Resurrection - Leo Tolstoy

Author: Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy

Tolstoy summons us to the barricades for love. As I hear him, he asks, ‘Is it not time for a revolution of the heart? Is it not time to recognize that mutual love and not economics or politics is the fundamental law of human life?’. Prince Nekhlyudov undergoes a spiritual crisis. While serving as a juror during the trial of a prostitute accused of murder, he realizes that the accused is Maslova, the peasant girl that he once seduced and abandoned after impregnating.

Tolstoy lived in a time of revolutionary fervor, but instead of Marxism, nihilism, or anarchism, Tolstoy--the “Christian anarchist”-- proposes a revolution of love. He calls for the abolition of courts, punishments, and prisons (and sexual intercourse), but I will let him explain all of that to you on his own. He also calls for the abandonment of organized religion and the reorganization of society based upon a literal interpretation of the Gospels. Could this writer whom no one would accuse of being balanced or psychologically healthy, help restore a sense of balance to us?

Depending on your tolerance for Tolstoy’s scrupulosity and beliefs, you will either love this as a novel of ideas or despise it as a polemical tract. His didacticism may annoy you, but he is convinced that love is invincible-- and Tolstoy’s ideals inspired Gandhi, Dorothy Day, and Martin Luther King. Will you meet Tolstoy at the barricades of your own conscience? 

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