Tolstoy, Unamuno and Their Religious Essays. An Introduction.

One hundred years ago, in 1910, one of the greatest writers of all times, Lev (Leo) Nikolaevich Tolstoy died of pneumonia at the railway station in Astapovo, Russia far from his family and estate that he left behind in pursuit of the life of a humble and spiritual man. At the same time, in Spain, the philosopher and writer Miguel de Unamuno who considered Tolstoy to be his kindred spirit (in spite of the geographical distance between them and age difference of over thirty years) published his essay My Religion that resonated with the religious thinking of Tolstoy. As the religious writings of Tolstoy and Unamuno not only reflect their thinking but actually are their thinking, examination of their personal lives allows observation of the conflict within them which eventually became a means of existential self-reflection and self-knowledge. This work has been modified from the original Spanish text to reduce scholarly terminology to make it more accessible to any reader interested in the lives and thinking of these apostles of renewed Christianity ; two extraordinary personalities who struggled with the conflict between reason and faith.

Autorentext

Anna Wieczorek Gray (Hamling), had her PhD thesis published by Editorial Pliegos in 2001. She has written on Spanish and Russian literature and Spanish and Latin American Women Writers for European journals in Spanish, Russian and English. She has contributed entries on Latin American, Spanish and Polish writers to several encyclopaedias.