The Post-Conversion Tolstoy= More Personal?

Taken from a Wikipedia article on the Kreutzer Sonata:

During the international celebration of Tolstoy's 80th birthday in 1908, G. K. Chesterton would criticize this aspect of Tolstoy's thought in an article in the September 19th issue of Illustrated London News, writing: "Tolstoy is not content with pitying humanity for its pains: such as poverty and prisons. He also pities humanity for its pleasures, such as music and patriotism. He weeps at the thought of hatred; but in The Kreutzer Sonata he weeps almost as much at the thought of love. He and all the humanitarians pity the joys of men." He went on to address Tolstoy directly:
"What you dislike is being a man. You are at least next door to hating humanity, for you pity humanity because it is human."

So, from Professor Cassidy's comment, I thought a good final paper would be something that combined Tolstoy's Ivan Ilych, The Devil, Kreutzch's Sonata, and the Confessions with a pinch of What is Art?, all different facets of his post-conversion self so that I would be able to better understand his final thought on death and dying, eternity, etc that comes through so darkly in The Death of Ivan Ilych.

But, I wasn't able to go through everything! I read The Devil and both of its endings before moving on to The Kreutzer Sonata. But 3/4 of the way through, I felt so overwhelmed by the incessant, wayward rantings of the anxious and near-crazed Pozdnyshev that I did something I never thought truly possible...I stopped reading Tolstoy.

For an author whose work I greatly respect, whose powerful depiction of the abyss that results from the dismemberment of his faith into barely disguised nothingness frightened and has captivated me since I was a child, (that one could struggle against so much for so very little...), I definitely thought that, despite my disagreements which his conceptions of a godless religion, (for that is what he ended up with), his influence would be something I continually valued.
But as Tolstoy aged, the man became someone so tortured and ever so deluded by his own graspings after an ideal, unrealistic world, a world where the "body" is condemned and one faces hell for desiring what is natural and good in marriage-- conjugal love. Tolstoy lost sight of himself.
And I hope I don't sound so condemnatory towards Tolstoy myself, but his stories ceased to be works of art but disintegrated into frantic attempts to validate himself through the approval of the outside world. If his theory of sexuality is only disseminated out to the greater world, then peace would be achieved. In blatant violation of his own conception of what art is, he hijacks the fictional medium for for his own agenda. Yes, writing of any kind is inherently selfish-- selfish in that it usually circles back to the author who hopes that the reader receives something in the form of a word or textual experience that he, as author, hopes beneficial. But the methods of these type of “readerly conversions” should never be one of enforcement. Tolstoy, thinly veiled under Pozdnyshev's voice, speaks to put down every voice that rises in opposition of his theories. The people of the train car are particularly not the best candidates to represent the common world, (the woman is so horribly educated, aristocratically simple, etc and the men aren't much better). And the narrative construction of the long, LONG train ride and extremely helpful narrator as a means of giving Pozdnyshev the necessary, uninterrupted time to speak his sermon/story is almost amusing. Really, it is Tolstoy just having a conversation with Tolstoy.