Confession (Paperback)

by Leo Tolstoy (Author), David Patterson (Translator) "I WAS BAPTIZED and educated in the Orthodox Christian faith..." (more)
Key Phrases: Orthodox Church, Old Believers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Confession is Leo Tolstoy's memoir of midlife spiritual crisis. In 1879, having written War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the 51 year-old Tolstoy began to believe that his life was meaningless. Confession is his account of the limited satisfactions he derived from his aesthetic and intellectual triumphs, and of his first yearnings for real faith. This book marks the turning point in his career as a writer: after 1880 he would write almost exclusively about religious life, especially devotion among the peasantry (in works such as The Death of Ivan Ilych and Resurrection). Near the end of Confession, Tolstoy describes the desolation he felt upon deciding that he could not solve his crisis of faith by taking refuge in the church. "I have no doubt that there is truth in the doctrine," he writes, "but there can also be no doubt that it harbors a lie; and I must find the truth and the lie so I can tell them apart." Confession does not find the full Truth, but it offers an inspiring example of a man rejecting the lies that cling to unthinking orthodoxy. Its final, exhilarating, heart-rending account of a spiritually awakening dream ranks with the best of Christian mystical writing. --Michael Joseph Gross

Product Description
Reissued in new trade paperback format and design. In 1879 the fifty-one-year-old author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina came to believe that he had accomplished nothing and that his life was meaningless.

Marking a shift in his career from the aesthetic to the religious, Tolstoy's Confession relates this spiritual crisis, posing the question: Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my death? It is a timeless account of an individual's struggle for faith and meaning.
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Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (August 17, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393314758
• ISBN-13: 978-0393314755
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #466,910 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tolstoy challenges society, religion, and worldly wisdom., September 17, 1999

By A Customer

Tolstoy takes the reader through his personal spiritual struggles as a young adult. Tolstoy, saturated with worldly knowledge, begins to understand the implications of a life purely devoted to rational and explanable thought: a meaningless existence. Scorning the stubborness of many past thinkers and speculators, Tolstoy heralds faith as the only avenue to true meaning. To be rich in the knowledge of men is weak and ultimately inconclusive, but to believe in an ultimate creator, inherent with purpose and direction, bids a life soaked with a paucity of excitement, conviction, and optimism goodbye. Tolstoy masterfully paints the tragedy of his early years, only to inevitably reveal an eternal triumph which exists in a victorious union with the divine. Simple, straightforward, and genuine, Confession allows the reader to reflect and speculate about his or her own existence.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great commentary on life, June 4, 1998

By	Allen Riberdy (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When reading A Confession I felt as if I were listening to a wise, animated friend. This book spoke to me. Tolstoy convincingly details the reasons not to live only to conclude that the best thing to do is to continue living. Since it is not a particularly well-known Tolstoy work, I thought it deserved some promotion here. It really is wonderful.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Journey Unfulfilled, January 19, 2004

By	OrthodoxMama (Germantown, MD USA) - See all my reviews

Tolstoy's Confession was written during his time of deep internal spiritual struggle. Upon his renunciation of a life of aristocratic wealth and worldly pleasure, Tolstoy longed for the sense of true peace that he saw in the peasant class. Thus he embarked upon a search for meaning and happiness through a life of simple faith, manual labor, and poverty. He formulated his own Chrisian philosophy based on Christ's Sermon on the Mount stressing the existence of the Kingdom of God within the human heart, civil disobedience, and total pacifism. This "law of love" is explored deeply in confessional form throughout this autobiographical work. Although this particular approach to living the life in Christ ultimately did not cultivate in Tolstoy the deep inner peace that he yearned for, I feel that many of his ideas can be beneficial to people both within the Church as well as not. Regardless of the validity of his doctrine, it cannot be denied that this is an authentic, genuine, and very human confession of a man searching for God and some meaning to life on earth. Although I personally disagree with many of Tolstoy's points, I still hold his Confession to be a universal work that deserves a fair exploration by all who have ever felt a similar need for inner peace and true reconciliation with God.