Dreams in Leo Tolstoy’s Spiritual Searchings
By Vladimir Perudominsky
The concepts of “sleep” and “awakening” were an extremely important allegory for Leo Tolstoy in his moral meditations from youth till deep old age. “There is a different man inside me, who sometimes sleeps”. 1 Or: “...I am extremely sleepy intellectually and even spiritually” [55; 173]*. In his diary for 1895 Tolstoy wrote: “I continue to be idle and bad. No thoughts, no feelings. Moral hibernation” [53; 22]. Here is an entry for 1896: “I have been struggling over my work for several days, but have made no progress. I am asleep. I thought I would finish the draft copy somehow, but have not been able to do so. A foul mood, intensified by the emptiness, the impoverished self-satisfied cold emptiness of the life around me” [53; 95]. In describing the “life around him”, the life of those who were beside with him, he draws again on the concepts of sleep and awakening: “It is no use speaking to such people until they have slept their fill. It’s fearful” [53; 117].
“To sleep” for Tolstoy meant to depart from the life which embraced those moral and religious principles which he felt in duty bound to follow. In Resurrection he writes about the need “to cleanse the soul”: a person has to be aware of the slowing-down and, sometimes a complete stoppage of his internal life, he must remove the litter which has cluttered his soul and caused this stoppage. By the “cleansing of soul” Tolstoy meant the awakening of one’s spiritual essence, bound up and suppressed by everyday temptations.
“Moral decline, readiness to yield to temptation, to fall, this is most often the state of somnambulism, that is, the condition in which the higher centers, the spiritual powers are inactive, asleep. In order not to succumb, it is not necessary to struggle, to invent remedies: all that is needed is to understand that you are asleep and to try and wake up. I remember how often, in such moments of temptation, I sort of shook myself physically in order to wake up. You must do what you do when suffering from a nightmare: ask yourself ‘Perhaps I am sleeping?’ And then you will awaken” [52; 31].
“Today I woke up. I feel good,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary [56; 37].
.
.
.
Tired of being sorry
The concepts of “sleep” and “awakening” were an extremely important allegory for Leo Tolstoy in his moral meditations from youth till deep old age. “There is a different man inside me, who sometimes sleeps”. 1 Or: “...I am extremely sleepy intellectually and even spiritually” [55; 173]*. In his diary for 1895 Tolstoy wrote: “I continue to be idle and bad. No thoughts, no feelings. Moral hibernation” [53; 22]. Here is an entry for 1896: “I have been struggling over my work for several days, but have made no progress. I am asleep. I thought I would finish the draft copy somehow, but have not been able to do so. A foul mood, intensified by the emptiness, the impoverished self-satisfied cold emptiness of the life around me” [53; 95]. In describing the “life around him”, the life of those who were beside with him, he draws again on the concepts of sleep and awakening: “It is no use speaking to such people until they have slept their fill. It’s fearful” [53; 117].
“To sleep” for Tolstoy meant to depart from the life which embraced those moral and religious principles which he felt in duty bound to follow. In Resurrection he writes about the need “to cleanse the soul”: a person has to be aware of the slowing-down and, sometimes a complete stoppage of his internal life, he must remove the litter which has cluttered his soul and caused this stoppage. By the “cleansing of soul” Tolstoy meant the awakening of one’s spiritual essence, bound up and suppressed by everyday temptations.
“Moral decline, readiness to yield to temptation, to fall, this is most often the state of somnambulism, that is, the condition in which the higher centers, the spiritual powers are inactive, asleep. In order not to succumb, it is not necessary to struggle, to invent remedies: all that is needed is to understand that you are asleep and to try and wake up. I remember how often, in such moments of temptation, I sort of shook myself physically in order to wake up. You must do what you do when suffering from a nightmare: ask yourself ‘Perhaps I am sleeping?’ And then you will awaken” [52; 31].
“Today I woke up. I feel good,” Tolstoy wrote in his diary [56; 37].
.
.
.
Tired of being sorry