A CONFESSION BY LEO TOLSYOY
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer. He
was born on 9 September 1828 and died on 20 November 1910. He is known as one
of the greatest and most influential writers of the world.
His abundantly popular novels are War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877). There is also a deeply
spiritual memoir called A Confession
(1882) dealing with the existential crisis of his
midlife.
There are a few more well-known
books written by him. They are: The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1894), What
Is Art (1897), Childhood, Boyhood, Youth (1852-1856) and The Death of Ivan
Ilyich (1886).
According to literary judges Leo Tolstoy’s
philosophy centres on “Chritian pacifism, non-resistance to evil, and a radical
rejection of state and church authority.”
It is also important to note that
Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi shared “a brief but powerful correspondence
between 1909 and 1910 that helped shape the philosophy of nonviolent resistance.”
Inspired by the philosophy of Leo Tolstoy Gandhiji christened his communal
settlement for non-violent resisters in South Africa as Tolstoy Farm in 1910.
Here is a brief extract from Tolstoy’s
book A Confession:
The religious doctrine taught me
from childhood disappeared in me as in others, but with this difference, that
as from the age of fifteen I began to read philosophical works, my rejection of
the doctrine became a conscious one at a very early age. From the time I was
sixteen I ceased to say my prayers and ceased to go to church or to fast of my
own volition. I did not believe what had been taught me in childhood but I
believed in something. What it was I believed in I could not at all have said.
I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God ---but I could not have said
what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching
consisted in I again could not have said………
Ambition, love of power, covetousness,
lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge ---were all respected. “
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G.R.Kanwal
28 September 2026
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