Not content to profess his new faith in letters to his friends, he decided to bequeath it to Russia and the world, in a series of books: first,
his Confession, begun in 1879, then a Criticism of Dogmatic Theology (1880), Union and Translation of the Four Gospels (1882) and lastly, What I Believe (1883). In these four complementary books, he sought to define the origins of his torment and the outcome of his reflections. "Leo is still working, as he calls it," Sonya wrote to her sister on November 7, 1879, "but alas! all he is producing are philosophical disquisitions! He reads and thinks until it gives him headache. And all in order to prove that the Church does not accord with the Gospels. There are not ten people in Russia who can be interested in such a subject. But there's nothing to be done. My only hope is that he will soon get over it, and it will pass, like a disease."
Far from passing, the "disease" was developing complications. By thinking about it night and day, Tolstoy was aggravating his case. Ills Confession was the tale of the internal struggle that led him to leave the Church. To be sure, the desire for total honesty that prompted it is praiseworthy, and many of its pages arc remarkable for their tragic beauty, but the general impression created by the book is an unhealthy one of public exposure and flagellation. One continually feels that the author is burrowing into his dung-heap with too-evident relish. The extravagance of his language casts doubts 011 the nobility of his purpose. At the end of the book one wonders whether this display of Christian humility is not rather an orgy of masochistic pride, for self- criticism, when performed in broad daylight, can produce a kind of intoxication, and setting oneself up as an example not to follow may be another way of attracting attention.
"I killed men in the war," he writes, "I fought duels; playing cards, I squandered money extorted from the peasants, and I punished them
cruelly: I fornicated with women of easy virtue and deceived husbands.
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Lies, theft, adultery, drunkenness and brutality of every sort, I have committed ever)' shameful act; there is no crime I am not acquainted with." Elsewhere he calls himself "a base and criminal man" and a "vermin"—flashy eloquence and greasepaint. He struts in his rags, he wallows in sham humility, and more than ever, reviling himself, he adores himself.
In the Criticism of Dogmatic Theology he wages a frontal attack on the teachings of the Orthodox Church. In the name of reason he rejects all that is beyond his understanding, beginning with the dogma of the Trinity: "Let us suppose that God lives on Olympus, that God is made of gold, that there is no God, that there arc fourteen gods, that God has several children or one son. All these affirmations may be strange and barbaric, but each of them is based on one idea, one concept. But that God is one and three can be based on no con-
ccpt or idea." Further on, he refuses to accept that Jesus is "the second person of God who became incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary through the intervention of the Holy Ghost." Demons and angels, the creation of the world in six days, the story of Adam and the serpent, salvation and eternal damnation are just so many primitive legends. At times his refutation of the traditional trappings of religion reveals the author's fragmentary knowledge and specious argumentation, ill- hidden by the polemicist's fervor.
Still more singular is his claim to offer a personal and original version of the divine message, in the Union and Translation of the Four Gospels. His knowledge of Greek is insufficient, so he hastily learns Hebrew in order to penetrate and compare the sacred texts. He attempts to throw light on what he cannot understand through the works of the exegctes: Dom Calmct, Reuss, Griesbach, Tischendorf, Meyer, Liicke, etc. By good fortune, his children have a new tutor, the young philologist Ivakin; whenever Tolstoy encounters some difficulty in translation, he runs to him and thrusts the Greek Bible under his nose. "I translated the passage he pointed out to me," Ivakin recounts in his reminiscences, "and most of the time my translation concurred with that of the Church." Tolstoy was greatly vexed at this. He would have liked the text to say exactly what he thought it ought to say: " 'Can't that be interpreted to mean this or that?' he would ask. And he told me what he wanted. I pored over the lexicons and did the impossible to satisfy him." 'Ilius, carried away by his passion to convince, he sometimes lost sight of the truth in his efforts to impose his version of it at all costs. In a fever of excitement, he would ay out, "What do I care whether Christ is risen! Is he risen? Well, God be with him! What I care about is to find out what I must do, how I must live!"25
He relied on his intuition, his heart, to rediscover the sources of Christianity. Starting with the idea that all four Gospels were describing the same events, he rearranged them in chronological order into a single text. The Gospels according to Sts. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were superseded by the Gospel according to St. Leo, which is no more nor less than another of his rules of life. It is embodied in the fourth part of his mystical series, What 1 Believe. The entire foundation of the Tolstovan faith is in the Sermon on the Mount. Six com- mandments: "Thou shalt not be angry, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not swear, thou shalt not resist evil by evil, thou shalt have no enemies, thou shalt love God and thy neighbor as thyself." With prodigious naivctd Tolstoy observes, "Strange as it may seem, it was necessary for me to discover these rules after eighteen centuries, as though for the first time." What Tolstoy really wanted was to believe
in God and to live according to Christian morality, while denying the divinity of Christ.
It required courage to adopt a position in open opposition to the Church, in a country in which the Church was a State institution. Since the publication of such inflammatory religious writings was out of the question, Tolstoy had a number of manuscript copies made and circulated among the public. Later he published a printed edition of What I Believe, limited to thirty copies, which could be done without authorization from the censor. Even so, the police seized every one.I Union and Translation of the Four Gospels was first published in Geneva in Russian, and French and German translations soon appeared elsewhere abroad.
"You used to be worried because you had no faith; why aren't you happy now that you have it?" Sonya sighed. Even Fet was unable to go along with his friend's newest passion. Strakhov, however, continued to sing the master's praises: "Not only have you amazed me, inestimable Leo Nikolayevich, as you have often done in the past, but this time you have given me peace and warmed my heart. . . . My God, it's good! When I think of you, your tastes, your habits, your work, when I remember the horror of every form of deceit that is expressed in all your books and permeates your life, then I can understand how you arrived where you arc now. . . . Please, do not chidc mc for these words of praise. I need to believe in you; that belief is my sole support. . . . I shall cling to you and, I hope, be saved."2®