Confession & Other Religious Writings (Penguin Black Classics Series)

By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written WAR AND PEACE and ANNA KARENINA, novels that would assure him of immortality. He had a wife, a large estate and numerous children; he was 'a happy man' and in good health, yet life had lost all meaning.

A CONFESSION (1879), a poignant fragment of autobiography, describes a crisis familiar to many people. It records Tolstoy's depression and estrangement from the world, his desperate desire to find answers to the simplest questions of life and the beginnings of his passionate intellectual search for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth'.

A CONFESSION marks the point in Tolstoy's life when he began to turn away from fiction and aesthetics. The three other works collected here - RELIGION AND MORALITY (1893), WHAT IS RELIGION AND OF WHAT DOES ITS ESSENE CONSIST? (1902) and THE LAW OF LOVE AND THE LAW OF VIOLENCE (1908) - are some further fruits of his extraordinary investigations into questions concerning truth.
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IntroductionA ConfessionWhat Is Religion And Of What Does Its Essence Consist?Religion And MoralityThe Law Of Love And The Law Of ViolenceExplanatory Notes
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Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world, A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of literary immortality; he had a wife, a large estate and numerous children; he was 'a happy man' and in good health - yet life had lost its meaning. In this poignant confessional fragment, he records a period of his life when he began to turn away from fiction and aesthetics, and to search instead for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth'. His searingly honest search for spiritual fulfilment also inspires the three other works collected here: Religion and Morality (1893), What is Religion and of What Does Its Essence Consist? (1902) and The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (1908).
-Publisher