32 pages • 1 hour read
Leo TolstoyA Confession
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1880A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Tolstoy relates that he was raised as an Orthodox Christian in Russia and trusted what his elders taught him about faith until age 18 when he lost his faith during his second year of university. The teasing of his ultrareligious brother Dmitri by his peers and elders taught him that if the formalities of faith were observed, like learning the catechism, it was unnecessary to take faith too seriously.
The author explains that the loss of faith happened the same way for him and others of his “social and cultural type” (14): the faithful live out their lives according to principles that are directly opposed to the teachings of their faith, so the teachings become increasingly foreign and irrelevant. Tolstoy writes that people who are avowed Orthodox Christians are generally less moral than nonbelievers.
Tolstoy’s belief in God and Jesus Christ continued after he stopped actively practicing religion, but the nature of his belief was unclear. His only true faith from the age of 16 was a “faith in perfection” (17), which involved studying and exercising to achieve moral and physical fitness. This effort evolved into a desire for perfection in the eyes of other people and, eventually, “a longing to be stronger than other people, that is, more renowned, more important, wealthier than others” (17).
Chapter 2 Summary
The young Tolstoy was ridiculed by his peers and elders for trying to be morally good and was instead rewarded for succumbing to the “vile passions” (17). This experience led him to become more like his elders, engaging in immoral behavior like cheating, lying, and acting violently.
Tolstoy took up writing “out of vanity, self-interest, and pride” (18) and was accepted into a community of writers in St. Petersburg. He lost his discipline and abandoned his self-improvement efforts as part of joining this community and adopted the views of these other writers, including the idea that this group played a crucial role in the “general development” of life (19). Tolstoy developed faith in “knowledge, poetry, and the evolution of life” (19) but began to doubt this faith after several years once he noticed how his fellow writers disagreed amongst themselves and mistreated each other. He began to see these writers and himself as immoral and repugnant. A desire for money and praise drove their efforts, and they reasoned that they were important because of their role in furthering the cause of enlightenment.
Chapters 1-2 Analysis
In the first chapter, Tolstoy introduces a major concern that will reappear throughout this work: the hypocrisy of religious people of his class. He is careful to clarify what type of Christian he is referring to, and we will see later that Tolstoy has positive things to say about the authentic faith of Russian peasants as opposed to the relatively affluent.
Tolstoy outlines his quest for self-improvement and his descent into vain pursuits in these early chapters. He presents a bleak view of human nature when he explains that his efforts to be morally good were ridiculed by his peers. Meanwhile, he was rewarded by his writer friends and reading audience for exhibiting the worst of human behavior. Even in his writing, which the author explains he pursued “out of vanity, self-interest, and pride” (18), Tolstoy felt the need to hide his quest for moral goodness under a veil of immorality to be successful. Despite his and his writing cohort’s desire to teach people, Tolstoy was already beginning to realize that he knew nothing and that his friends contradicted each other, a finding that later becomes applicable in his analysis of religion when he investigates the disagreements between the various Christian denominations.
Related Titles
By Leo Tolstoy
