Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T11:43:28.455Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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.

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×