Tolstoy S Quest For God

The religious dimension of Tolstoy's life is usually associated with his later years following his renunciation of art. In this volume, Daniel Rancour-Laferriere demonstrates instead that Tolstoy was preoccupied with a quest for God throughout all of his adult life. Although renowned as the author of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, The Death of Ivan Ilych, and other literary works, and for his activism on behalf of the poor and the downtrodden of Russia, Tolstoy himself was concerned primarily with achieving personal union with God.Tolstoy suffered from periodic bouts of depression which brought his creative life to a standstill, and which intensified his need to find comfort in the embrace of a personal God. At times he was in such psychic pain he wanted to die. Yet Tolstoy felt that he deserved to suffer, and he learned to welcome suffering in masochistic fashion. Rancour-Laferriere locates the psychological underpinnings of Tolstoy's suffering in a bipolar illness that led him actively to seek suffering and self-humiliation in the Russian tradition of holy foolishness. With voluntary suffering, and Jesus Christ as his model, Tolstoy advocated nonresistance to evil, and in his daily life he strove never to return evil actions or words with physical or verbal resistance. On the other hand, being bipolar, Tolstoy in some situations would drift in a manic direction, indulging in delusions of grandeur. Indeed, the aging Tolstoy occasionally went so far as to equate himself with God, as can be seen from his diaries and personal correspondence.The pantheistic world view which Tolstoy achieved at the end of his life meant that God was within himself and within all people and all things in the entire universe. By this time Tolstoy was also utilizing images of a mother to represent his God. With this essentially maternal God so conveniently available, there was nowhere Tolstoy could be without Her. For, in the end, Tolstoy's quest for God was a

The thoughts here offered to the reader, illustrating what Leo Tolstoy understands by the term "God," have been extracted from his diaries, private letters, note-book jottings, draught manuscripts of unfinished papers, and various writings of the same kind. A portion of the matter has already appeared, the remainder has not been published before. If the reader desires to form a complete idea of Tolstoy's views on this subject, he should supplement these thoughts by what the author has written on the same theme in his previously published works and in the other booklets in this series. The reader is requested to bear in mind that the thoughts here presented, not being originally intended by the author for publication, are not expressed as precisely and carefully as they would have been had he been preparing them for the general public; and also that the translation of writings of this character affords special difficulties, owing to their rough and unfinished form. In order, therefore, that the reader may both do justice to these expressions of thought and fully profit by them, it is desirable that he should endeavour to understand any verbal imperfections according to the spirit of the whole, and to fill up in the sense most advantageous for the thought expressed, any omission he may remark. Odin's Library Classics is dedicated to bringing the world the best of humankind's literature from throughout the ages. Carefully selected, each work is unabridged from classic works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or drama.

The Kingdom of God Is Within You is a metaphysical essay written by Leo Tolstoy. As a result of Tolstoy's lengthy deliberation, it presents a new structure for the world built on an understanding of Christianity through the lens of universal love.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy: A Confession, The Kingdom of God is Within You, What I Believe, Christianity and Patriotism, Reason and Religion, The Gospel in Brief and more” is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel. Table of Contents Introduction Leo Tolstoy: A Short Biography "Tolstoy the Artist” and "Tolstoy the Preacher” by Ivan Panin Books The Kingdom of God is Within You What I Believe The Gospel in Brief A Confession Christianity and Patriotism Reason and Religion Patriotism or Peace Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby Bethink Yourselves! Why do People Stupefy Themselves? A Letter to a Hindu Correspondences with Gandhi Persecution of Christians in Russia Help! Thoughts on God 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' Two Wars Reason and Morality Church and State Religious Relation to Life Letter to a Kind Youth Reply to Critics Reminiscences Reminiscences of Tolstoy, by His Son by Graf Ilia LvovichTolstoi My Visit to Tolstoy by Joseph Krauskopf Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) which are often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction.

​This book examines Leo Tolstoy’s struggle to understand the relationship of God and man, in connection with his attempt to answer questions regarding the meaning of life. Tolstoy addressed such issues in a systematic way and with great concerns for the future of humanity. Predrag Cicovacki approaches Tolstoy both as a thinker and as an artist, and examines various sides of his intellectual and artistic engagement: his social criticism, his ambiguous relationship to nature, his understanding of art, and his attempted reconstruction of the true religion. By combining philosophical, religious, and literary analysis, Cicovacki undertakes an interdisciplinary study, showing much can be learned from Tolstoy's insights, as well as from his mistakes.

After penning classics like War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy underwent a spiritual awakening, departing from the Russian Orthodox Church for truth. This collection features five enlightening tales exemplifying his quest, illuminating the paths to human virtue and salvation.

This carefully crafted ebook: "The Spiritual Works of Leo Tolstoy: A Confession, The Kingdom of God is Within You, What I Believe, Christianity and Patriotism, Reason and Religion, The Gospel in Brief and more" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. In the 1870s Tolstoy experienced a profound moral crisis, followed by what he regarded as an equally profound spiritual awakening, as outlined in his non-fiction work A Confession. His literal interpretation of the ethical teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him to become a fervent Christian anarchist and pacifist. Tolstoy's ideas on nonviolent resistance, expressed in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, were to have a profound impact on such pivotal 20th-century figures as Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel. Table of Contents Introduction Leo Tolstoy: A Short Biography "Tolstoy the Artist" and "Tolstoy the Preacher" by Ivan Panin Books The Kingdom of God is Within You What I Believe The Gospel in Brief A Confession Christianity and Patriotism Reason and Religion Patriotism or Peace Letter to Ernest Howard Crosby Bethink Yourselves! Why do People Stupefy Themselves? A Letter to a Hindu Correspondences with Gandhi Persecution of Christians in Russia Help! Thoughts on God 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' Two Wars Reason and Morality Church and State Religious Relation to Life Letter to a Kind Youth Reply to Critics Reminiscences Reminiscences of Tolstoy, by His Son by Graf Ilia LvovichTolstoi My Visit to Tolstoy by Joseph Krauskopf Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) was a Russian writer who is regarded as one of the greatest authors of all time. Born to an aristocratic Russian family in 1828, he is best known for the novels War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) which are often cited as pinnacles of realist fiction.

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), besides writing famous novels such as War and Peace, also wrote on political issues, especially later in his life, putting forward a political philosophy which might be termed 'Christian anarchism'. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Tolstoy’s political thought. It outlines in a systematic way Tolstoy’s thought, which was originally articulated unsystematically in diverse, often informal writing, such as pamphlets, letters, and speeches, as well as books, and in his novels, where Tolstoy’s thinking is put forward implicitly through the novels’ characters. The book sets out the basic themes of Tolstoy’s political thought: his acceptance of the teachings of Jesus, his criticism of the way in which Jesus’ teachings have been relayed by the church through traditional creeds and dogma, his passionate rejection of political violence by both the state and those working for reform, his plea for a nonviolent response to violence and injustice, and his call for society to forego its institutional shackles and enact a community of peace, love, and justice. The book also includes background information on the Russia of Tolstoy’s time, including the religious context, and a discussion of how Tolstoy’s political thought has been received by his admirers, who included Gandhi, and his critics.