A Confession -

Leon Tolstói

Penguin Classics

2009

97 páginas

3h 14m

ISBN-13: 9780141042558

Despite having written War and Peace and Anna Karenina, Tolstoy, at age 51, looked back on his life and considered it to be a meaningless, regrettable failure. A Confession gives insight into Tolstoy's thinking as he began to forever change his ideas and actions and develop his radical philosophy. This book was first distributed in 1882 and published in 1884 after some fun with the censors.

Resenhas (2)

4 (Muito bom)

Lost to be found.

"It is now clear to me that there was no difference between ourselves and people living in a madhouse (...) Like all madmen, I thought everyone, except myself, was mad"

Tolstoy wrote this text when he was passing through a mental breakdown. After all he had experienced in life, he was tormented by questions regarding the meaning of life.
Already in an advanced age, some reflections about what he thought he had understood of the world, haunted him to show he knew nothing at all, which he felt ashamed about how he still was praised, even though that knowledge he had didn't prevent him from suffering, and won't prevent anyone. Personally, I love the way he humbles down in this part of the text, sometimes it looks like the intectual life guides you to be over pride, to be considered smart.
He also poses about his brother, who suffered from an agonizing death, and died in a year, after falling sick without ever understanding why he lived, and even less why he died. All these thoughts made he feels suicidal at a point where he had to hide things which could be used to him kill himself.
In the text, he describes his approach to God, and some reflections about the Catholic Church. He exposes the mindless attitude of some believers towards the sacred scriptures and the convenient interpretation to harm others using God as a shield.
" I turned my attention to everything that was done by people who claimed to be Christians, I was horrified"
And the horrendous self-affirmation that some believers used to make about being the "right" faith.
"The assertion that you live in a lie while I live in the truth is the most cruel thing one person can say to another"
I believe Tolstoy became an exemplary Christian. He finishes the text talking about how these lies and truths came from the same origin and he got a positive attitude towards his faith. In the last chapter he describes a dream he had about being hung in an abyss, held only by a thread linked into the sky, a beautiful analogy about his faith saved him, and kept his safe.
I'm not religious, however, this is a must-read book for sure.