Ask HN: Anyone else read A Confession by Tolstoy?

13 points by mholubowski 2 years ago | 6 comments

I’ve read a lot of books in my life, including others by Tolstoy and his contemporaries - and entirely different types of books such as Harry Potter and Javascript, The Good Parts.

Recently, I found and read Tolstoy’s A Confession. It immediately struck me as the most important thing I’ve ever read. Feels like it should be state mandated reading, has me absolutely frozen and inspecting my own life.

Has anyone else read it? I suppose at some level the purpose of my post here is to search for some additional validation to the tune of: “yes indeed, you have in fact stumbled upon a life changing 80 pages, as I also did some time ago”.

- your boi

cableshaft 2 years ago |

It's been probably a decade or more since I read it, but I remember it having a similar effect on me at the time. I don't remember what specifically in there had that effect anymore though, so I'm probably due for a reread.

If I remember correctly, it was about Tolstoy's struggle to find meaning in his life, even after having a wife, several kids, and finding lots of success with his writing and a large house. He experiments with and discusses quite a few philosophies in a fairly frank manner before circling back around to Christianity, and does his best to make a case for it based on logic and comparing with his past experiences.

But even for people who aren't religious (I'm not really that religious myself) and don't want to be, I think they'll still relate to his struggle to find meaning and find some useful and thought provoking ideas in there.

I do agree that more (most?) people should read it. I even gifted a copy of it to a good friend at the time.

Other books where I had a similar experience from reading them include Siddhartha by Herman Hesse, The Conquest of Happiness by Bertrand Russell, and The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch.

In particular Siddhartha had a lot of similarities to A Confession, in subject matter and structure, although it's told as a third person narrative and not as a personal account.

What were some of the takeaways you got from reading it?

SubGenius 2 years ago | |

I ought to reread Siddhartha, as it's been a while. Have you read his other works? I can recommend Narcissus and Goldmund - it's absolutely beautiful.

ZeroGravitas 2 years ago |

Standard ebooks version:

https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leo-tolstoy/a-confession/a...

Their blurb:

> Leo Tolstoy wrote this short meditation on sadness and the meaning of life when he was middle aged. He had already completed his masterworks, Anna Karenina and War and Peace, reared fourteen children, and gained fame and acclaim in Russia as a man of letters. But despite having attained that success, he still found himself unhappy and always returning to the disturbing idea that all achievement is meaningless.

> A Confession is his attempt to put these thoughts in words as he teetered on the brink of suicide. It forms the first in a four-volume series that included A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, The Gospel in Brief, and What I Believe (also known as My Religion or My Faith).

SubGenius 2 years ago |

I have not, but it's been on my audiobook backlog for a bit. Hoping to get to it soon.

To be honest, I've felt this way about many books - as though I'd read them at a point in life when their message exactly resonated with me.

Sometimes it's happens that a book I read a long time ago didn't have much impact, but a reread at a later date has me feeling the same way as you.

There are some books I keep rereading, just to experience that feeling again, although it's not quite the same. I suppose our exact life situation at the moment of reading decides the life-changing impact of a book.

Being a big Tolstoy fan, I'm expecting the book to be life-changing anyway.

besnn00 2 years ago |

I also read it a few days ago and for me it was very underwhelming. A disappointment for me was that Tolstoi was always looking for some perfection or regularity that would explain everything. It is arrogant of us to think that there should be something when as far as we can see there is only all that has ever been and nothing more. But I think there was a hidden theme there, which is something that many people who have read Nietzsche but also positive nihilists agree with: we give meaning to life. This was what Tolstoi found in tradition. A meaning that had been passed to new generations, evolving bit by bit but retaining it's essence. Only he couldn't stand that God was so ingrained in it.

kyting 2 years ago |

I haven't read it yet. It should be interesting to compare with Augustine and Russell's Confessions.