Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression and estrangement from the world

A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty. By the time he was fifty, Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of literary immortality; he had a wife, a large estate and numerous children; he was a happy man and in good health - yet life had lost its meaning.

In this poignant confessional fragment, he records a period of his life when he began to turn away from fiction and aesthetics, and to search instead for a practical religion not promising future bliss, but giving bliss on earth.