That doesn’t mean I haven’t been reading. I have been making decent progress in the novel...not with the speed that I had started out with, but progress nonetheless.
M and I have been getting ready for the baby, and it seems that the “free time” I had in the past has been taken up with the preparations. I have no problem with this. We will all be making adjustments in our lives to welcome the little guy and those adjustments will trickle down to the smallest things like reading time.
So, the next place I have marker to discuss here is pictured below. Chapter 39. If you look closely, there is a small asterisk next to the last word in the first sentence of the chapter. If we flip back to the notes section, the note for this section reads:
The following description of the liturgy has become along with “Natasha at the opera” in War and Peace, a locus classicus used to illustrate Tolstoy’s technique of “defamiliarazation”. It was especially offensive to the pious and the clergy and contributed to the eventual decision to excommunicate him. Within the novel it should be contrasted with the earlier Easter Celebration which presents the liturgical event from the eyes of the faithful. Here Tolstoy’s estranged view helps stress the oppressive aspects of prison life and Maslova’s loss of faith.
An in the shot below, you will see the article discussing the excommunication which was covered by the New York Times in March of 1901. If you click on the photo, you should be able to get a better shot.
And below is an article detailing how even after 100 years, the Russian Orthodox Church would not bring him back into the fold.
"100 Years After Excommunication, Church Cannot Look Kindly Upon Tolstoy"
Russian Orthodox hierarchy rejects request of writer's great-great-grandson.
Andrei Zolotov | posted 3/01/2001 12:00AM
A hundred years after it excommunicated Leo Tolstoy, the Russian Orthodox Church has ignored a plea by his great-great-grandson, Vladimir Tolstoy, to reconsider the writings and reflections of the famous novelist.
Vladimir Tolstoy, director of Leo Tolstoy's Yasnaya Polyana estate museum, told ENI this week that he had written to the church's leader, Patriarch Alexei, in January asking him to review Tolstoy's teaching—the reason for his rejection by the church—on the grounds that the excommunication was a hindrance to national reconciliation.
He told ENI the media had misinterpreted his letter as a plea to lift the excommunication. "I was simply inviting the church to hold a dialogue on this painful subject," Tolstoy said in an interview. "In my letter, there was no request to lift the excommunication or to forgive Tolstoy."
In his letter to the patriarch, the writer's descendant stated that the decision on February 22, 1901, by the Russian Orthodox Church synod to excommunicate Tolstoy had had a "painful effect on all the following course of
The church's act had forced "every Russian Christian" to make a difficult "moral choice." "An Orthodox Christian cannot reject God, but it is also difficult to reject the national genius and prophet, who to this day constitutes the pride and glory of our national culture," Vladimir Tolstoy wrote…
In the late 1870s, after completing the two novels, Tolstoy underwent a profound spiritual crisis and began a search for the meaning of life. He found little solace in the writings of philosophers, theologians and scientists, but, as he declares in A Confession, published in 1884, he found insights in the daily life of Russian peasants who told him that everyone must serve God rather than living for themselves.
He emerged from his spiritual crisis as what some have described as a Christian anarchist, attached to the Gospel, but without any belief in immortality and seeing Christ as simply a man. At the same time, Tolstoy rejected the authority of the church and the government.
Tolstoy then gathered a big following as he dedicated most of the second part of his life to writing essays, pamphlets, didactic short stories and plays. His novel Resurrection, published in 1899, includes strong criticism of church ritual. Apparently this was one of the reasons for his excommunication. Tolstoy's views influenced European humanists and
…
At a press conference on March 4, Patriarch Alexei acknowledged Tolstoy as "a literary genius," but said that the writer's religious views were a different matter. "I do not think we have the right to force a man, who died [almost] 100 years ago, to return to the bosom of the church that he rejected," the patriarch said.
Vsevolod Chaplin, a senior Moscow Patriarchate official, told ENI. "I think everyone in our country, including believers, have respect for Tolstoy as a writer. When he expressed views that contradict its teaching and its spirit, the church, naturally, had the right to say that such views could not be considered Orthodox."
Father Chaplin pointed out that after the 1901 excommunication Tolstoy did not publicly repent for his views. Although there were various stories about the writer receiving absolution and communion before his death, there was strong indication that he had not, Chaplin said.
A review of Tolstoy's reflections and teaching "would make sense only if some proof were discovered that Tolstoy changed his views before his death," Father Chaplin said. "Otherwise, it makes no sense whatsoever." He added that excommunication was "not a curse, as some people think, but an attestation that the writer's beliefs very seriously disagreed with the Orthodox teaching."
Vladimir Tolstoy told ENI that "they [church officials] are trying to avoid the subject. But I received many letters and telephone calls. That reassured me that there is a lot to discuss here."
So, after 100 years, a bunch of old guys sitting in the church feel that an author such as Tolstoy, who wrote a series of essays and books which could have cast an ill-eye towards the Orthodox Christina Church, should not be accepted back into the community of Russian Orthodoxy.
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Well, I think that Tolstoy wouldn’t have trouble with that decision at all. In fact, I feel that if Tolstoy were to be magically transplanted into our time with all the knowledge that we now have (specifically in the fields of certain sciences…physics…cosmology etc.) his personal beliefs would be sharper and I doubt that he would feel the need to be welcomed back into the church.
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