Describing Tolstoy's crisis of depression & estrangement from the world A Confession (1879) is an autobiographical work of exceptional emotional honesty By the time he was fifty Tolstoy had already written the novels that would assure him of literary immortality; he had a wife a large estate & numerous children; he was 'a happy man' & in good health
- yet life had lost its meaning In this poignant confessional fragment he records a period of his life when he began to turn away from fiction & aesthetics & to search instead for 'a practical religion not promising future bliss but giving bliss on earth'