Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky had radically different accounts of religion and its relation to language. In this piece, Professor of Russian John Givens argues that while Tolstoy attempted to create a practical version of Christianity by using readily comprehensible language purged of mysticism to describe the world, it is ultimately Dostoevsky and his language-transcending mysticism which provide readers with a more meaningful account of what it means to embody religion and act in the world accordingly.
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