description of all the sides and conditions of Tolstoi's life, and therefore the intimate places have been omitted in the present edition of the Journal. In consequence, the reader will not find an exhaustive description in these chapters of the personal life of Tolstoi which is connected with his family relations.
From 1895 to 1899 Tolstoi lived through much spiritual suffering and struggle, and during this time he was ill quite often. If one carefully followed all the entries in the Journal, then it would clearly be seen that almost all his severe illnesses came after depressing inner experiences.
With the strength of his deep religiousness, Tolstoi invariably strove to use, in the best spiritual sense, all the trials which were given to him as his lot, physical as well as spiritual, and through intense inner labour he generally at the end succeeded in converting all his sufferings, to use his own language, to the joy of fulfilling the will of God.
At the end of 1895, Tolstoi was earnestly occupied with the plot of his drama, The Light that Shines in Darkness; this plot agitated him so that he even dreamed of it and he raved about it in his sleep. This can be easily understood in view of the fact that there are many autobiographic elements in this drama.
And so he wrote in the Journal that he "lived through much," in reading over, at the request of his wife, his journals for the past seven years.[1]
- ↑ November 5, 1895, page 5.
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