Leo Tolstoy and The Bahá'í Faith

Fülszöveg

'Very profound. I know of no other so profound.' This was the final conclusion about the Bahá'í Faith of the great nineteenthcentury writer Leo Tolstoy, a few months before his death in 1910. Tolstoy estimated his philosophical and religious ideas to be of greater significance than the classic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina which made him a household name. He became dissatisfied with the Church as a young man and eventually was excommunicated in 1901. He tirelessly sought out knowledge of religious movements and ideas which might contribute to his vision of 'the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God, that is to say, the replacement of an organization of life in which division, falsehood and violence are all-powerful, by a new order in which harmony, truth and brotherhood will reign'. Tolstoy first heard of the Bahá'í teachings in 1894 at a time when the movement was known hardly at all in the West, and its leader was a prisoner in an obscure outpost of the Turkish... Tovább

Fülszöveg

'Very profound. I know of no other so profound.' This was the final conclusion about the Bahá'í Faith of the great nineteenthcentury writer Leo Tolstoy, a few months before his death in 1910. Tolstoy estimated his philosophical and religious ideas to be of greater significance than the classic novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina which made him a household name. He became dissatisfied with the Church as a young man and eventually was excommunicated in 1901. He tirelessly sought out knowledge of religious movements and ideas which might contribute to his vision of 'the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God, that is to say, the replacement of an organization of life in which division, falsehood and violence are all-powerful, by a new order in which harmony, truth and brotherhood will reign'. Tolstoy first heard of the Bahá'í teachings in 1894 at a time when the movement was known hardly at all in the West, and its leader was a prisoner in an obscure outpost of the Turkish Empire. This book traces the developments and fluctuations in Tolstoy's attitűdé as more information was made available to him. It is based on the author's correspondence and diaries, as well as the memoirs* of those close to him and Bahá'ís who came into contact with him. Most of the material is here made available for the first time in English, translated from Russian, Persian and French, and includes a hitherto unpublished Tablet of 'Abdu'l-Bahá. Luigi Stendardo comes from Puglia in southern Italy. In 1972 he moved to Switzerland to study Russian, Italian and linguistics at the University of Geneva. After becoming a Bahá'í in 1974 he decided to study Leo Tolstoy's interest in the Bahá'í Faith, then little-known outside Bahá'í circles, and in 1980 he was awarded his licence és lettres for the dissertation which is the subject of this book. Luigi Stendardo now works in the international organizations in Geneva. Vissza