In its final form the Confession was intended as an introduction to Tolstoj's polemical treatise on Orthodox dogmatic theology (Issledovanie dogmati eskogo bogoslovija (1879-80). These two works together with his translation of the gospels (Soedinenie i perevod etyrex evangelij) and the systematic exposition of his new faith (V em moja vera?) represented his major statements on the religious questions which were to pre-occupy him for the rest of his life. As religious literature the Confession found both defenders and assailants; but those critics who were indifferent to the religious crisis it depicts either understated its value or attempted to demonstrate its relevance to the pressing social issues of the day. With few exceptions this trend has continued to our own time.¹ While acknowledging the importance and even the beauty of the Confession, critics have generally failed to deal meaningfully with its purely artistic features. Although it was conceived as a preface to the later religious writings, its character is not exclusively functional or "cognitive," as even the most cursory reading will reveal. This paper is a preliminary attempt to explore and define the poetic value of Tolstoj's treatise apart from its role in the evolution of his religious thought. Specifically, it will focus attention on the structural design of the work, the development of its most important themes, the special role of parables and extended similes, and the use of classical rhetorical devices.

The Confession consists of sixteen chapters which are logically developed, arranged, and interrelated through a system of recurring themes and elaborate comparisons. Nicolas Weisbein has described the structural framework with the following scheme (130-31): the first three chapters are a historical survey of Tolstoj's spiritual dilemma; chapters 4-7 present the reason for his conversion; and the remaining chapters examine the faith which he has attained. Although this scheme is basically accurate, it is not sufficiently detailed. Each chapter has a specific role to play, and in this "poetry of thought" each is related to the others both aesthetically and logically. Although the Confession was intended as a preface, only the last chapter, the sixteenth, explicitly serves this purpose. At the same time it functions as an epilogue to the fifteen preceding chapters. Because its tone and theme set it apart from the rest of the work, it is advisable to consider the first fifteen chapters as the body of the Confession proper.

Chapters 1-3, as Weisbein indicates, are essentially autobiographical. The exposition is dynamic and swift, proceeding not only along logical lines to the inexorable crisis adumbrated in chapter 3, but in chronological order from Tolstoj's childhood to the fiftieth year of his life. In chapter 1 Tolstoj tells the reader how his faith in the teachings of the Church was replaced by faith in selfperfection. The second details his military career and his early years as a writer. The third shows him as teacher, family man, and renowned author. The disillusionment described at the end of the chapter foreshadows the total despair of chapter 4. Intended as a sharp contrast to the preceding three chapters, the fourth represents a static interlude, the theme of which is stated in the very first sentence: "My life stopped."² It is followed by seven chapters (5-11) which cover a relatively brief period in the author's life but present in great detail the arduous intellectual labors which result in a rebirth of religious faith. The process begins as Tolstoj turns for consolation to man's knowledge: to empirical science in chapter 5 and to philosophy in chapter 6. Finding no satisfactory answer in either, he begins to examine the beliefs and behavior of the people around him. At first he observes the members of his own social class (chapter 7) and then the Russian peasantry (chapter 8). Chapters 9 and 10 summarize and synthesize the preceding four. The findings of chapters 5 and 6 are re-examined and properly evaluated in chapter 9. After a reconsideration of chapters 7 and 8 (in chapter 10) Tolstoj accepts the faith of the Russian people. In chapter 11 he consolidates his gains by reviewing all the earlier arguments; at the same time he points to the next crisis, described inthe following chapter. Like chapter 4, chapter 12 is basically static. Once again life seems to stop in the face of a new dilemma—this time, the search for God. The resolution of the problem, expressed metaphorically in the parable of the boat, is a direct answer to the pessimistic parable of the traveler in the static fourth chapter. The structural symmetry in the Confession is reinforced by chapters 13-5, which correspond to the first three chapters as 12 corresponds to 4. Although the earlier sections treat a much longer period in Tolstoj's life, the latter chapters are also autobiographical in nature insofar as the author now lives the conclusions reached in the purely contemplative chapters (5-11). In addition, these final autobiographical notes lead up to the ultimate purpose of the Confession, which is openly stated in chapter 16. Here Tolstoj declares his intention of going to the sources: to study the theology of the Orthodox Church and to examine the Scriptures. The chapter ends with a dream, which succinctly outlines the struggle that has been waged and, presumably, won.

Thematic development in the Confession may be compared to that of the sonata form in music.³ In the opening chapter Tolstoj states his major themes, which are fully developed and frequently recapitulated in subsequent chapters. The first of these principal themes is the loss and rediscovery of religious faith. Tolstoj begins by describing the erosion of his childhood beliefs and their eventual transformation into an indefinable faith in lofty principles and self-perfection. Evaluating this new Weltanschauung, he emphasizes again and again what he regards as the foolishness of his position by the repeated use of the phrase "I could not say" or a variation of it. It appears whenever he seeks to define any belief or the purpose of any action prior to his crisis and conversion. An illustrative passage occurs toward the end of chapter 1: "What I believed in I could not say. I believed in God, or, rather, I did not deny God, but what sort of god I could not say. Nor did I deny Christ and his teachings, but what his teachings were I also could not say." (p. 3.) The same phrase occurs, though often in a variant form, when Tolstoj tries to determine what he hopes to accomplish by writing novels, what he intends to teach to peasant children, or how he is to answer the apparently unanswerable questions which besiege him at the height of his career. He implies that a loss of faith puts every man in a ridiculous and defenseless position, variously described as foolishness, ignorance, illness, and even madness.

Tolstoj treats the untenable position resulting from a rejection of pristine ideals as an inevitability in his own life and in the lives of most of his peers. It is inevitable merely because it is part of the very process of growth. The old disabuse the young, the young lose their beliefs, and they in turn corrupt the succeeding generation. The "foolishness" or "madness" perpetuates itself from one generation to the next. In chapters 1 and 2 Tolstoj describes his experiences passing from childhood to manhood. He recalls being scandalized by the jokes made at the expense of his older brother Dmitrij, who was a serious and devout youth at the time. As he himself matured, he found himself in a similar predicament, ridiculed for noble aspirations and praised for passions and vices ("Succumbing to these passions, I was becoming more like an adult, and I felt that people were pleased with me," p. 4). Like St. Augustine, Tolstoj allows the praise of others to undermine the goodness which he regards as inherent in early childhood.⁴ His degradation proceeds from passions to crimes to writing—all with the constant encouragement first of his elders and then of his contemporaries.

Further developing the theme of the loss and recovery of faith, Tolstoj finds that as he rises in the esteem of others, his self-esteem declines; this sets the stage for the crisis depicted in chapter 4. He insists, however, that even after the deterioration of his religious beliefs and in spite of his friends' contrary advice he continued to aspire to virtue: "With all my heart Iwanted to be good. But I was young, I had passions, and I was alone, completely alone, when I sought the good." (p. 4.) In a similar passage in his Confessions Rousseau shows how a man can become evil and unjust in his actions without losing his love of virtue.⁵ It is precisely such latent noble sentiments which rescue Tolstoj from his spiritual impasse, deliver him from his inconclusive ruminations, and enable him to accept the faith of the Russian people as the answer to his dilemma. To Tolstoj, this faith is an "irrational knowledge," which makes life possible despite the hopeless conclusions of the philosophers, whose ideas he outlines in chapter 6. He contends, however, that he has arrived at this knowledge through purely rational argument. Chapters 9 and 10, in which the theme of religious faith is most fully developed, are presented as a summary and evaluation of chapters 5-8, the most purely analytical chapters of the Confession. The anaphoric repetition of the phrase "I understood" at the end of chapter 10 and throughout chapter 11 emphasizes once again Tolstoj's conviction that his conclusions are fully in accord with the dictates of his reason. This conviction notwithstanding, it is the desire for good, characteristic of his youth and described in chapter 2, which predisposes him to reject what he considers the false standards of his social class (chapter 7), to turn to the common people, the "makers of life" (chapter 8), and to seek a principle which affirms life in the face of death (chapters 9 and 10). However questionable Tolstoj's arguments in the last of the analytical chapters, his insistence on the rationality of his search for faith provides a contrast and introduction to his irrational quest for God, which is the second principal theme of the Confession.⁶

It is a reminiscence of childhood which introduces the theme of God early in chapter 1. Tolstoj recalls the day when Vladimir Miljutin, a gymnasium student, revealed a great discovery to him and his brothers: that God does not exist.⁷ This information is received with interest and a degree of sympathy, as indicated in the final version of the Confession: "I remember that we were all very excited, and we accepted this news as something very intriguing and entirely possible" (p. 1). The implication is clear that the boys are inclined to believe their friend's revelation. In an earlier variant of this anecdote, however, the passage above ends with the clause, "although we did not believe him" (p. 488). The news which was not accepted in an early version is judged "entirely possible" in the final text. This is the starting point in Tolstoj's downfall. Significantly, the process begins with an idea acquired in school. Thus, as with the theme of faith, there is a connection between intellectual development and the loss of one's belief in God.

As Tolstoj grows into young manhood in chapters 2 and 3, his earlier belief in God yields to faith in self-perfection, in the writer's mission, and in the teacher's task. The theme of God is absent from these chapters (as is the word Bog). It returns, in covert form, only in chapter 4, where "life stops" and Tolstoj suspects that a nameless "someone" has played a cruel joke on him: " izn' moja est' kakaja-to kem-to sygrannaja nado mnoj glupaja i zlaja šutka" (p. 13). The sentiment and even the wording are strongly reminiscent of Lermontov's poem "I sku no i grustno." Like Tolstoj, the poet finds that life's hopes and joys are illusory and concludes that his existence is a fatuous jest: "I izn', kak posmotris' s xolodnym vniman'em vokrug,—/Takaja pustaja i glupaja šutka." In later chapters the Lermontov echo develops into a label attached to those members of Tolstoj's class who continue to live in spite of their rejection of God and their conviction that life is an absurdity.

In chapters 5-10 the theme of God recedes into the background once again, replaced by the "questions," "answers," and "meaning" which typify the middle section of the Confession. Then in chapter 11 Tolstoj reviews his former life and all the conclusions he has reached up to thispoint. The final paragraphs, especially the parable of the worker at the well, prepare the reader for chapter 12, the last "static" chapter and the ultimate response to the despair of chapter 4.

If Tolstoj arrives at faith through ratiocination in chapters 5-11, he rediscovers God through intuition in chapter 12. Religious faith as a general principle is presented as the concluding argument of an elaborate dialectic. But Tolstoj remains unsatisfied. Reason alone is inadequate. Ultimate satisfaction derives only from faith in God, and that faith, in Tolstoj's view, is achieved by intuitive and even mystical experience. In chapter 12, as in the numerous "conversion" scenes from War and Peace to the later fiction, the discovery of God is contingent upon the triumph of the irrational over the rational. Here the discovery is made through memory, the third major theme of the Confession. The connection between God and memory is made explicit: "But then I looked at myself and at what was happening inside me, and I remembered all the hundreds of times that I had died and come back to life. I remembered that I lived only when I believed in God." (p. 45.) The same notion is emphasized in the anaphoric insistence on the words "I returned," which in their context are the equivalent of "I remembered." Tolstoj remembers his former faith in God and believes once again: "I returned completely to the very beginning, to my childhood and my youth" (p. 46). In a variant of this chapter he expresses the view that the religious impulses which survived his childhood were rooted not in his earlier beliefs but in the secular literature which he avidly read as a young man (p. 490). In the final versions of both chapters 1 and 12, however, there is no indication of this. On the contrary, the early readings—in Voltaire, for example—only served to undermine his faith in God. In its final form the Confession is the story of memory, of a return to a former state of childlike acceptance. The parable which closes chapter 12 makes this quite clear. It relates Tolstoj's attempt to cross a river while the current carries him relentlessly downstream. Realizing that he is heading for the rapids and certain death, he "comes to his senses" (opomnilsja), and the parable ends with the following words: "But looking back, I saw a great many boats stubbornly and unceasingly trying to cross the current. I remembered (vspomnil) the shore, the oars, and my direction, and I began to row back upstream and toward the shore." (p. 47.) The same theme of salvation through memory is found in the dream at the end of the last chapter. The dream itself, added several years after Tolstoj began work on the Confession, is said to have been prompted by a rereading of the preceding chapters and the memory of the thoughts and feelings which the author had experienced while writing them. Inspired by the Confession, the dream is in effect a summation of it. Its conclusion stresses once again the role of memory in the process of conversion: "And it seemed that somebody was telling me: 'Look and remember.' And I woke up." (p. 59.)

Tolstoj develops his principal themes—the attainment of faith, the search for God, the importance of memory—in an intricate pattern of anticipations and repetitions. The most prominent and surely the most impressive means employed to dramatize his quest and conversion is the parable or the extended comparison. The parables of the Confession vivify the author's story and give it a Biblical grandeur quite suited to its subject and purpose. Their themes correspond to the principal sections of the work and fall into the following categories: (1) those which serve to characterize Tolstoj's state of mind before the crisis, (2) those which objectify the inner dilemma, and (3) those which offer a solution to the problem.

The first category is represented by a long comparison in chapter 2 between the literary confraternity, of which Tolstoj had been a member in the late 1850's, and the inmates of a madhouse. In their eagerness to be praised, their quickness to take offense, and their determination to out-shout one another, the writers are similar to and eventually even identicalwith madmen. In chapter 8 Tolstoj takes up the theme of madness again: be finds it to be characteristic of those members of his social class who have completely ignored the broad masses of the people. The "madness" reappears in chapter 11 in an extended comparison of the educated classes with those people (here, an executioner, an alcoholic, and a madman) who spend their lives in a dark room convinced that they will perish if they leave their place of confinement. Questioned about the nature of human existence, they reply that life is the greatest evil. Tolstoj comments: "The madman's answer would be completely correct, but only for him" (p. 42). Interpreting the parable of the worker at the well toward the end of the chapter and linking it to the earlier comparison, he states that some workers—the intellectuals—will not pump water from the well because they cannot understand why they must do so. They despise their master and ignore his commands.

The parables and comparisons dealing with the spiritual crisis itself begin in chapter 3, which is both a continuation of the autobiographical chapters and an introduction to the suspension of life in chapter 4. The first comparison is occasioned by the many unanswered questions which begin to harass Tolstoj at the height of his career. At first these questions are merely annoying, but in time they become more frequent and persistent until they coalesce into a "single black spot" (odno ernoe pjatno), which replaces the "empty space" (pustoe mesto) left by the erosion of faith in chapter 1. It is the darkness represented by the black spot which impels Tolstoj to suicide at the end of chapter 4: "The terror of the darkness was too great, and I wanted to free myself from it as quickly as possible, either with a noose or with a bullet. And it was this feeling which drew me most forcefully toward suicide." (p. 15.) But the darkness is "answered" in chapters 11 and 12, both of which are responses to chapter 4. In an allusion to the Gospel according to St. John in chapter 11, Tolstoj insists that the darkness is a matter of choice and that people prefer it because "their deeds are evil." In chapter 12 the light, which Tolstoj associates with belief in God, triumphs over the darkness: "And more brightly than ever before everything inside me and around me was illuminated, and that light has not left me" (p. 46).

Immediately after the comparison between the unanswered questions and the black spot, Tolstoj, in a noteworthy anticipation of the theme of The Death of Ivan Il'i, equates his condition at the time of his spiritual crisis to the state of a sick man whose affliction develops only gradually into prolonged suffering. The author adds: "The suffering increases and the patient no sooner turns around than he realizes that what he had assumed to be a sickness was that which was the most significant thing in the world to him—death" (p. 11). These words are answered only at the end of chapter 12: "And so the power of life was restored in me, and once again I began to live" (p. 47).

A comparison Tolstoj uses repeatedly to dramatize his crisis is to a man lost in a forest. It first appears in chapter 4, where the man who has lost his way begins to panic at the mere realization of his situation. Tolstoj too is terrified because he cannot cope with the problem that torments him at the zenith of his fortunes. The simile is elaborated at the beginning of chapter 6. Now the author finds himself in the forest of man's knowledge. From the tops of the trees (empirical science) he sees clearings but cannot find his way home. Entering the thicket (philosophy) he finds only darkness. The theme is reintroduced in chapter 11 when Tolstoj discovers that he was lost because he had "lived badly." In the following chapter he compares himself to a fledgling which has fallen from the nest and is squealing for its mother. In an early variant Tolstoj had chosen a puppy, not a bird, as the object of comparison (p. 505). Apparently the change was made in order to continue the imagery of the forest, for twoparagraphs later Tolstoj finds himself in the woods searching for God: "I remember it was early in the spring. I was alone in the woods listening to its sounds. I was listening and thinking about one thing all the time just as I had constantly thought the same thing those past three years. I was looking for God again" (p. 45). The structure of the passages immediately following and especially the use of interior monologue to mark the various stages of Tolstoj's quest suggest that it is also in a forest that he discovers the answer to his dilemma in a renewed faith in God. Now the darkness, which had been associated with the woods, turns to light.

The image of the man lost in a forest is related to the numerous allusions in the Confession to Tolstoj's age at the time of his spiritual crisis: the age of fifty. The subject is introduced in chapter 3, when the author contends that the early years of his marriage only postponed the dilemma which faced him approximately fifteen years later. Since he was married in 1862, the crisis apparently began in 1877, i.e., at a time when he was nearly fifty years old. In chapter 4 the moments of doubt and dejection persist until they poison his life at its peak ("before I was fifty"). Later in the same chapter he sees himself at the "summit of life." In chapter 5 the age of fifty is mentioned again, at the moment when Tolstoj contemplates suicide because he cannot determine the meaning of his existence. Fifty is the middle of life. This is clear in the parable of the boat when he loses the direction and abandons his oars "in the very middle of the stream." If the theme of age is linked to the imagery treated earlier, Tolstoj appears as a man lost in a forest in the middle of his life. Viewed in this light his dilemma strongly suggests the opening lines of Dante's Inferno: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/mi ritrovai per una selva oscura/che la via diritta era smarrita."⁸

The longest of the parables treating the feeling of desolation at the height of the crisis is the Indian legend recounted in chapter 4. It is the story of a traveler who finds himself menaced by a ferocious animal. He escapes by jumping into a dry well at the bottom of which is a dragon ready to devour him just as surely as the beast above. The traveler desperately clings to a bush growing in the crevices of the well, although two mice, one black and the other white, are gnawing at its stem. On the leaves of the bush he sees honey, which he reaches out and licks with his tongue. The dragon, Tolstoj explains, is death; the mice are day and night eating away at his life; the honey is his consolations—his family and his art; but death is the great reality, and he concludes: "And this is no fable but the honest, indisputable, universally intelligible truth" (p. 14).

The gloom of the traveler's tale is dispelled by the parable of the worker in chapter 11, the first of three parables treating the resolution of Tolstoj's crisis. It is the story of a hungry and naked beggar who is taken from the street and given a job "moving a stick." At first he does not know why he is doing this, but he trusts his master unquestioningly. In time he realizes that he is pumping water from a well which irrigates rows of fruit trees. The ominous, dry well of chapter 4 has now become the source of life. There is little doubt that Tolstoj intended to respond to the parable of the traveler by reviving the image of the well. In an early version of chapter 8 he wrote: "I finally understood, finally broke through that wall separating me, a wise and learned man, from the foolish and the ignorant. I came to my senses as if I had sprung forth from a stifling well into the light of day" (p. 500). In the parable of chapter 11 the worker is at first puzzled by the well; he understands it only after he places his faith in his benevolent master. The master in the story is obviously God.

The parable representing Tolstoj's rediscovery of God in chapter 12 is prepared for by a passage in chapter 3. Ridiculing the faith in progress which he had substituted for his earlierfaith in God, Tolstoj likens his situation to that of a man in a boat battered by winds and waves. When he asks himself what direction he must take, he responds incongruously that he is being "carried off somewhere." Belief in progress is viewed as an irrelevant answer to the most important question in Tolstoj's life. In chapter 12 the boat reappears. In a tale that offers a contrast to the parable of the traveler in chapter 4, Tolstoj is supposed to cross a river in a boat. At first he merely sails with the current and drifts downstream. When he realizes, however, that he is heading toward destruction, he remembers his original destination (God), picks up the oars (faith), and arrives safely at the other shore. This parable is both an answer to the despair of the parable it is meant to balance and a summary of the journey Tolstoj has made from the faith of his childhood in chapter 1 to the rediscovery or memory of that faith in the "middle of his life."

The final chapter ends with the description of a dream Tolstoj had in 1882. Allegedly, it was inspired directly by the "thoughts and feelings" experienced during the writing of the Confession proper. If this is truly the case, his dream is as artistic as his conscious creations in the earlier chapters. He himself points out that it clarifies and summarizes the entire work. And that is precisely what it does. As a representation of Tolstoj's life up to that time and a restatement of the story told in the Confession, its meaning is transparent. There is no explanation at the end as there is at the end of the long parables in chapters 4 and 12; nevertheless, this too must be considered a parable. Tolstoj dreams that he is lying on a bed. All is well until he begins to think about what he is doing. This passage of the dream parallels chapters 1-3, which depict the loss of faith as the result of heightened consciousness and maturity. He notices that he is lying on straps which can be moved. When he begins to experiment with them, they slip away until the lower part of his body is hanging toward the ground. Looking down, he sees an unimaginably deep abyss. The reference here is to chapter 4 and specifically to the parable of the traveler looking down into the jaws of the dragon at the bottom of the well. At this point Tolstoj directs his attention upward and forgets the abyss below. His position seems secure, and his fear of destruction is gone. He begins to review what has happened to him: "I remember everything that occurred. I remember how it all happened: how I moved my legs, how I hung there, how I grew terrified and was saved from this terror by looking up" (pp. 58-59). These lines reflect Tolstoj's desperate search for the meaning of his life and his ultimate discovery of faith. But the ordeal is not over. He begins to wonder what is supporting the weight of his body as he looks upward. He discovers a column at his head and a loop extending from it, on which he lies securely. The column is firm yet physically impossible, since it has nothing to rest upon. It is clearly a symbol of God, and the episode is a reference to chapter 12. A voice in the dream now tells him to remember all that he has seen. The parable ends and he awakens.

The language of the Confession deserves a special study of its own. However, I treat only its most salient features here. Mirsky's assertion that "every detail, every turn of thought, every rhetorical cadence, is in its right place" (p. 300) is a good point of departure. But it is difficult to agree with him when he insists that Tolstoj spurns all the devices of traditional rhetoric. On the contrary, he makes effective use of the devices and syntactical constructions of classical rhetoric throughout the Confessions. Reference has already been made to his liberal use of anaphora, for example. In Chapters 10 and 11 the words "I understood" are used anaphorically ten times, as Tolstoj draws up the balance sheet of his speculations; "I remembered" appears five times in chapter 12 when the author returns to the God of his boyhood. In chapter 10 the phrase "in opposition to this" (v protivupolo nost' tomu) introduces five contrasts between the members of Tolstoj's class and the peasantry.

Certain key phrases recur at various points in the story. Developing the theme of foolishness—the foolishness of those who have fallen away—Tolstoj frequently uses the clause "I could not say" or a variation of it. In similar fashion the expression "that is how I lived" and its variations occur whenever one period of Tolstoj's life is ending and another is beginning: after his life in the army, after the first few years of his career as a writer, after fifteen years of marriage, and after his acceptance of the people's faith. The phrase always suggests that Tolstoj is ready to leave the plateau he has reached and continue his search. In chapter 16 the chain is broken by the dream, which begins with the words: "I wrote this three years ago" (p. 57). Tolstoj gives the impression that he has reached the last plateau and that he is content to remain there.

A striking rhetorical device in the Confession is the arrangement of nouns, adjectives, or verbs in groups of three. These triads can be found in abundance, but one example from chapter 10, a contrast of two triads, will suffice: "V protivupolo nost' tomu, to spokojnaja smert', bez u asa i ot ajanija, est'samoe redkoe isklju enie v našem kruge, smert'nespokojnaja, nepokornaja i neradostnaja est' samoe redkoe isklju enie sredi naroda" (p. 40). Like single words and phrases, clauses also frequently show a tripartite construction (the tricolon of classical rhetoric).

On occasion Tolstoj follows the advice of Cicero and punctuates the meaning of a passage with a line of rhythmic prose. Gusev has demonstrated that Tolstoj was quite conscious of this device, for he used it while working on his unfinished novel on Peter the Great.⁹ The reader is struck by the iambic cadence of such lines as the following: "I dumaju i uvstvuju i ja" (p. 26) toward the end of chapter 6 or "No v em byla ošibka, ja nikak $$Word$$ mog najti" (p. 31) at the very end of chapter 7. These rhythmic units confirm the reader's impression that Tolstoj has paid attention to the minutest details of euphony.

The elements treated above—the symmetrically balanced structural framework, the statement and exposition of themes, the use of parables and similes as illustrations to Tolstoj's search and discovery, and the presence of rhetorical ornamentation—are too often neglected in the critical literature on the Confession. Questions of genre and style also need to be investigated. While there is general agreement that Tolstoj did not cease to be an artist after his conversion, it must also be said that his artistry is evident in his religious writings as well as in his fiction. This study has attempted to show the Confession as a vivid, persuasive presentation of Tolstoj's spiritual peripeties and as a worthy introduction to the later religious treatises.

NOTES

¹ For a survey of critical opinion see N. N. Ardens, Tvor eskij put' L. N. Tolstogo (M.: AN SSSR, 1962), 374-75; B. I. Bursov, L. N. Tolstoj: Seminarij (L.: $$Word$$ 1963), 342; S. P. By kov, L. N. Tolstoj (M.: GIXL, 1954), 333-36; Hugh I'Anson Fausset, Tolstoy: The Inner Drama (New York: Harcourt Brace, n.d.), 196-207; M. S. Gromeka, Poslednie proizvedenija grafa L. N. Tolstogo: Kriti eskij ètjud (M.: N. N. Baxmetev, 1884); Derrick Leon, Tolstoy: His Life and Work (London: Routledge, 1944), 194-95; D. S. Mirsky, A History of Russian Literature, ed. Francis J. Whitfield (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 299-301; Alexander I. Nazaroff, Tolstoy: The Inconstant Genius (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1929), 215; Romain Rolland, Vie de Tolstoï, 10th ed. (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1921), 80-84; Antoni Semezuk, Lew Tolstoj (Warsaw: Wiedza powszechna, 1963), 221-33; Ernest J. Simmons, Tolstoy (Boston: Routledge & Kegal Paul, 1973), 103-06; A. M. Skabi evskij, "Mysli i zametki po povodu nravstvennofilosofskix idej gr. L. Tolstogo," So inenija, 3rd ed., ed. F. Pavlenkov (2 vols.; SPb.: Ju. N. Èrlix, 1903), II, 157-216; G. W. Spence, Tolstoy the Ascetic (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), 13-16; Henri Troyat, Tolstoï (Paris: Fayard, 1965), 480-81; Nicolas Weisbein, L'Evolution religieuse de Tolstoï (Paris: Librairie des Cinq Continents, 1960), 128-47.

² L. N. Tolstoj, Polnoe sobranie so inenij, ed. V. G. ertkov et al. (90 vols.; M., L.: GIXL, 1928-58), XXIII, 11. Subsequent page references in the text are to this volume. Translations are my own.

³ For a discussion of the sonata form in Tolstoj's earlier works see R. F. Christian, Tolstoy: A Critical Introduction (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), 61.

⁴ St. Augustine, Confessions (2 vols.; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1960), I, 38-40. The relevant passage is worth quoting in its entirety: "Non te amabam et fornicabar abs te, et fornicanti sonabat undique: 'euge, euge.' Amicitia enim mundi huius fornicatio est abs te et 'euge, euge' dicitur, ut pudeat, si non ita homo sit."

⁵ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Bruges: Editions Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959), I, 56.

⁶ In chapter 9 Tolstoj emphasizes that one must define one's faith first before searching for God.

⁷ In the final text Miljutin's name is only an initial. The disclosure of his identity might have been interesting to the first readers of the Confession because he had committed suicide in 1855 at the height of a brilliant academic career.

⁸ The parallel is not exact; Dante regarded the age of thirty-five as the middle of life, in accord with the Scriptures (cf. Psalms 90: 10).

⁹ N. N. Gusev, Lev Nikolaevi Tolstoj: Materialy k biografii s 1870 po 1881 god (M.: AN SSSR, 1963), 125.