September

5 weekly readings

Why Do People Stupefy Themselves?

Dlya chego lyudi odurmanivayutsya?

Leo Tolstoy

This essay is extracted from Tolstoy's longer work of the same title, written in 1890. It uses the metaphor of a compass to explain conscience—the "seeing, spiritual being" within us that always point

The Fugitive

Beglets

Anton Chekhov (Part I); Victor Hugo, adapted by Tolstoy (Part II)

This compound weekly reading pairs two stories about children in crisis. Part I is Chekhov's tender and tragicomic tale of a peasant boy left at a hospital, which captures both childhood innocence and

Peter Chelčický

Petr Khel'chitskiy

Leo Tolstoy

This essay introduces Peter Chelčický (c. 1390–c. 1460), a Czech religious thinker whose book *The Net of Faith* (*Sít' víry*) argued that true Christianity is incompatible with state power, violence,

From the Testament of a Mexican King

Iz zaveshchaniya meksikanskogo tsarya

Nezahualcoyotl, King of Texcoco (Part I); Plato (Part II)

This compound weekly reading pairs two meditations on mortality and the soul. Part I is attributed to Nezahualcoyotl (1402–1472), the philosopher-king of Texcoco, a city-state in pre-Columbian Mexico,

For What?

Za chto?

Leo Tolstoy

This novella, written in 1906, tells the tragic story of Józef Migurski, a young Polish patriot exiled after the November Uprising of 1830-31, and Albina Yachevska, who follows him to Siberia to becom