Leo Tolstoy shone a penetrating light into the malaise that gnawed at and silently devoured at his soul. While ineffable and elusive, this condition of utter meaninglessness was unmistakable in its physical manifestation and haunting ability to paralyze his very existence. One is reminded of the French novelist Honoré de Balzac’s protagonist Raphaël de Valentin in The Wild Ass’s Skin (La Peau de chagrin, 1831) who is enveloped and held hostage by a stubborn mist of psychic darkness described in the famous scene as he enters the notorious gambling den. “The young man looked like an angel without his halo, like one who had lost his way. So, all these emeritus professors of vice and infamy, like toothless old hags, overcome with pity at the sight of a lovely girl offering herself up to corruption, were ready to cry out to the novice: ‘Go away!’” (Balzac, 2012, p. 7).