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Chapter 8 - Father Sergius: Kasatskii’s Spiritual Journey to Holy Foolishness

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2022

Pål Kolstø
Affiliation:
University of Oslo
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Summary

In the short story Father Sergius, Tolstoi tells about the guards officer Kasatskii who renounces his military career, enters a monastery, then leaves it again in order to become hermit. Finally, he ends up as a simple vagabond. The drama unfolds on the inner plane, but is reflected in three incidents when Kasatskii alias Father Sergius suddenly breaks away from his former life and finds new meaning in an existence that coincides with four traditional forms of Orthodox piety; monasticism, eldership, holy wandering. He ends up in holy foolishness, which combines elements of them all, as a life in the world, but not of the world. The life of Kasatskii alias Father Sergius is a circular motion. He starts in the world, withdraws from it, and finally returns to it. However, he has not come back to the starting point, for he is now equipped with new insights about God and life. These varieties of piety prove to be, with the words of Søren Kierkegaard, "stages on the path of life," hierarchically arranged. Despite the abrupt breaks between them, they must be understood as parts of a developmental process, all contributing to a cumulative maturation.

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Chapter
Information
Heretical Orthodoxy
Lev Tolstoi and the Russian Orthodox Church
, pp. 137 - 145
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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