A traveller walking through the desert suddenly finds himself encountering a raging beast. In a panic, the traveller leaps into a nearby dried-up well to hide. He hangs onto a small bush that grows out of the crevice till the coast is clear. He is safe, for now. But, to his horror, the man hears a snort and the snapping of jaws coming from below him. A dragon sits at the bottom of this well, mouth open, ready to devour. The animal outside stalks in circles around the well. If he pulls himself up, he will be slain by the beast above; if he drops down, he will be eaten by the beast below. And it is only a matter of time before his arms grow tired and the impossible choice is made for him.
The austere Russian author relaying this fable then leans forward and tells us: "This is no fairy tale but truth, irrefutable and understood by all."
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is one of the greatest authors of all time. His works are standard bearers, not only of Russian literature in particular, but of modern fiction in general. One of Tolstoy's English translators, David Patterson, explains that just two of Tolstoy's works—War and Peace and Anna Karenina—"have assured [Tolstoy] a permanent place in the annals of world literature; both testified to the depth of his genius and creativity." They may be the greatest novels ever written.
Nevertheless, by the time Tolstoy was fifty-one-years-old—after publishing his most seminal works—he became convinced that his life was meaningless, that it amounted to nothing, and began to daily entertain thoughts of suicide.
Patterson asks an unsettling question: "If artistic achievement of this magnitude cannot instill life with meaning, then where is meaning to be found?"
This is the subject that Tolstoy writes of on the other side of his existential collapse in his short spiritual autobiography, A Confession.
Disbelief
Tolstoy begins his memoir with detailing how his childhood faith was easily blown away at the slightest wind of doubt. By the time he was eighteen, he was a confirmed atheist and thought the Russian Orthodox Church nothing but hypocrisy and superstition.
But this disbelief didn't lead Tolstoy to reject a moral life. In fact, once he severed himself from the Church, he began an even more ardent pursuit of perfection, of progress. He joined a circle of sophisticated artists and poets who ardently held to the concept of moral perfection and progress.
My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere."
Tolstoy at 20, c. 1848
Tolstoy may not have been able to explain where or what he was progressing towards, but he was progressing. This uneasiness was set aside by his own mantra: "Everything is developing, and I am developing; the reason why I am developing in this way will come to light, along with everything else." In other words, I'm sure this will all make sense in time. The meaning of life is just on the other side of the hill, and in time, he will arrive.
Looking back on this season, he admits that for all his talk of progress and perfection, he was a debauched and lecherous man.
I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder-there was not a crime I did not commit; yet in spite of it all I was praised, and my colleagues considered me and still do consider me a relatively moral man.
Disenchantment
In time, Tolstoy was turned off by the avante-garde circle he ran in. He found the contradictions and smug superiority off-putting and hungered for more satisfying answers to the riddles of life. Then, while visiting Paris, Tolstoy witnessed a public execution that shook him to the core and "revealed to me the feebleness of my superstitious belief in progress." The French Revolution was supposed to usher in the quintessential ideal of secular progress and the dismissal of superstition—when in the end it brought about the guillotine and the reign of terror.
When I saw how the head was severed from the body and heard the thud of each part as it fell into the box, I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act.
A seed of doubt had been sown in Tolstoy's philosophy.
Distraction
The reality of death punctured Tolstoy's soap bubble philosophy of 'progress.' But, at the age of 34, Tolstoy married and began having children. The joys of family life served as a distraction from his existential angst and "completely diverted me from any search for the overall meaning of life." At this point, Tolstoy was already a well known author and teacher, but he now he wrote primarily to support his family and to improve their material situation. And he was remarkably successful.
At that time my whole life was focused on my family, my wife, my children, and thus on a concern for improving our way of life. My striving for personal perfection, which had already been replaced by a striving for perfection in general, a striving for progress, now became a striving for what was best for my family and me.
Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's Estate
Despite writing his most successful novels at this time, there was a fly buzzing in the back of Tolstoy's mind all the while. He began having "moments of bewilderment" where he would stop and ask: Why? What's the point of this? He was able for sometime to wave these questions away as pointless, childish even.
I thought that the answers to them were well known and that if I should ever want to resolve them, it would not be too hard for me; it was just that I could not be bothered with it now, but if I should take it upon myself, then I would find the answers.
…
But as soon as I laid my hands on them and tried to resolve them, I was immediately convinced, first of all, that they were not childish and foolish questions but the most vital and profound questions in life, and, secondly, that no matter how much I pondered them there was no way I could resolve them.
Even as he considered his own fame, he says to himself: "Very well, you will be more famous than Gogol, Pushkin, Shakespeare, Moliere, more famous than all the writers in the world-so what? And I could find absolutely no reply."
Death
Finally turning his attention to the question of Why? resulted in Tolstoy entering a near catatonic state. He is able to "breathe, eat, drink, and sleep" but nothing else. Tolstoy was so unravelled that he had to invent clever ruses to stop himself from committing suicide. He stopped hunting with a gun and removed all rope from his house, lest he take his own life.
What was it about Tolstoy's question of Why? that left him so thoroughly crushed? He explains:
My question, the question that had brought me to the edge of suicide when I was fifty years old, was the simplest question lying in the soul of every human being, from a silly child to the wisest of the elders, the question without which life is impossible…Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitably approaching death?
Portrait of Tolstoy, c. 1878
If the wave is going to come to wash away the sand castle, does it matter how well it is built? Are artistry and thoughtfulness and design any different than slap-dash and laziness if both are going to be reduced to nothing?
In Tolstoy's telling of the fable of the dragon, he explains that on the bush the traveller clings to there is a spot of honey that distracts the man from his plight. The honey represents everything in life that serves as a diversion, from the carnal pleasures of Tolstoy's younger life, to his more mature pleasures of family and literary success. But, of course, the honey of distraction only works for so long. In time, the weakness of grip and the sounds of the dragon drown out any pleasure—you can't ignore death forever. "I try to suck the honey that once consoled me, but the honey is no longer sweet."
The former delusion of the happiness of life that had concealed from me the horror of the dragon no longer deceives me. No matter how much I tell myself that I cannot understand the meaning of life, that I should live without thinking about it, I cannot do this because I have done it for too long already. Now I cannot help seeing the days and nights rushing toward me and leading me to death. I see only this, and this alone is truth. Everything else is a lie.
Tolstoy had spent the whole of his life assuming that he would discover the meaning to life, that he would crest the hill and find the goal he had been progressing towards. But now, as the weight of death grows heavier in his mind, he is no longer confident that he will crest that hill. Or, worst yet, perhaps he has already crested the hill, only to find…nothing.
If a fairy had come and offered to fulfill my every wish, I would not have known what to wish for…I did not even want to discover truth anymore because I had guessed what it was. The truth was that life is meaningless.
Despair
Most people living with the kind of forward-tilt that Tolstoy had employed—looking ahead to some future goal that will answer the riddles, heal the ache, give sense to the meaning of it all—do not arrive at the kind of fame and fortune that Tolstoy did. Thus, they are convinced that their feelings of hollowness and resentment come from their material circumstances: Once I get married…once I have kids…once I make more money…once I am published, etc. But Tolstoy, like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, had reached the mountain top that only a few persons in all of history do…only to find it empty. Tolstoy's memoir sounds eerily similar to the reflections of Solomon in Ecclesiastes:
"I should have been considered a completely happy man," writes Tolstoy.
"I kept my heart from no pleasure," writes Solomon (Eccl 2:10).
"I had a large estate that was growing and expanding without any effort on my part," says Tolstoy.
"I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself…I also gathered for myself silver and gold," says Solomon (Ecc 2:4, 8).
"More than ever I was respected…I could claim a certain renown without really deluding myself," Tolstoy claims.
"I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me," Solomon claims (Ecc 2:9).
"And," writes Tolstoy, "in such a state of affairs I came to a point where I could not live."
"So I hated life," says Solomon, "because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind," (Eccl 2:17).
Tolstoy actually cites Ecclesiastes extensively in his memoir, and constantly compares himself to Solomon, to prove that one can have it all…and be miserably empty, confused, and left aimless in life.
I could not be deceived. All is vanity. Happy is he who has never been born; death is better than life; we must rid ourselves of life.
Photo of Tolstoy, c. 1908
Doubt
After realizing that life was absurd and evil, Tolstoy knew that most logically consistent action was suicide. Why drag life out if everything is pointless? Yet, he could not bring himself to do it. "Now I see that if I did not kill myself, it was because I had some vague notion that my ideas were all wrong."
Tolstoy notices that all of the ordinary people around him—the farmers and milkmaids and children—don't share his sense of ennui. "It turned out that all of humanity had some kind of knowledge of the meaning of life which I had overlooked and held in contempt." When left in the isolated closet of his own rationalism, Tolstoy could find no answers, no meaning of life. Yet, when he looked out at the large mass of normal people living, working, and dying, he saw that they all possessed a great sense of purpose and meaning. None of them languished as Tolstoy did; all of them thought suicide a great evil, not a logical necessity. At first, Tolstoy assumed this was because they were ignorant and uneducated, intoxicated with the honey of life. But, something pushed Tolstoy beyond this intellectual snobbery to consider that perhaps he was the ignorant one. Maybe he was missing something.
What did the average man have that Tolstoy lacked?
Faith. Faith in a God who bestowed meaning, who had designed a purpose for all mankind, regardless of their material success or station in life. When looking at the faithful, he saw that they had simple answers to all of Tolstoy's questions. When asked about the meaning of life—questions that the titan of intellect, Tolstoy, could not answer—the average peasant could quickly explain:
However I may put the question of how I am to live, the answer is: according to the law of God.
Is there anything real that will come of my life? Eternal torment or eternal happiness.
What meaning is there which is not destroyed by death? Union with the infinite God, paradise.
But this was infuriating to Tolstoy. To assume that the meaning to life was found in religion was like returning to the nursery as a grown man. Faith was for the naive, for the credulous, for the superstitious; it was the denial of rationality, not the answer that rationality itself demanded.
My position was terrible. I knew that I could find nothing in the way of rational knowledge except a denial of life; and in faith I could find nothing except a denial of reason, and this was even more impossible than a denial of life.
But, amazingly, Tolstoy doesn't stop there.
I ran into a contradiction from which there were only two ways out: either the thing that I had referred to as reason was not as rational as I had thought, or the thing that I took to be irrational was not as irrational as I had thought.
In other words, Tolstoy began to doubt his doubts.
Deliverance
After examining possible alternatives in science and philosophy and finding them equally insufficient, Tolstoy has a flash of insight. What he is searching for is a meaning and purpose that extends beyond his finite existence, something that matters on the other side of his death. But to possess meaning that extends beyond the bounds of the finite requires contact with what is infinite. But, by definition, he will never find that infinite within the realm of the finite—to what the rational mind can produce, what science can prove. Thus his quest will be doomed.
Faith, however, looks to the realm of the transcendent, to the infinite God who can bridge the gap, who grant meaning and eternal life to us finite creatures. To those who possess faith, our lives, however brief or long, however spectacular or mundane, are freighted with eternal meaning because they have been made, directed, and intended by an eternal God who has destined us for eternal life.
…faith gives infinite meaning to the finite existence of man, meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation, and death. Therefore, the meaning of life and the possibility of living may be found in faith alone.
When the option of returning to faith in God first presented itself, Tolstoy despised the thought as childish. Now, he openly acknowledged that the faith of a child was precisely what he needed. "In essence I returned to the first things, to the things of childhood and youth."
Deus
Tolstoy's account isn't a model to necessarily be implemented. It is, at a minimum, a journal of a man's hard-earned journey out of skepticism, of doubting the doubts. The faith that he eventually arrives at is thoroughly heterodox. He rejects the Trinity, abandons his wife because he believes celibacy to be holier than married life, rejects all sacraments, and advocates an anarcho-pacifism that results in him being excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church. Further, he actually misunderstands Solomon's account in Ecclesiastes, assuming that the point of the book is to lead you to believe that life is meaningless.
This is only half of Solomon's argument, but it is the half that is so powerfully illustrated by Tolstoy's memoir: the vanity of life with no reference to God. But Tolstoy's conclusion—life only makes sense with faith—is the same conclusion that Ecclesiastes reaches: "The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man," (Eccl 12:13).
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