Tom Hodgkinson on Tolstoy’s wonderful collection of daily thoughts to nourish the mind and soul 

Towards the end of his life, Tolstoy assembled a lovely book called A Calendar of Wisdom. For each day of the year, he gives a set of quotations from great thinkers (including himself).

He’d been planning to do this for a while. In March 1884 he wrote in his diary: “I have to create a circle of reading for myself: Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-tzu, Buddha, Pascal, the New Testament. It is a must for everyone.” In a letter to his assistant, he also mentions Socrates. These sages, he said, “tell us the most important things for humanity and virtue.”

When he’d finished the book, in around 1903, he wrote in his diary: “I felt that I have been elevated to great spiritual and moral heights by communication with the best and wisest people.” Among them, he said, he included Lucy Mallory, a journalist from Oregon, USA.

While compiling later editions, he said, he imposed a news blackout on himself. “For two months I did not read anything else – neither newspapers nor magazines – and I felt so good.” He was so pleased with the result that he thought the book better than War and Peace, and incorrectly predicted that his Calendar would outlive his great novel. “To create a book for the masses… is infinitely more important and fruitful than to compose a novel of the kind that diverts members of the wealthy classes for a short time and then is forgotten for ever.”

The Soviets banned his Calendar and no edition appeared between 1912 and 1995. Then it was published again in Russian and sold over 300,000 copies. The first English translation was published in 1997. There’s a nice paperback edition available now for a mere nine quid.

I keep the book beside my bed and read a page or two each evening and I can report that it is indeed happy-making. Reading for my Stoics book was also happy-making: a little drip-feed of Seneca, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius and the rest was nourishing soul-food. The key, I think, is to abandon reaching for the goal of ever being wise or enlightened. The feeling that you may be making tiny fractional progress along the path towards wisdom is enough.

Tolstoy died, as you may well know, having taken the palpably unwise decision to do a runner from his wife at the age of 82. He planned to retire to a hut and collapsed at a train station (here’s a fantastic clip from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation which describes Tolstoy’s last days and includes footage of the sage sawing a tree and pottering about in his garden).

Learn more about Tolstoy in our Idler Academy course with the sage A.N. Wilson.

Live well,

Tom

PS A reminder that I’m doing a gig tonight in Shepherd’s Bush, west London. I’ll be chatting to Florence Read about the Stoics. That will be followed by a Stoic singalong with my band, The Loafers.  More info here.

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