Tolstoy's Lost Masterpiece

You may have heard of, read, or seen the movies of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but are you familiar with the last major work of the famous Russian novelist, which he considered to be his greatest masterpiece?

A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul was the culmination of Tolstoy’s fifteen-year dream to “collect the wisdom of the centuries in one book.” His first recorded expression of the idea came in 1884; the book was to have “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people.” However, the collection of wise thoughts grew, so that in this edition there are up to six thoughts on a theme for each day. Tolstoy’s sources for these wise thoughts included Socrates, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal, and the New Testament, among others. In addition, he added about eight hundred of his own thoughts, written during his many years of meditation, or taken from his own previous diary entries.

There were three editions published during Tolstoy’s lifetime. After the Russian Revolution, the book was forbidden because of its spiritual orientation and its numerous religious quotes, and was finally republished in 1995 after the democratic reforms. The selections from this first 1995 English translation are taken from the second, most lengthy edition. In his introduction, translator Peter Sekirin states that  “it belongs among the very best creations of human genius, a work which will serve its readers as a practical spiritual guide on how to live in peace with oneself and how to live a life filled with kindness, satisfaction, and happiness.”

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November 7

You can look at life as death, and death as an awakening.

I cannot stop thinking that I was dead before I was born, and at my death I will return to the same state.
    --George Lichtenberg

I do not regret that I was born here and that I lived part of my life here, because I lived in a way that I think was useful. When the end comes, I will leave my life in the same way, as if I leave an inn and not my home, because I think that my stay in this life is temporary and that death is only a transfer to another state.
    --Marcus Tullius Cicero

Even if I err in saying that the soul is eternal, nevertheless I am happy that I made this mistake. And while I am alive, not a single person can take away this assurance which gives me complete calmness and great satisfaction.
    Marcus Tullius Cicero

We ask the wrong question when we say, “What will happen after death?” When we speak about the future, we speak of time, but when we die, we leave time behind.

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A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy, translated from the Russian by Peter Sekirin; Scribner, New York, 1997.