Introduction Chapter 1. "So That I Could Easily Read Myself": Tolstoy's Early Diaries Tolstoy Starts a Diary--The Moral Vision of Self and the Temporal Order of Narrative--What Is Time? Cultural Precedents--"A History of Yesterday"-- Time and Narrative--The Dream: The Hidden Recesses of Time--What Am I? The Young Tolstoy Defines Himself--What Am I? Cultural Precedents Interlude: Between Personal Documents and Fiction From Diaries to Childhood: Tolstoy Becomes a Writer (1852)--"I Think I Will Never Write Again": Tolstoy Attempts to Renounce Literature (1859)--"I . Don't Even Think about the Accursed Lit-t-terature and Lit-t-terateurs": Tolstoy Renounces Literature Again (1870); and Again (1874-75) Chapter 2. "To Tell One's Faith Is Impossible. How to Tell That Which I Live By. I'll Tell You, All the Same." Tolstoy in His Correspondence "What Is My Life? What Am I?": Tolstoy's Philosophical Dialogue with Nikolai Strakhov--"I Wish that You, Instead of Reading Anna Kar [ enina ], Would Finish It."--"In the Form of Catechism," "In the Form of a Dialogue"--To Tell One's Life--Rousseau and His Profession/Confession--The Parting of Ways: Tolstoy Writes His Confession, and Strakhov Continues to Confess in His Letters to Tolstoy Chapter 3.

Tolstoy's Confession : What Am I? Tolstoy Publishes his Confession--The Conversion Narrative: Excursus on the Genre--Tolstoy's Confession : Step by Step--Tolstoy's Confession Related to Rousseau's and Augustine's--After Confession: "Presenting Christ's Teaching as Something New after 1,800 Years of Christianity"--Coda: Tolstoy's Influence Chapter 4. "To Write My Life ": Tolstoy Tries, and Fails, to Produce a Memoir or Autobiography The Author Biography--"My Life": "On the Basis of My Own Memories"--"Reminiscences": "More Useful Than All That Artistic Prattle with Which the Twelve Volumes of My Works Are Filled"--"Reminiscences": "I Cannot Provide a Coherent Description of Events and States of Mind"--"The Green Stick": "Où Suis-Je? Pourquoi Suis-Je? Que Suis-Je?"--Tolstoy and the Autobiographical Tradition Chapter 5. "What Should We Do Then?": Tolstoy on Self and Other "Why Have You, a Man from a Different World, Stopped near Us? Who Are You?"--Master and Slave: Tolstoy Rewrites Hegel--Tolstoy and the Washerwoman--The Order of Things: The Church, the State, the Arts and Sciences--"Master and Man"--Coda: Nonparticipation in Evil Chapter 6. "I Felt a Completely New Liberation from Personality": Tolstoy's Late Diaries Tolstoy Resumes his Diary--The Temporal Order of Narrative: The Last Day--"On Life and Death "--The Diary as a Spiritual Exercise--"I, the Body, Is Such a Disgusting Chamber Pot"--"I Am Conscious of Myself Being Conscious of Myself Being Conscious of Myself."--"I Have Lost the Memory of Everything, Almost Everything. How Can One Not Rejoice at the Loss of Memory?"--Sleeping, Dreaming, and Awakening--Tolstoy's Dreams--Dreams: The World beyond Time and Representation--The Book of life: "It Is Written on Time"--The Circle of Reading: "To Replace the Consciousness of Leo Tolstoy with the Consciousness of All Humankind"--"The Death of Socrates"--Tolstoy's Death Appendix: Russian Quotations Notes Index.