Russian Literature and the spiritual regeneration of man
Lately I’ve been on a Russian literature kick, reading in particular Leo Tolstoy. I have always been a big fan of Dostoyevsky, but I have never read Tolstoy. So I started with a volume of his later short stories in the Everyman library edition. There are a lot of his short stories. Some of his stories are simple folk tales with very clear ethical messages. Some seemed similar to Jewish Hasidic folk tales or Aesop tales. Tolstoy's later writings are imbued with radical Gospel moral themes, such as non-violence and turning the other cheek, as well as stories of moral regeneration and redemption. One of his more famous short stories in this collection is the work, the Death of Ivan Illich, which explores the question of how we should die, and by extension how we should live our life in the knowledge of our own mortality. It is considered one of his masterpieces. After reading some of his short stories the main novel I read by Tolstoy was Resurrection. ...