A Candle, Leo Tolstoy
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A Candle

Author: Leo Tolstoy

Narrator: Cathy Dobson

Unabridged: 18 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/06/2014


Synopsis

Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian writer and philosopher who primarily wrote novels and short stories. He was a master of realistic fiction and is widely considered one of the world's greatest novelists.

Tolstoy's literal interpretation of the teachings of Jesus, centering on the Sermon on the Mount, caused him in later life to become a fervent Christian anarchist and anarcho-pacifist. His ideas on nonviolent resistance are represented in his short story "A Candle", which tells the story of a group of peasants suffering under a tyrannical overseer. His beatings are so severe as to be sometimes fatal and when he orders the serfs to plough the fields on Easter Sunday, a discussion begins as to whether they should assassinate the brutal steward. The peasants are divided on the subject. One group, led by Vasili are determined to murder the bully. Another group, swayed by Piotr, believe it is best to bear their sufferings rather than to risk their souls.

But neither group can possibly foresee the strange and terrible events which occur when Easter Sunday arrives.

Author Bio

Leo Tolstoy was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana in central Russia and educated privately. He studied Oriental languages and law at the University of Kazan, then led a life of dissipation until 1851, when he went to the Caucasus and joined an artillery regiment. He took part in the Crimean War, and on the basis of this experience wrote The Sevastopol Stories, which confirmed his tenuous reputation as a writer.

After a period in St. Petersburg and abroad, where he studied educational methods for use in his school for peasant children at Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy married Sofya Behrs in 1862. The next fifteen years was a period of great happiness: the couple had thirteen children, and Tolstoy managed his estates, continued his educational projects, and wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

A Confession marked a spiritual crisis in Tolstoy's life; he became an extreme moralist, and in a series of pamphlets written after 1880, he expressed his rejection of state and church, indictment of the weaknesses of the flesh, and denunciation of private property. He published his last novel, Resurrection, in 1900.

Tolstoy's teaching earned him many followers at home and abroad, but also much opposition, and in 1901 he was excommunicated by the Russian Orthodox Church. He died in 1910.

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