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The novel "War and Peace" essay ("War and Peace" essay).

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" surprises us from the very first lines - the work opens with lines in French and a footnote that contains a translation of this text. The author opens his book in such an unusual and at the same time intriguing way.

The reader is constantly confronted with in French words on every page of the novel, which greatly complicates the perception of the text, as it easily distracts from the plot itself. After the novel's release literary critics They vying with each other about why L. N. Tolstoy used French speech in War and Peace. Even during the writer’s lifetime, it either appeared or was removed from the text of the work with each new edition for some unknown reasons. What is known for certain is that thanks to such a specific artistic technique The author manages to create a special historical flavor. So, the heroes of the novel use French names dishes that are eaten are called in French words, the most popular dances of that time and dance figures. Even proper names the characters pronounce in the French manner.

The meaning of the author's intention becomes clearer if you pay attention to where exactly French speech is found most often. Having analyzed the text, we can conclude that most often the author resorts to foreign speech in the characters’ secular dialogues. When the same characters communicate with their families, they speak French less often. That is, the characters’ discussion of political issues, as well as any social gossip, occurs using, at times, entire French expressions. Russian and French speech are mixed, creating a special atmosphere. And it is not clear whether the author wanted to emphasize the desire of the aristocrats to cultivate their speech, or whether he was hinting at the laziness of the educated nobles who did not bother searching for the right words in one language. The characters also resort to non-Russian speech when they speak insincerely. Behind a different language lies the falsity of feelings, lies, hypocrisy. It gives the heroes the opportunity to isolate themselves, to hide from others under someone else’s mask. The author endows almost all of his characters with knowledge of foreign languages, but not all of them use them in everyday life. For example, Kutuzov almost always speaks Russian, although Tolstoy points out that the hero is fluent not only in French, but also in German. Here the author emphasizes the character’s education and at the same time his sincerity of the Russian soul. Some heroes openly despise the French language and everything connected with it. Thus, Prince Bolkonsky sometimes deliberately grimaces and distorts his speech when speaking French, although he can speak pure French. All these techniques allow the writer to solve a variety of artistic problems.

Michurinsky Pedagogical Institute Faculty of Russian Language and Literature

COURSE WORK

“Language features of the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"

Completed by: student

correspondence department

Zobnina O.A.

Head: Loginov A.V.

Michurinsk - Naukograd - 2006

Introduction

I. The language of L. Tolstoy in the novel “War and Peace”

II. The interaction of visual and expressive means in L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”

III. Light adjectives in L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

The Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy left behind a great wise legacy. He was born in Yasnaya Polyana September 9, 1828. Tolstoy's whole life was full of painful and intense quests. His creative path begins in 1852, when his first works “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” were published.

“This talent is new and, it seems, reliable,” this is how N.A. responded to the appearance of the new writer. Nekrasov. I.S. Turgenev wrote that the first place among writers rightfully belongs to Tolstoy, and that soon “only Tolstoy will be known in Russia.” N.G. Chernyshevsky, reviewing Tolstoy’s first collections, defined the essence of artistic discoveries young writer two terms: “dialectics of the soul” and “purity moral sense" For Tolstoy, the instrument for studying mental life was the microscope. psychological analysis became the main one among other artistic means. An unprecedentedly close interest in mental life is of fundamental importance for Tolstoy, the artist. In this way, the writer opens in his characters the possibilities of change, development, internal renewal, and confrontation with the environment. The ideas of the revival of man, people, humanity constitute the pathos of Tolstoy’s work.

Work on the novel “War and Peace” lasted 7 years (from 1863 to 1869). Tolstoy begins his novel in 1805. He intended to take heroes and heroines through historical events 1805, 1807, 1812, 1825 and end it in 1856. That is, the novel had to cover a large historical period. However, in the process of working on it, Tolstoy gradually narrowed it chronological framework and so I came to create a new novel. In this book merged important images in world history of events and in-depth analysis human souls. And although the chronological framework was narrowed from 1805 to 1820, Tolstoy went beyond the personal fate of the heroes and created a grandiose epic picture of Russian life at the beginning of the last century.

“War and Peace” is one of the few works in world literature of the 19th century that can rightfully be called an epic novel. Big events historical scale, general life, and not private life, forms the basis of its content, it reveals historical process, an unusually wide coverage of Russian life in all its layers has been achieved, and as a result of this, the number of characters, in particular characters from the popular environment, is so large. It shows Russian national life and, most importantly, the history of the people and the path of the best representatives of the noble class to the people are the ideological and artistic core of the work. The breadth of coverage of the Russian nation in the work is amazing: noble estates, aristocratic metropolitan salons, village holidays and diplomatic receptions, greatest battles and paintings peaceful life, emperors, peasants, dignitaries, landowners, merchants, soldiers, generals. We meet more than 500 characters on the pages of the novel. All of them, especially the positive heroes, are in constant search. Tolstoy's favorite heroes are not flawless, but they strive for improvement, search for the meaning of life, tranquility for them is tantamount to spiritual death. The characters created by Tolstoy reflect the moral and philosophical research of the author of the novel himself.

The relevance of this work lies in the fact that the epic novel has been studied by many research authors with different points sight, but detailed analysis the work has been examined very poorly, one might say that it has not been examined at all. In the literature there are critical articles of this work, but they are aimed at studying the character of the heroes, the described military actions, everyday life, historical events and much more. This topic is of interest for research, since it is very difficult to find in the literature language analysis novel "War and Peace".

The purpose of the course work is to identify language features L. Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace".

Coursework objectives:

1. determine the essence and main characteristics of L. Tolstoy’s language in the novel “War and Peace”;

2. identify the interaction of visual and expressive means in L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”;

3. consider light adjectives in the epic novel “War and Peace”.

Object of study: L. Tolstoy’s epic novel “War and Peace”.

When performing work, the following methods are used: information collection, analysis, generalization. Theoretical significance The work consists in collecting and systematizing material on the research problem. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that it is the first to examine the linguistic features of L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace.”

The practical significance of the work is determined by the opportunity to use the presented materials in Russian language and literature lessons.

The structure of the work corresponds to the set goals and objectives. The work consists of an Introduction, which defines the relevance of the problem, outlines the goal and objectives, and determines the theoretical and practical significance.

I Language of L. Tolstoy in the novel “War and Peace”

What do we know about Leo Tolstoy's language?

The fact that there are many liberties in it (the language) (both in word usage and in grammar), for example:

““He’ll give it to him!” “This crowd of pronouns could be considered,” testified K. Fedin, “a slip of the tongue of any writer.” But with Tolstoy this is not negligence... This is what they say in life when they don’t find the form..."

Tolstoy has a complex periodic syntax, the longest sentences are blocks, as in the spring ice drift. Although this has become commonplace the statement is by no means absolute.

“Natasha needed a husband. A husband was given to her. And her husband gave her a family. The phrase is choppy, telegraphic (almost like Hemingway’s). But it is prepared with a long dialogue (in the first completed edition of the novel; manuscript):

What do you want? - asked the mother.

I need a husband. Give me a husband, mother, give me a husband,” she shouted in her chesty voice through a barely noticeable smile, in exactly the same voice as when she was a child demanding cake at lunch! At the first second, everyone was puzzled and frightened by these words, but the doubt lasted only one second. It was funny, and everyone, even the footman and the jester Nastasya Ivanovich, laughed...

Mom, give me a husband. “Everyone has a husband,” she repeated, “everyone has a husband, but I don’t.”

But the most paradoxical stereotype of philological (linguistic) judgments about Tolstoy’s language consists in attributing to him someone else’s word, the so-called improper direct speech:

Rostov looked at Pierre unkindly, firstly, because Pierre, in his hussar eyes, was a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, generally a woman...

From that first evening, when Natasha, after Pierre’s departure, told Princess Marya with a joyfully mocking smile that he was definitely, well, definitely from the bathhouse, and in a frock coat, and with a haircut...

And yet, no matter how many examples we give, it will not be possible to confirm the linguistic definition of improperly direct speech: “The author is hiding behind the hero” (Sh. Bally). In improperly direct speech, cunning, “on your own,” cunning, irony, and humor are formalized. Tolstoy’s language is demanding and categorical. Tolstoy's author quotes not words, but the thoughts and feelings of the characters (it turns out something like an “improperly direct thought”). And in order to convey the original (without verbal mediation) thought of the hero, the author sometimes “forgets” about speech etiquette, even if it concerns such a tender (according to the Karamzin tradition) subject in literature as women, young ladies.

Her tone was already grumbling, her lip lifted, giving her face not a welcoming, but a brutal, squirrel-like expression.

According to the Dictionary of 1847, brutal - “fierce, ferocious, bestial,” i.e., characteristic of animals. We understand that the squirrel is not a fierce animal. And yet brutal is an adjective in itself that is terrifying for our perception.

Tolstoy “speaks affirmatively everywhere... and cannot speak otherwise,” noted the first critics of War and Peace (P.V. Annenkov), speaks “with naivety, which in all fairness can be called genius” (N.N. Strakhov). Tolstoy's author-narrator needs only his own and direct speech. He is absolutely accurate in conveying the hero’s direct speech, in every possible way protects its inviolable integrity and character, but, on the other hand, if the hero’s direct speech itself is not reproduced, the writer is extremely scrupulous in conveying the character’s thoughts and feelings in words, the language of either the narrator or the author, direct quotes from the character's speech.

Both women cared quite sincerely about making her beautiful. She was so bad that not one of them could think of competing with her...

It wasn’t the dress that was bad, but the princess’s face and whole figure... They forgot that the frightened face and figure could not be changed...

Retelling is also used as a literal transmission of direct speech. Compare with the narrator:

In her imagination, she [Princess Marya] already saw herself with Fedosyushka in rough rags, walking with a stick and a wallet along a dusty road... where there is no sadness, no sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.

From Princess Marya herself:

I will finally come to that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sadness nor sighing.

The Gospel quote is not exact, but a vital role always remains with direct speech.

The language of L. Tolstoy in the novel “War and Peace”

What do we know about Leo Tolstoy's language?

The fact that there are many liberties in it (the language) (both in word usage and in grammar), for example:

““He’ll give it to him!” “This crowd of pronouns could be considered,” K. Fedin testified, “a slip of the tongue for any writer.” But with Tolstoy this is not negligence... This is what they say in life when they don’t find the form..."

Tolstoy has a complex periodic syntax, the longest sentences are blocks, like ice drifting in the spring. Although this statement, which has become a common place, is by no means unconditional.

What do you want? - asked the mother.

I need a husband. Give me a husband, mother, give me a husband,” she shouted in her chesty voice through a barely noticeable smile, exactly in the same voice in which she demanded cake at lunch as a child! At the first second, everyone was puzzled and frightened by these words, but the doubt lasted only one second. It was funny, and everyone, even the footman and the jester Nastasya Ivanovich, laughed...

Mom, give me a husband. “Everyone has a husband,” she repeated, “everyone has a husband, but I don’t.”

But the most paradoxical stereotype of philological (linguistic) judgments about Tolstoy’s language consists in attributing to him someone else’s word, the so-called improper direct speech:

Rostov looked at Pierre unkindly, firstly, because Pierre, in his hussar eyes, was a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, generally a woman...

Her tone was already grumbling, her lip lifted, giving her face not a welcoming, but a brutal, squirrel-like expression.

According to the Dictionary of 1847, bestial is “fierce, ferocious, bestial,” i.e., characteristic of animals. We understand that the squirrel is not a fierce animal. And yet brutal is an adjective in itself that is terrifying for our perception.

Tolstoy “everywhere speaks in the affirmative... and cannot speak otherwise,” noted the first critics of “War and Peace” (P.V. Annenkov), he speaks “with naivety, which in all fairness can be called genius” (N.N. . Fears). Tolstoy's author-narrator needs only his own and direct speech. He is absolutely accurate in conveying the hero’s direct speech, in every possible way protects its inviolable integrity and character, but, on the other hand, if the hero’s direct speech itself is not reproduced, the writer is extremely scrupulous in conveying the character’s thoughts and feelings in words, the language of either the narrator or the author, direct quotes from the character's speech.

Both women cared quite sincerely about making her beautiful. She was so bad that not one of them could think of competing with her...

It wasn’t the dress that was bad, but the princess’s face and whole figure... They forgot that the frightened face and figure could not be changed...

Retelling is also used as a literal transmission of direct speech. Compare with the narrator:

From Princess Marya herself:

I will finally come to that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sadness nor sighing.

The Gospel quotation is not exact, but the decisive role always remains with direct speech.

By the way, the speech of Tolstoy himself also does not allow one to “suspect” an improperly direct one, because it is maximalist, uncompromising. This speech is brought to us by many testimonies, including the testimony of D. P. Makovitsky, L. N. Tolstoy’s family doctor (their first meeting took place in 1894), who collected - like Eckermann (“Conversations with Goethe”) -- conversations with Tolstoy: “Yasnaya Polyana Notes” in four books (Lit. inheritance.-- T. 90: In Tolstoy, 1904--1910).

[Lev Nikolaevich] Oh, Dostoevsky has it strange manner, strange language! All faces express themselves in the same language... He throws out the most serious questions at random, mixing them with romantic ones. In my opinion, the days of novels are over. Describe “how she let her hair down...”, interpret human (love) relationships...

[Sofya Andreevna] When love relationship- these are the interests of the first importance.

[L. N.] Like the first! They are 1018th importance. Among the people this is in its present place. Work life comes first.

[L. N.] I was happy that from a young age I loved the Russian people and admired the people... They are growing spiritually, moving forward, only slowly; he knows; we can learn from him.

[WITH. A.] I absolutely love it when people praise me. You are not?

[L. N.] I was completely freed from this. It is precious to have a serious attitude towards a person when you are scolded or scolded.

But two weeks after his departure, she, just as unexpectedly for those around her, woke up from her moral illness, became the same as before, but only with a changed moral physiognomy...

“What’s wrong? What well? What should you love, what should you hate? Why live, and what am I? What is life, what is death? What force controls everything? - he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions...

Pierre's questions coincide with diary entries Tolstoy: “I was thinking all night about the meaning of life.”

“My tongue is my enemy,” Pierre wrote in his diary. It is known that Pierre's speech did not always adequately express his thoughts and feelings. Let us remember his unsuccessful speeches: at the end of the Masonic meeting, where Pierre spoke, “ Great master with hostility and irony he made a remark to Bezukhov about his ardor.” Shocked by the failure, the speaker “for three days after delivering his speech in the box, he lay at home on the sofa, not receiving anyone and not going anywhere.” IN Assembly of the Nobility, where “the sovereign’s manifesto was read, which aroused delight,” and Pierre spoke out, “occasionally breaking through in French words and bookishly expressing himself in Russian,” his speech was perceived as “nonsense”:

Not only was Pierre unable to speak, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed away, and turned away from him as if from a common enemy.

Pierre reproached his tongue for expressing the wrong words, weak, unnecessary, inaccurate, not “universally meaningful, not consonant.”

“You cannot connect thoughts, but connecting all these thoughts is what is needed! Yes, we need to mate, we need to mate!” - Pierre repeated to himself with inner delight...

He gravitated towards perceiving and expressing a thought formalized by a word in the function of a sentence (predicative unit):

He remembered the honeymoon and blushed at this memory... the whole solution was in that terrible word, that she was a depraved woman: he said this terrible word to himself, and everything became clear!

While gravitating toward the only true words, Pierre stood closest to the semantics of science:

Don’t I feel that I am in this huge countless number of beings in which the deity is manifested - a higher power, as you like - that I constitute one link, one step from lower beings to higher ones? If I see, clearly see this staircase that leads from a plant to a person, then why should I assume that this staircase breaks with me, and does not lead further and further...

Bezukhov seemed to personify the main motives of science: “finding the general”, “the main thought in everything”.

Another thing is Andrei Bolkonsky.

Prince Andrei “expressed his thoughts so clearly and distinctly that it was clear that he had thought about this more than once...”; “...he could be... dry, strictly decisive and especially unpleasantly logical.” Let us pay attention to this series of definitions. What functional style of practical stylistics of the Russian language are they telling us about?

Nikolushka can’t go for a walk today: it’s very cold.

If it were warm,” at such moments Prince Andrei answered his sister especially dryly, “then he would go in only a shirt, but since it’s cold, we need to put it on him.” warm clothes, which was invented for this purpose. That’s what follows from this, that it’s cold, and not like staying at home when the child needs air,” he said with particular logic, as if punishing someone for all this secret, illogical thing that was happening in him internal work. Princess Marya thought in these cases about how this mental work dries out men.

The formal business style seems ideal for the formation and expression of cause-and-effect meaning. And the young prince “had in highest degree... practical tenacity,” tenacity of “business literature” (or, as we would say today, practical stylistics). Prince Andrey is characterized, as A.V. Chicherin noted, by “a constant movement of thought.”

Having finished his visits at five o'clock in the evening, mentally composing a letter to his father about the battle and about his trip to Brunn, Prince Andrei returned home to Bilibin.

The diplomat Bilibin can also be called a stylist (practical!): “despite his laziness, he sometimes spent nights at his desk” in order to “draft a circular, memorandum or report skillfully, accurately and gracefully.” But Prince Andrei’s view of style is more dialectical, deeper, as is the meaning that he was looking for and striving for: “... nothing happens forever.” We also understand that “forever” is anti-causal (and therefore not logical). The young Bolkonsky perfected the art of business - causal - style when he “concernedly translated articles of the Roman and French code into Russian ...” when he served on the commission of Speransky, the famous editor of the Code of Laws Russian Empire, “business Karamzin”. “Nikolai Pavlovich, having ascended the throne, said to Karamzin, who was dying at that time: “Imagine that around me no one knows how to write two pages in Russian, except for one Speransky...”. Prince Andrei's father - old Prince Bolkonsky - was brought up on the “organic” cause-and-effect phrase of the Lomonosov tradition, loved this “phrase” and himself resorted to the cause-and-effect method of expressing thought as universal logic business style:

The father accepted his son's message with outward calm, but with inner anger...

Firstly, the marriage was not brilliant in terms of kinship, wealth and nobility. Secondly, Prince Andrei was not in his first youth and was in poor health (the old man was especially careful about this), and she was very young. Thirdly, there was a son whom it was a pity to give to the girl. Fourthly, finally, the father said, looking mockingly at his son, “I beg you, postpone the matter for a year...”.

An example of a business style - conditional, causal and effectual meanings - both in their clear, logical and in the same unpleasantly logical following that was noted in the young prince. This “organic” superphrase is colored by the speech expression of the 18th century. - irony and wit. Let us recall that the military officer was asked to postpone the matter, and in the word business (in the Dictionary of 1847) the meaning of “battle” was updated:

However, today, probably, there will be no business,” said Bagration...

The officer, Tushin's comrade, was killed at the beginning of the case...

Anyone can answer the question, an example of which style is given below:

I want fame, I want to be famous people, I want to be loved by them... for this alone I live. Yes, for this alone!.. And no matter how dear or dear many people are to me - father, sister, wife - the most dear people to me - but, no matter how scary and unnatural it seems, I will give them all up now for a moment of glory, triumph over people...

This style is romantic. We could expand his “space.”

Prince Andrei was the first, tangling his hair on the muslin canopy, to move away from the crib. “Yes, this is the only thing left for me now,” he said with a sigh.

What is the difference between style and language? Usually this question is answered like this: style belongs to art, the language of communication (means of communication). Style is monologue, language is dialogue: two levels of a single hierarchical system. However, the main, deep (and even profound) difference between style and language is that every style formalizes cause-and-effect relationships. Each means both functional and historical-literary.

In the novel "War and Peace" the era itself appeared - in a single, unique copy literary sentimentalism, with its “general secretary” - Karamzin elegans. And the accents of the sentimentalist style are focused on Nikolai Rostov (“there is so much poetry in him,” according to Julie Karagina):

Nikolai sang the song he had learned again:

On a pleasant night, in the moonlight,

Imagine yourself happily

That there is still someone in the world,

Who thinks about you too!

“Dear friend of my soul,” he wrote. “Nothing but honor could keep me from returning to the village.”

Of course, it is difficult to agree with the enthusiastic Julie about the “poetry” in Nikolai:

“....all this is poetry and women’s tales... We need rigor... That’s what!” - he said, clenching his sanguine fist.

But we also cannot agree with Nikolai’s criticism regarding his “calmness,” supposedly “epigonian, replete with romantic cliches” and exposing him as an epistolary graphomaniac.

Firstly, his cliches are sentimentalist, and the difference between sentimentalism and romanticism is very significant. Secondly, the matter is not at all a matter of personal preferences - it is, so to speak, a historical inclination towards the epistolary, i.e., towards the sentimentalist (these definitions were synonymous), style.

As for Natasha as an epistolary author, it should be noted that she was distinguished by blatant illiteracy. The countess corrected her letters to Prince Andrei (one can assume: both spelling and stylistically) according to drafts (“brullions”).

The writer created a causal (cause-and-effect) phrase. Tolstoy the teacher was already approaching it - the “organic phrase”. He spoke about the method of building cause-and-effect relationships using examples of student essays in the article “Who should learn to write from whom, the peasant children from us or from the peasant children?” He recalls how the children “composed”: at first “... many smart and talented students wrote nonsense, wrote: “the fire caught fire, they began to drag it, and I went outside” - and nothing came of it, despite the fact that the plot The composition was rich and what was described left a deep impression on the child.” Then masterpieces appeared, pearls of cause-and-effect meaning: “... the side feature that the godfather put on a woman’s fur coat, I remember, struck me to such an extent that I asked: why exactly a woman’s fur coat?.. And in fact, the trait this one is extraordinary... The godfather, in a woman's fur coat, involuntarily seems to you to be a puny, narrow-chested man; which is obviously what it should be. The woman's fur coat, lying on the bench and the first one that came to his hand, also represents to you the whole winter and evening life of a peasant. You involuntarily imagine... all this external disorder of peasant life, where not a single person has clearly defined clothing and not a single thing of his own. specific place(...). It seemed so strange to me that a peasant, semi-literate boy suddenly showed such conscious strength as an artist, which Goethe, at all his immense heights of development, could not achieve.”

Tolstoy’s texts are filled with the words purification, renewal, phrases internal struggle, inner man and the like, illustrating Tolstoy’s principle of “the unity of the original moral attitude of the author to the subject.” It is the appeal of the Tolstoy author-narrator directly to the direct speech of the heroes that predetermines and conditions the development of the all-powerful Tolstoy voice.

But the fact that a functional style suddenly appeared in the Epilogue (in the 2nd part) was a complete surprise. How did his sentimentalist style dissolve and where did it disappear from the novel?

According to the law of energy transformation, style could not disappear, at least according to the law of inertia (conservatism) of the linguistic consciousness of people.

The "immobility of the earth" - according to Ptolemy - dictated "non-existent immobility in space." Man abandoned the consciousness of this “immobility” in order to recognize “the movement that is imperceptible to us,” says Tolstoy in the final paragraphs of the Epilogue. And he states that after this refusal and recognition will follow as inevitable and irreversible for history: “In the same way, it is necessary to abandon the perceived freedom and recognize the dependence that we do not feel.” The pressure of Tolstoy’s thought seems to break on a linguistic cliff: man really refused “non-existent freedom”, but in his language he did not recognize “unfelt dependence”; he continues, despite the discoveries of Copernicus, to speak in the language of Ptolemy’s geocentric system: sunrise, sunset, sunset , the sun has risen, the sun has risen, the sun is going down, the sun is going down - this is how the “non-existent stillness” was deposited in movement. And the matter is not saved by the so-called “reason” - this highest prerogative of man: Lobachevsky, recognizing intelligence in animals, denied them reason. L. Tolstoy denied it even to man.

In the Epilogue, free will does not at all mean a straightforward choice between good and evil. By the way, Tolstoy, who so loved these words in his everyday and journalistic speech, is very careful and restrained in the Epilogue.

The more clear to us a person’s connection with the outside world in general, the more unreliable his freedom, his economic, state, religious, universal connection with the outside world, the clearer it is to us, the more unreliable his freedom.

How “unreliable” is the stylistic (aesthetic-speech) freedom of a person! Style - the wings of a person or the sarcophagus in which he is imprisoned forever?

But human free will, but arbitrariness for good and evil? Here it is, a great word standing in the way of truth.

These biblically majestic lines were not included in the canonical edition; they will later unfold in the writer’s confessions, treatises and philippics.

But the second part of the Epilogue emanates the same ineradicable anxiety as Gogol’s “Dead Souls” or Chaadaev’s “Philosophical Letters.” On the one hand, we feel how the spirit reaches a higher peak of activity, breaks out of the circle of “writing.” On the other hand, we are frightened by the infinite number of meanings contained in magic words, their “innermost secret”, and most importantly, hopelessness from an axiological perspective: “science makes scientists, but not people.”

The epilogue in its second part is anti-poetic. Its twelve chapters can be recognized as twelve lectures - a semester-long university course on the topic “Differential of History” (without particularly delving into the aesthetic, and most importantly, the epic potential that personifies the image of Russia: “Russian peasant” - according to Sechenov, “ Russian forces" and "Russian voices" - according to Mendeleev, "Russian man" - according to Timiryazev, "Russian black soil" - according to Dokuchaev).

The epilogue in the second part is rhetorical - like a monologue addressed to the listeners (one of its secrets is hidden here: the reader has become a listener); it contains features of oratorical genres: diatribes (conversations with an absent interlocutor), soliloquy (conversations with oneself) and even menipea (intercalated episodes).

A set of rhetorical features is organized into a lecture.

Linguists will say: “I am distributed by predicates”, different in meaning, phase (I begin, proceed, etc.) -- character traits university lecture.

There was no “I” in the novel War and Peace itself. It appeared only in the Epilogue, and in it the “colossal, thousand-year-old “I” of literature” (V. Rozanov), the formidable “I” in the “Life” of Avvakum, the shocked “I” in “The Journey” somehow dialectically broke and disappeared. .”, the stupidly cunning “I” in “What is to be done?”, the Jesuit “I” in “The Brothers Karamazov”. And if we add to them other “I”s, scientific - emphatically polite to the point of courtesy - Sechenov, elegant to the point of sophistication - Timiryazev, skeptical to the point of shocking - Mechnikov, impressive to the point of preaching - Stoletov, open to the point of sincerity - Dokuchaev, then the epilogue “I” is the most unique subject in literature.

The researchers did not stop at the Epilogue not only because Leo Tolstoy himself asked them to do so (as he “begged” ordinary readers). The fact is that the so-called science of language (styles) fiction completely bypassed the reader. She recorded those phenomena and facts that could come exclusively from their demiurge, the writer.

For literary studies, the Epilogue is lost because in it literature disappeared (it doesn’t matter whether it drowned or evaporated).

For linguistics, the Epilogue is too monotonous in its syntactic construction with non-literary, non-verbal “lexical content”.

Only A. A. Shakhmatov decided to take several sentences from there (Epilogue-1) for his “Syntax of the Russian Language.”

What language is Epilogue 2 written in?

Here is Bakhtin’s opinion: “By the end of the novel, cognitive philosophical and historical judgments completely break their connection with the ethical event and are organized into a theoretical treatise.” And here is the opinion of V.V. Vinogradov: “The main linguistic background of the novel is Russian narrative, scientific-descriptive and philosophical-journalistic.” IN last chapters the image of the author “rises above the spheres of consciousness of the characters and above the world of the depicted reality. The author appears here as a preacher, seeker and “otherworldly” contemplator of the true simple, unvarnished truth.”

According to Bakhtin, the Epilogue “completely breaks”, according to Vinogradov it “ascends” and “otherworldly”, but Bakhtin, in addition to “breaks”, has an equally remarkable judgment: “The author must be on the border of the world he creates as its active creator, for his intrusion into this world destroys its aesthetic stability.” It turns out that Bakhtin’s separation cannot be taken literally - in its terminological meaning. Let's not forget that Bakhtin loved metaphors. What is important for us is the idea of the boundaries between the author and the hero, or rather, the “ghostliness” of these demarcations: “Any strict consistency of the genre, in addition to the artistic will of the author, begins to respond with stylization, or even parodic stylization.” “Tolstoy speaks scientific language...” believed Lev Shestov. But the opposition of the “I” itself is expressed in Tolstoy by the opposition of the spiritual “I” (New Testament) “I” to the scientific as a perverted “I”, which Berdyaev qualified as Tolstoy’s “rebellion” against history and civilization. We end the section on Tolstoy’s language with an analysis of Epilogue-2, because we distinguish in it an epilogue of the 20th century. Tolstoy's Epilogue-2 is inexpressibly relevant, let us remember his paradoxes: “he killed many people because he was very brilliant”; “the most powerful weapon of ignorance is the spread of printing” (you can read television); " advanced people, i.e. a crowd of ignoramuses"; something that seemed or seems funny to many young people at the end of the 20th century. appears to be Holy Scripture.

Of course, Epilogue 2 is written in super Tolstoyan language - that is, with the highest tension of his principle of “the original moral attitude of the author to the subject,” a language that is heavy and not always understandable.

But we set ourselves the task of showing the process of formation of such a language.

It is a mistake to see equality between the Epilogue of the novel and Tolstoy. In any case, the “I” in the Epilogue is not at all a synonym and not a substitute (substitute) for the “I” of Tolstoy proper.

We tried to show that Epilogue-2 (its language) was prepared by like-minded people - confidantes of the author-narrator: Pierre and Andrey, the word of the first, the sentence of the second. In a word - in the sense in which Pushkin’s Lensky has a spouse (“come, come...”) - the highest conjugation of meaning: “all is good...”. A sentence - in the sense of the practical compatibility of cause and effect. And the fact that non-direct speech cannot be attributed to Tolstoy’s language (as is almost unconditionally done) is what convinces most of all is the Epilogue - the embodiment of Tolstoy’s voice.

Tolstoy's style is further development Russian literary language, developed in the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol and their successors. It is nourished, on the one hand, by the language of artistic and scientific literature(Russian and European), on the other - colloquial speech noble intelligentsia, with the third - the speech of the people, mainly peasants. The language of War and Peace is unusually rich and varied. Here we meet, firstly, the speech style historical documents, memoirs early XIX centuries that convey the features of the language of the depicted era. This is, for example, the speech of the Freemasonic rhetorician upon Pierre's entry into the Freemasons. It is painted in the official clerical and Church Slavonic flavor characteristic of that era: “Not only in words, but by other means that, perhaps, have a stronger effect on the true seeker of wisdom and virtue than verbal explanations alone”; “to make them capable of perceiving it”, etc. But at the same time, Tolstoy’s language contains a lot of everyday Russian speech, features of regional dialects: “THE THREAM”, “greenery”, “it began to rejuvenate in the evening”, “in defiance of the wolf” … Simple vernacular appears clearly in Tolstoy in those places where he talks about the people. Talking about the partisan war, Tolstoy writes: “... the club of the people’s war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and... fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion was destroyed.”

The main direction in Tolstoy’s work on language was the axis of the writer’s desire to create a language that could truthfully, with the utmost completeness express the author’s thoughts and would be accurate and flexible in depicting complex philosophical quests and deep states of the soul
his heroes. This is where some of the cumbersomeness of Tolstoy’s speech sometimes results. This heaviness is quite natural, since it reflects the complexity of those states of mind which Tolstoy described.

In the field of language, as in all of its artistic work, Tolstoy fights for truth and simplicity, for realism, for the merciless exposure of verbal cliches, current phrases, for an accurate, unvarnished portrayal of life in artistic and journalistic words. This is the kind of word Tolstoy creates, relying on the language of the people, which he does not cover up with a phrase, like secular society, your real thoughts and feelings, but comes to the word from life, from deeds, from a living phenomenon, which is why there are such marks for its definition. “In Russia,” Tolstoy wrote in his article “On Public Education,” “we often speak in bad language, but the people always speak in good language.”
For about this time good language people - accurate, realistic - and Tolstoy fought. Hence, in “War and Peace,” the author’s persistent denunciation of the conventional language accepted in romantic literature and in secular circles, full of vague, “beautiful” phrases, verbal and book cliches. Vivid examples This is why we present Nikolai Rostov's story about
The Battle of Shengraben and the author’s own explanations of it, as well as Tolstoy’s description of Natasha Rostova’s visit to the opera. According to the idea that permeates the entire novel, affirming the people's truth, the epic "War and Peace" is truly folk work, a great patriotic poem glorifying the heroism of the Russian people in one of the most significant eras of its glorious history.
Source: According to A. Zerchaninov, D. Raikhin, V. Strazhev

The language of War and Peace is bright, simple, expressive, colorful and strictly logical. In this great historical epic, according to V. Vinogradov, the “echo” of the voices of the depicted era should have sounded dully and through the living hum of modernity in the 1860s. And Tolstoy managed to bring this “echo” to his readers. The reader's attention is also drawn to the abundance of French speech. French was considered compulsory at that time
belonging to the noble society, especially the highest, although the advanced people of their time FIGHTED against this foreign-language dominance. In War and Peace, French is spoken mainly by those characters who are alien to the Russian people. At the same time, Pierre, who recently arrived from abroad, where he was delighted to speak Russian. He resorts to French only in those cases when he expresses something other than what he feels (Helen’s declaration of love), or expresses himself artificially (a conversation with Anatoly Kuragin regarding the attempted abduction of Rostova). “The French phrase is disgusting to him,” Turgenev wrote about Tolstoy. In cases where representatives of the highest nobility turn to the Russian language, it differs in some ways. Characteristic here is inclusion in refined French speech common expressions. So, for example, Shinshin introduces peasant proverbs into his French language: “Erema, Erema, you should sit at home, sharpen your spindles.” Or: “A German is threshing a loaf of bread on a butt,” etc. Prince Vasily, who always speaks French (and always lies) in order to express his “sincere” affection for the old man Bolkonsky and show his “simplicity,” also turns to the people speech: “For my dear friend, seven miles is not a suburb.” Introducing his son to the owner of the house, he says: “I ask you to love and favor him.”
When, during the French invasion of Russia, the capital's nobles found it necessary to abandon the French language and switch to Russian, which they had forgotten (some even hired Russian language teachers), the general style of their speech was not entirely Russian in nature. Gallicisms abound here: “you do no favors to anyone”; “What pleasure is it to be so caustique [evil-tongued]?”;
“We in Moscow are all enthusiastic through enthusiasm”; “I have hatred for all French people”; “makes wonderful conversations over lint”; “although the enemy was twice as strong as us, we did not hesitate,” etc. Tolstoy skillfully creates a special flavor of the era and classes by introducing some archaisms (ball gown, powder man), as well as terminology and phraseology characteristic of the military environment of the early 19th century: battle, retreat and make a retreat in perfect order, etc.

The features of the Freemasons’ speech are also important in this regard: “to resist the evil that reigns in the world”; “put chains on your feelings and seek bliss not in passions, but in your heart.” The vocabulary of the Freemasons includes many words characteristic of the one depicted in the novel.
era: wisdom, virtue, sacrament, bliss, preparation, explanation, good morals, temple, etc. Here we also encounter Slavicisms: only, this, etc.

Since Tolstoy shows and peasant Rus', living folk speech flows into the narrative in a wide wave, as well as elements of oral folk art. Let us recall the conversation of the soldiers after the inspection of the regiment by Kutuzov:

“What did they say, crooked Kutuzov, about one eye?
- Otherwise, no! Totally crooked.
- No... brother, he has a bigger eye than you. He looked at all the boots and collars.
- How can he, my brother, look at my feet... well! Think … "
And here is the conversation between the Bogucharov men and the elder Dran:

“- How many years have you been eating the world? - Karp shouted at him. —
It's all the same for you! You dig up a little box, take it away, what do you want, ruin our
at home or not?

- It was said that there should be order, don’t leave anyone’s house, no matter what
It’s time not to take out the blue, that’s all! - shouted another.”

And vocabulary, and phraseology, and syntax - everything is here, as in a number of other
from many places, reproduces the speech of the peasants with exceptional truthfulness.

Peasant vernacular also occupies a large place in the language landed nobility(old man Bolkonsky, Rostov] and partially
Moscow (Akhrosimova).

Bolkonsky convinces his daughter to study mathematics: “If you endure it, you will fall in love... The nonsense will jump out of your head.”

He greets his son, who has decided to go to war, with these words: “Ah! Warrior! Do you want to conquer Bonaparte? .. At least take good care of him, otherwise he will soon make us his subjects
will write it down. Ztsoroao!”; and further: “The house is ready for your wife. Princess Marya will take her and show her and talk a lot about her. This is their woman's business."

Old Count Rostov, wanting to praise Natasha, says: “Yes, gunpowder! ... It hit me!” He speaks of his manager like this: “What gold I have, this Mitenka... There is no way that it is impossible...” Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova always spoke in Russian: “Dear birthday girl
with the children... What, you old sinner,” she turned to the count who was kissing her hand, “tea, are you bored in Moscow?” Is there anywhere to run the dogs? But what should we do, father, this is how these birds will grow up...” she pointed to the girls, “whether you like it or not, we have to look for suitors.”

There is a lot of peasant speech in the language of officers close to the peasant masses - Tushin, Timokhin and others. When Tushin was caught by senior officers without boots, in order to get out of an awkward situation, he tries to switch to a humorous tone: “The soldiers say: when you are smarter, you are smarter.” During the battle, he says: “Crash it, guys,” and, looking at the results of his battery’s firing, notes: “Look, I puffed again.” His favorite addresses: darling, dear soul. But the language of each of the characters has its own individual characteristics.

The speech of every soldier and peasant has its own characteristic features, starting with Karataev, Lavrushka and ending with fleeting, episodic images. Thus, Karataev’s speech is always quite verbose and instructive. Even in the episode with his attempt to appropriate
the remnant of a canvas that belonged to a French soldier, after the Frenchman gives him this remnant, Karataev finds an instructive maxim: “Unchrist, but also a soul. That's what the old people used to say: a sweaty hand is tarnished, a dry hand is stubborn. He himself is hollow, but he gave it away.”

The speech of Tikhon Shcherbaty, an intelligent, firm, decisive, fearless person, has a completely different character. Clear, precise and at the same time imaginative and not devoid of humor, it consists of short, sometimes incomplete sentences, in which the predominant place belongs to the verb, which gives it a touch of energy.
“Well, where have you been? - Denisov said.
- Where had you been? “I followed the French,” Tikhon answered boldly and hastily...
-...Well, don’t vaip>.
“He took it,” said Tikhon.
-Where is Dezhon?
- Yes, I took him first at dawn... and took him into the forest. I see it's not okay. I think, let me go, I’ll take another more careful one... I went after another... I crawled into the forest in this manner, and then lay down. “Tikhon suddenly and flexibly lay down on his belly, imagining in their faces how he did it. - One and turn around... I’ll grab him in this manner. - Tikhon quickly and easily jumped up. “Let’s go, I say, to the colonel.” How loud he will be. And there are four of them here. They rushed at me with skewers. I hit them with an ax in such a manner: what are you saying, Christ is with you.”

The speech of the peasants contains a lot folklore elements. Karataev constantly uses wise proverbs created by the people: “Yes, the worm smoothes the cabbage, but before that you disappear”; “Our happiness, my friend, is like Water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing”; “A persuader is a brother to a cause,” etc. Sometimes they express their own with the help of proverbs
thoughts and other characters: “And wormwood grows on its root.”

The soldiers sing folk songs: “Oh, it’s gone... yes, the hedgehog’s head... Yes, we are tenacious on the wrong side”; “Oh, you, my canopy, my canopy!” etc. Speech diversity is also visible among the nobility. The precise, clear, often laconic speech of Andrei Bolkonsky, with his sometimes bitter irony, differs sharply in character from the statements of the dreamy, absent-minded, good-natured, and sometimes enthusiastic Pierre.
The deceit of Prince Vasily is emphasized by the hyperbolic epithets he uses.

Natasha Rostova’s speech is also unique.

It is distinguished by complete artlessness and simplicity, but is complemented more than any of Tolstoy’s other positive heroes by rich intonation, the expression of the eyes of the entire face, and body movements.
V. Vinogradov in his work “On Tolstoy’s Language” points out that this mimic conversation is also conveyed by the writer in the form of oral dialogue. So, for example, to Bolkonsky’s question whether Natasha could be his wife, she did not answer anything in words, but “her face said: “Why ask? Why doubt what you can’t help but know? Why talk when you can’t express in words what you feel.”

The synonyms with which the forest is depicted at the beginning of summer are bright, full-voiced and colorful: “The bells rang even more muffled in the forest than a month ago; everything was full, shady and dense...”

The epithetics also testify to the vocabulary richness of the language of War and Peace, its remarkable accuracy and expressiveness. Boris Drubetskoy is characterized by few epithets, but revealing the most basic features of the high-society Molchalin: quiet, decent, not fast (steps). But Andrey's complex nature
Bolkonsky demanded a lot of color from the writer (see the description of Andrei Bolkonsky). The word lives only in the context, and the richness of the writer’s language is most manifested in the skill of combining words.

French text and its functions in the novel “War and Peace”

LEARNING FROM STUDENTS

Elena KOLESNIK,
11th grade,
Gymnasium-laboratory
Salakhova, Surgut
(teacher - I.S. Shcherbakova)

French text and its functions in the novel “War and Peace”

The essay by Elena Kolesnik is devoted to the study of the role of the French text in novels of the 19th century century. Research received a 1st degree diploma at the regional conference “Step into the Future”. We are publishing a fragment of the essay concerning the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace".

A large number of foreign remarks in Tolstoy's novel are felt by the reader as an independent text introduced into the fabric of Russian narrative. When including someone else’s text, in our case the French language, the main text “acquires the features of increased conventionality, its playful character is emphasized - ironic, parody, theatrical.”

Indicative in this sense is the scene that opens the novel. A long French remark, belonging to Anna Pavlovna Scherer, immediately introduces us to the heroine as that “enthusiast” who feels her special social status and the place of a close empress, which she is. As soon as Scherer is named by the author and it is announced that with this remark she met the important official Prince Vasily, Tolstoy places the text of her note, by which in the morning the prince, like all other guests (the author notes - “without distinction”), is invited to this evening. The translations from French placed side by side make it possible to see that in both cases the foreign language plays a kind of mask role, hiding, in one case, acute feeling(“...all the nasty things, all the horrors of this Antichrist...”), in another - a vulgar banality (“... the poor sick woman...”).

On foreign language everything said is elegant and decent, but the reader will certainly remember that even obscene abuse in a foreign language does not sound so rude.

On the same page, the author comments on the French of his heroes (“He spoke that refined French language in which our grandfathers not only spoke, but also thought, and with those quiet, patronizing intonations that are characteristic of a significant person who has grown old in the world and at court.” ). But at the same time, almost side by side, Tolstoy writes, as the prince and Anna Pavlovna say: one is “lazy, like an actor speaking the role of an old play,” the other, on the contrary, “is full of animation and impulses.” This creates an atmosphere of unnatural, inorganic, puppet behavior. Therefore, when Pierre appears in Scherer’s living room in the second chapter, the hostess’s face “displayed anxiety and fear.” This fear, Tolstoy explains, “could only relate to the intelligent and at the same time timid, observant and natural look,” which distinguishes Pierre from everyone in the living room. In response to Anna Pavlovna’s French greeting, “Pierre muttered something incomprehensible.”

Even after reading only these two chapters incompletely, the reader certainly comes to the conclusion that French seems to dictate a certain model of behavior to the characters. At the same time, Pierre, raised abroad, named in the French manner, abandoning a foreign language, allows himself to abandon the ritual of “hearing about the health of his aunt and her Majesty,” without fear of saying that the plan of the distinguished guest Scherer is a “chimera.” Involuntarily, from the first chapters the reader has to understand that naturalness and organicity are associated in the novel with the Russian language, with which the first chapter ends, for even Anna Pavlovna, turning to Bezukhov, will pronounce all her remarks only in Russian.

It is interesting to dwell on one more favorite hero of Tolstoy. The appearance of Andrei Bolkonsky is accompanied by a rather long author's description, followed by a short dialogue in French between Anna Pavlovna and Bolkonsky. This conversation is unpleasant for Andrey, and in order to interrupt it, the prince categorically responds to the French remark with a Russian one. This scene clearly shows how, using French, the hero is subject to the prescribed norm, established by someone unknown, he must comply with the rules of this game, and when switching to Russian, he becomes himself, the theatrical action stops.

Further consideration of the interaction of French and Russian in this famous Tolstoy scene, up to the fifth chapter, forces us to put forward the following hypothesis: the combination of Russian and French created a situation of “increased conventionality,” in Lotman’s words. It was she who pushed the writer to emphasize the artificial, unnatural, puppet principle in those heroes who expect to express themselves in French. That is main idea Tolstoy's novel - the opposition of natural and unnatural, the opposition of true (natural) and false (unnatural) - was set by the very element of combining two languages.

The presence of the heroes in the sphere of two linguistic cultures makes their actions contradictory, this is especially clearly seen in the images of Prince Andrei and Pierre Bezukhov. But this applies not only to the main characters. In this sense, the scene of the meeting between Emperor Alexander I and the Frenchman Michaud (vol. 4, part 1, chapter 3) may be interesting for us in this sense. The scene seems passable and rather insignificant in the development of the plot; rather, Tolstoy needed it to develop the image of the emperor, who was contrasted with Kutuzov in the first volume and classified as a hero gravitating toward the “Napoleon’s pole.” In this chapter, all lines, except the author's commentary, are spoken in French. The writer says at the beginning of the chapter that Michaud does not speak Russian, so, on the one hand, it is clear why the dialogue is conducted in French. But, on the other hand, couldn’t the emperor, having learned about the grave loss (by the way, note that the entire last part of the previous volume tells about the Battle of Borodino, the surrender of Moscow, and it turns out that the emperor is the last to learn about it), express his feelings in his native language? language?

No, I couldn't! I couldn’t because from the very beginning of their conversation it becomes clear - this is a real performance, where everyone plays their roles: Alexander - the caring patron of the people and the state, Michaud - the faithful servant of “his treès gracièux souverain” (the most merciful ruler).

With the phrase “all-merciful ruler,” Tolstoy remarks in parentheses, “as he wrote.” This is the very beginning of the chapter, and the reader immediately understands that the author is using Michaud’s memoirs, which means he is not inventing anything, but is following the witness of time. In the same way, at the end of the chapter, next to the final remark of the messenger, there is the author’s clarification: “as he said later.” Tolstoy needs these introductory constructions for the compositional design of the chapter. One can’t help but be amazed at how precisely, with the help of an impeccable form (in this case, with the help of just two author’s remarks, a compositional ring is born) the writer pushes us to read his main idea.

By and large, nothing happens in the chapter, except that the emperor’s “beautiful blue eyes” were “moistened with tears.” Michaud brought terrible news about the abandonment of Moscow. Why does Kutuzov send him, a Frenchman, albeit “quoique étranger, Russe de coer et d"âme” (foreigner, but Russian at heart), and not one of the Russian adjutants or those commanders who are dear to Alexander I? Probably , because for any Russian person the loss of Moscow is a personal grief, but Michaud had “such a sad face when he was introduced into the sovereign’s office that the sovereign immediately asked him: “M"apportez vouz de tristes nouvelles, colonel? ” (“What news did you bring me? Bad news, Colonel?”). He reports the loss respectfully, and when he discovers that in response to the sovereign’s question: “...Comment avez-vous laissé l"armée, en voyant ainsi, sans coup ferir abandonner mon ancienne capitale? N"avez-vouz pas apercu du découragement? ..” (“...How did you abandon my army, which left without a battle ancient capital? Have you noticed any loss of spirit in her?”) - before she had time to prepare an answer, she begins to gain time. Tolstoy speaks of a “thin, barely noticeable smile on the lips” and that he prepared an answer in the form of a “light and respectful jeu de mots” (pun, pun). While the sovereign frowns sternly, the “plenipotentiary of the Russian people” “with respectful playfulness” puts his “jeu de mots” into action. In principle, we are close to the climax scene of the chapter, because, according to the plans of the characters, after Michaud’s subtle flattery, a certain climax comes: the “sensitive” emperor “with a lacquered sparkle in his eyes” pronounces a monumental, more similar to the monologue of the tragic hero of a not very talented play replica. This phrase is accompanied by a “majestic gesture”, pronounced “in an excited voice”, “with tears appearing in his eyes.” He calls his subjects “brave men”, “kind nobles”, “good men”, threatens to “grow a beard”, “eat one potato”, but “not to make peace with Napoleon”, but only to destroy him. All quotes are given by us from Tolstoy’s translation, because everything is said, of course, in French. It is the French language that both allows and forces the emperor to support and continue the theatrical performance begun by Michaud. It is here that the combination of a voluminous French text with short but apt author’s remarks in Russian creates the feeling of a theatrical parody of classical play of bad quality. It is clear that both actors playing their historical role with all their might, they have no doubt that this episode will be inscribed on the pages of world history. Tolstoy, as always, does not forgive his heroes for unnaturalness, and the combination of French and Russian creates an atmosphere of pretense, theatricality, and bad acting. One would like to call the language of the characters “tactical French,” and each of the participants in the scene seems to be the one directing and that history will remember only him.

Summarizing the above, we come to the conclusion that Tolstoy’s Russian and French are opposites. Russian makes the hero strive for self-understanding, to determine his place in the world. French does not require either spiritual or intellectual effort from the heroes. They behave as if French is an indicator of their abilities, culture and spiritual qualities.

The novel War and Peace original language. All school essays on literature

The language of L. Tolstoy in the novel “War and Peace”

LEARNING FROM STUDENTS

Elena KOLESNIK, 11th grade, Gymnasium-laboratory Salakhova, Surgut (teacher - I.S. Shcherbakova)

French text and its functions in the novel “War and Peace”

Elena KOLESNIK,
11th grade,
Gymnasium-laboratory
Salakhova, Surgut
(teacher - I.S. Shcherbakova)