A Confession

A Confession is a short autobiographical essay in which Leo Tolstoy recounts the spiritual crisis he experienced in his early fifties, after completing War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Convinced that life had no meaning in the face of inevitable death, he found that neither philosophy, science, nor the educated classes could give him a satisfactory answer.

He ultimately arrived at a personal affirmation of God as the source of life itself, a turning point that redirected the rest of his career toward religious and ethical writing. The essay unfolds in sixteen parts, moving from Tolstoy's childhood loss of faith, through the existential abyss he describes with the Eastern fable of the dragon in the well, to the resolution he found among ordinary peasants whose unquestioning faith enabled them to live without despair.

My life came to a standstill. I could breathe, eat, drink, and sleep, and I could not help doing these things; but there was no life, for there were no wishes the fulfillment of which I could consider reasonable.

Part 4

First lines

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it in childhood and throughout my boyhood and youth. But when I abandoned the second course of the university at the age of eighteen I no longer believed any of the things I had been taught.

Contents

Reception

Written in 1879–1880, A Confession was suppressed by Orthodox Church censors when first submitted for publication in 1882, and appeared in print only in Geneva (1884) before circulating legally in Russia in 1906. William James cited it at length in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) as a paradigmatic account of spiritual crisis and conversion. On Goodreads the work carries over 20,000 ratings at a 4.1 average. It is widely considered the pivot of Tolstoy's career: the works that followed—including What I Believe and The Kingdom of God Is Within You—develop the same transformation it describes.

Frequently asked

What is A Confession by Tolstoy about?

It is a short autobiographical essay in which Tolstoy describes the existential crisis he fell into in his early fifties, when success and family no longer gave his life meaning. He examines four possible responses—ignorance, Epicureanism, suicide, and endurance—before arriving at a personal faith in God as life itself.

When was A Confession written and published?

Tolstoy wrote it in 1879–1880. An attempted publication in 1882 was suppressed by Orthodox Church censors. The text first appeared in Geneva in 1884 and did not circulate legally in Russia until 1906.

Why is A Confession considered significant?

It marks the turning point in Tolstoy's career from fiction to religious and ethical writing. William James discussed it in The Varieties of Religious Experience as a textbook case of spiritual crisis. It is also read as an early document of what later became secular existentialism.