Teach Me "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy

Friends don’t let friends read Tolstoy alone.

Resurrection is not bad; it’s brilliant. It is not dull; it’s captivating—yet I toiled and slogged through the entire book. George Saunders says, “Reading Resurrection, you'll resent Tolstoy and be glad you're not him — dragging that heavy conscience around making everything miserable.”¹ I will never read Tolstoy alone again, and I will not allow someone to read him alone if I can help it. His writing begs to be verbally processed.

A few weeks ago, I contemplated writing this little community to fess up and tell you that I had made a mistake in beginning my classic reading journey with Tolstoy’s Resurrection. I planned to admit defeat, change trajectory, and choose a less challenging read—I was halfway through the book and felt overwhelmed by it. Published in 1899, Resurrection is Tolstoy’s “last and darkest”² novel. Set on the cusp of 20^th-century Russia, 18 years short of the Russian Revolution; Resurrection highlights the economic and political disparity between the rich and the poor in the 1890s.

I picked up a 124-year-old copy of the book at an enchanting and dusty used bookshop in an obscure town in Ohio. At the beginning of my quest to “read well”³ the title Resurrection (also known as Awakening) beckoned my tender heart to read it. My mind, after all, was going through its own awakening. When I announced the “Teach Me” series in May, I planned to have the book read by the end of June, “Four weeks should be plenty of time,” I thought—and then I started it.

Resurrection’s premise is quite simple, making it easy to follow, yet it is challenging to navigate. It is much like driving hours and hours from central Mexico to the US border—the road is arrow straight but devoid of safe or inviting rest areas to take a break. The book’s first paragraph reveals precisely how it plays out in its entirety:

“Everything looked cheerful—the plants, the birds, the insects and the children. But people—the big, grown-up people—did not stop deceiving and tormenting themselves and one another. Those people did not think this spring morning holy and important, nor this beauty of God’s world, given to the welfare of all beings— this beauty which inspires peace, harmony and love; but they considered holy and important their own inventions to rule over one another.”⁴

Resurrection follows the transformation of Prince Dimitry Nekhludov, whose good character was lulled to sleep by all the trappings high society had to offer. One morning, he is called to jury duty and discovers, to his horror, that he knows the defendant, Maslova—on trial for murder. He met her in his youth, and they fell in love. She was a housekeeper in his aunt’s home he visited on holiday. During one of his visits, his passion for her became too great to resist, and he sexually assaulted her and left her pregnant and alone, never to return. Eventually, her circumstances led to a life of sex work, which is how she came to be in court, accused of poisoning one of her clients. The jury intended to acquit Masolva, but an oversight condemned her to hard labor in Siberia. Nekhludov feels entirely responsible for her downfall and vows to set her free—it is during this process that he “awakens” and becomes a changed man after praying, “Lord, help me, teach me, come unto me and purify me of all kinds of filthiness!”⁵

Tolstoy leaves no stone unturned—the reader is step for step with Nekhludov. A 535-page book spans less than six months of his life, and the first third only covers one week. Each character he encounters is described in detail, even if they are not mentioned again.  There is no bright spot in the book. No breath of “fresh air”. No moment that is not cloaked in the utter hopelessness of Russia’s poor or the complete indifference of the rich. “What makes it so dark is its extreme truthfulness. Tolstoy does not flinch at the places that we, as writers and readers, reflexively agree to cloak. It was dark but incredibly moving.”⁶ This is why I toiled and slogged through the book (with plenty of complaining to my husband and a friend). It was complex soul work to take the journey with Nekhludov and Maslova—who experienced her own awakening. Complex but worth it, and I am glad I continued reading.

As I continued through the book, my eyes widened several times, and I wondered how it could be that a 125-year-old book could speak so clearly to American culture of today. It was like the time I watched a horror movie with my hands over my eyes, looking at the gory parts through my fingers to make it less grotesque somehow—but I couldn’t. The parallels between Resurrection and the political and social climate of the United States today are startling and disturbing. As I contemplated these parallels while writing this, I realized I could not reduce this book to one essay, as was my plan; it will now become a series of four.

Toward the end of the book, when all seemed dark, bleak, and dreary, a glimmer of light shone through, and as if I was watching a flower in slow motion unfurl its petals into full bloom—I saw love. In her book On Reading Well, author and teacher

Karen Swallow Prior

indicated this would happen, but I did not expect it so soon. Ironically, her chapter on “love” covered another of Tolstoy’s works, and the love discovered in that novel was also surprising. In Resurrection, Maslova ultimately does not find love with Nekhludov but finds it instead in prison with a man who she loved deeply as a friend first. Nekhludov learns to love by spending time with a disabled prisoner and finding a faithful friend in an unexpected place. For both, it was a love born out of terrible circumstances. Prior says in her book, “Facing something terrible, I could behold something less terrible, something good even…it is a terrible but wonderful thing that binds all of humanity together: the bearing of one another’s burdens.”⁷

That’s it, that’s true. The greatest loves of my life have developed while bearing each other’s burdens. My love for my husband has grown more profound because he has attended to my heart when I was in need. It is a Christ-like love, a reflection of the true Burden-Bearer.

 Nekhludov offered Maslova marriage throughout the novel out of duty and repentance—an offer Maslova wisely refused. This theme will be explored in my next essay. For now, know that I believe that, ultimately, they were the better for it. In the end, Nekhludov learned that love sometimes requires letting go and moving on—a different burden that exemplifies love. “New life dawned on Nekhludov, not so much because he entered new conditions of life, but because everything that happened to him since now had an altogether different meaning to him than before.”⁸ Nekhludov learned the meaning of true sacrificial love, and Tolstoy’s’ revelation of it is a gift to his readers because he knows, “the greatest [of all things] is love.”⁹

Thanks Tolstoy.

Now it’s your turn. Please teach me about Tolstoy. What am I missing? What did I get wrong? What do I need to know about Russian culture that I perhaps overlooked? Have you read Tolstoy and felt the same way I did? What do you know about his other novels that can inform my understanding of this one? I want your expertise.

Extra Sauce

• I’m feeling spicy, and next week, you will feel the heat as I discuss exactly why I would have thrown the book had Nekhludov and Maslova ended up together.

• I am offering free virtual suicide prevention training on September 24th. I would loveto have you join me. You can sign up here: https://losscs.org/events/virtual-qpr-suicide-prevention-training/

• I appreciated this newsletter by A.J. Swaboda this week:

  Learning to Ponder

• Are you 18 and over and attend church at least once a month? I am involved in a research project on suicide stigma in religious communities with Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, and we need people to take our questionnaire. Be on the lookout for it soon.

1. Saunders, George. “Adjust Your Vision: Tolstoy’s Last and Darkest Novel.” NPR. NPR, January 6, 2013. Last modified January 6, 2013. Accessed September 18, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2013/01/06/168651740/adjust-your-vision-tolstoys-last-and-darkest-novel.

2. Ibid.

3. Prior, Karen Swallow. On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2022.

4. Tolstoy, Leo. Resurrection. New York, New York: J.s. Ogilvie Publishing, 1900. 7.

5. Ibid, 127.

6. Saunders, George. “Adjust Your Vision: Tolstoy’s Last and Darkest Novel.” NPR. NPR, January 6, 2013. Last modified January 6, 2013. Accessed September 18, 2024. https://www.npr.org/2013/01/06/168651740/adjust-your-vision-tolstoys-last-and-darkest-novel.

7. Prior, Karen Swallow. On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2022.

8. Tolstoy, Leo. Resurrection. New York, New York: J.s. Ogilvie Publishing, 1900. 535.

9. 1 Cor. 1

3