and wrote this book aged 51 in 1879. He lived a privileged childhood and graduated to a career in the army, which he pursued until 26 (c. 1854) where he lived a dissolute and rapacious life. He writes passionately about how the educated, privileged section of society professes to adhere to spiritual and religious codes but really, “our genuine, sincere concern was over how to gain as much money and fame as possible” (p10). This seems to ring entirely true to me today with many rich people, myself included, publicly declaring themselves to be appalled at the inequality that exists in society while privately amassing as much money, status and security as possible. Tolstoy also writes about the perverse effects this social milieux had on his approach to life, “every time I tried to display my innermost desires - a wish to be morally good - I met with contempt and scorn, and as soon as I gave in to the base desires I was praised and encouraged. Ambition, lust for power, self-interest, lechery, pride, anger, revenge, were all respected qualities. As I yielded to these passions I became like my elders and felt that they were pleased with me” (p6). Eventually, disgusted with the lifestyle and what he sees as the religious duplicity of his class, Tolstoy rejects traditional Russian Orthodoxy and enthusiastically adopts a form of rationalism or empiricism. He writes eloquently of this era of his life, “these people became repugnant to me, and I became repugnant to myself, and realized that the religion was a fraud...Now when I think about this period and about my state of mind and that of those around me (and incidentally there are thousands of them nowadays), I feel sad, terrible, ridiculous; it arouses in me precisely the same feelings as one might experience in a madhouse” (p9).
He started to write as his new career and went to Europe to learn more and try to make up for his feeling that he was trying to teach something he didn’t know himself. He returns after six years (c.1860/1?) and started to involve himself in the education of peasant in schools following the liberation of the serfs in Russia in 1861. He worked like this, managing the schools and publishing a journal, until he became exhausted and left to the steppes of Bashkir to ‘live a primitive life’. He marries on his return (1862) and enters a period of his life focussed on his family and attempting to provide for them in the best possible way for 15 years (perhaps until c.1877?). During this period he considered the writer's task unimportant and pursued writing only as a means of attaining material goals for his family. He says he didn’t concern himself with questions about the meaning of his life and life in general. He lived this life until ‘five years ago’ (c. 1874?) when he started to experience moments of ‘bewilderment’ when his thoughts would leave the material plans he had for himself and his family and ask him, “But why?”, “to what end?” and “for what purpose? I empathised a lot with the feelings of emptiness and futility that arise from the conflict of living a finite life in an infinite universe. Tolstoy writes, “what is the meaning of my life? It has none. Or: what will come of my life? Nothing. Or: why does everything there is exist, and why do I exist? Because it does.” (p35). He can’t shake his existential malaise and comes to see life as evil, “‘Life is that which it should not be: evil. The transition into nothingness is the only thing sacred in life,’ says Schopenhauer. ‘Everything in the world, both folly and wisdom, richness and poverty, happiness and grief, all is vanity and emptiness. A man dies and nothing remains. This is absurd,’ says Solomon.” (p42-3).
He goes on to describe a process of searching human knowledge for answers to these questions that have caused him to see life as an evil. He categorises human knowledge into two branches, the empirical and the speculative. He finds fault with pure empiricism and doubts its ability to provide any meaningful answers to his questions:
“But the only answer this branch of knowledge provided to my question concerning the meaning of life was this: you are that which you call your life; you are a temporary, incidental accumulation of particles. The mutual interaction and alteration of these particles produces in you something you refer to as your life. This accumulation can only survive for a limited length of time; when the interaction of these particles ceases, that which you call your life will cease, bringing an end to all your questions. You are a randomly united lump of something. This lump decomposes and the fermentation is called your life. The lump will disintegrate and the fermentation will end, together with all your questions. This is the answer given by the exact side of knowledge, and if it adheres strictly to its principles, it cannot answer otherwise” P35
He’s also dissatisfied with explanations invoking progress or evolution, writing:
““It became apparent to me that to say that in the infinity of time and space everything is developing, becoming more perfect, complex and differentiated, is really to say nothing at all. They are all words without a meaning, for in the infinite there is no simple or complex, no before or after, and no better or worse” P28
Nor can he find any comfort in explanations from the speculative realm:
“[to] the other side of knowledge, the speculative realm...the universe is something infinite and incomprehensible. Man’s life is an inscrutable part of this inscrutable whole...The mistake is identical: development and perfection can have no purpose or direction in infinity, and as far as my question is concerned, no answer” P36
So Tolstoy finds himself lost; having rejected religion and attempted to live a rational life. Haunted by his irrational fear of death and the meaningless of finite human life. He includes this quite long, rather mystic allegory about the human condition. I found it memorable, perhaps because of the exotic details like the steppe, the dragon and the well:
“It is only possible to go on living while you are intoxicated with life; once the sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere trick, and a stupid trick! That is exactly what it is: there is nothing either witty or amusing, it is only cruel and stupid. There is an Eastern fable about a traveller who is take unawares on the steppes by a ferocious wild animal. In order to escape the beast the traveller hides in an empty well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon with its jaws open, ready to devour him. The poor fellow does not dare climb out because he is afraid of being eaten by the rapacious beast, neither does he dare drop to the bottom of the well for fear of being eaten by the dragon. So he seizes hold of a branch of a bush that is growing in the crevices of the well and clings on to it. His arms grow weak and he knows that he will soon have to resign himself to the death that awaits him on either side. Yet he still clings on, and while he is holding on to the branch he looks round and sees that two mice, one black and one white, are steadily working their way around the bush he is hanging from, gnawing away at it. Sooner or later they will eat through it and the branch will snap, and he will fall into the jaws of the dragon. The traveller sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish. But while he is still hanging there he sees some drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, stretches out his tongue and licks them. In the same way I am clinging to the tree of life, knowing full well that the Dragon of death inevitably awaits me, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand how I have fallen into this torment. And I try licking the honey that once consoled me, but it no longer gives me pleasure. The white mouse and the black mouse - day and night - gnawing at the branch from which I am hanging. I can see the dragon clearly and the honey no longer tastes sweet. I can see only one thing; the inescapable dragon and the mice, and I cannot tear my eyes away from them. And this is no fable but the truth, the truth that is irrefutable and intelligible to everyone.” P21
Feeling like he has exhausted human knowledge in his search for answers, Tolstoy begins to look at the other people around him and wonders how they find ways to forget about their predicament in the well or, at least, continue hanging on and sucking the honey. He identifies four main approaches:
- “ignorance...the majority of the people of this kind are either women, or very young, or very stupid and have not yet understood the problem of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon and Buddha.” P44
- “Epicureanism…” P45
- Suicide - “The third method of escape is through strength and energy. It consists of realizing that life is evil and senseless, and destroying it” P46
- “The fourth road of escape is that of weakness. It consists of clinging to a life that is evil and futile, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it” P47
As well as displaying a healthy disrespect for women, Tolstoy shows a strength of belief in death as preferable to life that I find hard to understand. He puts himself in the category of the weak but seems to think he would like to be in the suicide category, which I can partially understand if one really can’t deal with life’s seeming meaninglessness. However, given that life can be enjoyable even if it is ultimately futile (the honey in the allegory), why is it preferable to destroy it? Because of the certainty that action brings? It seems to me that there is no possible, certain way of telling if death will be preferable to life so the safe bet would be to go on living. Of course, I am speaking as someone who has yet to find life’s meaninglessness, which I think I do appreciate, overwhelming. Perhaps I am too young at the moment. Or very stupid. Or a woman. Tolstoy writes, “for if I know of something better and it is within my reach, then why not yield to it? I myself belong to this category.” but how can we be sure that what is in reach is better? More certain and less subject to injustice, perhaps, but how can ‘better’ be judged in such an abject absence of information!? I suppose my response would be that my life and everything in the world may or may not be meaningless but there is simply no way of knowing and that it’s unnecessary to place so much importance on meaning and significance. Especially to the extent where you’d rather kill yourself than go on living. But perhaps I am yet to feel the full force of futility!
Tolstoy finds his answers in faith, which may seem unusual given his earlier rejection of religion. Again, Tolstoy proceeds with incredible force of belief in his convictions but I lack his convictions. His mastery of feeling and emotion would seem to dictate that these play a central role in spiritual reflections. And sometimes there is no denying the feeling of a presence of God, or love, or oneness in the universe. Equally, there are often opposite feelings of comparable strength. Tolstoy seems to feel the importance of religious doctrines and institutions in a way I am simply incapable of doing at the moment. In fact, most of my feelings tend in the other direction as I am naturally wary of authority and instruction. As with the preference for death over life, perhaps I am still too young or too stupid or have yet to apprehend the problem in its totality. Tolstoy starts out by realising that, of all the branches of human enquiry, faith alone is really concerned with answering the questions he is asking, which seems to me to be broadly true:
“Faith remained as irrational to me as before, but I could not fail to recognise that it alone provides mankind with the answers to the question of life, and consequently with the possibility of life...Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death.” P57
But he moves pretty quickly on to claiming that a far more extensive religious infrastructure is required to sustain life, which I just don’t follow or feel in the same way. For example:
“The concepts of an infinite God, the sanctity of the soul, the relationship[s between God and the affairs of man, of moral good and evil, are all concepts that have been worked out in history, through the life of a humanity that is hidden to us. Without the existence of these concepts there would be neither life nor myself, and yet I, rejecting all the efforts of humanity, wanted to do it all over again, alone, in my own way...I began to realise that the most profound wisdom of man is preserved in the answers given by faith, and that I did not have the right to negate them on grounds of reason and, above all, that it is these answers alone that can reply to the question of life” P61
Part of me respects the humility and reverence for history but another part of me revolts at the non-existent justification for this extreme doctrine. He seems to be saying that if it happened throughout history then it must be right and a necessary precondition for life! I’m sure humans have executed each other in one way or another for the whole of human history; but it is this very act that disgusts Tolstoy and causes him to write the most moving part of the whole book! It is true most religions don’t advocate killing but some do in certain circumstances, including Christianity. It seems inconsistent and ill-reasoned. In some ways, this is what we should expect and this is what Tolstoy is explicitly telling the reader to expect as he returns to faith after attempting, unsuccessfully, to live by reason alone. However, I still find too many things I find unsatisfactory are adopted too quickly with too little justification. Perhaps I am just wanting “to do it all over again, alone, in my own way”! Tolstoy’s new position can be summarised as, “Where there is life there is faith” (P58). One of the main things that seems to have lead him in this direction is his interaction with the labouring or peasant classes and his disgust with religion as practiced by his own class.
Tolstoy comes to believe fervently that the life he was leading, and religion as practiced by most other members of his class, were corrupting his mind and his soul:
“I realised that I had been blinded from the truth not so much through my mistaken thoughts as through my life itself, which had been spent in satisfying desire and in exclusive conditions of epicureanism . I realised that my question as to what my life is, and the answer that it is an evil, was quite correct. The only mistake was that I had extended an answer that related only to myself to life as a whole. I had asked myself what my life was and had received the answer that it is an evil and meaningless. And this was quite true, for my life of indulgent pursuits was meaningless and evil, but that answer applied only to my life and not to human life in general. I understood a truism that I subsequently found in the gospels: that people often prefer darkness to light because their deeds are evil. For he who acts maliciously hates light and avoids it so as not to throw light on his deeds. I understood that in order to understand life it is first of all necessary that life is not evil and meaningless, and then one may use reason in order to elucidate it. I realised why I had for so long been treading so close to such an obvious truth without seeing it, and that in order to think and speak about human life and not about the lives of a few parasites. The truth has always been the truth, just as 2 x 2 = 4, but I had not admitted it, because in acknowledging that 2 x 2 = 4 I would have had to admit that I was a bad man. And it was more important and necessary for me to feel that I was good than to admit that 2 x 2 = 4. I came to love good people and to loathe myself, and I acknowledged the truth. And then it all became clear to me” P67
This is a moving passage and I think it contains a good deal of truth about how important our actions and surroundings are in creating reality. We try to judge ourselves based on what is around us and Tolstoy’s extreme change in mindset when he changes his environs is alluring. However, there are aspects of it I disagree with. First is the delineation by class. I found it too dogmatic and also hard to understand. I can accept that the majority of the rich are in some way evil because they are so greedy and fearful. But can the majority of peasants be thought to be so wonderful? This kind of Slavophilic deification of the peasantry is similar to Dostoevsky and a doesn’t really appeal to me. I have found humanity to be more homogenous with all manner of person found in all manner of classes. Another problem I have with it is seeming rejection of work in the educated classes. There are plenty of educated people in society doing good, worthwhile, meaningful jobs and Tolstoy seems to discount this just because it isn’t agricultural labour. It’s all a bit Chinese Cultural Revolution for my tastes! What about doctors, academic, social workers and administrators? Characters like Levain, Prince Nikolai and Tolstoy's own life spring to mind too. Why should a labourer be placed above them? Should anyone be placed above each other in a truly Christian assessment of humanity? As usual, these sort of religious assertions tend to produce more questions than they answer. Here is Tolstoy on the blessedness of hard labour:
“In contrast to what I saw happening in my own circle , where the whole of life is spent in idleness, amusement and dissatisfaction with life, I saw that these people who laboured hard throughout their entire lives were less dissatisfied with life than the rich. In contrast to the people of our class who resist and curse the privations and sufferings of their lot, these people accept sickness and grief without question or protest, and with a calm and firm conviction that this is how it must be, that it cannot be otherwise and that it is all for the good” P65
There is doubtless some truth in what he says but it is simply too general and takes too much joy in other, poorer people’s stoicism for my tastes. I’m sure the blessed poor would rather be rich and evil and not have to suffer like they do and so it feels a bit voyeuristic, and even materially false, to exalt their luck at having a poor life. Even though it may be entirely true! Criticisms of the hypocrisy of privileged class ring far truer to me perhaps because it is something I have seen at close quarters. Perhaps because I feel like the rich have all the resources and should be able to do something better with them. Although I think it is simply the fact that rich people say they care about other people but act like they don’t which is the gratuitous thing! Anyway, Tolstoy is excellent on this and wrties scathingly and bitingly about it:
“But believers of our class lived, just as I did, in excess, striving to maintain and increase it and fearing deprivation, suffering and death. Like myself and all non-believers, they lived only to satisfy their desires and they lived badly just as, if not worse than, non-believers.
No arguments could convince me of the truth of their faith. Only actions showing me that they had an understanding of life that did not make them afraid, as I was, of poverty, sickness and death might have convinced me...I realised that the belief these men had was not the faith I was seeking and that their faith is not really faith but only one of the epicurean consolations of life.” P63-4
Tolstoy believes that interaction with the working class and ‘loving good people’ shook him out his malaise and returned him to faith:
“The thing that saved me was that I managed to tear myself away from my exclusive existence and see the true life of the simple working people, and realise that this alone is genuine life” P71
While I am sceptical about the sanctity of agricultural labour and the merits of Russian Orthodox Church, I can definitely recognise the benefits of doing something you have faith in and loving people better than yourself. So, as with lots of this book, I found myself disagreeing with Tolstoy’s ultimate conclusions while agreeing with lots of the sentiments and ideas he express. Some of them are very beautifully expressed too!
Tolstoy’s return to organised religion is all a bit much for me to stomach and I know I have written about this already so I won’t go into detail about what is a huge, and hugely complex, topic in its own right. That’s the nature of this book, it is short and deceptively simple but it drags you into all these infinite questions because of the chosen subject. Tolstoy is definitely aware of the problems himself and even sketches some of them in the latter pages: “As I turned my attention to all that is done by people who profess Christianity, I was horrified” (P92) and “And assuming that truth lies in union by love, I was struck by the fact that theology was destroying the thing it should be advancing” (P88). But he goes on to present us with this extraordinary passage that seems to claim it’s explicable and normal for competing religions, which both or all claim to be the true keepers of a faith based on love, to kill each other!!
“Then I understood it all. While I am seeking faith, the force of life, they are seeking the best way of fulfilling, in the eyes of men, certain human obligations. And in fulfilling these human affairs they perform them in a human fashion. However much they might speak about their compassion for their lost brethren, or of their prayers for those who stand before the throne of the Almighty, it has always been necessary to use force in carrying out human duties. Just as it has always been applied, so it is now, and always will be. If two religions each consider that they hold the truth and the other a lie, then in order to convert their brother to the truth they will each preach their own doctrines. And if a false doctrine is taught to the inexperienced sons of the Church which holds no truth, then that Church will have no choice other than to burn the books and banish the person who is leading his sons into temptation. What can be done with a sectarian who, in the eyes of the Orthodox Church, is ablaze with the fire of false doctrine, and who is misleading the sons of the Church in the most important matter of life, in faith? What can be done with him other than chop off his head or imprison him?” P91
I can’t say I really understood this or subscribe to what it is saying. It seems that the answer is broadly, ‘humans always kill each other so why expect anything different in religion?’. This strikes me as depressing and seems to negate the special status and power that religion is claiming for itself. As I mentioned earlier, religion and its explanations always seem to lead down a rabbit hole that opens up into an endless warren where more questions are asked than answers given. Or the answers end up being delivered in a kind of double think, a bit like the passage above, and it is unclear if you’ve learned anything at all!
Tolstoy describes his own experience in terms of a boat trip across a river of almost Biblical proportions! It is certainly a description of a religious experience of some sort, to me, if only one experienced with hindsight. As such, I think it explains Tolstoy’s confession well. It’s not a reasoned account of his return to religion and never could be. It’s more a story about his mystical journey back to religion:
“Something like this happened to me: without remembering when I had been put into it, I found myself in a boat that had set off from some unknown shore. The direction to the opposite shore was shown to me, oars were put into my inexperienced hands, and I was left alone. I rowed as best I could and moved forwards, but the further I rowed towards the centre of the stream, the faster the current became that was carrying me directly away from my object, and I kept meeting more oarsmen like myself, who were being carried away by the current. There were lone oarsmen who continued to row; there were some who had discarded their oars; there were large rowing boats and enormous ships full of people, some struggling with the current, others abandoning themselves to it. And as I looked at the flow of those drifting downstream, I found that the more I rowed, the more I forgot the directions that had been given to me. In the very middle of the current, amid the crowd of boats and ships being pulled downstream, I lost my directions and abandoned my oars. From all directions people were being carried downstream by sail and oar, shouting for joy and assuring me and themselves that there could be no other direction. And I believed them and flowed with them. And I was carried a long way, so far that I could hear the noise of the rapids which were bound to shatter me, and I caught sight of the boats that were already being smashed against them. Then I came to my senses. For a long time I could not understand what had happened to me. I saw nothing ahead of me except the destruction towards which I was rushing, but which I feared, and I could see no salvation anywhere, and I did not know what to do. But looking behind me I saw countless boats that could not stop but were defiantly pushing against the current, and I remembered the oars and the direction of the shore, and I began to struggle back against the current, towards the shore.
The shore was God, the direction was tradition, and the oars were the freedom given to me to row towards the shore and unite with God. In this way the force of life rose up within me and I started to live once again” P76-7
As a cynic and general nitpicker, I would be interested to see how fully Tolstoy abandoned the life of privilege and renounced his worldly goods from a biographical perspective. He certainly talks a good game in this book but perhaps the reality was somewhat different, as it often is when it comes to material comfort! I suspect that Tolstoy probably did renounce it but I still want to find out!
My favourite part of the book, alongside the indictment of his class and their religious sophistry, was this section:
“Thus, during my stay in Paris, the sight of an execution revealed to me the precariousness of my superstition in progress. When I saw the heads being separated from the bodies and heard them thump, one after the next, into the box I understood, and not just with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence and progress could justify this crime. I realized that even if every single person since the day of creation had, according to whatever theory, found this necessary I knew that it was unnecessary and wrong, and therefore that judgements on what is good and necessary must not be based on what other people say and do, or on progress, but on the instincts of my own soul. Another instance in which I felt that the superstition of progress was inadequate in regard to life was the death of my brother. He was an intelligent, kind-hearted, serious man who became ill when he was young, suffered for over a year and died in torment without having understood why he had lived, and still less why he was dying. No theories could provide the answers to these questions, either for him or for me, during his slow and torturous death.” P12-13
It reminded me a lot of my favourite section from Anna Karenina when Levain is discussing the concept of ‘living for God’ with his serf or servant in his trap. This is where Tolstoy is really excellent. Describing the visceral, all consuming feelings that give us certainty in life and seem to guide us far more powerfully than reason or thoughts. Often, they are difficult to interpret and analyse after the event and we are left feeling confused. In some ways, Tolstoy seems to have felt his way back to religion, and had to do so in order to continue living, and this book is in part an expression of that journey.
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