A Confession

Tolstoy relates that he married at age 34 and shortly afterward lived abroad in Europe, during which time his belief in perfectibility turned into a belief in progress. After witnessing the disturbing scene of a beheading in Paris in 1857, Tolstoy resolved to start making moral judgments based on his sense of right and wrong rather than the beliefs of others. His faith in progress amounted to the belief that “everything is developing, and I am developing; the reason why I am developing in this way will come to light, along with everything else” (23), which Tolstoy admits is a shaky, uncertain belief that forces one to live as if “being carried along in a boat by the waves of the wind” (22).

Tolstoy tells the reader that he returned to the Russian countryside to teach in peasant schools, where he took on a more critical attitude toward progress. He was hounded by the uncomfortable truth that he did not understand what he was teaching, and this truth was magnified during his time as a magazine publisher. Tolstoy became spiritually stuck; he spent some time living like an animal in the wilderness, and finally returned to focus on his family, which became the most important thing for the author and replaced his striving for progress and perfection.

Fifteen years passed this way during which Tolstoy continued to write. He says that five years before he began writing what would become A Confession he was struck with intermittent depression and indecisiveness regarding the meaning of life. He kept putting off difficult questions regarding the meaning of his actions and the point of existence. When he finally decided to take these questions seriously, he found that they were “the most vital and profound questions in life” (27), which he was unable to resolve.