Like many folks who were introduced to the writings of Leo Tolstoy through his novel War and Peace, I was, and remain, ambivalent about the Russian author. I found War and Peace a bit of a slog. However, I found Anna Karenina and The Death of Ivan Ilyich much more approachable. I recently ran across the fascinating recording below that was made at the author’s home in Yasnaya Polyana on October 31, 1909, when he was 81 years old. He died just over a year later. In the remarkable series of recordings Tolstoy reads a passage from his book, Wise Thoughts for Every Day, in four languages: English, German, French and Russian. Tolstoy apparently translated the passage himself. The English version sounds a bit stilted. The words are hard to make out in the recording, but he says:

That the object of life is self-perfection, the perfection of all immortal souls, that this is the only object of my life, is seen to be correct by the fact alone that every other object is essentially a new object. Therefore, the question whether thou hast done what thou shoudst have done is of immense importance, for the only meaning of thy life is in doing in this short term allowed thee, that which is desired of thee by He or That which has sent thee into life. Art thou doing the right thing?