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Average Rating:  out of 15 Reviews
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Price: $11.95
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Sale: $6.15
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Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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EAN (European Article Number): 9780393314755
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Number of Items: 1
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Binding: Paperback
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Author: Leo Tolstoy
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Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
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Dewey Decimal Number: 809
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Publication Date: 1996-08
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Reading Level: 95
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Description: Confession is Leo Tolstoy's memoir of midlife spiritual crisis. In 1879, having written War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the 51 year-old Tolstoy began to believe that his life was meaningless. Confession is his account of the limited satisfactions he derived from his aesthetic and intellectual triumphs, and of his first yearnings for real faith. This book marks the turning point in his career as a writer: after 1880 he would write almost exclusively about religious life, especially devotion among the peasantry (in works such as The Death of Ivan Ilych and Resurrection). Near the end of Confession, Tolstoy describes the desolation he felt upon deciding that he could not solve his crisis of faith by taking refuge in the church. "I have no doubt that there is truth in the doctrine," he writes, "but there can also be no doubt that it harbors a lie; and I must find the truth and the lie so I can tell them apart." Confession does not find the full Truth, but it offers an inspiring example of a man rejecting the lies that cling to unthinking orthodoxy. Its final, exhilarating, heart-rending account of a spiritually awakening dream ranks with the best of Christian mystical writing. --Michael Joseph Gross
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Customer Reviews
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Review Summary: Tolstoy Review |
Date: 2007-04-01 |
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Details: This is a fascinating look at a man's journey to religious enlightenment. He is lost and he struggles to make sense of life and religion, asking the age old question, "Why are we here?" |
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Review Summary: Insightful |
Date: 2005-09-16 |
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Details: Good insight into the mind of a talented thinker. Unfortunately he dwindles of toward the end, but definitely worth reading. |
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Review Summary: Confession |
Date: 2005-07-21 |
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Details: Tolstoy really hit on the fact that people work their whole lives in pursuit of something that will make them truly happy. "The more I get the happier I'll be". It doesn't work like that. Even at his best he was miserable, suicidal. The answer is God. Plain and simple. He is the only thing that Tolstoy discovered would lead him to a more peaceful,satisfying life. This was a great book. |
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Review Summary: 'The meaning of life is within us ' |
Date: 2004-12-05 |
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Details: The starting point of this work always fascinated me. Here is a great genius of mankind, recognized throughout the world as an immortal creator of Literature. He is the father of a large family and has a wife he has loved and who has loved him. He has great wealth .In other words here is a person who seems to have almost everything most human beings strive for in their lives and do not attain in any way close to the level at which he has attained them. And yet it all turns meaningless to him, and he in despair asks the question of whether there is anything to truly live for, what can give life true meaning. For he too senses that Death will take him and all his worlds, and their meaning away.
His answer comes from within his own personal Christian faith. It is not a formal church faith but rather has to do with the message of God he hears in his heart, the message of love for all of mankind. Meaning is to be found according to Tolstoy in living in a spiritual way in which stress is placed in goodness with others and sharing with them whatever one has to give.
The meaning of life is living according to this voice of God he hears within.
This is the answer Tolstoy gave, but the evidence of his life suggests it did not satisfy him. For his questionings and doubts persisted throughout his lifetime, and his life did not end in some great gesture of affirmation and love but rather in his running from the once- beloved wife, who for years had embittered his life, as he hers.
This work cannot of course compare to Tolstoy's great novels in scope or even in human interest. It is a look at a great man's ' soul' at one stage of his life but in giving that life omits many of the great skills Tolstoy made use of in other writing.
As spiritual guide it has never seemed to me to provide the kind of answers to life meaning I have been looking for.
Yet I understand how it may be of much help and consolation to all those who have suffered crises similar to that of Tolstoy.
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Review Summary: Candid and insightful reflections. |
Date: 2004-05-17 |
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Details: Tolstoy's honesty at his own selfish motives and his dissapointment with the true value of his accompleshments is wonderfully refreshing. His writing is so personal and open that I don't think anyone can walk away from this unmoved. I was dissapointed that he rejects the concept of a personal active God in the conclusion of his search. |
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