About the author …

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910, born in Yasnaya Polyana in central Russia, had a charmed early life until the death of both parents at the age of ten. When he attended the University of Kazań he became disenchanted with the system of education and endorsed Jean-Jacques Rousseau's philosophy expressed in Émile, Or On Education. At nineteen, he broke with the church and religion, and a few years later became a military officer in the Crimean War. This early experience fueled the realism of his novels. Although he often criticized the Russian government, his world-wide fame kept him safe from polical harm . At midlife, he sought a simple life based on the religious tenets of the Sermon on the Mount and put his books in the public domain. Our reading, from What is Art? contains his final view of art: the social value of art is ultimately religious.