The first book-length study on the subject in any language, Tolstoy
and the Religious Culture of His Time treats Tolstoy's experience
as a massive philosophical and religious project rather than a
crisis-laden tragedy. Inessa Medzhibovskaya explains the evolution
of Tolstoy's religious outlook based on his ongoing dialogue with
the tradition of conversion in Europe and Russia, as well as on the
demands of his own heart, mind, and spirit. The author
contextualizes Tolstoy's conversion, comparing his pattern of
religious conversion with that of other notable religious
converts-Saint Paul, Saint Augustine, Luther, Pascal, Rousseau-as
well with that of Tolstoy's countrymen-Pushkin, Gogol, Chaadaev,
Stankevich, Belinsky, Herzen, and Dostoevsky. Stressing the
importance of the religious culture of his time for Tolstoy, this
study investigates the nineteenth century debates that inspired and
repelled Tolstoy as he weighed arguments for or against faith in
his dialogues with the culture of his time, covering widely
differing fields and disciplines of experimental knowledge. The
author considers German Romantic philosophy, the natural sciences,
pragmatist religious solutions, theories of social progress and
evolution, and the historical school of Christianity.
Medzhibovskaya stresses the fact that influential intellectual
currents were as important to Tolstoy as believers and nonbelievers
were from and beyond his immediate environment. The author argues
that, in this sense, Tolstoy's conversion emerges as deeply
intertextual, and this surprising discovery should not diminish our
trust in Tolstoy's sincerity during his religious evolution, which
occurred both spontaneously as well as deliberately. The polyphony
of discreet spiritual moments that Tolstoy created by fusing in his
narratives of conversion religious and artistic realms is arguably
his greatest contribution to spiritual autobiography.
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