w h o a r . c o . n z

“..As Pevear outlines in his introduction to the new collection ..

.. the last decades of Tolstoy’s life were marked by a turn toward ideological radicalism and spiritual extremity.

In a series of works composed in the wake of Anna Karenina (1878)–A Confession, the first and most powerful, described his own crisis and conversion; ..

.. others bear titles like “What Men Live By” .. and The Kingdom of God Is Within You–

– he expounded the moral philosophy that became known around the world as “Tolstoyism”: ..

..anarchist, pacifist, ascetic, egalitarian, vegetarian, anti-church.

The Sermon on the Mount became the central text of Tolstoy’s renovated Christianity; ..

.. its highest ideal, borrowed from the Russian mendicant tradition as well as, via Schopenhauer, from Eastern religion ..

.. was renunciation: ..

.. the surrender not only of material possessions ..

.. but of all attachment to this world .. this life..”

go to source/story>>The Renunciation Artist: On Leo Tolstoy

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