Realism of L. Tolstoy and its features

The originality of psychologism L.N. Tolstoy was noted by N.G. Chernyshevsky. He wrote: “The peculiarity of Count L.N. Tolstoy is that he is not limited to depicting the results of the psychological process: he is interested in the process itself... the subtle phenomena of this inner life, replacing one after another with extreme speed and inexhaustible originality...” The writer’s focus is on the “dialectics of the soul,” the processes of consistent development of feelings and thoughts. Let's see with what artistic means Tolstoy conveys the processes of the inner life of the characters in the novel War and Peace. One such artistic medium is portraiture. Descriptions of appearance in the novel are not just detailed - the characters are depicted in the entire spectrum of their mental movements, feelings and states. “There are painters who are famous for their art of capturing the reflection of a ray on quickly rolling waves, the fluttering of light on rustling leaves, its shimmer on the changing outlines of clouds: they are mostly said to be able to capture the life of nature. Count Tolstoy does something similar regarding the mysterious phenomena of mental life,” wrote Chernyshevsky. And the entire “mental life” of Tolstoy’s heroes is reflected in the description of their appearance. The writer uses the so-called dynamic portrait, dispersing the details of the hero’s appearance throughout the entire narrative. But the novel also contains static portraits, close to the creative style of Lermontov and Turgenev. However, if these writers have an unchanging, monologue portrait that is characteristic of the main characters, then Tolstoy’s “stable portrait” is characteristic of secondary and episodic characters. These are the portraits in the novel of Aunt Malvintseva, the freemason Bazdeev, the French officer with whom Pierre fights in a trench on the day of the Battle of Borodino. A stable portrait is also characteristic of heroes who are “closed” to living, authentic life, for whom living feelings are inaccessible (description of the appearance of Helen Bezukhova).

Another tendency of Tolstoy’s creative method is a decisive rejection of “all kinds of habitual beauty”, “revealing the true appearance of things”, when something beautiful and significant is hidden under the ordinary, and something ugly and base is hidden under the outwardly spectacular, brilliant. In this, Tolstoy’s creative style approaches the style of Dostoevsky, in whose heroes external unattractiveness often contrasts with internal beauty (the portrait of Lizaveta in the novel “Crime and Punishment”). In this aspect, Tolstoy describes the appearance of Marya Bolkonskaya and Helen Bezukhova. The writer often emphasizes the external unattractiveness of Princess Marya. Here is one of the first portraits of the heroine: “The mirror reflected an ugly, weak body and a thin face. The eyes are always sad, now they looked at themselves in the mirror especially hopelessly.” However, the heroine is distinguished by her spiritual beauty. Marya Bolkonskaya is kind and merciful, open and natural. Her inner world is unusually rich and sublime. All these qualities are reflected in the princess’s eyes, which “large, deep and radiant (as if rays of warm light sometimes came out of them in sheaves), were so good that very often, despite the ugliness of the whole face, these eyes became more attractive than beauty.” Princess Marya dreams of a family, and the arrival of father and son Kuragin involuntarily gives rise to hopes for love and happiness. The heroine’s confusion, her excitement, a sense of shame, awkwardness in front of the Frenchwoman and Lisa, who quite sincerely “cared about making her beautiful” - all these feelings were reflected on her face. “She flushed, her beautiful eyes went out, her face became covered with spots, and with that ugly expression of victim that most often settled on her face, she surrendered to the power of mll Bourienne and Lisa. Both women cared quite sincerely about making her beautiful. She was so bad that not one of them could think of competing with her...” Princess Marya appears completely different during her meeting with Nikolai Rostov. Here the heroine is natural, she does not care about the impression she makes. She is still upset by her father’s death, disappointed and discouraged by the behavior of Bogucharov’s men, who did not accept her “help” and did not let her out of the estate. Recognizing in Rostov a Russian person in her circle, someone who can understand and help, she looks at him with a deep, radiant gaze and speaks in a voice trembling with excitement. The heroine’s appearance here is given in the perception of Nikolai Rostov, who sees “something romantic” in this meeting. “A defenseless, grief-stricken girl, alone, left at the mercy of rude, rebellious men! And some strange fate pushed me here!..And what meekness, nobility in her features and expression!” he thinks, looking at Princess Marya. But Princess Marya does not remain indifferent to him. The appearance of Nikolai awakens in her soul love, timid hope for happiness, “a new force of life.” And all the heroine’s feelings are reflected in her appearance, giving her eyes sparkle, her face tenderness and light, her movements grace and dignity, her voice “new, feminine chest sounds.” This is how Tolstoy describes Princess Marya during a meeting with Nikolai in Voronezh: “Her face, from the time Rostov entered, suddenly transformed. How suddenly, with unexpected, striking beauty, that complex, skillful artistic work appears on the walls of the painted and carved lantern, which previously seemed rough, dark and meaningless, when the light is lit inside: so suddenly the face of Princess Marya was transformed. For the first time, all that pure spiritual inner work with which she had lived until now came out. All her inner work, dissatisfied with herself, her suffering, striving for good, humility, love, self-sacrifice - all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her thin smile, in every feature of her tender face.” The type of “soulless, ugly” beauty is embodied in the novel in the image of Helen Bezukhova. In this heroine, Tolstoy defiantly emphasizes her bright, dazzling appearance. “Princess Helen smiled; she rose with the same unchanging smile of the quite beautiful woman with whom she entered the living room. Slightly rustling with her white ball gown, decorated with ivy and moss, and shining with the whiteness of her shoulders, the gloss of her hair and diamonds, she walked between the parting men, not looking at anyone, but smiling at everyone and, as if kindly granting everyone the right to admire the beauty of her figure, full shoulders... Helen was so beautiful that not only was there not a shadow of coquetry visible in her, but, on the contrary, she seemed ashamed of her undoubted and too powerfully and victoriously effective beauty.” We never see Helene as unattractive, as we sometimes see Natasha or Princess Marya. However, this very manner of portraying the heroine embodies the author’s attitude towards her. Tolstoy, who subtly notices the slightest changes in the mental life of his characters, is demonstratively monotonous in his portrayal of Helen. Nowhere do we find descriptions of the heroine’s eyes, her smiles, or facial expressions. Helen's beauty is crudely physical, palpably material, her beautiful figure, full shoulders - everything seems to merge with her clothes. This “demonstrative sculpturality” of Helen emphasizes the “lifelessness” of the heroine, the complete absence in her soul of any human feelings and emotions. Moreover, these are not just the “brilliant manners” of a secular woman who skillfully controls herself - this is internal emptiness and meaninglessness. The feeling of pity, shame or remorse is unfamiliar to her; she is devoid of any reflection. Hence the stability, the static nature of her portrait.

And vice versa, the writer reveals to us the emotionality of Natasha Rostova, her liveliness, all the diversity of her emotional movements in the descriptions of her animated eyes, her different smiles. Natasha has a “childish” smile, a smile of “joy and calmness,” a smile that “brightened due to ready tears.” Her facial expression conveys a wide variety of feelings. The dynamism of Natasha's portraits in the novel is also due to the fact that Tolstoy depicts how she grows up, turning from a child to a girl, and then to a young woman. Natasha Rostova first appears before us as a young girl, lively and restless. “A dark-eyed, big-mouthed, ugly, but lively girl, with her childish open shoulders that had popped out of her bodice from a fast run, with her black curls tumbling back, thin bare arms and small legs in lace pantaloons and open shoes, was in that cute the age when a girl is no longer a child, and a child is not yet a girl.” Natasha is touchingly innocent at the first “adult” ball in her life. In her gaze there is “readiness for the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow,” “despair” and “delight,” fear and happiness. “I’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” this frightened and happy girl seemed to say with her smile, shining because of ready tears... Her bare neck and arms were thin and ugly in comparison with Helen’s shoulders. Her shoulders were thin, her breasts were vague, her arms were thin; but Helen already seemed to have varnish from all the thousands of glances sliding over her body, and Natasha seemed like a girl who had been exposed for the first time and who would have been very ashamed of it if she had not been assured that it was so necessary.” Uncertainty and joy, excitement, self-pride and a nascent feeling of love are the main feelings of the heroine, subtly noticed by Tolstoy in her portrait. The description of appearance here is accompanied by the author's commentary, an almost open indication of Natasha's feelings. We do not find this kind of commentary in portraits created by Pushkin, Gogol or Turgenev. Tolstoy not only records the hero’s appearance in dynamics, but also reveals what caused certain changes, reveals feelings and emotions. To more deeply reveal the inner world of the hero, Tolstoy often uses some repeating detail of appearance. Such a detail is the deep, radiant eyes of Princess Marya, the “marble” shoulders of Helen, the scar on Kutuzov’s temple, the white hands of Speransky, the “jumping” cheeks of Prince Vasily. All these parts perform a characteristic function. We find this kind of repeating details that create the leitmotif of the portrait in Turgenev’s novels (Pavel Petrovich’s fragrant mustache in the novel “Fathers and Sons”). A special place in Tolstoy’s description of appearance is occupied by the image of the characters’ eyes. By recording the expression in the eyes of his characters and the characteristic features of their gaze, the writer reveals the complex internal processes of their mental life and conveys the mood of a person. Thus, the “quick” and “stern” eyes of the old man Bolkonsky emphasize the insight, skepticism of this man, his energy, efficiency, contempt for everything ostentatious and false. Dolokhov’s “beautiful insolent eyes” convey the contradictory nature of his nature: a combination in his character of nobility and arrogance, swagger. This is how Tolstoy describes the look of the dying Liza Bolkonskaya when Prince Andrei returned from the war. “Brilliant eyes, looking childishly scared and excited, stopped at him without changing expression. “I love you all, I haven’t done harm to anyone, why am I suffering? help me,” said her expression...” “She looked at him questioningly, childishly and reproachfully. “I expected help from you, and nothing, nothing, and you too!” - said her eyes. Sometimes a writer compares his characters to animals. From this perspective, Tolstoy describes the appearance of Liza Bolkonskaya. After a quarrel with her husband, “the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess’s beautiful face was replaced by an attractive and compassion-arousing expression of fear; She looked from under her beautiful eyes at her husband, and on her face appeared that timid and acknowledging expression that appears on a dog, quickly but weakly waving its lowered tail.” Prince Andrei suppresses his wife, sometimes he is unceremonious with her - Liza often takes his behavior for granted and does not try to resist. By comparing her to a dog, the author emphasizes the heroine’s humility, “peacefulness,” and a certain complacency. In general, by comparing the manners and behavior of the characters with the habits of animals, Tolstoy achieves a magnificent artistic effect. Thus, the massive, fat and awkward Pierre is called a bear in the novel for his enormous physical strength, awkward movements, and “inability to enter the salon.” Tolstoy compares Sonya, with her extraordinary smoothness of movements, grace and “somewhat cunning and restrained manner,” to a beautiful, but not yet formed kitten, “who will be a lovely cat.” And at the end of the novel, Sonya’s “cat habits” really showed up. Tolstoy emphasizes “virtue” in the heroine, bordering on spiritual coldness; she lacks passion, ardor, selfishness, which, according to the author, is necessary, the will to live. Therefore, Sonya is a “barren flower.” Living in Nikolai’s family, she valued “not so much the people as the whole family. She, like a cat, has taken root not with people, but with the house.” Thus, the “dialectics of the soul,” so deeply explored by the writer in the novel, is fully revealed in the description of their faces, smiles, eyes, gestures, movements, and gait. Tolstoy’s landscape becomes another artistic means that allows one to convey the hero’s state of mind. Pictures of nature in the novel reveal the thoughts and feelings of the characters and emphasize their character traits. Thus, researchers have repeatedly noted the significance of the image of the “blue, endless sky” in revealing the inner appearance of Andrei Bolkonsky. This image accompanies the hero throughout his entire life, metaphorically conveying some of his character traits: coldness, rationality, striving for a heavenly ideal. Landscapes in the novel frame certain stages of the characters’ lives, merge with their mental crises or symbolize the acquisition of inner harmony. In this regard, the landscape that opened up to the wounded Prince Andrei on the field of Austerlitz is important. This is still the same picture of the endless, distant sky, indifferent to human destinies, worries, and aspirations. “There was nothing above him anymore except the sky - a high sky, not clear, but still immeasurably high, with gray clouds quietly creeping across it. “How quiet, calm and solemn, not at all like how I was running,” thought Prince Andrei... How come I haven’t seen this high sky before? And how happy I am that I finally recognized him. Yes! everything is empty, everything is deception, except this endless sky...” The hero experiences a mental crisis here, disappointment in his ambitious thoughts. Tolstoy again correlates the feeling of spiritual renewal, “return to life” in Prince Andrei with a natural image - a mighty, old oak tree. So, on the way to the Ryazan estates, the hero drives through the forest and sees an old huge oak tree, with broken branches, looking “like some old, angry and contemptuous freak.” “Spring, and love, and happiness! - it was as if this oak tree was speaking. - And how can you not get tired of the same stupid, senseless deception? Everything is the same, and everything is a lie! There is no spring, no sun, no happiness. Look there - the crushed dead spruce trees are sitting, always the same, and there I am, spreading out my broken, skinned fingers, wherever they grew - from the back, from the sides. As I grew up, I still stand, and I don’t believe your hopes and deceptions.” The hero’s mood here fully corresponds to the pictures of nature. But in Otradnoye Bolkonsky meets Natasha, involuntarily hears her conversation with Sonya, and in his soul, unexpectedly for himself, a “confusion of young thoughts and hopes” arises. And on the way back he no longer recognizes the old oak tree. “The old oak tree, completely transformed, spread out like a tent of lush, dark greenery, was melting, slightly swaying in the rays of the evening sun. No gnarled fingers, no sores, no old grief and mistrust - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves broke through the hundred-year-old hard bark without knots, so it was impossible to believe that this old man had produced them. “Yes, this is the same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrei, and suddenly an unreasonable spring feeling of joy and renewal came over him.” Another important means of conveying the “dialectics of the soul” in the novel is the internal monologue. V.V. Stasov wrote that “in the “conversations” of the characters there is nothing more difficult than “monologues.” Here the authors falsify and invent more than in all their other writings... Almost no one anywhere has any real truth here, it is accidental, incorrect, fragmentary, incomplete and all kinds of leaps. Almost all authors (including Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, and Gogol, and Pushkin, and Griboyedov) write monologues that are completely correct, consistent, drawn out like a thread and to a string, polished and archilogical... Do we really think that way to ourselves? Not at all like that. I have found only one exception so far: this is Count Tolstoy. He is the only one who gives real monologues in novels and dramas, precisely with their irregularities, accidents, reticences and jumps.” Let us remember the episode where Rostov loses a large sum of money to Dolokhov. The latter, who saw his happy rival in Nikolai, wants to take revenge on him at all costs, and at the same time acquire the opportunity to blackmail him. Not being particularly decent, Dolokhov drags Nikolai into a card game, during which he loses a huge amount of money. Remembering the plight of his family, Rostov himself does not seem to understand how all this could happen, and does not fully believe in what is happening. He is angry with himself, upset, and cannot understand Dolokhov. All this confusion of the hero’s feelings and thoughts is masterfully conveyed by Tolstoy in his internal monologue. “Six hundred rubles, ace, corner, nine...it’s impossible to win back!.. And how fun it would be at home...Jack, but no...this can’t be!..And why is he doing this to me?..” - he thought and remembered Rostov". “After all, he knows,” he said to himself, “what this loss means for me. He can't want my death, can he? After all, he was my friend. After all, I loved him... But it’s not his fault either; What should he do when he is lucky?..” Elsewhere, Princess Marya guesses about the true reasons for Nikolai Rostov’s coldness towards her. “So that’s why! That's why! - said the inner voice in the soul of Princess Marya. -...Yes, he is now poor, and I am rich...Yes, only because of this...Yes, if only this had not happened....” Tolstoy's inner speech often seems abrupt, his phrases syntactically incomplete. As Chernyshevsky noted, “Count Tolstoy’s attention is most of all drawn to how some feelings and thoughts develop from others; it is interesting for him to observe how a feeling that directly arose from a given position or impression ... passes into other feelings, again returns to the previous starting point and wanders again and again.” We observe the change of these mental movements, their alternation in the internal monologue of Andrei Bolkonsky before the Battle of Borodino. It seems to Prince Andrei that “tomorrow’s battle is the most terrible of all in which he participated, and the possibility of death for the first time in his life, without any relation to everyday life, without consideration of how it will affect others, but only in relation to to himself, to his soul, with vividness, almost with certainty, simply and horribly” appears to him. His whole life seems to him a failure, his interests petty and base. “Yes, yes, these are the false images that excited and delighted and tormented me,” he said to himself, turning over in his imagination the main pictures of his magic lantern of life... “Glory, the public good, love for a woman, the fatherland itself - how great they seemed to me.” These pictures, what a deep meaning they seemed to be filled with! And all this is so simple, pale and rough in the cold light of that morning which I feel rising for me.” Prince Andrei seems to convince himself that his life and the lives of his loved ones are not so good as to be pitied. Bolkonsky's gloomy mood intensifies as he remembers more and more of the past. He remembers Natasha and feels sad. “I understood her,” thought Prince Andrei. “I not only understood, but this spiritual strength, this sincerity, this spiritual openness, this soul, I loved in her... so much, so happily I loved...” Then Bolkonsky thinks about Anatole, his rival, and his melancholy turns into despair, the feeling of the misfortune that has happened to him takes possession of his soul with renewed vigor. “He didn’t need any of this. He didn't see or understand any of this. He saw in her a pretty and fresh girl, with whom he did not deign to connect his fate. And I? And is he still alive and cheerful?” Death seems to the hero as a deliverance from all the misfortunes of his life. But, finding himself close to death, on the Borodino field, when “a grenade, like a top, smoking, spun between him and the lying adjutant,” Bolkonsky suddenly felt a passionate impulse of love for life. “Is this really death,” thought Prince Andrei, looking with a completely new, envious gaze at the grass, at the wormwood and at the stream of smoke curling from the spinning black ball, “I can’t, I don’t want to die, I love life, this grass, earth, air ..." As S.G. notes Bocharov, these natural images of the earth (grass, wormwood, a trickle of smoke), symbolizing life, are in many ways opposite to the image of the sky, symbolizing eternity in the novel “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy. – In the book: Three masterpieces of Russian classics. M., 1971, p. 78.”>. However, Prince Andrei in the novel is associated precisely with the image of heaven, so in this impulse to life there is a certain inconsistency; we can assume the future death of the hero. A writer's internal monologue often acts as one of the means of characterizing a character. Tolstoy reveals the selfishness, irritability, despotism of the old Prince Bolkonsky and at the same time his intelligence, insight, and ability to understand people not only in his actions, but also in the hero’s internal monologues. Thus, Nikolai Andreevich quickly recognizes the true nature of Anatoly Kuragin, who came with his father to woo Princess Marya. Old Prince Bolkonsky is attached to his daughter in his own way and at the same time is selfish like an old man. He is sorry to part with Princess Marya, and besides, he clearly understands that young Kuragin is stupid, immoral and cynical. Nikolai Andreevich notices Anatole’s interest in the French woman, notices the confusion and excitement of his daughter, who has the hope of starting her own family. All this irritates old man Bolkonsky to the extreme. “What do I need Prince Vasily and his son? Prince Vasily is a chatterbox, empty, well, he must be a good son...” he grumbled to himself. Life without Princess Marya seems unthinkable to the old prince. “And why should she get married? - he thought. - Probably to be unhappy. There's Lisa behind Andrey (it seems hard to find a better husband now), but is she happy with her fate? And who will take her out of love? Dull, awkward. They'll take you for your connections, for your wealth. And don’t they live in girls? Even happier! Anatole's attention to mlle Bourienne, which offends all the feelings of Nikolai Andreevich, the innocence of his daughter, who does not notice this attention, the turmoil created in the house due to the arrival of the Kuragins by Liza and the French woman - all this drives him literally into rage. “The first person he met showed up - and the father and everything was forgotten, and he was running, itching upward, and wagging his tail, and he didn’t look like himself! Glad to leave my father! And I knew that I would notice... Fr... fr... fr... And don’t I see that this fool is looking only at Burienka (we need to drive her away)! And how there is no pride enough to understand this! Although not for myself, if there is no pride, then for me, at least. We need to show her that this idiot doesn’t even think about her, but only looks at Bourienne. She has no pride, but I will show her this...” In the same scene of the Kuragins' matchmaking, all the baseness of Anatole's thoughts, the cynicism and immorality of his depraved nature are revealed. “Why not marry, if she is very rich? It never interferes,” thought Anatole. Having seen Mlle Bourienne, he decided that “here, in the Bald Mountains, it will not be boring.” “Very pretty! - he thought, looking at her. “This companion is very nice.” I hope she will take it with her when she marries me,” he thought, “very, very pretty.” Thus, the writer’s inner speech is “incorrect,” mobile, and dynamic. “By recreating the movement of thoughts and feelings of his heroes, Tolstoy reveals what is happening in the depths of their souls and which the heroes themselves are either unaware of or only vaguely guess. What happens in the depths of the soul, from Tolstoy’s point of view, is often more true than conscious feelings…” writes M.B. Khrapchenko. Using the technique of internal monologue, the writer reproduces the characteristics of the characters and their inner world.

In Tolstoy's psychological analysis, the author's commentary on the character's thoughts, words, or any events is also very important. Let us recall, for example, the scene of Bagration’s detour of troops before the Battle of Shengraben. “Whose company? – Prince Bagration asked the fireworksman standing by the boxes. He asked: whose company? But in essence he asked: aren’t you shy here? And the fireworksman understood this. “Captain Tushin, your Excellency,” the red-haired fireworksman with a face covered with freckles shouted, stretching out in a cheerful voice.” And then Tolstoy allows his hero, Andrei Bolkonsky, to evaluate these events. “Thanks to the tact that Prince Bagration showed, Prince Andrei noticed that, despite this randomness of events and their independence from the will of their superior, his presence did an enormous amount. The commanders, who approached Prince Bagration with upset faces, became calm, the soldiers and officers cheerfully greeted him and became more animated in his presence and, apparently, flaunted their courage in front of him.” Another important artistic technique of L.N. Tolstoy the psychologist is the so-called “defamiliarization” (V. Shklovsky). It is based on a description of an object, phenomenon, process as completely unfamiliar, a departure from all stereotypes, habitual associations, the effect of a new, fresh look. The writer repeatedly uses this technique in the novel, characterizing the characters in a certain way, conveying their intellectual level, thoughts, and mood. A well-known example of “defamiliarization” in Tolstoy’s novel is Natasha Rostova’s perception of the opera. “On the stage there were even boards in the middle, on the sides there were painted cardboards depicting trees, and behind there was a canvas stretched on boards. In the middle of the stage sat girls in red bodices and white skirts. One, very fat, in a white silk dress, sat separately, on a low bench, to which green cardboard was glued to the back. They were all singing something. When they finished their song, the girl in white walked up to the prompter's booth, and a man in tight-fitting silk trousers on thick legs, with a feather and a dagger, approached her and began to sing and spread his arms. The man in tight trousers sang alone, then she sang. Then both fell silent, the music began to play, and the man began to finger the hand of the girl in a white dress, apparently again waiting for the beat to begin his part with her. They sang together, and everyone in the theater began to clap and shout, and the man and woman on stage began to bow.” This scene shows us that social life, with its falsehood, lies, and conventions, is initially alien to Natasha. She finds it strange what she sees on stage. Tolstoy portrays opera as a symbol of a thoroughly false secular society. It is characteristic that it is here that Natasha meets Helen and unwittingly succumbs to her harmful influence.

Thus, L.N. Tolstoy in the novel “War and Peace” appears before us as a brilliant psychologist who reveals the depths of the human soul and the facets of characters.

In 1869, from the pen of L.N. Tolstoy came one of the brilliant works of world literature - the epic novel "War and Peace". The genre of the epic novel is the creation of Leo Tolstoy. The ideological and artistic meaning of each novel scene and each character becomes fully clear only in their connection with the comprehensive content of the epic, that is, in the context of historical events. The composition of “War and Peace” is also subject to the requirements of the genre. The plot is based on historical events. Secondly, the significance of the destinies of families and individuals is revealed. The epic novel combines detailed pictures of Russian life, battle scenes, artistic narration and philosophical digressions. The basis of the content of the epic novel is events of a large historical scale, “general life, not private life,” reflected in the destinies of individual people. Tolstoy achieved an unusually wide coverage of all layers of Russian life - hence the huge number of characters. The popular idea is not that ordinary people are depicted, but that at the moment of historical upheavals the nation acquires a directed movement that unites all layers of society. For T, the people are not peasants, but all Russian people opposing an external enemy, and the division occurs not along social lines, but according to friend or foe... People in “War and Peace” it is the living soul of the nation: Russian peasants, soldiers and partisans; townspeople who destroyed their property and left long-lived places: the nobility who created militias; the population leaving Moscow and showing “with this negative action the full strength of their national feeling.” The common good (victory) is portrayed by the writer as a necessary (natural) result of the unidirectional interests of many people, always determined by one feeling - the “hidden warmth of patriotism.” One of the chapters of compositions of methods for constructing a district is ANTITHESIS. Already in the title: “B and M”. two antonyms. It is war in its meaning, but peace is like 1) peace; 2) universality, the whole world; 3) peace with And short - community, community cell. Community implies commonality: everyday life, interests, economic. How is the correct model of the community device. The entire text is organized with this principle: episodes of peaceful and military life are compositionally interspersed. It shows h-ka in peacetime and wartime. The system of pers-zhey also determines the str-ru of the district. Favorite and least favorite heroes. Alive, having developed their spirit: Andrey, Pierre, Nikolai, Natasha. They are opposed to static heroes: Helen, Sonya (also contrasted to Natasha. She did not become Tolstoy’s ideal, because she is sweet, but cold (episode of a summer night) and she does not react, does not reflect). Anatol. Napoleon and Kutuzov. Eyes are an important detail of Tolstoy’s hero, a meaningful, deep look. The principle of antithesis is subject to 2 compositional nests: the War of 1805-7 and 1812. In the first war, the Russian army showed itself passively, the souls of Russians were not affected. The second is domestic, defensive. Andrey: Under Austerlitz there was nothing to defend. Don't take prisoners in Borodino, they entered my house. Composite nests yet. 1) families: family is a mirror of society. Different families are shown and they are also contrasted: 1) Families where there is a union between parents and children. Rostov, Bolkonsky. They are also opposed to each other: Rostov - absolute trust and all-consuming love. Natasha comes to her mother and tells her all her thoughts. Nikolai confesses to his father about his gambling debt, who helps him. The father dominates the Bolkonsky family. The obedience of children is built on the authority of the father. Maria is ready to learn geometry so that her father will be pleased with her. Farewell to father and Andrey. The father first gives orders if the son returns and the father has already died. Then he gives an order: I am glad that you are going to the front and will become a warrior, but it will hurt me if you die, but I will be sad if you do not behave like Bolkonsky’s son. Andrey: you shouldn’t tell me about this. These families bring up those people who will become the foundation of the Russian nation. 2) There is no connection between them. Kuragins, caragins, bergs. Kuragins - moral decay. All they do is oppose the French - they refuse the French language. The viability of each character in War and Peace is tested by popular thought. Among the people, Pierre's best qualities turn out to be necessary: ​​strength. disdain for the comforts of life, simplicity, selflessness, lack of egoism" He strives to "enter this common life, to be imbued with his whole being by what makes them so." Pierre feels his insignificance, the artificiality of his mental "constructions in comparison with the truth, simplicity and by the strength of the soldiers and militias seen on the Borodino field. The highest praise for Andrei Bolkonsky is the nickname “our prince” given to him by the soldiers of the regiment. The correctness of Kutuzov in his dispute with Bennigsen at the council in Fili is emphasized by the fact that the sympathies of a peasant girl are on his side Malashi.The positive traits of Natasha Rostova are revealed with particular brightness at the moment when, before the French enter Moscow, inspired by a patriotic feeling, she forces her to throw her family goods off the cart and take the wounded, and when she, in a Russian dance, delighted with folk music, shows all her strength the national spirit contained in it. The author creates many images of men, soldiers, whose judgments together make up the people's perception of the world. “People's thought” is embodied in many individualized images. Those people qualities that T. always considered to be the integral qualities of a Russian soldier - heroism, willpower, simplicity and modesty - are embodied in the image of Captain Tushin, yavl. a living embodiment of the people's spirit. Beneath the unattractive appearance of this hero lies inner beauty and moral greatness. Tikhon Shcherbaty – person. war. The spirit of rebellion and the feeling of love for his land, all that rebellion that T. discovers in the serf peasant, he brought together in this image. Platon Karataev brings peace to the souls of the people around him. He is completely devoid of egoism: meek and kind to every person. “People's thought” clearly sounds in the protest against Napoleon’s wars of conquest and in the blessing of the liberation struggle, in which the people defend their right to independence, to their national way of life. The folk is revealed in War and Peace, first of all, as universal, national. "Anna Karenina": began publishing in the magazine "Russian Bulletin" in January 1875 and immediately caused a storm of controversy in society and Russian criticism. The main thought is a family thought. Three types of family relationships. There are 3 storylines in the district: 1) the story of Anna’s adultery, the triangle Anna - Vronsky - Karenin; 2) history of the Oblonsky family; 3) the love story of Levin and Kitty Shcherbatskaya. At first glance, these storylines are loosely connected. Anna is Stiva Oblonsky's sister. Kitty is Dolly Oblonskaya's sister; Anna and Levin meet twice in the novel (at the ball, when Levin proposes to Kitty, and shortly before Anna's death). The destinies of the heroes are intertwined. These three storylines are three versions of family, human relationships and human types. The peculiarity of the composition of the novel is that in the center there are two stories that develop in parallel: the story of the family life of Anna Karenina, and the fate of the nobleman Levin, who lives in the village and strives to improve the farm. These are the main characters of the novel. Their paths cross at the end of the work, but this does not affect the development of the events of the novel. There is an internal connection between the images of Anna and Levin. The episodes associated with these images are united by contrast, or according to the law of correspondence, one way or another, complement others. The principle of concentric arrangement of large and small circles of events in the novel. Tolstoy made Levin’s “circle” much wider than Anna’s “circle”. Levin's story begins much earlier than Anna's story and ends after the death of the heroine after whom the novel is named. The book ends not with the death of Anna (part seven), but with Levin’s moral quest and his attempts to create a positive program for the renewal of private and public life (part eight). Anna and Vronsky live for love, but sensual, carnal love. Karenin for social activities, and only Levin in the novel gives the final and correct answer: a person lives for the sake of love for people. Levin is the only one in the novel who thinks about philosophical questions. He comes to the conclusion that nothing needs to be changed in the patriarchal structure of the Russian village. Anna's death leads him to think about the fragility of human existence. He, too, is visited by thoughts of death, but his love for Kitty and the child, for the whole world, saves him and establishes a balance between him and the world: he finds the meaning of life in activities for people. "Resurrection". In comparison with “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”, “Resurrection” is new, openly social, “public”. In the structure of “Resurrection” 3 points are important: 1) the main task of the region is to artistically explore the entire existence general structure of life. The work shows various social strata: aristocracy, clergy, merchants, peasantry, military environment, English missionaries, workers, jailers. The setting is varied: Moscow and St. Petersburg, a poor village, a landowner's estate, a prison, transit stages, judicial institutions, a church, a tavern, etc. The beginning of the district is Nekhlyudov’s crime against Katyusha Maslova (seduction of a girl). The rest of the material is strung on this plot core. 2) Rn thought about sin, repentance and the revival of the nobleman Nekhlyudov. However, in the final version, something else came to the fore as a subject - the life of the offended people, in particular the innocently convicted Maslova. Maslova's trial is discussed in detail in her prison cell, as are all her meetings with Nekhlyudov. 3) The district is sharply journalistic. This is both a district review and a district sermon. The composition is single-line and is built in accordance with the main conflict. The world is divided into 2 unequal and hostile camps: the ruling classes and peasants, the urban poor, prisoners, political exiles. At the center of the story is the situation of the fall and rebirth of the heroes. The entire district excl. The first chapters are the story of the gradual internal revival of the h-ka. Katyusha Maslova is experiencing spiritual resurrection. In her life we ​​can highlight 2 key stages: 1) Nekhlyudov’s meanness and 2) meeting with political prisoners, who believed her. Affected??? social, morals, f-fskogo x-ra. The title itself already contains all these problems. Sunday is not a day of the week, it is a capacious concept. 1) Christian meanings: spiritual rebirth (i.e. the fall of morals and the ascent of morals) Redemption. When Katya Maslova becomes a prostitute, even her name changes: Lyubka. She begins to lead a different life. The point of the trial is the beginning of the spirit of rebirth. The main character recognizes his old love. He sees in him not Lyubka, but Katya. He breaks through the wall with which she has surrounded herself and the spirit of rebirth begins. Tolstoy shows 2 ways of revival: 1) repentance, awareness. Nekhlyudov - an attempt to save another person. 2) Katya Maslova - becomes close to the revolutionaries and socialists. Her sacrificial path is serving the people. At the end of the district, when Nekhlyudov follows her into exile in Siberia. Transit points - Nekhlyudov's declaration of love, marriage proposal. She loves him, but will never allow herself to hang the yoke of the past on him. She chooses a revolutionary, he becomes her husband. “Resurrection” summed up all of Tolstoy’s TV in the 80s and 90s. On the negative side, the tasks of universal denunciation and moral preaching were achieved by this novel. For this work the writer was excommunicated from the church. Tolstoy's districts were translated into European languages ​​during Tolstoy's lifetime. They were accepted by European readers. They had an impact on the worldview, the districts were discussed, Sunday - with an open ending, therefore there is a lot of controversy. Tolstoy had a significant influence on the tradition of the European region.

13. Creativity of A.P. Chekhov. A.P. Chekhov (01/17/1860 – 07/2/1904). 1 lane - TV 1 floor. 1880s (1879-1885). Collaborates with humorous magazines (eg “Oskolki”). Signed as: Antosha, Man without a spleen, My brother's brother, more often than not Antosha Chekhonte. During the first half of the 1880s. Chekhov works in different genres: humorous little thing(comic aphorisms, captions for drawings, parody calendars, reports, etc.) literary parody, feuilletons, anecdote, novella(“Living Goods”, “Belated Flowers”), the genre of the scene (a short humorous story, a picture from life, the comedy of which consists in conveying the conversation of the characters), comic novella (81-82): a humorous story, built according to novelistic laws, action-packed and with an unexpected resolution. (“Death of an Official” and “Fat and Thin” (1883), “Chameleon” and “I Quarreled with My Wife” (1884), “Dear Dog” and “Horse Name” (1885), “On Mortality” (1886)). The main novelistic devices: double denouement, violation of the traditions of the plot cliche, endings “contrastingly wrapped up in the beginning of the story”, ring composition, typical for a comic short story “motive of unfulfilled expectations”, etc. A special place is occupied by novella of morals, rising to biting satire. C ikle stories 1883 ode about officials, which are built on the same principle: the hero abruptly changes his behavior or says something opposite to what he was just saying out of inner conviction, “instinctively, by reflex,” automatically and instantly. "Chameleon" It was first published in the magazine “Oskolki”, in 1884 it was signed “A. Chekhonte”. Features of the genre. The action begins immediately. There are no detailed author's arguments. The part bears a special load. The plot of the story is based on a certain everyday conflict, a specific situation: the goldsmith Khryukin was bitten by a dog, and the police warden Ochumelov must resolve the conflict in the market square. Feature of the composition: the same scene is repeated several times. but it repeats itself, as in a mirror. Depending on who owns the dog, Ochumelov is ready to consider her or Khryukin to be the culprit of the incident. Little man theme. The story “The Death of an Official” shows a paradoxical situation when a small man pursues a strong one. Chekhov emphasizes in the little man a slave who has no self-esteem. A person turns into a rank. Another type of little person was developed by the author in the stories “Grief”, “Tosca”, etc. This is a humiliated, oppressed person, but retaining human dignity, for example, like the old cab driver Iona Potapov from the story “Tosca”. 2nd lane - TV in the 2nd half of the 80s - 90s. In 1885-1889. Chekhov began his professional literary career as an employee of the monthly magazines “Severny Vestnik”, “Russian Thought”, “Life”. The stories and tales “Steppe”, “Name Day” (1888), “Fit”, “Boring Story” (1889) belong to this period. During this period, the collections “At Twilight” (1887), “Innocent Speeches” (1887), “Stories” (1888), and “Gloomy People” (1890) were published. Chekhov works a lot for the theater: the play “Ivanov” (1887-1889), the one-act play “Wedding” (1889, published 1890), the play “Leshy” (1889, published 1890; then remade into the play “Uncle Vanya”), vaudevilles “The Bear”, “The Proposal”, “Anniversary”, etc. The story “The Steppe” is considered to be a transitional stage in the writer’s television. In it, Chekhov, moving away from the concrete everyday localization of his early stories, changes spatial orientations and expands his field of vision. “The Steppe” was published in 1888. In "Northern Bulletin". The main themes and problems of the story: 1) the theme of the Motherland, its endless expanses, powerful people: 2) man and nature; 3) beauty and meaning of life: 4) national happiness: Happiness is understood as overcoming, gaining life experience, mastering living space, unity with people: 5) as well as the formation of the human personality. The subtitle of the story “The Story of One Trip” indicates that the work can be perceived on two levels: external, objective, realistic, and then it is almost an ethnographic essay, in which in front of the traveling 9-year-old boy Yegorushka, one picture successively replaces another. The name “Steppe”, which absorbs a whole complex of associations, takes the narrative to a symbolic, metaphysical level. The original plot is in that. that the story intertwines two storylines: human life and the life of nature. Landscape of the story: the steppe with human destinies included in it. The steppe is a holistic image-character. The author uses the technique of correlating the hero with nature (for example, the singing peasant woman is the singing grass. Dranitskaya is a black bird, Solomon is a plucked bird). The story can be roughly divided into 3 parts: Yegorushka’s past life, given retrospectively, in memories, very briefly: Yegorushka’s future, which is still unclear. In the present there is a bare steppe living its own life. Features of the composition: each chapter makes up a special story. Compositionally, “Steppe” is built in the same way. like many of Chekhov's later stories, the beginning and end, as well as numerous repetitions, round out the narrative, forming a ring composition. Artistic features: 1) the author’s desire for maximum generalization (the steppe is the image of a yearning Motherland): 2) associativity: 3) sound painting; 4) a kind of chronotope: in the steppe, the present and the past overlap each other, time is compressed. Yegorushka makes her way from patriarchal antiquity to the world of civilization. The road in the work is a road from one space-time plane to another. This is Russian history, the history of Russia's path. In 1890, Chekhov took a trip to the island. Sakhalin, the result of which is the essay and journalistic book “Sakhalin Island” (1893-1894, separate edition 1895). In the same 1890, he bought the Melikhovo estate in the Moscow province, where he built schools, helped the poor and treated peasants, worked as a local doctor during the cholera epidemic of 1892-1893, participated in the general population census of 1897. In 1898-1900 The writer creates his most famous stories: the trilogy “The Man in a Case”, “Gooseberry”, “About Love”, as well as “Ionych” and “The Lady with the Dog”. Around 1893, a new stage in Chekhov’s work began(plays “The Seagull” (1896), “Uncle Vanya” (1897), “Three Sisters” (1900-1901, awarded the Griboyedov Prize), “The Cherry Orchard” (1903-1904)). In Vishn. In the garden in the center there is a sale of the estate. But from the first act to the end of the play, Ranevskaya’s drama immerses us in the driving process of general everyday life. The Cherry Orchard” by the representative. is a combination of comedy - “sometimes even farce,” as the author himself wrote, with gentle and subtle intrigue. While ridiculing their weaknesses and vices, the author at the same time sympathizes with them. The main conflict develops in the souls of the heroes. He concluded not in the struggle for the cherry orchard, but in dissatisfaction with life, the inability to unite dream and reality. Particular conflicts entailed changes in the depiction of the dramatic character. The author does not sharply characterize the individual's speech; rather, their speech merges into one melody. With this effect, the author created a feeling of harmony. Innovation of the playwright. The fact is that it departs from the prince of classical drama and reflects the dramatic world of not only the problems, but also the display of the psychological experiences of the heroes. Chekhov's plays became a new wave in theatrical art.

14.History, theoretical foundations and artistic practice of Russian symbolism. Poetry of A.A. Blok. Symbolism was first recognized as a new literary direction in an article by D.S. Merezhkovsky in 1893. He proclaimed 3 main elements of Russian literature: mystical content, symbols and the expansion of artistic impressionability. The word-symbol was considered as a sign with the help of which the artist comprehended the “mystical content”. Bryusov, Balmont, Sologub belonged to the generation of “senior” symbolists. Decadent moods in their work were reflected in the pessimistic perception of the world as a prison (Gippius, Sologub), in the self-deification of the “I” (Bryusov), motives of loneliness, lack of faith in life and one’s own strength. In the works of older symbolists, the apocalyptic theme associated with the image of the city clearly manifests itself. “Younger Symbolists”: A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach.Ivanov, S. Solovyov, Ellis (L.L. Kobylinsky) - came to literature at the beginning of the 20th century. and acted as adherents of a philosophical and religious understanding of the world in the spirit of the late philosophy of Vl. Solovyova. The younger symbolists tried to overcome the extreme subjectivism and individualism of the older ones. Peering into the surrounding life in search of mysterious signs, many felt tectonic processes within Russian culture, Russian society, and all of humanity as a whole. The premonition of an impending catastrophe literally permeates all the lyrics of the mature Blok and A. Bely. The book “Gold in Azure” by A. Bely is imbued with the expectation of apocalyptic periods; in the books “Ashes” and “Urna” (1909), these expectations are replaced by tragic pictures of a dying Russia. And in the “City” cycle from the book “Ashes” a sign of revolution appears - a red domino, an ominous sign of an impending disaster. Main features of symbolism:- Dual world: departure from the real earthly and the creation of an ideal world of dreams and mysticism, existing according to the laws of Eternal Beauty; - Images-symbols: the language of premonitions, hints, generalizations, mysterious visions, allegories; -Symbolism of color and light: azure, purple, gold, shadows, shimmer; - The poet is the creator of ideal worlds - mystical, cosmic, divine; -Language: orientation towards classical verse, exquisite imagery, musicality and lightness of syllable, attitude to the word as a code, symbolic content of everyday words. Manifestos: 1) Merezhkovsky “On the causes of decline and new trends in modern Russian literature”; 2) Bryusov “Keys of Secrets”; 3) Vyach. Ivanov “Thoughts on Symbolism”; 4) Block “On the current state of Russian symbolism.” A.A.Blok(1880-1921) Blok’s early poems made up the first book, published in 1904, “ Poems about a Beautiful Lady" are multifaceted. These poems are symbolist, contrasting the mournful HERE and the beautiful THERE, the holiness of the hero's ideals, the desire for the promised land, a decisive break with the surrounding life, the cult of individualism, beauty. The plot of the cycle is the expectation of a meeting with the beloved, who will transform the world and the hero. The heroine, on the one hand, a real woman “She is slender and tall, // Always arrogant and stern.” On the other hand, before us is the heavenly, mystical image of the “Virgin,” “Majestic Eternal Wife,” “Incomprehensible.” “He” is a lover a knight, a humble monk, ready for self-denial. "She" is the ethereal focus of faith, hope and love of the lyrical hero. His second book, " Unexpected joy", made the poet's name popular in literary circles. Among the poems are "Stranger", "A Girl Sang in the Church Choir", "Autumn Wave". Blok's hero becomes an inhabitant of noisy city streets, greedily peering into life. He is lonely, surrounded by drunkards, he rejects this world that horrifies his soul, like a booth, in which there is no place for anything beautiful and holy. The world poisons him, but in the midst of this drunken stupor a stranger appears, and her image awakens bright feelings, it seems she believes in beauty. Her image is surprisingly romantic and alluring, and it is clear that the poet’s faith in goodness is still alive. Vulgarity and dirt cannot tarnish the image of a stranger, reflecting Blok’s dreams of pure, selfless love. And the poem “Autumn Wave” became the first embodiment of the theme of the homeland, Russia in Blok’s work. In Nekrasov's intonations appear in the poems - love for the homeland - love-salvation, the understanding that one’s destiny cannot be imagined in isolation from it. After a trip to Italy in 1909, Blok wrote the cycle " Italian poems", in the spring of 1914 - cycle " Carmen". In these poems, Blok remains a subtle lyricist, praising beauty and love. Through the deepening of social trends ( cycle "City"), religious interest ( cycle “Snow Mask”), comprehension of the “terrible world”, awareness of the tragedy of modern man (the play “Rose and Cross”) Blok came to the idea of ​​​​the inevitability of “retribution” ( cycle "Iambics"; poem "Retribution"). Hatred of the “well-fed” world, of the ugly, inhuman features of life (the “Terrible World” cycle, 1909-16) is persistently and strongly expressed in Blok’s work. Love lyrics Blok is romantic, she carries within herself, along with delight and rapture, a fatal and tragic beginning (sections of the cycle “Snow Mask”, “Faina”, “Retribution”, 1908-13, “Carmen”, 1914). Theme of the poet and poetry. The idea of ​​the poet's freedom, his independence from public opinion, superiority over the crowd runs through all the early poems on the topic of creativity. poems “To Friends” and “Poets. “To the Muse” creativity is not a reward, but hard work, which often brings disappointment and dissatisfaction rather than laurels and joy. Inspiration is sent by God, but any gift must be paid for, and the poet pays with personal happiness and peace, comfort and well-being. Blok considers the main theme of his work theme of the Motherland. From the first poems about Russia (“Autumn Wave”, “Autumn Love”, “Russia”) a two-faced image of the country appears - poor, pious and at the same time free, wild, banditry. During this period, the poet created cycles of poems “Motherland” and “On the Kulikovo Field”. The ambivalent attitude towards Russia is especially vividly embodied in the poem “To sin shamelessly, uncontrollably...”. Blok paints a realistic picture of contemporary Russia. And under the lamp by the icon / Drink tea, snapping the bill, / Then salivate coupons, / Open the pot-bellied chest of drawers... But the work ends with the words: Yes, and so, my Russia, / You are dearer to me of all lands. The revolution of 1917 was reflected in the largest post-October poem " Twelve"(1918). It reflected both real events and the poet's views on history, the essence of civilization and culture. The very beginning of the poem sets the reader up for struggle; two worlds stand in sharp contrast - the old and the new, just born: Black Evening. / White snow. /Wind, wind! /A man cannot stand on his feet. Human passions and the raging elements act in unison, destroying everything that has become obsolete, personifying the old way of life. As attributes of the old way of life - the bourgeois, the lady, and the priest: There is the lady in karakul / Turned up to another... / - We were crying, crying... - / Slipped / And - bam - stretched out! And then, shaking off the fragments of a lost society, twelve people walk. Who are they - builders of the future or cruel destroyers, killers? Blok used many symbols in his poem: names, numbers, colors. The leitmotif of the poem appears from the first bars: in the gap and opposition of “white” and “black.” Black color is a vague, dark beginning. White color symbolizes purity, spirituality, this is the color of the future. The image of Christ is also symbolic in the poem. Jesus Christ is the messenger of new human relationships, an exponent of holiness and purifying suffering. For Blok, his “twelve” are real heroes, since they are the executors of a great mission, carrying out a holy cause - a revolution. As a symbolist and mystic, the author expresses the holiness of the revolution religiously. Emphasizing the holiness of the revolution, Blok places the invisible walking Christ before these “twelve”.

15.Acmeism in Russian literature: main representatives, aesthetic program, artistic practice. Plaziya A.A. Akhmatova. Acmeism as a literary movement emerged from symbolism; the emergence of the movement dates back to the early 1910s. The formation of the new movement takes place first in the “Society of Admirers of the Artistic Word” (“Poetic Academy”), and then in the “Workshop of Poets” created in 1911, headed by N. Gumilyov and S. Gorodetsky. The most prominent representatives of the new trend included N. Gumilyov, A. Akhmatova, O. Mandelstam, S. Gorodetsky, M. Zenkevich, V. Narbut. Later they were joined by G. Adamovich, G. Ivanov, I. Odoevtseva, N. Otsup. The Acmeism program was proclaimed in such manifestos as: 1) “The Legacy of Acmeism and Symbolism” by N. Gumilyov; 2) “Some trends in modern Russian poetry” by S. Gorodetsky; 3) “Morning of Acmeism” by O. Mandelstam. The organs of the new trend were the magazines “Apollo” (1909-1917), created by the writer and historian S. Makovsky, and “Hyperborea”, founded in 1912 and headed by M. Lozinsky. The current has gotten three non-identical names: “acmeism” (from the Greek acme - flowering, peak, tip), “Adamism” (on behalf of the first member of Adam) and “clarism” (beautiful clarity). The philosophical basis of this movement was pragmatism (philosophy of action) and the ideas of the phenomenological school (which defended the “experience of objectivity”, “questioning of things”, “acceptance of the world”). Among their literary teachers, the Acmeists singled out F. Villon (with his appreciation for life), F. Rabelais (with his inherent “wise physiology”), W. Shakespeare (with his gift of insight into the inner world of the human race), T. Gautier (a champion "impeccable forms"). Also the poets E. Baratynsky, F. Tyutchev and Russian classical prose. The artistic principles of Acmeism were entrenched in his poetic practice: 1) active acceptance of multi-colored and vibrant earthly life; 2) rehabilitation of a simple objective world that has “shapes, weight, time”; 3) a primitive bestial, courageously strong view of the world; 4) denial of transcendence and mysticism; 5) focus on the picturesqueness of the image; 6) transfer of psychological states with attention to the bodily principle; 7) expression of “longing for world culture”; 8) attention to the specific meaning of the word; 9) perfection of forms. The fate of Acmeism is tragic. He had to assert himself in a tense and moral struggle. He was persecuted more than once. The tragic fate of A. Akhmatova, and the death of Mandelstam (died in a hospital barracks in the camp), Narbut (was shot at a quarantine transit point). The first victim was the leader of the movement, N. Gumilyov (he was shot). Anna Andreevna Akhmatova(surname at birth - Gorenko; 1889-1966) - one of the most famous Russian poets of the 20th century, writer, literary critic, literary critic, translator. Akhmatova was one of those who acted as a representative of the new movement of Acmeism (from Symbolism). In her early poems, the world around her is depicted clearly, vividly and objectively accurately. “I don’t need my legs anymore...” Object-figurative expressions: water column, coolness, the heroine grabs the seaweed with her hand. She sees in front of her a bridge as distant as her former lover. The layer of water is dense and heavy; above the water there is light smoke, into which her soul turns. The main theme is love. Dramatic moment: separation, approaching separation. Portrayed psychologically accurately. Collection "Evening".“I clenched my hands under a dark veil,” “I put the glove from my left hand on my right hand.” Uses a detail-thing, a detail-gesture. Collection "Rosary" 1914. The theme of love expands, while there is a complete rejection of the indifferent and frivolous attitude towards love, psychologism deepens, and a rejection of hedonism (sensual pleasures). “I escorted my friend to the front.” Then 1917. Collection “White Flock” and “Plantain”. Poems dedicated to the beginning of the 1st World War. "In memory of July 19, 1914." “Prayer” the heroine is ready to sacrifice everything so that the cloud over Russia becomes a cloud. Akhmatova did not accept the 1917 revolution in February and rejected the October one. “There was a voice for me, it called comfortingly” poem-voice monologue + author’s remarks. This form is more complex than all previous verses. The theme of emigration is “to leave or to stay?”. Akhmatova remains. “I am not with those who abandoned the earth to be torn apart by the enemies.” Positions: 1) those who abandoned the earth at a difficult moment - contempt; 2) “I always feel sorry for the exile” not of his own free will, they were expelled - pity; 3) those who remained, even on the verge of disaster, count themselves. In the early 20s, Akhmatova was forced to refuse to publish her poems, because... comes into conflict with the totalitarian regime. He is engaged in translations, the life and works of Pushkin. In the 1930s he wrote a series of poems, which he later combined into poem "Requiem". sources: Akhmatova’s personal tragedy (the arrest of her son), the execution of Nikolai Gumilyov, the repression of Akhmatova’s second husband. We are talking about the general grief of the totalitarian regime, the grief of all Russian women on “this side of the prison bars.” "Instead of a preface." 3 plot layers: 1) personal grief of a mother who lost her son; 2) the grief of thousands of Russian women; 3) the grief of the Mother of God losing her son. Themes of life, death, madness, memory, monument are intertwined. The mother suffers so deeply that she calls for death, but madness comes. She is glad for him, because madness kills memory and frees her from suffering. A woman who is a mother can allow herself to forget, but a woman who is a poet cannot. She needs to preserve the memory of these “frenzied years.” In the epilogue of the poem, the theme of memory turns into the theme of a monument. 2 questions: 1) will they remember me, 2) why exactly. “And I pray not for myself alone, but for everyone who stood there with me.” The monument is not to her, but to thousands of women who have lost loved ones. Place the monument “here, where it stood for 300 hours and where the bolt was not opened for me.” During the war, Akhmatova lived in St. Petersburg. Collection "Wind of War". The tragedy of the Leningrad blockade. “Oath” and “Courage” 1942 Akhmatova addresses the Russian intelligentsia. It is necessary to preserve Russian culture, the Russian word. Mature creativity “Poem without a hero.” Action in 1913 in Petrograd. This is a kaleidoscope of life in a ghostly, fantastic city. The central event is a theatrical masquerade. There are a lot of allegories here. Lots of allusions to real people. Fragmentary episodes. In the life of the city, as at this ball, masks dominate instead of people. However, real drama ensues. A dragoon cornet with poetry committed suicide under the doors of the calambina, which rejected him. This plot is projected onto the life of an entire era. frivolous, superficial and tragic. There is a hero in it - a lyrical heroine who, from the heights of the 50s, looks back to her youth in 1913. And on the one hand, he admires this time, and on the other, he understands that it was then that something important was missed, which led the country to disaster. In Akhmatova’s mature lyrics, the theme of creativity develops in a new way. She explores those secret motives that lead to the creation of poetry collection “Secrets of the Craft”. Cycle "Northern Elegies". biblical and evangelical motifs. She had to endure two disgraces. During her second disgrace, she died in 1966.

16. Russian futurism: futurist groups, main representatives, manifestos, artistic practice. Poetry of V. Mayakovsky. Futurism (from Latin - future) arose almost simultaneously in Russia and Italy.

Futurism - one of the main avant-garde movements in European art of the early 20th century. Russian futurism arose in 1910-1911. as an original artistic movement. Its history consisted of a complex interaction and struggle of 4 main groups: “Gilea” (Cubo-Futurists), “Association of Ego-Futurists”, “Centrifuge”, “Mezzanine of Poetry”. The earliest and most radical was “Gilea”, whose participants in numerous collections (“Zadok of Judges”, 1910; manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”, 1912; “Dead Moon”, 1913, etc.) and speeches primarily defined “the face of futurism " In “The Slap of Public Taste,” the futurists proclaimed a revolution of form independent of content. The call for a revolution in form stemmed from the first and main postulate of the futurists - about art as life-creativity, about the subjective will of the artist as the decisive and main engine of human history. The coming revolution was desired because it was perceived as a massive massacre. an action that involves the whole world in the game. After the February revolution, ft. The "Gileans" formed an imaginary "Government of the Globe". Software for ft. became shocking to the average person (“A slap in the face to public taste” - manifesto). F. was most afraid of indifference. A necessary condition for its existence was the atmosphere of literature. scandal. Optimal cheat. reaction to TV ft. there was aggressive rejection and hysterical protest, which was provoked by extremes in the behavior of the foot. (Malevich appeared with a wooden spoon in his buttonhole, Mayakovsky in a woman’s yellow jacket, Kruchenykh wore a sofa cushion on a cord across his shoulder). The principle of their work is the principle of “shift”, which was transferred to the literature of their avant-garde painting. Lexical renewal was achieved by depoetizing the language, introducing stylistically inappropriate words, vulgarisms, etc. terms. The word is ft. lost its halo of sacredness, it became objectified. Syntactic. displacements appeared at feet. in violation of the laws of logical compatibility of words, refusal of punctuation marks. Great value ft. gave the visual impact of the text. Futurists advocated the destruction of the conventional system of literary genres and styles and insisted on unlimited “word creativity and word innovation. The creation of original neologisms is a common feature in the works of such dissimilar poets as I. Severyanin and V. Khlebnikov, V. Mayak-ii and A. Kruchenykh. A bright innovator in the field of language was V. Khlebnikov, at the beginning of 1920. he introduced a special term to designate such a language - “zaum”, “abstruse language”. Calling for Pushkin and other classics to be thrown off the ship of modernity, the Futurist poets were unable to break the ties that connected them with the primordial traditions of Russian culture. The traditions of Russian futurism started from the poetics of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign” through the odic poetry of the 18th century. (G.R. Derzhavina), classical poetry of the 19th century (A.S. Pushkin), decadence of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. and through the poetry of symbolism. Mayak- a poet of accented verse with a distinct oratorical intonation (the text does not have a regular alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. In long lines, stressed syllables contain from 1 to 6 unstressed syllables). At the same time, there is a rhyme; Mayak-go's rhyming thinking was generally strict and original. Early lyrics. City theme. The idea of ​​urban civilization as a second, man-made nature, which h-k created around himself in contrast to the first. The poem “To Signs”, the theme of which is “new urban beauty.” “Iron Books” - street signs on tin - are indeed intended for reading. The subject of poetic inspiration here is the city, which is beautiful because it was created for the purpose. Theme of loneliness. The main topic becomes psychological condition his lyrical hero, the cat; despite the cordiality of the signs, he feels like he’s in a big city lonely. This hero is drawn from books, from indoor life to the street, to people. However, in the restaurant you can see a chewing creature. It was to him that Mayak addressed in verse "Here!":“In an hour from here into a clean alley / Your flabby fat will leak out.” The city is inhabited not by people, but by a crowd, which Mayak contemptuously calls “a hundred-headed louse.” The main opposition of early creativity: I - you (“Could you?” 1913); he has so far romantic shit, reflects duality.“Listen!”(] 914): spitting pearls. War theme (“War has been declared”, “Mom and the evening killed by the Germans”). Compassion for the victims of war. "To you!" - political continuation of “Here!” Satirical theme- Parody hymns (to dinner, to the scientist, to the critic, to the judge) "A cloud in pants" (1915), which brought him real fame. The Lighthouse rebellion is addressed to the Creator, cat. created love-torment, love-suffering. The hero of Mayak-go claims to curtail God, declaring Him “a half-educated, tiny big thing.” This is how the grandiose idea of ​​remaking the universe grows. But the only carrier of rebellion is the poet’s lonely “I.” The riot happens in his mind, unfolding like one big metaphor. A challenge thrown to the sky: “Hey, you! Sky! Take off your hat,” remains simply unheard. The conflict stated in “Cloud in Pants” was deepened and developed in the poems “Spine Flute” (1915) and “War and Peace” (1916), where the preaching of a harmonious world order by the forces of the h-ch himself was combined with the readiness of the hero Mayak-go sacrifice yourself for the sake of the future. This collision was brought to its complete exhaustion in the poem “Ch-k” (1916-1917), the final, final project of the pre-revolutionary Mayak. Revolution The lighthouse was greeted with enthusiasm. During the revolution and the civil war, he renamed the Cubo-Futurists into Comfutists (communist-futurists). Then he created LEF - the left front of the movement, which, in his opinion, was supposed to unite the leaders of the Kura who were close to the revolution - not only writers, but also musicians, artists, theater and film directors. Then LEF was not enough for him, he wanted to become “to the left of LEF”, and he created the “New LEF”. Then he once again reformed his group and renamed it REF - the revolutionary front of art. Z poet's wish- put into poetic form a political slogan, propaganda poster, trade advertising, current information, satirical feuilleton, write odes in honor of the leaders of the Bolshevik Party and revolutionary holidays. In the first post-October verses, Mayak calls his poems marches And orders:“Our March”, “Left March”, “Order for the Army of Arts”, “Order No. 2 for the Army of Arts”. Mayak's poems in the first post-revolutionary years sound like an oratorical speech at a rally. The “I”, to whom one prefers, almost disappears from his poems. "We". Mayak speaks as if on behalf of a new breed of people, cat. brought to life by the revolution. In 1918 he writes play "Mystery Bouffe". Mystery is a square dramatization of biblical stories, and the word “Buff” refers to the tradition of a cheerful circus performance. Two levels, sublimely religious and comically circus, determined the style and poetics of this piece. The scene of action is declared to be “the entire universe,” which the ark plows in search of the “Promised Land.” This turns out to be the “Communar World”, that is, the land rinsed by the revolution - the “holy washerwoman” - and turned into a universal Commune. Following “Mystery,” he wrote the heroic poem “150 million” (1919), inspired by the prospects of the approaching world revolution (the revolutionary fire in 1919 was already burning in Bulgaria, Hungary, and Germany). The main character of the poem - the one hundred and fifty million people of Russia, united in the “united Ivan”, crushed the stronghold of the world bourgeoisie - America. M wrote 2 satirical plays “Bedbug” and “Bathhouse”. In the play “The Bedbug” of 1929, the poet declares an irreconcilable war on philistinism in all its manifestations. “Former worker, former party member, now groom,” Prisypkin, who renamed himself Pierre Skripkin, reveals his philistine essence in actions and speeches. The inhabitants of the “young people’s” hostel, people from the future, into which the viewer finds himself along with the characters of the play, perceive Prisypkin and the microbe of philistinism, with which he is amazed, as phenomena incompatible with the laws, views, way of life of the new society. va. The mercilessness in exposing philistinism gives the play a combative, offensive character. The play “Bath” (1930) is aimed at an equally dangerous phenomenon - bureaucracy. The play is a fusion of dreams and reality, an interweaving of the present and the future. This is achieved by using fiction, which is woven into the real life of the inventor Chudakov and his comrades. The whole action comes down to the struggle for the time machine created by Chudakov, which will allow him to see the future, to be convinced of the reality of the dream, which is brought closer every day by the selfless work of thousands of people. The acute conflict between the real builders of the new society and Pobedonosikov, who stands in the way of the society to the future, is growing into a decisive battle between the new norms of life and bureaucracy, with Pobedonosikovism. The fantastic nature of the plot allows the poet to show the unacceptability of bureaucratic principles for the society of the future: the time machine throws out those “who are not needed for communism.” Political acuity in the formulation of the problem, accuracy of the poetic word, ingenuity in creating stage action are the distinctive features of this play by M.

17. Main trends in the development of Russian realism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: main representatives, artistic practice. Creativity of I. Bunin. Realism in RL belongs to the ageless and eternal phenomena, and at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th centuries. in the works of L.N. Tolstoy and A.P. Chekhov, he is experiencing a powerful rise. In Tolstoy: the poem “Resurrection”, “Father Sergius”, “The Devil”. Chekhov: the play “The Cherry Orchard”, the stories “The Bishop”, “The Bride” (1903). Later, a group of young writers entered Russian literature, continuing the traditions of classical realism. This is V.G. Korolenko, A.I. Kuprin, M. Gorky, I.A. Bunin, B. Zaitsev, I. Shmelev, V. Veresaev, L. Andreev. The work of these writers uniquely reflected the interaction of the realistic method with the new trends of the era. In 1902, Gorky became one of the organizers of the publishing partnership “Znanie”, and in 1904 he began publishing collective collections of prose and poetry. At the center of the work of the Znanievo writers was the theme of intense resistance of the h-ka to the social evil surrounding him, the theme of the awakening of consciousness, the formation of personality. L. Andreev, I. Bunin, V. Veresaev, S. Gusev-Orenburgsky, A. Kuprin, A. Serafimovich, M. Gorky and others collaborated in nineteen collections of “Knowledge” that appeared in 1904-1907. I. Bunin (1870-1953). TV developed in two directions: poetry and prose. Symbolist poetry with the influence of impressionism. The prose is realistic. Bunin began his literary career as a poet. His earliest poem is dated 1883. At first he was a student of Nikitin, Koltsov, and partly also of Nekrasov. Bunin followed them in developing peasant themes, adopted the motives of their lyrics, and imitated the structure and rhythm of their poems. While at the gymnasium, in January 1886 he wrote the poem “In the Village Cemetery” - about the hard lot of the Russian peasant. characteristic of one of Bunin’s first poems to appear in print, “The Village Beggar” (1886). In its center is the mournful image of an old peasant, a homeless sufferer, overcome by too much need, forced to live out his days on beggarly alms. We find sad thoughts about the homeland in a number of poems “Motherland” (1891), “Motherland” (1896). Gradually, nature became for Bunin that healing and beneficial force that gives a person everything: joy, wisdom, beauty, a sense of infinity, diversity and integrity peace, a sense of unity, kinship with him. Recreating pictures of Russian nature and the image of the Motherland, the poet cannot free himself from the feeling of grief. “Yes, my native land is not happy now!” - he exclaims in the poem “In the Steppe” (1889), merging together the feeling of his homeland and the feeling of grief for it. In 1903, the Academy of Sciences awarded Bunin the Pushkin Prize for the poetry collection “Falling Leaves” (1901) and the translation of “The Song of Hiawatha” (1896) by the American poet G. Longfellow, based on the tales of North American Indians (in 1909 the Academy of Sciences would choose Bunin as its honorary member). In 1903-1908. mournful poems arose about modernity, about Russia, where everything was shifting - “the great and the vile,” despotism and slavery, humility, heroism and cruelty. Printing the short poetic cycle “Rus” in 1908, Bunin reveals the complex, contradictory world of Russia. The poem that closes it, “Wasteland,” is perhaps Bunin’s most socially acute poem of those years. The theme of the people and their suffering is combined with the lyrical and mournful voice of the author. Bunin's realistic poetry was associated with the motives, moods, images and themes of his prose. Bunin turned to fiction at the age of sixteen. The unfinished sketch “The Lark's Song” and the fairy tale “The Light of Life” (1886 - 1887) were a kind of lyricism in prose; in which an attempt is made to express the youthful rapture of the beauty of nature, passionate but vague dreams of happiness, and creativity. Bunin’s first love story “Infatuation” (1886 - 1887) is also full of lyrical animation; the entire narrative bears the imprint of bookish imitation. The theme of first love is in the plot of the story “First Love”. Young Bunin acted as a “writer of the offended and oppressed.” Bunin's earliest epic works, such as the story "Nefedka" (1887) or the essays "Two Wanderers" (1887 - 1889) and "Convulsive" (1891), introduce the reader to the world of the village poor, beggars, tramps, lonely wanderers, the destitute, the homeless people The theme of the moral responsibility of the noble intelligentsia to the people was raised in the stories “Tanta” (1893), “News from the Motherland” (1895). In many works, the writer shows the desolation of the noble estate, the savagery of its last inhabitants (“In the Field”). In his stories, novellas, and poems, Bunin shows the whole range of problems of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The main theme of the early 1900s was the theme of Russia's fading patriarchal past. The stories “Antonov Apples”, “Pines”, “Zakhar Vorobyov” and others were written. They capture the beauty of Russian nature, the tragedy of a poor, disadvantaged people. We see the most vivid expression of the problem of the collapse of the foundations of noble society in the story “ Antonov apples" Bunin regrets Russia's fading past, idealizing the noble way of life. Bunin’s best memories of his former life are saturated with the smell of Antonov apples. The stories “The Good Life”, “The Mister from San Francisco” and others reveal the life of the city bottom with taverns and cheap rooms, the world of human passions. In the mid-1910s, he moved away from the theme of Russia's patriarchal past to criticism of bourgeois reality. The stories “The Good Life”, “The Mister from San Francisco” and others reveal the life of the city bottom with taverns and cheap rooms, the world of human passions. Bunin describes in great detail the luxury that represents the true life of the gentlemen of modern times. At the center of the work is a collective image of an American bourgeois millionaire who does not even have his own name, since no one remembered it. The consumer society has erased everything human in itself, the ability for empathy and condolences. Bunin perceived the October Revolution as a social drama. In 1920 he emigrated to France. There he continues his creative activity, creates the autobiographical novel “The Life of Arsenyev”, the stories “Mowers”, “Lapti”, writes a cycle of short stories “Dark Alleys”. In the collection " Dark alleys"The main theme is love. The book “Dark Alleys” is a whole gallery of female portraits. Here you can meet girls who have matured early, and self-confident young women, and respectable ladies, and prostitutes, and models, and peasant women. Female characters play the main role in the stories, male characters are auxiliary, secondary. More attention is paid to men's emotions and their feelings. The stories amaze with the variety of shades of love: the simple-minded but unbreakable affection of a peasant girl for the master who seduced her (“Tanya”); fleeting dacha hobbies (“Zoyka and Valeria”); a short one-day novel (“Antigone”, “Calling Cards”); passion leading to suicide (“Galya Ganskaya”); simple-minded confession of a minor prostitute (“Madrid”). The heroine of the story “Cold Autumn”, who lost her fiancé, loves him for thirty years and believes that in her life there was only that autumn evening, and everything else was an “unnecessary dream”. In the story " Sukhodol"The writer reconsiders the tradition of poetizing estate life. The ideological orientation of the work is contradictory, for Bunin, truthfully depicting the horrors of serfdom, the cruelty and degeneration of the owners of the estate, at the same time strives to substantiate the idea of ​​​​the blood unity of landowners and peasants, of the special closeness of their way of life and psyche. The Sukhodolsk chronicle is refracted through the perception of the former serf Natalia. She is submissive to her masters, incapable of condemnation and protest. The Khrushchevs are reputed to be the kindest gentlemen. On the other hand, they keep their peasants at bay. There are many oddities in the Khrushchev family: the grandfather, Tonya and Natalya are going crazy, either from boredom or from love. The house of the pillar nobles is gloomy and gloomy, like the life of its inhabitants. It seems that the Sukhodol residents live in isolation from the outside world. In the entire village there is the same desolation as in their souls, the death of old Khrushchev, killed by Gevraska, is predetermined by fate itself. Women, living out their lives, live only with memories of the past. Above the novel Life of Arsenyev“Bunin worked for a long time, with breaks. Novel is constructed as a free lyrical-philosophical monologue, where there are no usual heroes, where it is impossible to highlight the plot in the usual sense on the left. But “The Life of Arsenyev” is not just a lyrical diary of distant days. The first impressions of childhood and adolescence, life in the estate and study at the gymnasium, pictures of Russian nature and the life of the impoverished nobility serve only as a canvas for Bunin’s philosophical, religious and ethical concept. Autobiographical material is transformed by the writer. A huge mosaic picture of Russia is made up of many miniatures. “The Life of Arsenyev” is dedicated to the journey of the soul of a young hero who perceives the world with an unusually fresh and acute perception of the world. A passionate and deep feeling permeates the last, fifth book of the novel - “Lika”. It was based on the experiences of Bunin himself, his youthful love for Varya Pashchenko. Time is powerless to kill a true feeling. “Recently I saw her in a dream - the only time in my entire long life without her” - this is how “The Life of Arsenyev” ends. In the novel, death and oblivion recede before the power of love, before the heightened sense - of the hero and the author - of life. After being awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933, Bunin became a symbol of Russian literature throughout the world.

18.Creativity of S. Yesenin. Issues. Artistic originality. S. Yesenin (1895-1925) Born in the Ryazan province into the cross family. He studied at the zemstvo school in the village. Konstantinov, church-teacher's office in Spas-Klepiki, moving to Moscow. This is the peasant elite! There he worked as an assistant proofreader at Sytin's printing house, attended meetings of the Surikov circle and lectures at the Shanyavsky People's University. (The Surikov circle was founded in 1872 by the famous peasant poet Ivan Zakharovich. Surikov as a literary association of writers from the people). His early poems were rehashes of Koltsov, Nadson, and imitative developments of folklore motifs and genres. There was a lot of bad taste and provincialism in them. Quite quickly I realized their limitations. An important point is getting to know Blok and Klyuev. Blok gave him a recommendation, and at the end of 1915 Yesenin published his first book of poems in St. Petersburg - “Radunitsa”. Soon he was warmly received in St. Petersburg salons, and critics started talking about him as “Ryazan Lele.” The first period of TV-va E. (1914-1916) called Kitezh. (Klyuev attracted E. to the role of a salon poet: it is necessary to play the role of a “shepherdess” - boots, a jacket, a peasant talk. 1) Klyuev took into account the emerging fashion for everything “national”, thereby hoping to win a place in the literary environment. 2) Klyuev, who considered himself a representative of the ancient Russian nation, called E. to go to the people from the spoiled city center). Yours of this period reflects the sacred Russian dual world. In everyday life, he is a pagan, but he believes in Christ and goes to church. In the center of Yesenin’s world is “blue” Rus', a peasant hut with images (“In the Hut”). The main motive is grace (“Black, then smelling howl!”). The landscape is static; built on metaphor. Christ walks among people and calls the hero into the oak groves. The lyrical hero of E.’s early poems most often appears in 2 forms: 1. pilgrim, walking through the fields and forests of Rus' with secret faith in Jesus and the Mother of God and 2. Pagan shepherd (shepherd-shepherd, he is involved in the works of Christ): I pray at the dawn, I take communion by the stream. Pagan and Christian merge in the image of “double feeling.” An example of double feeling is the poetry of early E. "Song of the Dog" (1915), in which the whelping red bitch appears almost as the Virgin Mary. Her puppies are drowned, and one of them, like a red moon in the sky, turns out to be taken to heaven. The dog's tragedy is projected onto the gospel story. Second period - 1916 - 1919. Yesenin is a utopian. the search for an ideal - the kingdom of universal happiness, earthly paradise. The idea of ​​Russia-Inonia, another Rus' (land of ancestors, mythological eternity). In the small poems “Comrade”, “Singing Call”, “Otcharya”, “Advent”, “Transfiguration”, “Rural Book of Hours”, “Inonia”, “Jordanian Dove”. He talks about God's chosen country, Russia, cat. should become an earthly paradise. Christ is close to the Russian revolution - he was born in a manger and a peasant took him into his callous hands. In the poems and poems of this period, the image of the baby Jesus and, in parallel, the image of the calving sky are important: “The calving sky licks the red heifer.” A new Russia is born and brings to the world the Third - peasant - testament. The new god is a peasant god, a cow god, without a cross and torment, so it sounds like blasphemy: “I spit out the sacrament.” 1918 gr.war - conflict with Klyuev, lost faith in utopia. Dystopia. In the poem “Mare's Ships,” the Third Testament turned into a pestilence. Horses are dying on city streets - Apocalypse: “mad glow of corpses”). Who is to blame? Element of October (Metaphor: the October wind will consume the groves). He renounces the February and October illusions. 1919 own poetic manifesto - “The Keys of Mary”. In “The Keys of Mary” he wrote about the ancient ch-ka and its mythology, the secret of which was known to the ancient Slavic culture of shepherds and farmers. This art was connected with the sky. The remains of this culture are preserved by the Russian village (This is peasant folklore - the basis of Russian imagery), cat. in the era of bourgeois, “urban” civilization, it dies “like a fish splashed out on the shore of the earth by a wave.” Meets Anatoly Mariengof and Vadim Shershenevich. ( approximately 1920-1924 Imagist period) Imagists affirm the idea of ​​the intrinsic value of the image in poetry (the content is the cecum of art). The image is built on logic, talent and intuition are dubious things. The category of beauty was also banished, anti-aestheticism and the physiological nature of the image were welcomed. In a certain sense, Yesenin followed these principles: “The sun grows cold, like a puddle that a gelding has made,” “Over the groves, like a cow, the dawn lifted its tail.” The “Imagist” period of E.’s creativity begins with the transformation monk and shepherd into a hooligan. 1920 poem “Hooligan”, “Confession of a Hooligan”. In them, not only the lyrical hero changes, but also the landscape, the cat. becomes uncomfortable, gloomy, hostile. Yesenin strengthens the motive of his rejection, calling himself a robber, horse thief, thief, boor, charlatan, brawler. But at the same time he emphasizes in every possible way that at heart he remained as before as a village hick. In 1920 he began working on the dramatic poem “Pugachev,” but he was interested in Nestor Makhno, who was then called the new Pugachev. But writing a poem about him was too dangerous. E. saw in Makhno the possibility of a third way in the revolution, but it collapsed. 1922-1923 cycle of poems “Moscow Tavern” (MK)(feeling of hopeless impasse) Paradoxical combination of the theme of drunken decay with amazing poetic power. The disintegration in “MK” is Asian-style, cruel and rampant. One of the most expressive poems of the cycle ended like this: You, my Scattered... Scattered... Asian side. The lyrical hero E is just as cruel in this cycle. Purification for the hero of “MK” could only come through death and a religious return to the lost national soil. “Soviet Rus'” in the works of S. Yesenin E. greeted the revolution enthusiastically. At first he talks about God's chosen country of Russia, cat. should become an earthly paradise. In the poems and poems of this period, the image of the baby Jesus and, in parallel, the image of the calving sky are important: “The calving sky licks the red heifer.” But the civil war cooled the ardor. In the poem “Mare's Ships,” Paradise turned into pestilence. Horses are dying on city streets - Apocalypse: “mad glow of corpses”). Who is to blame? Element of October (Metaphor: the October wind will consume the groves). He renounces the February and October illusions. He was close to the Essayers. He considered Makhno's Republic as a new path for Russia. After traveling to America, In 1924-1925 An attempt to overcome one's discrepancy with reality. "I accept" concept. He makes a peacemaking gesture towards the Bolsheviks and tries to join the new Russia. E. writes a kind of small lyrical trilogy - “Return to the Motherland”, “Soviet Rus'”, “Departing Rus'” - in which for the first time he turns to the life of the Soviet village. The language of E.’s utopia is alien to this village, which gave rise to a bitter confession: “The language of my fellow citizens has become like a stranger to me, / In my own country I am like a foreigner.” Or, as he summed it up in another verse: “Who am I? What am I? Is it just a dreamer, / Lost the blue of his eyes in the darkness.” He writes about “steel Rus'”, about how he wants to “lift up his pants and run after the Komsomol.” In “Letter to a Woman,” E. is generally inclined to condemn himself for staying away from the struggle for the future, efforts to speak up for the new tongue. Yesenin's last major works are of a final nature. In 1925, one after another, he wrote the cycle “Persian Motifs”, the poems “Anna Snegina” and “The Black Man”. In “Persian Motives”, a conventional, invented Persia arises - a country of poetry and love, an illusory world of peace and silence. In “The Black Man,” the subject of the image was an empty, devalued life, in the face of which the poems are exposed as something illusory and deceitful. The poet's double, the Black Man, confesses with cynical composure. Yesenin painfully felt that he was living the fate of some “adventurer,” “a scoundrel and a drunkard.” Until now it was a mask. In “The Black Man,” the mask was fused to the face and was torn off with blood and flesh. Yesenin conceived “Anna Snegina” as an epic, “Nekrasov” narrative from peasant life, but in the end he created a lyrical confession. The plot of “Anna Snegina” unfolds against the backdrop of the men’s struggle for land in 1917. The hero of the poem, a double of Yesenin himself, also named Sergei, returns to his native place to rest. His friend Pron Ogloblin goes with him to the estate of the landowner Snegina (with whom Sergei once had an affair) to take land. Three people who love each other face a painful conflict - in order to eventually part forever: Anna goes to London, Sergei to the capital, Pron is killed by the whites. Anna from emigration sends him a letter of recognition." “But you are still dear to me, / Like the homeland and like spring.” And if at the beginning of the poem there is resentment towards a life in which there is so little love (“But they loved us little”) , then at the end the opposite is stated: (We all loved during these years, / But that means they loved us too.) The author of “Anna Snegina” forgives life for everything that “did not come true” in it, blessing it.

The infinity of the process of spiritual extraction when reading “War and Peace” is organically connected with Tolstoy’s task of identifying the general laws of social and personal existence that subordinate the destinies of individuals, nations and humanity as a whole, and is in direct connection with Tolstoy’s quest for the path of people to each other, with the thought of possible and proper human “unity”.

War and Peace - as a theme - is life in its universal scope. At the same time, war and peace are the deepest and most tragic contradiction of life. Tolstoy's reflections on this problem resulted primarily in the study of the relationship between freedom and necessity, the essence of the volitional act of the individual and the objective result of its consequences at a particular moment. Calling the era of the creation of “War and Peace” a “self-confident time” (15, 227), which forgot about the existence of this problem, Tolstoy turns to the philosophical, theological and natural scientific thought of the past, which struggled to resolve the issue of the relationship between freedom and necessity (Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine Blessed, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Hume, Schopenhauer, Buckle, Darwin, etc.), and nowhere - neither in philosophy, nor in theology, nor in natural science - does he find a final positive result in resolving the problem. In the search for past centuries, Tolstoy discovers the constant return of new generations to the “Penelopian work” (15, 226) of his predecessors: “Considering the philosophical history of the issue, we will see that this question is not only not resolved, but has two solutions. From the point of view of reason, there is no and cannot be freedom, from the point of view of consciousness there is no and cannot be necessity” (15, 227–228).

Reflections on the patterns of development of human history lead Tolstoy to the separation of the concepts of mind and consciousness. “Revelations” of consciousness, according to the writer, presuppose complete freedom of the individual, while the requirements of reason consider any manifestation of freedom (otherwise - will) of a person in its complex connections with the surrounding reality according to the laws of time, space and causality, the organic connection of which constitutes necessity.

In the draft versions of War and Peace, Tolstoy examines a number of the greatest moral “paradoxes” of history - from the times of the Crusades, Charles IX and the Night of St. Bartholomew to the French Revolution - which, in the writer’s opinion, were not explained in any of the historical books known to him. philosophical concepts, and sets himself the task of finding new laws of human history, which he defines as “the science of popular self-knowledge” (15, 237).

Tolstoy’s concept is based on the idea of ​​“the continuous movement of the individual in time” (15, 320). A large-scale comparison is made: “As in the question of astronomy, so in the question of humaniores of the present time, the whole difference of view is based on the recognition or non-recognition of an absolute fixed unit, which serves as a measure of the change of phenomena. In astronomy it was the immobility of the earth; in humaniores it was the immobility of the individual, the human soul.<…>But in astronomy the truth took its toll. So, in our time, the truth of the mobility of the individual must take its toll” (15, 233). “The mobility of the personality” in this case correlates with the mobility of the soul, which has already been established since the story “Childhood” as an integral sign of a person who “understands.”

In relation to history, the question of freedom and necessity is resolved by Tolstoy in favor of necessity. Necessity is defined by him as “the law of mass movement in time.” At the same time, the writer emphasizes that in his personal life, every person at the moment of committing this or that act is free. He calls this moment “an infinitesimal moment of freedom in the present,” during which the “soul” of a person “lives” (15, 239, 321).

However, each given moment of time inevitably becomes past and turns into a fact of history. Its uniqueness and irreversibility predetermine, according to Tolstoy, the impossibility of recognizing free will in relation to what has happened and the past. Hence the denial of the leading role of voluntary actions of the individual in history and at the same time the affirmation of a person’s moral responsibility for any action at every infinitesimal moment of freedom in the present. This act can be an act of good, “uniting people,” or an act of evil (arbitrariness), “separating people” (46, 286; 64, 95).

Repeatedly recalling that human freedom is “chained by time” (15, 268, 292), Tolstoy at the same time speaks of the infinitely great sum of “moments of freedom,” that is, human life as a whole. Since at each such moment there is a “soul in life” (15, 239), the idea of ​​“personality mobility” forms the basis of the law of the necessity of mass movement in time.

The primary importance of “every infinitesimal moment”, approved by the writer in “War and Peace,” both in the life of an individual person and in the global movement of history, predetermined the method of analyzing the historical and determined the nature of the “conjugation” of the scale of the epic with the detail of psychological analysis that distinguishes “War.” and the World" from all forms of artistic and historical narrative and remains unique to this day both in Russian and world literature.

“War and Peace” is a book of quests. In Tolstoy's attempt to find the laws of motion of human history, the search process itself and the system of evidence are important, deepening the insight of the reader's judgment. Some logical incompleteness and inconsistency of the general philosophical synthesis of these quests was felt by Tolstoy himself. He foresaw accusations of being prone to fatalism. And therefore, developing the idea of ​​historical necessity and the specific form of its expression - the law of spontaneous movement of the masses towards an unknown goal - the writer persistently and repeatedly emphasized the moral responsibility of a person for any decision or action at any given moment.

The “will of providence” in Tolstoy’s philosophical and artistic interpretation of the life process is by no means a paralyzing intervention of a “higher power” that eliminates the activity of evil. Evil is effective in both the public and private lives of people. “Indifferent force” is blind, cruel and effective. The concept of “fatalism,” used by Tolstoy himself to explain phenomena beyond the control of “rational knowledge,” is associated in the literary fabric of the novel with “heartfelt knowledge.” The “path of thought” is contrasted with the “path of sensation”, the “dialectic of the mind” (17, 371) - the “dialectic of the soul”. “Heart knowledge” takes on the name “faith” in Pierre’s mind. This knowledge is nothing more than a moral feeling implanted by nature in every person, which, according to Tolstoy, is “transhistorical” and carries within itself the energy of life that fatally resists the forces of arbitrariness. Tolstoy's skepticism encroaches on the “omnipotence” of reason. The heart is the source of spiritual self-creativity.

The rough sketches for “War and Peace” reflect a seven-year process of search and doubt, culminating in a philosophical and historical synthesis of the 2nd part of the epilogue. The description of a series of events in the movement of peoples from West to East and from East to West, the ultimate goal of which, according to Tolstoy, remained inaccessible to the human mind, begins with a study of the era of “failures and defeats” of the Russian people (the nation as a whole) and covers the period from 1805 to August 1812 is the eve of the Battle of Borodino, and June - August 1812 (Napoleon's invasion of Russia and his movement towards Moscow) and the seven and a half years preceding this time are qualitatively heterogeneous. From the moment the French army entered Russian territory, the “failures and defeats” of the Russian army were accompanied by an unusually rapid awakening of national consciousness, which predetermined the outcome of the Battle of Borodino and the subsequent catastrophe of Napoleon.

The genre originality of “War and Peace” was defined by Tolstoy in 1865 as “a picture of morals built on a historical event” (48, 64). The action of the novel spans 15 years and introduces a huge number of characters into the reader's consciousness. Each of them - from the emperor and field marshal to the peasant and the simple soldier - is subjected to Tolstoy’s “test” of time: both by an infinitesimal moment, and by the sum of these moments - history.

This “test” also reveals the essential importance that Tolstoy attaches to the ability of human “understanding” both in the private and in the general life of people.

In the midst of work on the beginning of “War and Peace,” the writer makes a significant entry in his diary concerning his relationship with Sofia Andreevna, but which goes far beyond just the personal: “There is nothing to explain. There’s nothing to explain... But the slightest glimmer of understanding and feeling, and I’m all happy again and believe that she understands things, just like me” (48, 57). The feeling of the fullness of life, the process of communication between people and the problem of “understanding” are considered by Tolstoy in an inextricable connection.

In Russia's opposition to Napoleon, the popular and the national organically merge. This unity is opposed in “War and Peace” by the highest St. Petersburg aristocratic circle, interpreted by the writer as a privileged social class denied by him, the distinctive feature of which is “misunderstanding.” At the same time, the patriotic feeling of the people during the period of the Napoleonic invasion is considered by Tolstoy as the highest level of “knowledge of the heart,” which determined the possibility of “human unity” in 1812, historically significant for the subsequent destinies of Russia and Europe as a whole.

The first detailed philosophical digression will precede the description of the events of 1812. But all of its problematics will be closely connected with Tolstoy’s concept of “the movement of personality in time,” developed in the artistic fabric of the first volume of War and Peace.

Already from the first part, which opens the novel, it becomes obvious that the internal motivations of both Bolkonsky and Bezukhov and the objective result of their actions are not in a direct logical connection. Prince Andrei, despising the world (with its perverted “moral world”) - the “vicious circle” without which his wife cannot live - is forced to visit it.

Pierre, suffering from the burden of the revelry of Kuragin and Dolokhov and giving his word to Bolkonsky to part with them, immediately after this promise goes to them. The same Pierre, without thinking about an inheritance, becomes the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia and at the same time a future victim of the tyranny of the Kuragin family. The “infinitesimal moment of freedom” of the heroes turns out to be “shackled by time” - multidirectional internal impulses of the people around them.

The movement of Bolkonsky and Rostov towards the disaster of Austerlitz is preceded by the retreat of Russian troops across the Enns River and the Battle of Shengraben. At the center of both descriptions is the moral world of the army. The passage through the Enns opens in the novel that period of military operations when the Russian army was forced to act “outside all foreseeable conditions of war” (9, 180). Instead of the offensive tactics “deeply thought out” by the allies, Kutuzov’s only “almost inaccessible” goal was to save the Russian army. The “general course of affairs,” so important for Prince Andrei and inaccessible to Nikolai Rostov, affects both heroes equally actively. Bolkonsky’s desire to change the course of events with a personal feat and Rostov’s desire to find “fullness of life” in conditions that require only honest performance of military duty and allow one to escape from the complexities and “subtleties” of daily existence in the “world” are constantly faced with unforeseen circumstances that, regardless of the will heroes are undermined by their hopes.

The beginning of the crossing of the Enns is depicted through the visual and auditory perception of a neutral secondary character - Prince Nesvitsky. Its end is given through the contradictory experiences of Nikolai Rostov. A varied mass of soldiers and officers, foot and horse, flashing before Nesvitsky, fragments of dialogue, short, unrelated and therefore meaningless remarks - everything is drowned in the overall picture of disorder, almost beyond the control of the elements of man. The soldiers are nearby, but not together. Both Nesvitsy himself, the adjutant of the commander-in-chief, who arrived with the order, and Rostov are practically just helpless spectators. At the same time, the ambiguity and haste of what is happening, groans, suffering, death, emerging and growing fear merge in Rostov’s consciousness into one painful and disturbing impression and force him to think, that is, to do what is given to him with such difficulty and from which he is so often runs.

Bolkonsky does not see the crossing over Enns. But the picture of the “great haste and the greatest disorder” of the retreat of the Russian army makes the “decline of spirit” of the army obvious to him. Nevertheless, both Bolkonsky the theorist in his first conversation with Bezukhov, and Bolkonsky the practitioner in the dialogue with Bilibin, who has already felt the destructive power of the “moral hesitation” of the army, are equally confident in personal election, which should determine the outcome of the upcoming military actions.

The Battle of Shengraben is the only event in the history of the war of 1805 that, from Tolstoy’s point of view, had a moral justification. And at the same time, Bolkonsky’s first practical collision with the laws of war, which psychologically undermined his voluntaristic aspirations. The plan to save the main part of the Russian army by Bagration’s detachment was an act of Kutuzov’s will, rested on the moral law (the sacrifice of the “part” saved the “whole”) and was opposed by Tolstoy to the arbitrariness of the decision on the battle of Austerlitz. The outcome of the battle is decided by the general “spirit of the army,” which Bagration sensitively senses. He perceives everything that happens as something he foresaw. Bolkonsky’s failed personal “Toulon” is contrasted with the “general Toulon” of Tushin’s battery, which determined the course of the battle, but was not noticed or appreciated by others.

Shengraben is equally important for the self-determination of Rostov. The incomparability of the internal motivation (enthusiasm and determination) and the objective result (wounding and stampede) plunges the hero into the abyss of questions that are terrible for him and again, as on the Ensky Bridge (Tolstoy draws this parallel twice), forces Rostov to think.

The decision on the Battle of Austerlitz is made against the will of Kutuzov. It seemed that all possibilities, all conditions, all “the slightest details” were provided for (9, 303). Victory does not seem to be “future”, but already “past” (9, 303). Kutuzov is not inactive. However, his energy to resist the speculative constructions of the participants in the military council on the eve of the battle, based on the feeling of the “moral peace” of the army, its “general spirit” and the internal state of the enemy army, is paralyzed by the arbitrariness of others vested with greater power. Kutuzov foresees the inevitability of defeat, but is powerless to break the activity of many arbitrarinesses and therefore is so inert at the council preceding the battle.

Bolkonsky in front of Austerlitz is in a state of doubt, ambiguity and anxiety. It was generated by “practical” knowledge acquired next to Kutuzov, whose correctness was always confirmed. But the power of speculative constructions, the power of the idea of ​​“triumph over all” translates doubt and anxiety into a feeling of the reliably approaching “day of his Toulon,” which should predetermine the general course of affairs.

Everything envisaged in the attack plan collapses immediately, and collapses catastrophically. Napoleon's intentions turn out to be unforeseen (he does not avoid battle at all); erroneous - information about the location of his troops; unforeseen - his plan to invade the rear of the allied army; Almost unnecessary is excellent knowledge of the terrain: even before the start of the battle, in dense fog, commanders lose their regiments. The feeling of energy with which the soldiers moved towards the battlefield turns into “annoyance and anger” (9, 329).

The Allied forces, who had already seen themselves attacking, found themselves attacked, and in the most vulnerable place. Bolkonsky's feat was accomplished, but did not change anything in the general course of the battle. The Austerlitz catastrophe at the same time exposed for Prince Andrei the inconsistency between the constructs of reason and the “revelations” of consciousness. Suffering and the “imminent expectation of death” revealed to his soul the imperishability of the general flow of life (the present), symbolized by the “eternal” sky for all people, and the transient significance of the individual who is made a hero by the historical event taking place.

Nikolai Rostov is not a direct participant in the battle. Sent by a courier, he acts as a spectator, involuntarily contemplating different periods and sections of the battle. The state of mental and emotional tension in which Rostov eventually found itself in the hands of Shengraben was beyond his strength and could not last long. His instinct of self-preservation finds ground that guarantees safety from the invasion of terrible and unnecessary questions. The “deification” of the emperor, who, from Rostov’s point of view, creates history, destroys the fear of death. The unreasoning readiness to die for the sovereign at any moment removes the question “why?” from the hero’s consciousness, returns Rostov to the norm of “healthy limitations” (48, 49), thereby predetermining his reasoning about the “duty” of obedience to the government in the epilogue of the novel.

The path of doubts, grave crises, revivals and new catastrophes for both Andrei and Pierre (in the period 1806 - early 1812) is the path of knowledge - and the path to other people. That understanding, without which, according to Tolstoy, there can be no talk of “unity of people,” is not only a natural intuitive gift, but an ability and at the same time a need, acquired through experience. For Drubetsky and Berg, who in the period from Austerlitz to 1812 (i.e., during the period of “failures and defeats”) reached the maximum possible boundaries of their official and personal careers for each of them, there is no need for understanding. Natasha’s life-giving element takes Drubetsky away from Helen for a moment, but the world of human “dust,” which allows one to easily and quickly climb the steps of the ladder of perverted virtues, prevails. Nikolai Rostov, endowed with “sensitivity of the heart” (10, 45) and at the same time “common sense of mediocrity” (10, 238), carries within himself the ability to understand the intuitive. That is why the question “why?” so often invades his consciousness, that is why he feels the “blue glasses of the hostel” (10, 141), which determine the behavior of Boris Drubetsky. This “understanding” of Rostov largely explains the possibility of Marya Bolkonskaya’s love for him. However, Rostov's human mediocrity constantly forces him to avoid questions, difficulties, ambiguities - everything that requires significant mental and emotional effort. Between Austerlitz and 1812, Rostov was either in the regiment or in Otradnoye. And it’s always “quiet and calm” for him in the regiment; in Otradnoye it’s “difficult and confusing.” The regiment for Rostov is salvation from “everyday confusion.” Otradnoye is a “pool of life” (10, 238). It is easy to be a “wonderful person” in the regiment, but difficult in the “world” (10, 125). And only twice - after a huge card loss to Dolokhov and at the moment of reflection on the peace between Russia and France concluded in Tilsit - the harmony of “healthy limitations” collapses in Rostov. Nikolai Rostov, within the “novel” limits, cannot gain understanding related to the depth of knowledge of the particular and general laws of human life.

A solitary (but active in its own way) life in Bald Mountains and Bogucharovo, government activities, love for Natasha - Bolkonsky’s path from the Austerlitz disaster to 1812. This period for Bezukhov included his marriage to Helen, a duel with Dolokhov, a passion for Freemasonry, philanthropic endeavors and also love for Natasha. Despite all the dissimilarity of their natures, both Andrei and Pierre strive for a common goal: to discover the meaning and driving source of human life and humanity as a whole. Both of them are able to ask themselves the question - “...isn’t everything that I think nonsense?..” (10, 169) or come to the thought: “it’s not that” (10, 39).

Bolkonsky's strong, sober and skeptical mind, will and at the same time egocentrism keep him in a vicious circle of destructive denial. Only communication with Pierre and feelings for Natasha were able to “soften” his misanthropy and break the negative structure of emotions with “thirst for life” and the desire for “light” (10, 221). The collapse of ambitious thoughts in the military and civilian fields is associated with the fall (in the hero’s mind) of two idols who achieved “triumph over people” - Napoleon and Speransky. But if Napoleon was an “abstract idea” for Bolkonsky, Speransky is a living person who is constantly observed by him. Speransky’s unshakable faith in the power and legitimacy of the mind (which captivated Prince Andrei most of all) from the first meeting contrasts in the hero’s mind with Speransky’s “cold, mirror-like, not letting into his soul” (10, 168). Speransky’s “too much contempt” for people also causes sharp rejection. Formally, Speransky’s activity was presented as “life for others,” but in its essence it was a “triumph over others” and entailed the inevitable “death of the soul.”

The world of the “real” was associated by Bolkonsky already in the first pages of the novel with a “living person” (9, 36), opposing the “dead” world. The world of the “real” - communication with Pierre’s “living soul” and feelings for Natasha - destroyed Bolkonsky’s desire to “leave” society (after Austerlitz) and withdraw into himself. This same force exposes all the vanity, futility and idleness of the various committees of state transformation, which bypassed everything “that concerned the essence of the matter” (9, 209).

The fullness of life that Prince Andrei suddenly and for the first time acquires is destroyed by himself. His need for understanding is unlimited, but his ability to understand others is limited. The Austerlitz disaster has already shown Bolkonsky the effectiveness and dynamism of the “infinitesimal moment.” But the experience of the past and the depth of knowledge of life did not at all destroy the hero’s egocentrism, and therefore the ability of his intuitive understanding has hardly changed compared to the beginning of the novel.

He thinks about the Rostov family: “...they are kind, nice people<…>Of course, they don’t understand even one bit of the treasure that they have in Natasha” (10, 210). But his ability to understand the heroine turns out to be even less.

For Tolstoy (and his hero of the 50s), every passing day is a fact of history, living history, a kind of “epoch” in the life of the soul. Bolkonsky does not have this sense of the significance of each passing day. The idea of ​​the movement of the individual at every “infinitesimal moment”, which forms the basis of the philosophical concept of “War and Peace,” and the year of separation that Prince Andrei offers Natasha at the arbitrariness of his father, are clearly correlated in the novel. The law of personality movement in time, the power of which the hero has already experienced, is not transferred by him to another person. Freedom and necessity are considered by Bolkonsky only in relation to his own personality. Prince Andrei's moral sense turns out to be isolated from the feeling of personal guilt.

Understanding comes to Bolkonsky on the verge of death. “There was something in this life that I did not understand and do not understand” (11, 253) - this thought persistently invades the consciousness of Prince Andrei after his mortal wound at Borodino and accompanies him in delirium, half-oblivion and wakefulness. She naturally focuses on the last tragic event of his personal life - his love for Natasha and the catastrophe of breaking up with her. Only detachment from one’s own fate and the experience of suffering give birth to Prince Andrei’s understanding of the soul of another person, with which comes a feeling of the fullness of life.

The problem of personal guilt and the fear of “misunderstanding” of something important constantly accompany Pierre Bezukhov. And on the night after the duel, and at the station in Torzhok, where the logic of the absurd calls into question not only the expediency, but also the very possibility of life, and in the difficult “Masonic” period, Bezukhov searches for the cause of evil, largely renouncing the interests of his personality. Dreams of becoming either a philosopher, or a “tactician,” or Napoleon, or the conqueror of Napoleon, are crumbling. The desire to “regenerate” the vicious human race and bring oneself to the highest degree of perfection leads to severe attacks of hypochondria and melancholy, flight from the questions of the “terrible knot of life” and new returns to them. At the same time, liberation from illusions, overcoming naivety, the process of learning about life as a whole is accompanied by a tireless search for the “inner man” in others (10, 183), recognition of the source of personal movement - struggle and disasters. “The skeleton of life” - this is what Pierre calls the essence of his daily existence. Belief in the possibility of good and truth and the obvious picture of the evil and lies of reality, which block the road to any activity, turn every passing day into a search for salvation from life. But at the same time, the tireless work of thought, freedom from skeptical one-sidedness and indifference to personal fate switch his consciousness to others and make the very ability of understanding a source of spiritual rebirth.

It is known that dialogue in the artistic structure of “War and Peace” as a way to resolve the crisis psychological states of the characters, as a way out to the process of communication beyond narrow class and social boundaries, is fundamentally important. Unlike Turgenev’s novels, where the dialogues of the heroes result in disputes, the main goal of which is the establishment of ideological systems opposing each other, in the dialogues of the heroes of “War and Peace” it is of paramount importance to test their own concepts, exposing the true and the erroneous in them. In the movement of the heroes towards the truth, dialogue is active and fruitful, and most importantly, possible. In the 70s the need for such a dialogue for Tolstoy’s hero will be just as significant. But the possibility of dialogue will become a problem, which will significantly affect the artistic structure of the novel Anna Karenina.

Comprehension of the laws of history, or more precisely, the hope of comprehending them, lies, according to Tolstoy, in the observation of infinitesimal moments of freedom of both an individual and humanity as a whole. The War of 1812 not only made obvious the internal motivations for the actions of each person, but was that unique event in the life of Russia, which determined the “homogeneity of inclinations” (11, 266) of the overwhelming mass of people. The understanding of what is “good” and “bad” goes beyond the narrow framework of the individual. The fragility and unclear boundaries between “good” and “evil” are replaced by conscious knowledge, general, popular and constantly deepening knowledge. It was produced by the “life of the soul” - the most important, according to Tolstoy, source of spiritual renewal of humanity.

The spirit of the army, the moral world of the army is nothing more than the life of the collective soul of the people. The flight of the French army from Moscow and the subsequent death of Napoleonic army are considered by Tolstoy as a natural and necessary consequence of a collision with a spiritually strong enemy. The people’s soul is always “in life” (that’s why Tolstoy described the background of Bogucharov’s rebellious peasants in such detail). The year 1812 only liberates the creative self-awareness of the people: they gain freedom of action and sweep away all the “generally accepted conventions of war.”

“A new force, unknown to anyone, is rising - the people. And the invasion dies” (15, 202). The people in War and Peace are the living soul of the nation: Russian peasants are soldiers and partisans; townspeople who destroyed their property and abandoned long-lived places; the nobility who created militias; the population leaving Moscow and showing “with this negative action the full strength of their national feeling.” There was no problem - it would be bad or good under the control of the French: “it was impossible to be under the control of the French: it was the worst of all” (11, 278).

Tolstoy repeatedly emphasizes the homogeneity and personal nature of the internal motivations of the people. The common good (victory) is portrayed by the writer as a necessary (natural) result of the unidirectional interests of many people, always determined by one feeling - the “hidden warmth of patriotism.” It is important that in “War and Peace” Tolstoy closely analyzes the ways of serving the “common good.” In their concrete manifestation, as the writer shows, these paths can turn out to be imaginary good, arbitrariness, aimed at achieving purely personal goals. The stupid and inhumane activities of Rostopchin - the governor of Moscow, abandoned by everyone - appear in the novel as a “personal sin”, arbitrariness, putting on the mask of the “common good”. Each time the thought that calmed Rostopchin was the same. “Since the world has existed and people have been killing each other, not a single person has ever committed a crime against his own kind without reassuring himself with this very thought. This thought,” writes Tolstoy, “is le bien publique, the supposed good of other people” (11, 348). This is how a significant adjustment is made to the writer’s own philosophical constructions of the late 40s - early 50s. Much later than the Confession, in the treatise of the 90s. “Christian teaching” (1894–1896), this perversely understood “common good” as a method of social deception, so convenient for the “ruling class”, Tolstoy openly put among the “temptations” and called it a trap into which a person is lured by “the semblance of good "

Arbitrariness, putting on the mask of the “common good,” is contrasted in “War and Peace” with “common life,” with which Tolstoy’s thoughts about the “internal” man opposed to the “external” man are also associated. The concepts of “inner man” and “outer man” are born in Pierre’s mind during the period of his disappointment in Freemasonry. The first of them is, according to Tolstoy’s plan, “the soul in life.” The second becomes the personification of the “mortality” and “dust” of the soul. The “inner man” in its most complete form finds artistic embodiment in the collective image of the people and the image of Kutuzov, who carried the “national feeling” in all its “purity and strength.” "External man" - in Napoleon.

For Pierre, “superfluous, devilish<…>burden<…>external man” (11, 290) becomes especially painful on Borodin’s field. Through the perception of the “non-military”, “peaceful” person Bezukhov, the beginning and end of the Battle of Borodino are given. The hero is not interested in the battlefield. He is all about contemplating the “life of the soul” of the people around him, in whose eyes and faces “lightning of hidden fire” flared up as the battle progressed. The moral world of the “family circle” of soldiers of Raevsky’s battery, dying before Pierre’s eyes, who accepted this purely “non-military” man into their family and nicknamed him “our master”, that “common life”, the completeness and incorruptibility of which is suddenly revealed to Bezukhov, predetermine the rapidity of the hero’s path to a moral crisis, as a result of which the “inner man” wins.

Having experienced the healing power of “common life,” Pierre finds himself in the conditions of the destructive power of arbitrariness. The picture of an execution committed by people who did not want, but were forced to execute their own kind, destroys the hero’s faith both “in humanity and in his own soul” (12, 44). Doubts about the possibility, necessity and expediency of life had been creeping into his consciousness for a long time, but had their source in personal guilt, and the healing power of rebirth was sought in himself. “But now he felt that it was not his fault that the world had collapsed in his eyes, and only meaningless ruins remained. He felt that returning to faith in life was not in his power” (12, 44).

However, the return to life and finding “agreement with oneself” (which so struck Pierre in the soldiers of Raevsky’s battery) occurs precisely after the “horror of execution,” during a period of suffering and deprivation. Pierre's meeting with Platon Karataev greatly contributes to going beyond the boundaries of an isolated personal life and gaining the sought-after inner freedom. Karataev is not so much the personification of obedience and humility as Tolstoy’s ideal of “simplicity and truth,” the ideal of complete dissolution in “common life,” destroying the fear of death and awakening the full power of human vitality. Karataev’s life, “as he himself looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. She made sense only as a particle of the whole, which he constantly felt” (12, 51). Hence the manifestation in him of the “inner man” in its absolute form and a unique gift for “knowledge of the heart.” It is during the period of communication with Pierre Karataev that “rational knowledge” is called into question, which did not give him agreement with himself in his past. “Ways of Thought” (12, 97) Tolstoy contrasts in “War and Peace” knowledge “unreasonable” (i.e., rationally inexplicable), the path of sensations, moral feeling, fraught with the ability to distinguish between good and evil, and thus precedes one of the main themes of Anna Karenina and the philosophical treatise Confession.

The undoubted reality of the good of “common life” became practically obvious to Pierre under conditions of complete subordination to necessity (captivity). But participation in “common life” did not yet guarantee complete “dissolution” in it. With the acquisition of external freedom, Pierre’s “common life” moves into the realm of “knowledge”, stored as the most precious memory. The question of how to “enter this common life with your whole being,” which confronted Pierre after Borodin, was essentially the main one in the life of Tolstoy himself. The solution to this issue radically changed his life path on the verge of the 70s and 80s. and determined the nature of that moral teaching, for which Tolstoy’s entire life was devoted to the struggle after the publication of “Confession” (1882).

Complete internal freedom, according to Tolstoy, is unattainable in real life. Its possibility is eliminated by the action of multidirectional human wills, which predetermine the inevitability of spiritual catastrophes. But it is precisely during these periods that the “life of the soul” goes beyond the usual framework of the “norm”, stereotypes of perception collapse, and the intensity of the individual’s spiritual self-creativity rapidly increases. “They say: misfortune, suffering,” says Pierre, going through the memories of the past. - Yes, if they told me now, this very minute: do you want to remain what you were before captivity, or first go through all this? For God's sake, once again captivity and horse meat. We think that as soon as we are thrown out of our usual path, everything is gone: but here something new, good, is just beginning” (12, 222). The plot of “catastrophe” as an inevitable consequence of the constant struggle between “good” and “evil”, “inner man” and “outer man” is interpreted in “War and Peace” as a “purifying” beginning, leading the individual to a deeper comprehension of life.

"Art<…>“has laws,” Tolstoy wrote in the drafts of “War and Peace.” - And if I am an artist, and if Kutuzov is depicted well by me, then this is not because I wanted to (I have nothing to do with it), but because this figure has artistic conditions, while others do not<…>Why are there many lovers of Napoleon, and not one poet has yet made an image of him; and never will” (15, 242). If for Kutuzov what is paramount is what is in the souls of others, then for Napoleon it is “what is in his soul” (11, 23). If for Kutuzov good and evil are in the opinion of the people, then for Napoleon it is in his own opinion: “... in his concept, everything is what? he did was good not because it coincided with the idea of ​​what? good and bad, but because he did it” (11, 29). He could not renounce everything he had done, praised by half the world, and therefore was forced to renounce truth and goodness. The “inner man” in Kutuzov is concerned primarily with giving the collective soul of the people the opportunity for maximum freedom of action, constantly feeling it and leading it, as far as it is in his power. The “outer man” in Napoleon, “destined by providence” for the sad, unfree role of “executioner of nations,” assures himself that the purpose of his actions is the good of the people and that everything in the world depends only on his will.

Napoleon gave the Battle of Borodino, Kutuzov accepted it. As a result of the battle, the Russians came closer to the “death” of Moscow, the French - to the “death” of the entire army. But at the same time, for the first time in the history of the Napoleonic wars, Napoleon’s personal arbitrariness was defeated by the will of the people: “the hand of the strongest enemy in spirit was laid on his army” (11, 262). The “strangeness” of the Russian campaign, in which not a single battle was won in two months, neither banners, nor guns, nor corps of troops were taken, began to be felt by Napoleon after the capture of Smolensk. In the Battle of Borodino, they are given orders in the same way as always. But they turn out to be either implemented or belated - and equally unnecessary. Long-term military experience persistently tells Napoleon that a battle that is not won by the attackers within eight hours is lost. And for the first time on this day, the sight of the battlefield defeats his “mental strength”, in which he saw his greatness: his tyranny generated mountains of corpses, but did not change the course of history. “He awaited with painful melancholy the end of the matter in which he considered himself involved, but which he could not stop. Personal human feeling for a short moment took precedence over that artificial ghost of life, which he served for so long" (11, 257).

Kutuzov’s personal will is subordinated to that “common life”, which is perceived by Pierre at the Raevsky battery as a kind of revelation and gift of fate. Kutuzov agrees or disagrees with what is offered to him, peers into the expressions of the faces who reported to him about the progress of the battle, listens to the tone of their speech. His growing confidence in the moral victory of the Russian army is transmitted to an army of many thousands, supports the spirit of the people - “the main nerve of war” (11, 248) - and makes it possible to give orders for a future offensive.

The Battle of Borodino denies arbitrariness as the driving force of history, but does not at all eliminate the significance of the individual, who perceives the meaning of occurring phenomena and adapts his actions to them. After the moral victory of the Russian army at Borodino, by the will of Kutuzov, Moscow was left without a battle. The external illogicality of this decision causes the most active resistance of almost the entire military leadership, which did not break the will of Kutuzov. He preserves the Russian army, and, allowing the French into the already empty Moscow, wins a “bloodless” victory over the Napoleonic army, which for the most part turns into a huge crowd of marauders.

However, the insight of the “higher laws”, that is, the understanding of “common life” and the subordination of personal will to it, a gift acquired at the cost of enormous spiritual expenditure, is felt by “weak” souls (and “indifferent strength”) as an unacceptable deviation from the generally accepted norm . “...It is more difficult to find another example in history where the goal that a historical figure set for himself would be so completely achieved as the goal towards which all of Kutuzov’s activities were aimed in the 12th year” (12, 183). And meanwhile: “In the 12th and 13th years,” Tolstoy emphasizes, “Kutuzov was directly accused of mistakes. The Emperor was unhappy with him<…>This is<…>the fate of those rare, always lonely people who, comprehending the will of Providence, subordinate their personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish these people for their insight into the higher laws” (12, 182–183).

Tolstoy's dispute in the interpretation of the historical role of Kutuzov with almost all Russian and European historiography was very sharp in nature. Such situations occurred more than once in Tolstoy’s polemics. For example, a fierce struggle arose between the writer and the official church in the 80s and 90s. The result of Tolstoy’s active and intense study of theological literature and the teachings of the church was the recognition in Christ of an earthly personality who personified the highest ideal of “common life” and “inner man” in all its purity and strength. The official church was, in Tolstoy’s opinion, a collective “external man” who distorted the teachings of Christ and built a utilitarian kingdom of lack of spirituality on the blood of the “inner man” who had gained insight into the highest moral laws.

In the epilogue of the novel, Pierre is shown as an active participant in the Decembrist movement. The understanding he suffered and gained led the hero to that practical activity, the expediency of which Tolstoy resolutely rejected, despite the writer’s unconditional justification of the ideological and moral aspirations of the Decembrists.

The Decembrists were always perceived by Tolstoy as people “who were ready to suffer and suffered themselves (without making anyone else suffer) for the sake of loyalty to what they recognized as truth” (36, 228). Their personalities and destinies, according to the writer, could greatly contribute to the education of “just people”, so sharply opposed to Tolstoy in the early 60s. "people of progress" - the stillborn fruits of the liberal public education program. In the writer’s repeated returns to the idea of ​​a novel about the Decembrists, which remained unfinished, his desire to resolve the contradiction between a morally justified goal and a political character unacceptable for Tolstoy, combined in the historical “phenomenon” of Decembrism, is obvious.

The source of internal motivation for Pierre’s activity in the epilogue is the idea of ​​the true “common good”; Nikolai Rostov theoretically denies this idea. However, in everyday life his practical and ethical orientation towards the “man” is constantly increasing. Rostov’s “common sense of mediocrity”, in unity with the spirituality of Marya Bolkonskaya, outlines in the novel the line that will become central in Tolstoy’s work in the 70s.

The writer’s self-determination in the positions of patriarchal peasant democracy will eliminate the “mediocrity” of the hero, remove the illusion of social harmony and determine the birth of Konstantin Levin, one of Tolstoy’s most “autobiographical” heroes.

Approving during the crisis period for Russia in the 60s. the priority of a set of moral rules over a set of “beliefs and ideas”, “knowledge of the heart” over “knowledge of the mind”, Tolstoy strived for one thing - to show the effectiveness of moral feeling, its self-creative power, the ability to resist social pathology in all its spheres. The return of a writer on the verge of the 60s and 70s. to pedagogical problems, the creation of the ABC (1871–1872), the processing of epic plots, and an appeal to the era of Peter I are connected by the same goal - to find the sources of moral opposition to the destructive forces of bourgeois utilitarianism.

The 70s, which exposed all the contradictions of post-reform reality, raised in a new way the question of the historical destinies of Russia for the Russian social and literary consciousness (from conservative and liberal to democratic). The feeling of the tragedy of Russian life, “universal isolation,” “disorder,” “chemical decomposition” (Dostoevsky’s terms) determined during this period the ideological and artistic quests of Shchedrin and Nekrasov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky and significantly affected the philosophical and stylistic structure of the Russian novel and story and poetic genres in general.

Appeal to the moral capabilities of the individual, analysis of socio-historical contradictions, primarily through the “opening” of the moral and psychological collisions of human consciousness, doomed to defend itself “in the chaos of concepts,” brought Tolstoy closer to Dostoevsky. But they only brought us closer. The specific solution to the question of the possibilities and ways of human unity between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is largely different. The roots of this difference are in the writers’ different understanding of the essence of human nature and in their different attitudes towards the church, in Tolstoy’s rejection of it and in Dostoevsky’s appeal to it (with all the reservations).

The socio-psychological concretization of Tolstoy's ethical ideal, which took place in the 70s, was accompanied by severe crises. The path from “War and Peace” to “Confession,” which ended with Tolstoy’s self-determination on the positions of patriarchal-peasant democracy, marked a growing internal rejection of the bourgeois aspirations of post-reform Russia. However, Tolstoy’s complete and exclusive orientation towards the ethical values ​​of the people’s peasant consciousness and the lack of a specific historical analysis of the transitional nature of the era led to the inconsistency of the writer’s position and his moral and philosophical teaching of the 80–900s, revealed in V. I. Lenin’s famous articles about Tolstoy.

The most acute crisis in all spheres of public and private life - a consequence of the active invasion of bourgeois forms of community life - was accompanied by an obvious (and terrible for Tolstoy) process of “death” of the individual. The question was no longer about the greater or lesser intensity of the “life of the soul.” Its extinction, described with such a passionate sense of protest in “Lucerne” based on the “results” of Western progress, occurred so rapidly in Russia that it cast doubt on Tolstoy’s original idea of ​​human unity. The impact on current reality, according to Tolstoy, was primarily to stop the process of “fading away” of the soul, to reveal the hidden vital force living in any person. Tolstoy (like Dostoevsky) contrasts one of the central questions of Russian post-reform novelism - the question of the meaning of individual rights - with the question of the possibilities of the individual.

In the 70s (as never before), sometimes in hopeless forms, the theme of death arose in Tolstoy’s consciousness - as a purely personal topic. The first painful attack of “melancholy, fear, horror” was experienced by the writer shortly after the end of “War and Peace”, in September 1869, on the way to the Penza province and was subsequently described in the story “Notes of a Madman” (1884–1886). In “Confession” Tolstoy sets out in detail his search for the “power of life”, which leads the individual out of the impasse of contradictions, answers the question “what is the meaning of life?”, overcomes the “fear of death” - his path to faith. He understands it as “unreasonable” knowledge (23, 35), that is, rationally inexplicable, as a psychological need to follow the moral law, in which the personal and the general coincide. “The answer of faith - according to Tolstoy - gives the finite existence of a person the meaning of the infinite - a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation and death<…>faith is knowledge of the meaning of human life, as a result of which a person does not destroy himself, but lives. Faith is the power of life" (23, 35). And here Tolstoy talks about his understanding of God, which he acquires along with faith. In this understanding, there is the same moral and real essence as in the understanding of faith: “Knowing God and living are one and the same thing. God is life" (23, 46).

The idea of ​​“Anna Karenina” was born during this most difficult period of Tolstoy’s quest. The first edition of the novel was created in 1873. At the beginning of 1874, its (not completed) printing as a separate book began. The wife, her husband and lover in the first edition of the novel are still far from the heroes of the final text: the heroine is led to suicide by the cooling of her lover and the collision of the “diabolical” obsession of passion with Christian self-sacrifice and humility, personified in the deceived husband, on whose behalf the religious and moral story is presented. “truth” found in the final edition by Levin. Significant changes to the original plan occurred in 1875–1877. Tolstoy’s enthusiastic studies in “religious and philosophical works,” which he “began” “not for publication, but for himself,” also date back to this time (62, 266).

“Confession” was written mainly in 1879, completed in 1882 and published in 1884. But it is important that an attempt to artistically embody one of the central aspects of its philosophical problematics is already present in the fifth volume (1st edition) of “War and Peace” ", the work on which falls on 1868. The theme of “Confession” - and in the February diary entry of 1874: “Having lived for about 50 years, I was convinced that earthly life gives nothing, and the smart person who looks closely at earthly life seriously, work, fear, reproaches, struggle - why? - for the sake of madness, he will shoot himself now, and Hartmann and Schopenhauer are right. But Schopenhauer made it felt that there was something why he did not shoot himself. This something is the task of my book. How do we live? (48, 347). By the mid-70s. includes a number of sketches of religious and philosophical content: “On the future life outside of time and space” (1875), “On the soul and its life...” (1875), “On the meaning of the Christian religion” (1875–1876), “Definition of religion - faith "(1875-1876), "Christian Catechism" (1877), "Interlocutors" (1877-1878). Each of these sketches touches on, to a greater or lesser extent, the main problem of the Confession (the question of the meaning of life for people of the “educated class”). Taken together, these sketches are something like rough developments of the most important themes, which in the “Confession” are considered and developed from the standpoint of “results”. The results are “knowledge of the mind,” “knowledge of the heart,” and knowledge acquired in the sphere of artistic comprehension of reality.

Thus, Tolstoy’s active psychological movement towards a radical restructuring of his worldview, which took place on the verge of the 80s, coincides in time with the period of significant changes in the original plan of Anna Karenina. This largely determines the breadth and depth of the socio-philosophical analysis of Russian post-reform reality in the novel, the transfer of “family thought” from its private channel into the sphere of general analysis of human relationships during a period of acute social contradictions.

The autobiographical nature of Levin’s image is indisputable, just as it is indisputable that his path to faith reflects the tragedy of Tolstoy’s personal quest for the “power of life” that destroys the “fear of death.” Almost verbatim coincidences between Levin’s thoughts about suicide and Tolstoy’s similar thoughts reproduced in “Confession” have long been noted. But the significance of this socio-philosophical treatise for understanding Anna Karenina is much broader: it provides a kind of detailed auto-commentary on the entire novel as a whole, its figurative system (“coupling of ideas”) and artistic structure.

The seventh chapter of “Confession” opens with extensive reflection on the possible paths of life for “people of the educated class.” In the same reasoning, the temptation of “sweets” is considered as the main evil that blocks a person’s exit from “darkness” to “light.”

“I have found that for people in my circle there are four ways out of the terrible situation in which we all find ourselves.

The first way out is the way out of ignorance. It consists in not knowing, not understanding that life is evil and nonsense. People of this category - mostly women, or very young, or very stupid people - have not yet understood the question of life that presented itself to Schopenhauer, Solomon, and Buddha. They do not see the dragon waiting for them, nor the mice eating away at the bushes they are holding on to and licking drops of honey. But they lick these drops of honey only for the time being: something will draw their attention to the dragon and mice, and that’s the end of their licking.<…>

The second way out is the way out of Epicureanism. It consists in, knowing the hopelessness of life, to enjoy for the time being those blessings that exist, not to look at the dragon or the mice, but to lick the honey in the best possible way, especially if there is a lot of it on the bush. Solomon expresses this output as follows: “And I praised the fun, because there is nothing better for a man under the sun than to eat, drink and be merry: this accompanies him in the labors of the days of his life, which God gave him under the sun. So, go eat your bread with joy and drink your wine with a joyful heart... Enjoy life with the woman you love all the days of your vain life, all your vain days, because this is your portion in life and in your labors, how you labor under the sun... Whatever your hand can do, do it, because in the grave where you are going there is no work, no thinking, no knowledge, no wisdom..."

“The third way out is the way out of strength and energy. It consists in realizing that life is evil and nonsense, and destroying it. This is what rare, strong and consistent people do. Realizing the stupidity of the joke that was played on him, and realizing that the blessings of the dead are greater than the blessings of the living and that it is best not to exist, they do so and end this stupid joke right away, fortunately there are means: a noose around the neck, water, a knife, so that they pierce the heart, trains on the railways. And there are more and more people from our circle doing this. And people do this for the most part in the best period of life, when the strength of the soul is in its prime, and few habits that degrade the human mind have yet been acquired. I saw that this was the most worthy way out, and I wanted to do it.

The fourth way out is the way out of weakness. It consists in understanding the evil and meaninglessness of life, and continuing to drag it out, knowing in advance that nothing can come of it. People of this type know that death is better than life, but, not having the strength to act rationally - to quickly end the deception and kill themselves, they seem to be waiting for something. This is a way out of weakness, for if I know the best, and it is in my power, why not surrender to the best?.. I was in this category” (23, 27–29).

The next nine chapters of the “Confession” are a person’s search for the “power of life”, overcoming the “fear of death” and, thanks to the people, finding that self-creative principle with which spiritual peace comes. The path of “weakness” turns into the path of “insight”.

Each of these paths (and not just the path of “insight”), which initially contained within itself the germs of self-destruction, even before its philosophical and symbolic interpretation in the treatise, received a figurative embodiment in the artistic fabric of “Anna Karenina”. The path of “ignorance” (Karenin and Vronsky), the path of “Epicureanism” (Steve Oblonsky), the “path of strength and energy” (Anna) and the path from “weakness to insight” (Levin), symbolizing the possible destinies of the Russian “educated class” and closely internally correlated with each other, determine the socio-philosophical orientation of the novel, explain the epigraph to “Anna Karenina” - “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay” - as a reminder of the impending moral punishment, equally addressed to all people of that part of Russian society that opposed the people who create life, and could not discover in her soul the law of goodness and truth. These paths provide the key to understanding Tolstoy’s famous answer to S. A. Rachinsky, who was dissatisfied with the “architecture” of the novel (the disconnection, from his point of view, of two themes - Anna and Levin - developing side by side): “Your judgment about A. Karenina seems wrong to me . On the contrary, I am proud of the architecture - the vaults are built in such a way that you cannot even notice where the castle is. And this is what I tried most of all. The connection of the building is made not on the plot and not on the relationships (acquaintance) of persons, but on the internal connection<…>That’s right, you’re looking for it in the wrong place, or we understand the connection differently; but what I mean by connection is the very thing that made this matter significant for me - this connection is there - look - you will find it” (62, 377). And these paths indicate that the problem of the contradictory relationship between the “general” and the “personal” determined the main moral and philosophical core of the novel.

The first part of the “Confession” (the search for the meaning of life through thought) is based on the “coupling” of the absolutely real feeling of “evil and nonsense” in the life of people of the “educated class” (i.e., the ruling class) and the conditionally symbolic assimilation of its physiological need for “sweetness” " But the “coupling” of real sensation and physiological need itself is not static. In this first part of the “Confession,” the veils of abstraction are removed from the conventionally symbolic interpretation of life’s path.

Anna's dying monologue is, in fact, an artistically embodied synthesis of all these philosophical issues. The heroine's analysis and introspection are determined by two themes. “Everything is untrue, all lies, all deception, all evil” (19, 347) - Anna finds confirmation of this thought in her past and present, in people whom she has known for a long time, in the faces flashing in front of the carriage window, in random fellow travelers along the way. carriage. And at the same time, “in that piercing light that now revealed to her the meaning of life and human relationships” (19, 343), for her the significance of the temptation of “sweetness” became undeniable as a physiological need of that circle of people whose life she understood as a universal life. A random impression (the boys stopping the ice cream man) gives rise to a stable association, which now determines her entire train of thought: “We all want sweet, tasty things. No candy, then dirty ice cream. And Kitty too: not Vronsky, then Levin<…>Yashvin says: he wants to leave me without a shirt, and I want to leave him. This is the truth! These thoughts “involved her so much that she stopped even thinking about her situation.” The stream of thoughts is interrupted by a forced return to the house, where “everything aroused disgust and anger in her,” and again enters the same channel: “No, you’re going in vain,” she mentally addressed the company in the carriage of four, who were obviously going to have fun out of town. - And the dog you are taking with you will not help you. You won't leave yourself<…>Count Vronsky and I also did not find this pleasure, although we expected a lot from it<…>He loves me - but how? The zest is gone<…> Yes, I no longer have that taste for him."(19, 340–343; italics mine - G.G.).

The temptation of “sweets” is recognized by Anna as a symbol of the universal meaning of life, leading to human separation: “...the struggle for existence and hatred are the one thing that binds people<…>Aren't we all thrown into the world only to hate each other and therefore torment ourselves and others?<…>So do I, and Peter, and the coachman Fyodor, and this merchant, and all those people who live there along the Volga, where these advertisements invite, and everywhere and always ... "(19, 342, 344).

The stream of thoughts is interrupted again. Faces flash, fragments of dialogues and incoherent remarks are half-heard, words unspoken by passers-by are conjectured. In the carriage, the train of thought is restored again: “Yes, where did I stop? On the fact that I cannot think of a situation in which life would not be torture, that we are all created to suffer, and that we all know this and we all come up with ways to deceive ourselves. And when you see the truth, what should you do?” (19, 346).

The logic of “rational knowledge” turned the temptation of “sweetness” into another confirmation of the “evil and meaninglessness of life” and closed the circle of contradictions. A phrase accidentally said by a neighbor in the carriage invades Anna’s consciousness: “That’s what reason is given to a person, to get rid of what bothers him.” These words seemed to answer Anna's thought. "Get rid of what's bothering you"<…>Yes, it bothers me very much, and I have been given reason to get rid of it...” (19, 346, 347). This thought, in fact, had been wandering in her mind for a long time. The words of the lady sitting opposite seem to quote what Anna herself had already said: “Why was I given reason if I don’t use it to avoid bringing into the world unfortunate people?” (19, 215). From the insoluble impasse of contradictions in the path of thought (closed in itself), “the most worthy way out” is “a way out of strength and energy” (23, 28): suicide. Anna’s life path, personifying this “exit,” is predetermined from beginning to end by the author’s plan, the socio-philosophical essence of which is revealed in “Confession.”

Tolstoy was always an opponent of the “women’s question” (Family Happiness, 1859, was a polemical response to it). Nevertheless, in the 70s. in the process of artistic recreation of the fate of people of the “educated class” (who have not acquired faith), the path of “strength and energy”, “the most worthy way out”, is associated by Tolstoy with the female image. The question in the novel is posed not so much about rights as about the moral possibilities of the individual. The general process of dying of the “inner man” was resisted to the greatest extent by the female nature due to its greater sensitivity and receptivity.

The general “destruction” also captured the sphere of emotions. A feeling, the regenerating power of which was elevated to the highest pedestal in War and Peace, in the 70s. became, according to Tolstoy, an almost unique phenomenon, but by no means ceased to be the “best phenomenon” of the “human soul” (48, 31, 122).

Anna's moral and emotional world is, first of all, not ordinary. The originality lies in the mercilessness of self-analysis, in the rejection of compromise in a love affair, in the force of influence that her personality has on the familiar, standard and seemingly invulnerable everyday norms of the worldview of both Karenin and Vronsky. Anna’s feeling destroys all the comforts of “ignorance” of both heroes, makes them see a dragon waiting for them at the bottom of the well, and mice undermining the bush they are holding on to.

The temptation of “sweetness” is not eternal, the comfort of “ignorance” is fragile. And the reluctance to gain insight is strong. But the wall of self-defense and self-justification erected by Karenin (and in his own way by Vronsky), the psychological foundation of which is the desire to preserve the illusory world of established norms, does not withstand the force of life, exposing the “evil and nonsense” of the mirage of temptations.

If in “War and Peace” the “internal” and “external” people are compared, then in “Anna Karenina” the “internal” and “external” relationships of people are compared. “Internal relationships” is the need of Anna and Levin. “External” - various connections between the characters in the novel, from family to friendship. Both Karenin and Vronsky discover the essence of “internal relationships” at the bedside of dying Anna. Each of them comprehends “her whole soul,” and each rises to the limit of spiritual height possible for him. Both Karenin’s all-forgiveness and Vronsky’s self-condemnation are an unexpected deviation from their usual path of life, from which the rapid destruction of the comforts of “ignorance” begins for both.

From the first suspicions to this moment, Karenin is first confused, then indignant, the desire to “secure his reputation” (18, 296), to reject “knowledge” from himself, to establish his own innocence and the thirst for “retribution” (18, 297) for dirt , with which she “spattered him in her fall” (18, 312). The idea of ​​“demanding a divorce and taking away his son” (along with the secret desire for Anna’s death) comes later. At first, Karenin rejects a duel, divorce, separation and hopes for the saving power of time, for the fact that passion will pass, “like everything passes” (18, 372): “... time will pass, time suits everything, and the relationship will be restored to its former state.”<…>that is, they will be restored to such an extent that I will not feel disorder throughout my life” (18, 298–299). This idea by Karenin clearly correlates with the concept of “everything” that runs through the entire novel. is formed”, with which Stiva Oblonsky (who understands in many ways the evil and meaninglessness of life) “resolves” all complicated life situations. Concept is formed(almost always italicized in the text of the novel) symbolizes the peculiar philosophical basis of the path of “Epicureanism” (personified by Oblonsky), which is refuted by the entire content of the novel.

Determining Anna’s perception of Vronsky (on the eve of suicide), Tolstoy wrote: “For her, all of him, with all his habits, thoughts, desires, with all his mental and physical makeup, was one thing - love for women” (19, 318). This essence of Vronsky, with all the unconditional nobility and honesty of his nature, predetermined the incompleteness of his sense of Anna’s entire moral world, in which the feeling for him, love for his son and consciousness of guilt before her husband were always a terrible “knot of life” that predetermined the tragic outcome. The nature of Vronsky’s “external relations” with Anna, provided for by his personal “code of honor” and conditioned by feeling, is impeccable. But long before the birth of his daughter, Vronsky begins to feel the existence of some other, new and hitherto unfamiliar relationships, “internal” relationships that “frightened” him “with their uncertainty” (18, 322). Doubts and uncertainty come, anxiety is born. The question of the future, so easily resolved in words and in the presence of Anna, turns out to be not at all clear and simple, and simply incomprehensible in solitary reflections.

Anna herself, in her dying monologue, divides her relationship with Vronsky into two periods - “before the connection” and “after”. "We<…>We walked towards each other until contact was made, and then we uncontrollably dispersed in different directions. And this cannot be changed<…>We disagree in life, and I make his misfortune, he is mine, and neither him nor I can be changed..." (19, 343-344). But practically the understanding of this comes long before leaving with Vronsky abroad. The second period of their love for Anna immediately (long before the birth of her daughter) was both happiness and unhappiness. Unhappiness lies not only in “lies and deception” (18, 318), not only in the feeling of guilt, but also in the feeling of those internal fluctuations of Vronsky, which become more and more obvious to her with each new meeting with him: “She, as in every meeting, she combined her imaginary idea of ​​him (incomparably better, impossible in reality) with him as he was” (18, 376). A sense of hopelessness and a desire for death arise in Anna almost immediately after confessing to Karenin. The “evil and meaninglessness” of life become obvious to her already at the beginning of her relationship with Vronsky. Their stay in Italy, St. Petersburg, Vozdvizhensky and Moscow is a psychologically logical movement towards the awareness of this “evil and nonsense” by Vronsky.

In Anna Karenina - Anna's only meeting with Levin. And at the same time, this is the only dialogue in the novel - a dialogue in which every word of the interlocutor is heard and understood, a dialogue in which the theme is developed, and the final thought is born from the synthesis of what is accepted and rejected. In Anna Karenina there are conversations and there is a need for dialogue, which cannot take place. The impossibility of dialogue (this is where the book begins and ends: Stiva - Dolly, Levin - Kitty) runs through the entire novel, as a kind of symbol of time, a symbol of the era, undoubtedly connected with Tolstoy’s concept of human relations - “internal” and “external”. Throughout the entire novel, the impossibility of dialogue between Anna and Vronsky is persistently emphasized. All Levin’s numerous meetings always end with a feeling of their meaninglessness: and the conversation with Oblonsky (“And suddenly they both felt<…>that everyone thinks only about his own, and one doesn’t care about the other” - 18, 46), and conversations with Sviyazhsky (“Every time Levin tried to penetrate beyond the open doors of the reception rooms of Sviyazhsky’s mind, he noticed that Sviyazhsky was slightly embarrassed , a barely noticeable fear was expressed in his gaze...” - 18, 346), and “controversy” with Koznyshev (“Konstantin was silent. He felt that he was defeated on all sides, but he felt at the same time that what he wanted to say, it was not understood..." - 18, 261–262), and a conversation with the hopelessly ill Nikolai, and a meeting with Katavasov and Koznyshev (“No, I can’t argue with them<…>they have impenetrable armor, and I am naked” - 19, 392).

As if in contrast to the general disunity and internal isolation, already at the beginning of Anna Karenina, Plato’s “Feast”, one of Tolstoy’s favorite classical dialogues, is mentioned. The problematics of “The Feast” (about two types of love - spiritual and sensual - and the almost hopeless “confusion” of the ideal and material in human earthly existence) directly confront the reader with the main question of the novel - the question of the meaning of life.

The theme of Plato's Symposium appears in Lewin's discussion of the two kinds of love that serve as "the touchstone of men" (18, 46), and follows his decisive statement of "disgust for fallen women" (18, 45). The development of this theme in the general structure of the novel (in accordance with the course of Tolstoy’s reasoning in the first part of “Confession”) has a paradoxical conclusion for Levin himself. His only meeting with Anna ends with the words: “And, having previously condemned her so severely, he now, by some strange train of thought, justified her and at the same time pitied her and was afraid that Vronsky did not fully understand her” (19, 278).

By the time of the dialogue with Anna, the “evil and nonsense” of life had long since become obvious to Levin. The feeling of “confusion of life” (18, 98) and dissatisfaction with oneself were sometimes more or less acute, but never disappeared. The ever-growing alienation (this concept is used by Levin himself - 19, 382) between the people of his “circle,” on the one hand, and between the “lordly” and peasant worlds, on the other, is perceived by him as an inevitable consequence of the public and social upheavals of current reality. The question of overcoming this “alienation” becomes the most important for Levin and switches from the sphere of his personal search for the meaning of life to the sphere of reflections on the historical destinies of Russia. The historical accuracy and significance of Levin’s understanding of Russian post-reform reality as a period when everything “has turned upside down and is just settling down,” and Levin’s conclusion that the question of “how these conditions will fit in is only one important question in Russia” (18, 346), - were noted by V.I. Lenin.

The essence of the moral and philosophical quest of the hero of Anna Karenina was objectively determined by the main social contradiction of Russian social life in the post-reform years. At the center of Levin's thoughts is the “disorder” of the post-reform Russian economy as a whole. Throughout the entire novel, from the first conversation with Oblonsky to the last - with Katavasov and Koznyshev, there runs Levin’s rejection of all the ways of achieving the “common good” that were established during this period, personifying nothing more than various temptations of “sweets”, resting on the likeness of good - an imaginary serving the people. Zemstvo activity is considered by Levin as “a means for the county coterie to make money” (18, 21). Levin’s moral sense discredits in his long and fruitless conversations with Koznyshev liberal science, divorced from life, which also appeals to a perversely understood service to the “common good”: “... it occurred to him that this ability to act for the common good, of which he felt completely deprived , may not be a quality, but, on the contrary, a lack of something<…>Lack of the power of life, of what is called the heart, of that aspiration that makes a person, out of all the countless imaginable paths of life, choose one and desire this one. The more he got to know his brother, the more he noticed that Sergei Ivanovich and many other figures for the common good were not led by their hearts to this love for the common good, but with their minds they decided that it was good to do this, and only for that reason did they do it. Levin was also confirmed in this assumption by the remark that his brother took to heart no more questions about the common good and the immortality of the soul than about a chess game or about the ingenious design of a new machine” (18, 253). Levin returns to this topic even after gaining faith: “...he, together with the people, did not know, could not know, what the common good consists of, but he knew for sure that the achievement of this common good is possible only with the strict implementation of the law of good that has been revealed every person" (19, 392).

Levin contrasts the false ways of serving the “common good” with a specific socio-utopian program for combining “labor and capital” - “common labor” (18, 251). For Levin, the peasantry is “the main participant in common labor” and “the best class in Russia” (18, 251, 346). However, enthusiastic practical activity in the village, perceived by Levin as “a field for undoubtedly useful work” (18, 251), all his attempts to rationalize the economy are faced with “some kind of elemental force” (18, 339), dooming the undertaking to failure and destroying the illusion spiritual peace. In the daily working life of the peasantry, Levin sees completeness and “joy”, which he himself strives for in vain. The incoming feeling of happiness is temporary - the fullness of life and the feeling of unity with the people during the mowing of Kalinov's meadows are replaced by completely different experiences in the scenes of hay harvesting on the sister's estate: “When the people with songs disappeared from sight and hearing, a heavy feeling of longing for their loneliness, for their bodily idleness, for his hostility to this world, overtook Levin” (18, 290).

The feeling of not only alienation, but the fatal opposition of his personal aspirations to the interests of the peasants, recognized by Levin as “the most just” (18, 341), organically leads him to rejection of all his activities: “The farm that he led became not only not interesting to him, but it was disgusting, and he could no longer deal with it” (18, 340). And at the same time, the personal catastrophe is interpreted by the hero not as “exclusively his situation, but the general condition in which the situation in Russia is located” (18, 354).

Levin's perception of the post-reform economy is compared in the novel with a conservative, liberal and democratic assessment of post-reform relations. The hero is equally alien to the point of view of the landowner-serf, dreaming of power taken away by the reform of 1861, for whom “a man is a pig and loves swinishness” (18, 350), and the reasoning of the liberal Sviyazhsky about the need to “educate the people in the European manner” ( 18, 355), and the sober and reasoned position of the “nihilist” Nikolai, although Levin is forced to admit the truth of his brother’s words “... you are not just exploiting men, but with an idea” (18, 370).

The collapse of the “landowner’s” undertakings leads the hero to the thought of “renouncing his old life, his useless knowledge, his useless education” (18, 291) and poses the question of how to make the transition to a new life , folk, “simplicity, purity and legality” of which he clearly felt. Levin’s family, on whom he places such high hopes, does not save him. The closed world of family life and economic activity is powerless to give a feeling of the fullness of life and answer the question of its meaning. The “evil and nonsense” of isolated human existence, inevitably destroyed by death, with uncontrollable force drive Levin to suicide.

“Anna Karenina” reveals the moral and social inconsistency of the “established” forms of community life, revealing those destructive and self-destructive tendencies that clearly manifested themselves in the post-reform reality of the 70s. Tolstoy contrasts the egoism of bourgeois aspirations with the absolute ethical values ​​of peasant consciousness (taken in their patriarchal immobility) as the only self-creative principle.

“Anna Karenina” is an aesthetic realization of Tolstoy’s most important socio-philosophical quests, which preceded their logical formulation in a philosophical treatise. At the same time, Tolstoy’s self-determination in the positions of patriarchal peasant democracy, his renunciation of his class, his break with it is the most important fact in the biography of the writer himself. Levin only discovered faith. But the question of the practical transition to a “new”, “working people’s life”, which arose before him long before he became acquainted with the philosophy of life of the peasant Fokanych, remained for him in the realm of speculative.

In the subjective aspect, the turning point in Tolstoy’s worldview is nothing more than the writer’s final affirmation of the truth of the “folk faith”: an orientation towards the people’s consciousness marked the entire previous period of his activity, starting with the story “Childhood”.

Tolstoy's transition to new positions was accompanied by the most careful study of official Orthodox Christianity, professed by both the people and people of the “educated class.” What led Tolstoy to theological treatises was his awareness of the contradiction between the Christian faith of the “ruling” class and its “anti-Christian” life. The result of this study was the denial of the existing social system as incompatible with “true Christianity” and the recognition that it was necessary to “purify” the moral nature of the people, corrupted by existing evil: “... although I saw that in all the people there was less of that admixture of lies that pushed me away than among the representatives of the church, I still saw that in the beliefs of the people, lies were mixed with the truth” (23, 56).

A critical “study” of theological works and a careful analysis of the text of the Gospel resulted in the works “Study of Dogmatic Theology” (1879–1884), “Connection and Translation of the Four Gospels” (1880–1881), and “Summary of the Gospel” (1881–1883). The assertion of the infallibility of church authority, church dogmas, the doctrine of the divinity of Christ and his resurrection, and the opposition between earthly life and the afterlife are subject to crushing criticism by Tolstoy. At its core is the gap (more precisely, the abyss) between “practical ethics” - the teachings of Christ and the utilitarian philosophy of the church’s justification and legitimation of violence and evil as the norm of social life. Tolstoy’s understanding of the essence of religion and Christianity as a moral teaching about what gives meaning to a person’s earthly existence (the merging of personal life with the general one) is set out in the treatises “What is my faith?” (1882–1884), The Kingdom of God is Within You (1890–1893), and Christian Doctrine (1894–1896). Interpretation of Christ as the “Son of Man” (i.e. denial of his divine origin), and his commandments in the Sermon on the Mount (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter V) - the teaching of non-resistance to evil by violence - as an ethical law not only personal, but also social life is accompanied in these works by an analysis of that “network” of pseudo-Christianity, which, according to Tolstoy, constituted the “religion” of the state and the official church. “They pushed me away from the church and the strangeness of dogmas<…>and the recognition and approval by the church of persecutions, executions and wars, and the mutual denial of each other by different confessions, but it was this indifference to what seemed to me the essence of the teachings of Christ that undermined my trust in it” (23, 307). The centuries-old tactics of “silencing” and “circumventing” the commandments of the Sermon on the Mount are revealed by Tolstoy in his treatise “The Kingdom of God is Within You,” which received the subtitle “Christianity not as a mystical teaching, but as a new understanding of life.”

The moral teaching, which took shape in the early 80s, was a kind of social declaration of Tolstoy, based on the ethical ideas of Christianity, considered by the writer as an earthly and actually implementable moral truth (the Christian commandments were interpreted by the writer not as rules and laws, but as instructions ideal). The doctrine was based on the denial of the entire existing social structure as anti-Christian in its essence. Hence the judgment on life, the sharpest social criticism of all types and forms of state violence, and above all violence dressed in the bourgeois “toga”. Tolstoy associated the general renewal and establishment of “truth in relations between people” with the “revolution of consciousness”, which began with conscious and consistent disobedience to the “reigning evil”: “Let only the people stop obeying the government, and there will be no taxes, no confiscation of land, or any embarrassment from the authorities, no soldiers, no wars” (36, 274).

In Tolstoy’s teachings, the insistent assertion that non-resistance to evil through violence is by no means identical to the philosophy of passivity and conscious doom to suffer is paramount: “Let all evil not be corrected, but there will be awareness of it and the fight against it not by police measures, but by internal ones - fraternal communication of people who see evil , with people who do not see it, because they are in it” (25, 180).

The doctrine of non-resistance to violence, considered by Tolstoy as an effective means of combating social evil, the “temptations” of state ethics, the justification of violence by science, philosophy and art, will determine the problems of all subsequent Tolstoy’s creativity (more diverse than ever before in its genres) - journalism (religious and philosophical , social, literary and aesthetic), folk stories (and the closely related activities of the writer in the publishing house “Posrednik”), drama, short stories and, finally, the novel “Resurrection”.

The utopianism of Tolstoy’s positive program (with the “most sober realism” of his social criticism) was revealed in the famous articles of V. I. Lenin. And there the inconsistency of Tolstoy’s teaching was shown as a reflection of the political immaturity of spontaneous peasant protest during the preparation of the first Russian revolution. Tolstoy’s conviction in the need to replace the “violent principles” of the social order with the “reasonable principles” of universal equality, fraternity and justice was accompanied by the absence of a specific idea of ​​​​what the “new order of life” should be. The path of social transformation proposed by Tolstoy, which he associated only with Christian (in his opinion, universal) truth, involved “a lack of understanding of the causes of the crisis and the means of overcoming the crisis that was approaching Russia.” With all this, Lenin’s articles note the worldwide public resonance that could not but be caused by the sincerity, persuasiveness and passion of Tolstoy’s criticism, who sought to “get to the root” in search of the real cause of the people’s misfortunes.

According to Tolstoy, internal experience and reasoning must discard the “habit” of thinking that “moral teaching is the most vulgar and boring thing” (25, 225), and show that without the doctrine of the purpose and good of man there can be no “real sciences.” "(25, 336). The “expression of knowledge” of this main science, according to Tolstoy, is art. The writer’s intense reflections on the essence and tasks of art after the release of “Confession” took shape in the programmatic treatise “What is Art?” (1898), which absorbed the main problems of a series of articles on this topic in the 80–90s. The culture of the ruling classes, striving to destroy the function of art as “the spiritual organ of human life” (30, 177) and “to deceive the moral requirements of man,” is contrasted by Tolstoy (both in the articles of the 80s and in the program treatise) to “religious” art. , i.e. universal, universal, the task of which is the same at all times - to give “knowledge of the difference between good and evil” (30, 4), to unite people in a single feeling, in a common movement towards the establishment of truth and justice in human relationships. Tolstoy traces the gradual loss of art (over the last century and a half) of its true purpose, and considers the fall of culture in direct connection with the separation of the art of the upper classes from the art of the people. The culture of the past and present (from naturalism to decadence, symbolism and realism) is criticized by Tolstoy in equal measure.

A critical perception of one’s own artistic practice in the treatise “What is Art?” sharp and straightforward. This circumstance largely psychologically explains the almost universal nature of Tolstoy’s denial of the art of the end of the century. The writer’s speech turns into a kind of indictment of the ineffective (in the maximum sense) influence of culture on the moral world of man: the modern diagnosis of the disease of mankind was no different from the diagnosis centuries ago. Escaping into the world of “temptations” - from personal to state (39, 144–145) - was equally attractive. The rampant violence and evil is just as great. But at the same time, the idea of ​​“the mobility of the individual in relation to the truth” runs through the entire treatise. Hence - in extreme denial - the revaluation of the values ​​of art is determined by the belief in the “resurrection” of both man and culture.

The treatise “On Life” (1886–1887) states that for a person “to have life<…>one must be reborn into this existence as a rational consciousness” (26, 367). Reasonable consciousness was conceived by Tolstoy in the 80s and 90s. as a synthesis of knowledge of the heart and mind and is considered as the main means of comprehending the highest form of morality. One of the central chapters of the treatise, structured as a polemical dialogue between the consciousness of the “reasonable” and the “lost” (26, 371–374) and designed to show the possibility of “resurrection” for any person, theoretically substantiated the main theme of the late Tolstoy.

The writer considered his personal path of moral insight possible for everyone and, acting as a spiritual mentor to all “classes” of society - from the upper classes to the people - with his artistic practice he sought not only to affirm the necessity of his own moral doctrine, but, above all, to give it real viability.

Even in his “Confession,” Tolstoy associated an important source of the “power of life” with the meaning that is extracted and assimilated by the people from traditions preserved for centuries (parables, legends, proverbs), which contain time-tested moral truth. Folklore stories, which Tolstoy used as the basis for his folk stories, were used by him as an ideal form of translating the “abstract” gospel commandments into artistically visible images, which should become a practical guide in the everyday existence of man. The thematic diversity of folk stories is united by the framework of Tolstoy’s teaching, which appears in them in its “naked” form. And only in these stories, approaching the genre of folk legend, the transfer of ethical provisions from the “speculative” sphere to the “life” is accompanied (in most cases) by the affirmation of knowledge about “how people live” as absolute and unshakable knowledge.

Folk stories are one of Tolstoy’s experiences in creating folk literature, that is, universal literature, equally addressed to readers of all classes. However, this part of the writer’s heritage cannot be called narratives about the life of the people. The social and moral conflicts of the Russian village, as a product of the established bourgeois forms of community life, become the theme of the drama “The Power of Darkness” (1886), where the destruction of patriarchal-peasant foundations, the enslavement of the peasant personality by the power of money and the reign of evil in village life are seen as tragic evidence of the extinction of the “power of life” in a people losing touch with the land. But only extinction, not death. In the moral revolution of Nikita’s consciousness, the latent moral source of goodness, originally inherent in the people’s soul, and the judgment carried out on the hero and the psychology of justifying violence by the always living voice of the people’s conscience are significant (Mitrich and Akim).

For the hero of the “dominant” class (from the “Kreutzer Sonata” to the “Posthumous Notes of Elder Fyodor Kuzmich”), the spiritual “resurrection” is more complicated: the rational consciousness must “suffer” for it, rejecting the generally accepted, taken for granted and carefully guarded priority of the class-egoistic over universal. The path to the “light” of the heroes of the stories “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1886) and “Father Sergius” (1898) - despite all the external dissimilarity of their specific destinies - is internally united. Comprehension of the highest moral truth begins for both with a catastrophe that separates them from the usual circle of life connections. The natural isolation (fatal disease) of Ivan Ilyich and the self-isolation of Stepan Kasatsky (monastery and monastery) crowd out all the external attributes that gave food to their spiritual life. With the loss of his usual life activities, Ivan Ilyich has a need for a new, hitherto unknown nature of human connection, an internal connection that excludes lies, indifference, evil and deception. In alienation from colleagues and family and rapprochement with the “buffet man” Gerasim - a trial of personal and class blindness of “ignorance”. The hard-won understanding of “life for others” destroys the fear of death and accomplishes that “birth in the spirit” that Tolstoy wrote about in his treatise “On Life,” which was created simultaneously with the story.

The “despair of doom” of Ivan Ilyich is opposed by the “despair of pride” of Stepan Kasatsky, which led him to “God, to faith, which was never violated in him” (31, 11). Tolstoy wrote about the return to “childhood faith” as one of the stages of his own “resurrection” in “Confession.” He interpreted it as the perception of official church teaching without proper critical analysis, rejected and contrasted it with the “mystical” god of “children’s faith” - the god of “people’s faith”, who personified the highest moral law. Stepan Kasatsky's many years of stay in a monastery and seclusion and an equally long struggle with “female” temptation are accompanied by a constantly felt “spiritual lull” (31, 31) and the replacement of “inner life” with “external life” (31, 28). Growing vanity over personal holiness gradually eliminates the need to understand the reasons for the doubts that oppressed him at first. But the catastrophe of the fall that precedes the finale suddenly and immediately reveals the gap between the “mystical” teaching of the church and the truly Christian understanding of life, life “under the pretext of God” and “life for God.” The latter is interpreted by the hero as “dissolution” in the common life of people: “And he went<…>from village to village, meeting and diverging with strangers and strangers<…>Often, finding the Gospel in the house, I read it, and people always, everywhere were touched and amazed at how new and at the same time long-familiar they listened to it” (31, 44).

The theme of resurrection, understood as moral insight, is born in Tolstoy from that new view of life, which was based on the denial of the existing system and at the same time the teaching of non-resistance to evil through violence. Tolstoy's moral doctrine results in practice in destructive denunciation in word and active assistance in deed (Moscow census, famine of the 90s, the fate of the Doukhobors, etc.), accompanied by incessant censorship and government repression and leading to the writer's excommunication from the church in the early 900s 's In Tolstoy’s artistic heritage, both sides of his moral teaching find their most complete realization in the novel “Resurrection” (1899), work on which lasted ten years.

Tolstoy’s last novel was the only work of the “great” genre during the crisis period of Russian novelism in the 80s and 90s, reflected the most complex problems of the Russian socio-historical process on the eve of the first Russian revolution and resulted in an indictment of unprecedented accusatory force.

“The terrible coupling of the cone of violence” (90, 443) is interpreted in the novel as a consequence of the personal and general “chronic crime” (32, 10) of moral commandments, which turned society into a “cautious” union of people and led to “cannibalism,” which began in “ ministries, committees and departments" and ended "in the taiga" (32, 414). The religion of the “dominant” class was considered as a practical philosophy that substantiated “all desecration, violence against the human person, all destruction of it.”<…>when it is beneficial” (32, 412). From these positions, Tolstoy discredits the “arsenal” of judicial evidence, evidence, evidence, interrogations, designed to justify punishment, the necessity of which was not explained, but was recognized as an axiom.

In the novel, Tolstoy puts the perception of the forms of the bourgeois world order protected by the state and the official religion in direct connection with the level of morality of each individual and forces Nekhlyudov, by association with the thought of the American writer Henry Thoreau, to conclude that in his contemporary Russia, prison is “the only fitting place for an honest man "(32, 304). The world of the “accused,” constantly compared by Nekhlyudov with the world of the “accusers,” makes it obvious to the hero that “punishment” entailed the loss of true “peasant, Christian morality” and the assimilation of a new one, affirming the permissiveness of violence. The “infection” of the people with vice depicted by Tolstoy is equally active both in the world of stockades and prisons, and in mundane daily life. And at the same time, Tolstoy’s last novel shows the people’s conscious social rejection of the entire state structure. The “free old man” met by Nekhlyudov in Siberia symbolically calls the “loyal subjects” of the state the “anti-Christ army”, seeking to eliminate the possibility of fulfilling the moral need of doing good.

Tolstoy associates non-participation in the crime of legalized violence and the denial of the existing system with a certain level of morality that goes beyond the anti-Christian essence of the prevailing morality, called “general level” ethics in the novel. Political exiles are conceptualized by Tolstoy as people who were “morally superior” to the general level and therefore included in the “category of criminals.” At the same time, however, “socialists and strikers convicted of resisting the authorities” and considered by Nekhlyudov to be among the “best” people in society are not unambiguous in the moral assessment of the hero: the desire for retribution added to the thirst for the liberation of the people reduces, in Nekhlyudov’s opinion, the effectiveness of good , created by Novodvorov and Markel Kondratiev.

The political urgency of the issue and the clarity of its social orientation are combined in a novel about the affirmation of the idea of ​​​​non-resistance to evil as the main means of social renewal and a force that helps each individual overcome the power and temptations of “general level” ethics.

As an undoubted truth, the knowledge is revealed to Nekhlyudov that “all that terrible evil that he witnessed in prisons and stockades, and the calm self-confidence of those who produced this evil, came only from the fact that people wanted to do an impossible thing: being evil , to correct evil. Vicious people wanted to correct vicious people and thought to achieve this mechanically. But all that came out of all this was that needy and selfish people, having made a profession out of this imaginary punishment and correction of people, themselves became corrupted to the last degree and continually corrupt those they torture” (32, 442). Nekhlyudov is logically led to this knowledge, acquired after the long-accomplished renunciation of his “class,” throughout the entire novel. His appeal to the commandments of the Sermon on the Mount is natural and organic. A critical reading of the Gospel is the result of that “spiritual life” that began for the hero after meeting Maslova in court. The ending of the novel is a reproduction in the most condensed form of the confessional pages of the treatise “What is my faith?” and that new “life understanding” that is set forth in the work “The Kingdom of God is Within You.” In the first treatise, each of the five commandments, suddenly “discovered” by Nekhlyudov, is “cleansed” by Tolstoy from the “distortions” of centuries, in the second it is contrasted with the “ethics” of government and church violence. In the text of the novel itself, Nekhlyudov’s appeal to the Gospel is prepared both by the scene of the divine service performed for prisoners (“blasphemy and mockery” of the commandments of Christ), and by the case of convicted sectarians (who interpret these commandments not according to generally accepted canons), and by the fate of Selenin, who returned from unbelief to faith “official” and “with all his being” aware “that this faith<…>there was something completely “wrong”” (32, 283).

The theme of “resurrection” in the novel ceases to be, as is known, the personal theme of Tolstoy’s autobiographical hero. Nekhlyudov's moral insight occurs at the beginning of the story. The hero’s further task is to discredit the entire social order and deny it. The writer connects with the theme of “resurrection” the question of the historical destinies of the people, society and humanity, which is significantly reflected in the artistic structure of the novel: for the first time in Tolstoy’s work, a heroine from the people becomes an image that develops psychologically and is pivotal in the movement of the plot.

The psychological development of Maslova’s image in the novel is composed of two processes opposed to each other and in this respect is in complete internal unity with the principle of contrastive comparison, which is the leading one in the artistic structure of the novel. Maslova’s life in “freedom” from the first steps in the manor’s house with its temptations of “sweets” to the initial months of her stay in prison is a gradual and natural “death” of the soul. Moral purity, which remains in the heroine despite the depth of her “fall,” loses the ability to be an active force and becomes only a source of spiritually painful sensations that arise every time she remembers the world “in which she suffered and from which she left without understanding and hating him” (32, 167).

But depicting the social pattern of the tragedy of a heroine from the people is only one of Tolstoy’s tasks. Misunderstanding of the world of evil, the perception of generally accepted and legalized “norms” of human relations as proper is defined by the writer as “the darkness of ignorance” (32, 304). This concept is used in the novel in the scene of Nekhlyudov passing a moral verdict on himself and is associated with his intellectual insight.

In the novel, the movement towards the truth of the people's consciousness is directly dependent on overcoming the “darkness of ignorance”. The moral resurrection of Maslova, the “revival” of her soul, occurs in “captivity” - in prison and on the stage to Siberia. At the same time, the most “decisive and most beneficial influence” (32, 363) is exerted on her by political exiles, about whom both in the novel itself and in a number of journalistic works of the 90s. Tolstoy speaks of the “best people” of his time. It is they who return Maslova’s faith in goodness and in herself, regenerate her “hatred of the world” into a desire to understand it and resist everything that does not coincide with moral feelings: “She very easily and without effort understood the motives that guided these people, and how a person from the people, I completely sympathized with them. She realized that these people were walking for the people<…>sacrificed their advantages, freedom and life for the people..." (32, 367). The spiritual resurrection of the people is openly associated in the novel with the activities of the “political”.

And this is the moral justification of revolutionary activity (with all Tolstoy’s rejection of violent methods of struggle) as a historically logical form of social protest against the “reigning evil.”

The moral has always been for Tolstoy the main form of understanding the social. Summing up the development of the Russian democratic novel, “Resurrection” asserts the inevitability of a people's revolution, which Tolstoy understands as a “revolution of consciousness” leading to rejection of all forms of state and class violence. This theme becomes the leading one in the writer’s legacy of the 900s.

Notes:

Marx K., Engels F. Soch., vol. 22, p. 40.

Lenin V.I. Complete. collection cit., vol. 20, p. 222.

See: Plekhanov G.V. Soch., vol. 1. M., 1923, p. 69.

Bocharov S. G. L. N. Tolstoy and a new understanding of man. "Dialectics of the soul." - In the book: Literature and the new man. M., 1963, p. 241; see also: Skaftymov A.P. Moral quests of Russian writers. M., 1972, p. 134–164.

Lenin V.I. Complete. collection cit., vol. 20, p. 101.

See: Kupreyanova E. N. “Dead Souls” by N. V. Gogol. (Plan and implementation). - Russian lit., 1971, No. 3, p. 62–74; Smirnova E. A. Gogol’s creativity as a phenomenon of Russian democratic thought of the first half of the 19th century. - In the book: Liberation movement in Russia. Interuniversity collection, No. 2. Saratov, 1971, p. 73–88.

See: Chicherin A.V. The emergence of an epic novel. M., 1958, p. 572.

See: Bocharov S. G. L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”. Ed. 3rd. M., 1978. - In the same place, see about the polysemy of the “image” of the world in the artistic system of the novel (pp. 84–102).

On the philosophical and historical concept of “War and Peace,” see: Kupreyanova E. N. “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy. - In the book: History of the Russian novel, vol. 2. M. - L., 1964, p. 270–323; Skaftymov A.P. Moral quests of Russian writers. M., 1972, p. 182–217; Gromov P. About the style of Leo Tolstoy. "Dialectics of the Soul" in "War and Peace". L., 1977.

See: Galagan G. Ya. Ethical and aesthetic quests of the young L. Tolstoy. - Russian Lit., 1974, No. 1, p. 136–148; Kamyanov V. The poetic world of epic. About L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”. M., 1978, p. 198–221.

On the active invasion of life into the consciousness of Nikolai Rostov, see: Bocharov S. G. Roman L. N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”, p. 34–37; Kamyanov V. The poetic world of epic. About L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”.

See: Lotman L.M. Realism of Russian literature of the 60s of the 19th century. (Origins and aesthetic originality). L., 1974, p. 169–206; Bilinkis Y. S. Production of forms of human communication. - In the book: Method and skill, vol. 1. Vologda, 1970, p. 207–222.

public good (French).

About Tolstoy's quest in the early 70s. see in the book: Eikhenbaum B. M. Leo Tolstoy. Seventies. L., 1974, p. 9–126.

On the moral essence of the concepts “faith” and “god” in Tolstoy, see: Kupreyanova E. N. Aesthetics of L. N. Tolstoy. M. - L., 1966, p. 260–272; see also: Asmus V.F. Worldview of L. Tolstoy - Literary Heritage, vol. 69, book. 1. M., 1961, p. 35–102.

See: Zhdanov V. A. Creative history of “Anna Karenina”. M., 1957.

In Tolstoy's presentation there is a close interweaving of reality and symbolism, going back to the ancient Eastern parable about a traveler (Tolstoy compares himself with him), who decided to escape from a wild beast in a waterless well and discovered a dragon there. The traveler hangs between the beast and the dragon, grasping the branches of a bush growing in a crevice of a well, the trunk of which is being gnawed by a white and a black mouse. The traveler knows that he is doomed to death, but while he is hanging, he sees drops of honey on the leaves of the bush and licks them. “So I,” writes Tolstoy, “hold on to the branches of life, knowing that the dragon of death is inevitably waiting, ready to tear me to pieces, and I cannot understand why I fell into this torment. I try to suck that honey that used to console me: but this honey no longer pleases me, and the white and black mouse - day and night - undermine the branch that I hold on to" (23, 14). For possible sources of Tolstoy’s acquaintance with this parable, see: Gusev N.N. Confession. History of writing and printing (23, 533).

In the treatise “Christian Doctrine” (1894–1896), where the topic of “temptations” becomes the subject of the writer’s special attention, Tolstoy wrote: “Temptation<…>means a trap, a trap. And indeed, temptation is a trap into which a person is lured by the semblance of goodness and, having fallen into it, dies in it. That is why it is said in the Gospel that temptations must enter the world, but woe to the world because of temptations and woe to him through whom they enter” (39, 143).

The epigraph to “Anna Karenina” has various interpretations. See about this: Eikhenbaum B.M. Lev Tolstoy. Seventies, p. 160–173; Bursov B.I. Leo Tolstoy and the Russian novel. M. - L., 1963, p. 103–109; Babaev E. G. L. Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”. Tula, 1968, p. 56–61.

See: Kupreyanova E. N. Aesthetics of L. N. Tolstoy, p. 98–118, 244–252.

The taste has become dull.

These words, like Anna’s entire conversation with Dolly about not wanting to have children, are usually interpreted as evidence of the author’s discrediting of the heroine, who has embarked on the path of “adultery.” Meanwhile, in the “Confession” this stage in the evolution of the self-destructive principle of a person from the circle of the “educated class” is explained as a false, but logical stage on the path to searching for the “meaning of life”: “... children; they are people too. They are in the same conditions as I am: they either have to live a lie or see the terrible truth. Why should they live? Why should I love them, take care of them, raise them and take care of them? For the same despair that is in me, or for stupidity! Loving them, I cannot hide the truth from them - every step in knowledge leads them to this truth. And truth is death” (23, 14).

Equally symbolic are the attempts of the heroes to “break through” to dialogue and the doom of these attempts - in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Teenager,” work on which dates back to 1874–1875.

See: Lenin V.I. Complete. collection cit., vol. 20, p. 100–101.

See also: Kupreyanova E. N. Aesthetics of L. N. Tolstoy, p. 251–252. - Here Levin’s condemnation of the possibilities of reason is correlated with Tolstoy’s discrediting of the path of thought in “Confession.”

The following diary entry by S. A. Tolstoy dates back to the beginning of 1881: “...L. N. soon saw that the source of goodness, patience, love among the people did not come from the teachings of the church; and he himself expressed that when he saw the rays, he followed the rays to the real light, and saw clearly that the light is in Christianity - in the Gospel. He stubbornly rejects any other influence, and from his words I make this remark. “Christianity lives in tradition, in the spirit of the people, unconsciously but firmly.” Here are his words. Then, little by little, L.N. saw with horror what a discord there was between the church and Christianity. He saw that the church, as if hand in hand with the government, had formed a secret conspiracy against Christianity” (Tolstaya S.A. Diaries. 1860–1891. M., 1928, p. 43).

The appearance of the first works was well received by readers and critics, who praised the author for his “observation and subtlety of psychological analysis,” poetry, clarity and elegance of the narrative (thus, at the end of 1855, Tolstoy returned to St. Petersburg and was accepted into the editorial office of the Sovremennik magazine as a Sevastopol hero and already a famous writer). N.G. turned out to be more insightful than other critics. Chernyshevsky ( 8th issue of Sovremennik, 1856, article “Childhood” and “Adolescence”. War stories of Count L.N. Tolstoy"), who drew attention to the features of psychological analysis.

“Most poets,” Chernyshevsky wrote, “are concerned primarily with the results of the manifestation of inner life, they care primarily about the results, the manifestations of inner life, about clashes between people, about actions, and not about the mysterious process through which a thought or feeling is developed. The peculiarity of Count Tolstoy’s talent is that he is not limited to depicting the results of the mental process: he is interested in the process itself, its forms, laws, dialectic of the soul, to express it in a definitive term.”

Since then, the “defining term” - “dialectics of the soul” - has been firmly attached to Tolstoy’s work, for Chernyshevsky really managed to notice the very essence of Tolstoy’s talent. Tolstoy’s predecessors, depicting the inner world of a person, as a rule, used words that accurately called the emotional experience “excitement,” “remorse,” “anger,” “contempt,” “malice.”

Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this: “To talk about a person: he is an original person, kind, smart, stupid, consistent, etc. - words that do not give any idea about a person, but have a claim to describe a person, whereas often they only confuse " Tolstoy does not limit himself to precise definitions of certain mental states. He goes further and deeper. He “points a microscope” at the secrets of the human soul and captures with an image the very process of the origin and formation of a feeling even before it has matured and acquired completeness. He paints a picture of mental life, showing the approximateness and inaccuracy of any ready-made definitions.

By discovering the “dialectics of the soul,” Tolstoy moves toward a new understanding of human character. We have already seen how in the story “Childhood” the “little things” and “details” of children’s perception blur and shake the stable boundaries in the character of the adult Nikolai Irtenyev. The same thing is observed in “Sevastopol Stories”. Unlike ordinary soldiers, Adjutant Kalugin has ostentatious, “non-Russian” courage. Vainglorious posturing is typical to one degree or another for all aristocratic officers; this is their class trait. But with the help of the “dialectics of the soul,” delving into the details of Kalugin’s mental state, Tolstoy suddenly notices in this man such experiences and feelings that do not fit into the aristocrat’s officer code and are opposed to it. Kalugin “suddenly became scared: he ran at a trot for five steps and fell to the ground...”. The fear of death, which the aristocrat Kalugin despises in others and does not allow in himself, suddenly takes possession of his soul.

In the story “Sevastopol in August,” the soldiers, hiding in a dugout, read from the primer: “The fear of death is an innate feeling in man.” They are not ashamed of this simple and so understandable feeling. Moreover, this feeling protects them from hasty and careless steps. Pointing his “artistic microscope” at Kalugin’s inner world, Tolstoy discovered spiritual experiences in the aristocrat that brought him closer to ordinary soldiers. It turns out that in this person there live broader possibilities than those instilled in him by his social status and officer environment. Turgenev, who reproached Tolstoy for excessive “pettiness” and meticulousness of psychological analysis, said in one of his letters that the artist should be a psychologist, but secretly, and not openly: he should show only the results, only the results of the mental process. Tolstoy pays the main attention to the process, but not for its own sake. “Dialectics of the soul” plays a large meaningful role in his work. If Tolstoy had followed Turgenev’s advice, he would not have discovered anything new in the aristocrat Kalugin. After all, the natural feeling of fear of death in Kalugin did not enter into his character, into the psychological “result”: “Suddenly someone’s steps were heard in front of him. He quickly straightened up, raised his head and, cheerfully rattling his saber, walked no longer with such fast steps as before.” However, the “dialectics of the soul” opened up prospects for change for Kalugin, prospects for moral growth.

Tolstoy's psychological analysis reveals infinitely rich possibilities for renewal in man. Social circumstances very often limit and suppress these possibilities, but they are not able to destroy them at all. Man is a more complex being than the forms into which life sometimes forces him. A person always has a reserve, a spiritual resource of renewal and liberation.

The feelings that Kalugin had just experienced had not yet entered into the result of his mental process; they remained in him unembodied, underdeveloped. But the very fact of their manifestation speaks of a person’s ability to change his character if he surrenders to them to the end.

“One of the most common and widespread superstitions is that each person has his own specific properties, that there are good, evil, smart, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc.,” writes Tolstoy in the novel “Resurrection.” - People are not like that. We can say about a person that he is more often kind than evil, more often smart than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic, and vice versa; but it will not be true if we say about one person that he is kind or smart, and about another that he is evil or stupid. And we always divide people like this. And this is not true. People are like rivers: the water is lonely and the same everywhere, but each river is sometimes narrow, sometimes fast, sometimes wide, sometimes quiet, sometimes clean, sometimes cold, sometimes muddy, sometimes warm. So are people. Each person carries within himself the rudiments of all human properties and sometimes displays some, sometimes others, and is often completely unlike himself, remaining at the same time the same as himself.” The “fluidity of man,” his ability to make abrupt and decisive changes, is constantly in the center of Tolstoy’s attention. After all, the most important motive of the writer’s biography and creativity is movement towards moral heights, self-improvement. Tolstoy saw this as the main way to transform the world.

He was skeptical of revolutionaries and materialists, and therefore soon left the editorial office of Sovremennik. It seemed to him that a revolutionary restructuring of the external, social conditions of human existence was a difficult matter and hardly promising. Moral self-improvement is a clear and simple matter, a matter of free choice of every person. Before you sow goodness around, you need to become good yourself: with moral self-improvement you need to begin the transformation of life.

This explains Tolstoy’s close interest in the “dialectics of the soul” of man. The leading motive of his work will be testing the hero for variability. A person’s ability to renew himself, the mobility and flexibility of his spiritual world, his psyche are for Tolstoy an indicator of moral sensitivity, talent and vitality (We remember that in Tolstoy’s hero is either emerging or in a state of search). If these changes had been impossible in a person, Tolstoy’s view of the world would have collapsed and his hopes would have been destroyed. Tolstoy believes in the creative, world-transforming power of the artistic word. He writes with the conviction that his art enlightens human souls and teaches them to “love life.” Like Chernyshevsky, he considers literature a “textbook for life.” He equates writing novels to a specific practical task, which he often gives preference to in comparison with literary work.

From Chernyshevsky’s article: “Of course, this ability must be innate by nature. This is the desire for tireless observation of oneself. We can study the laws of human action, the play of passions, the chain of events, the influence of circumstances and relationships by carefully observing other people; but all the knowledge acquired in this way will have neither depth nor accuracy if we do not study the most secret laws of mental life, the play of which is open to us only in our [own] self-consciousness. He who has not studied man within himself will never achieve a deep knowledge of people. Tolstoy extremely carefully studied the secrets of the life of the human spirit within himself; this knowledge is precious not only because it gave him the opportunity to paint pictures of the internal movements of human thought, but also gave him a solid basis for studying human life in general, for unraveling the characters and springs of action, the struggle of passions and impressions.

<…> Knowledge of the human heart is the main strength of his talent.”

Thus, of the “various directions” of psychological analysis, Tolstoy is more attracted to “the mental process, its forms, its laws, dialectic of the soul" The last words became a classic definition of the features of Tolstoy’s psychologism.

Related information.

As a manuscript

Gromova

Polina Sergeevna

PROSE a. K. TOLSTOY:

PROBLEMS OF GENRE EVOLUTION

dissertations for an academic degree

candidate of philological sciences

The work was carried out at the Department of History of Russian Literature

Tver State University.

Scientific director

Official opponents:

Doctor of Philology, Professor

Candidate of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor

Leading organization

Institute of World Literature

Scientific secretary of the dissertation council

Doctor of Philology, Professor

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF WORK

The work of the classic of Russian literature, the count, cannot be called unstudied. And although in the minds of the mass reader Tolstoy is, first of all, a poet and playwright, various researchers have repeatedly turned to his prose. Among them, and others. The observations made by them are valuable and are taken into account in this dissertation. At the same time, there are still many unclear and open questions in the study of Tolstoy’s prose. Early fantasy and historical prose are traditionally viewed as two isolated and independent stages in the writer’s work; The connections between Tolstoy's early prose and his novel did not become the subject of special research. Until now, due to its complexity, questions about the genre nature of Tolstoy’s works and the creative evolution of the writer remain the least illuminated. Although there are special works on Tolstoy's fantastic prose, it has not yet been fully revealed as an artistic unity.

Tolstoy's prose represents a wide variety of genre forms and artistic solutions. It reveals the writer’s understanding of modern Russian reality and the national historical past, raising eternal questions of love, goodness, justice, faith, and creativity. At the same time, while displaying genre diversity, Tolstoy’s prose is distinguished by its internal unity. The writer did not deliberately abandon fantasy and move on to historical works in his mature period; this dynamic seems quite natural. The premises of the historical novel are laid in early fiction, and fantastic elements fit organically into the historical novel. Turning to the works of art created by Tolstoy in one period or another of his work, it seems necessary to study their genre features in more detail, as well as to trace the formation of the images of the heroes and the development of various themes, ideas and motives. All this directly reflects Tolstoy’s creative evolution. Of particular interest for research in this light is early fantastic prose, which lays the foundations of artistic images and characters developed by Tolstoy in the future, and in addition, the author's style is formed and the basic artistic principles of creativity are developed, implemented in subsequent works of different genres.

Object The dissertation research includes prose works, namely early fantastic prose (“The Ghoul”, “The Family of the Ghoul”, “Meeting after Three Hundred Years”, “Amena”) and the novel “Prince Silver”.

Item research - genre specificity of works, features of the creative evolution of the writer, as well as the interaction of various literary traditions and artistic innovation in prose.

Relevance And scientific novelty The work is due to the fact that recently interest in Tolstoy’s work has increased greatly, but not all problems related to him can still be considered sufficiently illuminated. In this work, for the first time, an attempt has been made to trace the evolution of the genre and, at the same time, to comprehend Tolstoy’s prose in its unity, as well as to show the relationship between the fantastic and the historical in his works, the pattern of movement from a fantastic depiction of life to romantic historicism.

Target research - to trace the formation and development of the genre system in prose works.

Achieving this goal requires solving a number of research tasks:

1. Consider the genre specifics of prose works.

2. To introduce a number of clarifications into the existing ideas about the genre nature of Tolstoy’s prose works.

3. Determine the directions of genre transformations associated with Tolstoy’s creative evolution.

Methodological basis of the study:

The dissertation uses historical-literary, comparative-genetic and comparative-typological research methods. Works on the history of Russian literature and problems of romanticism, etc., as well as the works of the above-mentioned authors on creativity, turned out to be valuable in the study of this topic. The theoretical basis of the study is works on poetics. In matters of genre, we relied on research and.

Theoretical and practical significance is due to the fact that this study makes additions to the understanding of the relationship between artistic intent and the genre of the work that has developed in literary criticism. The dissertation materials can be used in the practice of university teaching of the history of Russian literature of the 19th century, as well as special courses devoted to fantastic and historical prose of the 19th century, creativity; for further development of the problems of romanticism and its interaction with other literary methodologies and movements.

Provisions for defense:

1. The genre nature of Tolstoy’s works is closely related to the nature of artistic fiction, which in turn is determined by the writer’s creative method.

2. Tolstoy’s early fantastic prose is a complex of works in which the romantic principles of his work are formed, and also reflect the Gothic literary tradition and some realistic tendencies.

3. In Tolstoy’s work there was no sharp transition from fantastic prose to historical prose. Interest in history and elements of historical artistic thinking are clearly visible in his early works, and the fantastic elements of early prose, remaining in Tolstoy’s later work, organically merge with romantic historicism.

4. “Prince Silver” is a natural continuation and development of trends that formed in Tolstoy’s early fantastic prose. The artistic method of Tolstoy the prose writer receives its most complete embodiment in the novel.

5. “Prince Silver” - a romantic historical novel. The definition of “romantic” is fundamentally important, since the novel reflects an understanding of history that is characteristic of romanticism.

6. Tolstoy’s prose, despite its genre diversity, represents a dynamic artistic unity.

Approbation of the study held at the II International Scientific Conference “Moscow in Russian and World Literature” (Moscow, RAS IMLI, November 2-3, 2010), Annual Student Scientific Conferences (Tver, Tver State University), International Scientific Conferences “The World of Romanticism "(Tver, May 21-23, 2009; Tver, May 13-15, 2010), International Scientific Conference "V Akhmatov Readings. , : Book. Piece of art. Document" (Tver - Bezhetsk May 21 - 23, 2009), Regional scientific conference "Tver book: ancient Russian heritage and modernity" (Tver, February 19, 2010), educational and scientific seminar "The theme of night in romantic literature" (Tver , Tver State University, April 17, 2010), educational and scientific seminar “Landscape in Romantic Literature” (Tver, Tv State University, April 9, 2011).

The main provisions of the dissertation are covered in 11 articles published in regional and central specialized publications. A list of published works is given at the end of the abstract.

Work structure. The dissertation consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion and a bibliography (225 titles).

MAIN CONTENT OF THE WORK

In administered The history of the study of Tolstoy's artistic heritage is briefly presented, the degree of research into the problems associated with his work is characterized, the subject and goals of this work, its relevance, theoretical and practical significance are determined.

The first chapter – “Early fantastic prose” – dedicated to Tolstoy’s prose dilogy “The Family of the Ghoul and “Meeting after Three Hundred Years” as his first science fiction works.

The first paragraph of the chapter “Romantic concept of the fantastic and creativity” includes an overview of romantic views on fantasy and imagination, necessary for understanding Tolstoy's attitude to the fantastic in fiction, and contains a comparison of these views with the position of the writer himself.

Since romantic ideas about the fantastic are examined in detail in the dissertation on Russian material, in our work, taking into account Tolstoy’s deep connections with the European romantic tradition, the main emphasis is on the aesthetics of foreign romanticism.

As is known, in the aesthetic works of F. Schlegel, C. Nodier and other romantics, an extensive and multifaceted concept of fantasy-imagination was developed, affecting both ontological aspects and direct aspects of artistic creativity. In one of his articles, C. Nodier wrote: “The two main sanctuaries of freedom are the faith of a religious person and the imagination of a poet.” The Romantics especially valued the ability to imagine in modern, purely pragmatic reality.

Tolstoy was highly characterized by that mystical sense of life, which in his works forms the basis for the definition of romanticism. According to the remark, “Romanticism was valuable for Tolstoy in its most diverse aspects and manifestations: in the affirmation of the ideal world, the aspiration to the “suprastellar”, eternal and infinite, in the worship of beauty, the cult of art as a “step to a better world”, the pathos of the original and national , in the charm of the mysterious and wonderful, etc.” Continuing the passion for science fiction, which was characteristic of Russian literature of the 30s and 40s. XIX century, Tolstoy's early prose reveals a connection with the tradition of early European romanticism. According to our observations, it fully expressed the immersion in the fantasy world characteristic of the romantics, the affirmation of the value and multidimensionality of fantasy, the desire to pose through fantasy the deep problems of existence, as well as the combination of the fantastic with the ironic.

Tolstoy's early prose is traditionally called fantastic, as it is united by the motifs of the supernatural invading ordinary reality. Tolstoy widely uses the philosophical, aesthetic and expressive possibilities of fiction: in his early prose it reflects the author’s view of the world and becomes one of the main ways of revealing the characters of the characters and the problems of the works. The dissertation develops the position that behind the usual everyday life, Tolstoy’s literary fantasy seems to glimpse the true structure of the universe, discovers patterns and cause-and-effect relationships between events that at first glance are unrelated, thereby creating an idea of ​​the diversity and unity of the Universe.

Fantasy in Tolstoy’s work reflects that very “human truth”, which is opposed to mechanical imitation in the depiction of nature, events, and characters. This “truth” is nothing more than the Artist’s loyalty to himself (see ibid.), his principles and understanding of reality, which is impossible to reflect in a work of art without having imagination. Thus, according to Tolstoy, fantasy turns out to be connected, on the one hand, with the freedom of artistic creativity, and, on the other hand, with familiarization with the deep secrets of the universe. Therefore, it seems natural that fantastic motifs and images that first appeared in Tolstoy’s early prose do not subsequently disappear from his works, but continue to develop throughout his entire creative career.

In the second paragraph of the first chapter - “Genre features of the stories “The Family of the Ghoul” and “Meeting after Three Hundred Years””– the question is raised about the specifics of these two works as a romantic dilogy, their main genre features are determined, and the common motifs that will be developed in the writer’s subsequent works are examined in detail.

The stories “The Family of the Ghoul” and “Meeting after Three Hundred Years” do not have an exact dating, but most researchers agree that they are Tolstoy’s earliest experiments in prose (late 30s – early 40s). These works are traditionally and rightly combined by researchers into a dilogy.

The dissertation provides new evidence of the structural commonality of the stories and reveals the artistic connections that hold them together. Thus, narratives from the characters’ perspectives are placed in frames. The internal text and the framing text interact in an original way, forming a complex system of points of view. The multi-level structure of a small work allows the writer to push genre boundaries and significantly expand the scope of the visual and expressive possibilities of the story.

Tolstoy's dilogy not only has common motifs that flow from one work to another, but also contains what is developed in further work. Already in these works of Tolstoy, a “sense of history” and the ability to recreate the color and style of the era were expressed. The stories are set in the past and have an exact historical date (1759, 1815). The dissertation puts forward the assumption that the dating of events had a certain meaning for Tolstoy and behind it lies a polemic with the skepticism and rationalism of the Enlightenment: fantastic events are experienced by heroes of the Enlightenment character, who, as a result of the terrible adventures they have experienced, are convinced of the existence of a world that was previously unknown suspected. Through the spiritual appearance, speech, behavior, and individual destinies of the heroes, Tolstoy seeks to paint the image of the gallant age of Louis XV, the court aristocracy, and at the same time the morals of rural Moldavia. The vividness of the reproduction of the color of the era is enhanced by the fact that the stories are written in French. All this does not make Tolstoy's stories historical (historical events and characters are mentioned quite briefly and mainly in the framing narrative), but they still contain features that he considers important for the poetics of the romantic novel.

The paragraph shows that the unified content that unfolds in the stories, along with fantastic events, already includes a novel beginning. Fantastic events develop against the backdrop of the love relationships of the heroes.

In the first stories, a powerful key, organizing element appears, stylistically marked in the text of the work and acting as a basic plot scheme. In “The Ghoul’s Family” this is Zdenka’s song, sung in her native language; in the second story, this is a family legend about the heroine’s great-great-grandmother. These elements not only reveal the plot scheme, but also help to reveal the leading motive of the duology - the motive of crime and atonement.

The research literature (,) has already noted the connection of both stories with the Gothic tradition. On this basis, Tolstoy's early fantastic prose is often defined as Gothic. In our opinion, Tolstoy perceives Gothic through the prism of its understanding by romanticism. It is from the romantics that Tolstoy inherits the fundamental polysemy of fantasy, the most complex fluctuations of meaning. The fantastic had several meanings for the romantics, but first of all, it was associated with the ability to discern the secrets of the universe and comprehend reality. In Tolstoy, the fantastic becomes an expression of the deep laws of the Universe; it acts as an active principle that drives the destinies of the heroes.

A common feature of Tolstoy's stories is also seen in the motif of the path. This motif, which runs through Tolstoy’s work, plays a plot-forming role in early fantastic prose, strengthening the connections between individual episodes, and in addition, it translates into reality the romantic idea of ​​​​the eternal dynamics of life.

The problem of family and home occupies a significant place in Tolstoy's first stories. Family ties, their emergence or disintegration, the hero’s marital status and his pedigree turn out to be important plot-forming components. Of particular importance are the ideas of moral duty and family continuity, which manifests itself in the possibility of atonement through many generations.

The third paragraph of the chapter is “The system of images in the stories “The Family of the Ghoul” and “Meeting after Three Hundred Years””– is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of the images of the heroes of the dilogy. The paragraph also compares the heroes of the dilogy and A. Hamilton’s novel “Memoirs of the Comte de Gramont”, based on which Tolstoy’s works may have been based.

The Marquis d'Urfe (“The Family of the Ghoul”) and the Duchess de Gramont (“Meeting after Three Hundred Years”) are heroes of the same era and the same circle, their cultural proximity is obvious. The images of these heroes are created by Tolstoy at the intersection of the romantic tradition and the tradition of French gallant prose of the 18th century, which reveals a subtle sense of historical flavor.

The Marquis d'Urfe, a man of his desires and passions, encounters the beyond and is convinced of its existence. The Duchess de Gramont is a real society lady, experienced in love games. However, a child's faith in supernatural forces is alive in her soul; fantastic images from a legend she once heard appear unusually vividly in her imagination. The fantastic events that happened to the heroes do not radically change their characters, but still they discover a different area of ​​existence. The image of d'Urfe is endowed with the features of a romantic wanderer, and the collision with the fantastic world emphasizes the complexity and originality of his nature.

In addition to the images of the main characters, the dissertation specifically examines the system of doubles in both stories, which once again emphasizes the artistic unity of the works and the presence of a novelistic element in the dilogy.

In the second chapter - ““Ghoul” and “Amena” in the context of creative searches” – the genre features of the writer’s works are analyzed from the perspective of his further creative quests.

In the first paragraph - ““Ghoul” as a romantic fantasy story”– we are talking about the development in the story of the structural features and motives stated in the two earlier stories.

In the story "Ghoul", as in short stories, the frame structure of the narrative is implemented. However, the story represents a significantly more complex system of frameworks. The narrative becomes branching; the special structure of the story reveals cause-and-effect relationships between real and fantastic events, which generally corresponds to the author’s picture of the world.

The central place in the story is occupied by the family legend about Martha’s crime against her husband and the family curse that it entailed. This legend serves as the eventual and compositional core, the center to which all the lines of the narrative are somehow drawn together. It should be considered as the “ideological hub of all incidents” that underlies the plot of the story and is functionally identical to Zdenka’s song and the family legend in the early dilogy.

The story contains motifs that are cross-cutting throughout Tolstoy’s entire prose work. The paragraph discusses the motives of the path, family and home, the ideas of a person’s moral duty and life values. Unlike earlier stories, in Tolstoy's story the motive of the journey is expressed implicitly (travel through a fantasy world). At the same time, the fantastic in “The Ghoul” becomes a genre-forming principle: it permeates the entire work and determines the development of the plot.

The fantastic principle is in complex relationships with the historical. The events of “The Ghoul” unfold in a time close to the author, but the historical past is included in it in a unique way (for example, access to records in the city archive of Como). Through the colorful images of the old-fashioned Moscow foreman Sugrobina and adviser Telyaev, the Russian 18th century seems to come to life. The author's sense of history, the desire to reveal the contradictory nature of the era through human individuality is manifested very clearly here.

In the second paragraph of the chapter - “The fantastic as the genre basis of the story “Ghoul””– the significance of the definition of “The Ghoul” as a romantic fantasy story is substantiated.

In romantic literature, the fantastic becomes a way not only to recreate the popular worldview, but also to comprehend reality and human consciousness. Dark, “night” fantasy, characteristic of late romanticism, is associated by most researchers with the desire to penetrate into the essence of a terrible, disharmonious reality. Romantics are interested in transcendental spheres, the mysteries of the universe and its secret laws that manifest themselves in everyday life. The story realizes Tolstoy's romantic worldview, in which the ability to see the surroundings fantastically occupied a very important place. Thus, the familiar world appears infinitely deep and mysterious.

Tolstoy's early works are full of fantastic images, genetically derived from many sources, including ancient mythology, Little Russian folklore, and literary tradition. The fantastic in Tolstoy has an ambivalent nature. On the one hand, “dark” forces destroy Rybarenko and Antonio and threaten the lives of Vladimir, Dasha, Runevsky, but, on the other hand, the intervention of the fantastic leads to the fact that the lovers are safely united and retribution for the ancient betrayal is accomplished. But it cannot be said that the fantastic is finally leaving reality. The ending of the story is ambiguous: despite the fact that the plot ends happily, Runevsky is deeply imbued with faith in otherworldly forces and fantastic worlds.

In the story “The Ghoul,” the dark fantasy is personified in a whole series of characters whose nature is dual: for example, the foreman turns out to be a cursed beauty, the state councilor turns out to be a ghoul. The description of these characters is not without romantic irony. The image of the Black Domino, which has not previously been considered by researchers, stands out. The dissertation examines the infernal nature of this character and proposes the following interpretation: invading the human world, evil becomes even more terrible and destructive because the form it takes is indistinguishable from the human. The extreme blurriness of this image allows us to “suspect” the Black Domino in every person. Black Domino is "anyone", no one, and therefore - everyone, anyone, everyone. Any person you meet can turn out to be the bearer of a dark, hostile principle, and this is the tragic pathos of Tolstoy’s philosophy.

The fantastic in “The Ghoul” comes as close as possible to everyday life, becomes inseparable and practically indistinguishable from it. Tolstoy widely uses the technique of “everyday life” of fantasy, and the intensification of the terrible in the spirit of the Gothic tradition is closely intertwined with the romantic irony that often accompanies the introduction of the fantastic: the jewelry bought by Rybarenko from a smuggler is wrapped in human bones, including a child’s skull, and at the same time An ordinary pistol becomes an effective weapon in the fight against ghost vampires.

In the cause-and-effect relationships between the events occurring in the story “The Ghoul,” the relationship between the fantastic and the real is clearly manifested. The author still gives priority in relation to the causality of events to the fantastic. This corresponds to the romantic understanding of life as a miracle and largely reflects the worldview of Tolstoy himself. “The affirmation of the greatest “miracle” of life, birth, death, the “miracle” of creation and creativity - this is precisely the pathos of romanticism and the reasons for its greatest charm and popularity.”

Third paragraph called “The system of images of the story “Ghoul””.

Creating a developed system of images, Tolstoy is based on the principle of duality of characters and at the same time their different psychological reactions: heroes find themselves in similar situations testing the fantastic, because in Tolstoy’s understanding the fantastic is “an astral force, an executor of decisions, a force that serves both good and evil.” " The different behavior of the characters helps to reveal their characters.

The dissertation compares three characters (Runevsky, Rybarenko and Vladimir), and clarifies their roles in the artistic world of the story. In our opinion, the romantic motive of high madness is associated with the image of Rybarenko. The hero acts as an exponent of the mentality of an entire era, but this era is coming to an end. On the other hand, in the image of Rybarenko the vitality and relevance of romantic ideals and aspirations is affirmed.

The main character of the story, Runevsky, is given by Tolstoy in evolution. At the beginning of the story, he is an ordinary secular young man, but as he joins the fantastic world, he plays his role in resolving the family curse. The dissertation traces the change in the hero's worldview as the plot develops. The dialectical nature of Runevsky’s image reflects attention to the inner world of man, which originated in the literature of romanticism and developed in realistic literature.

The image of Dasha is of particular research interest. The heroine does not have any features that could be called portrait. It does not have a specific appearance, it is like a vague vision. But, starting to paint the image in a romantic vein, Tolstoy later follows a different path: resorting to psychological analysis, he strives to concretize the image, to give it greater lifelikeness.

In the fourth paragraph - “Genre and problems of the novel passage “Amen””– the genre is clarified and the artistic features of the latest work in the series of Tolstoy’s fantastic prose are explored.

In our opinion, relying on the literary tradition, systematizing his own artistic discoveries, Tolstoy sums up certain results of his literary activity and creates an extraordinary work in terms of structure, genre and conflict.

Compared to previous works, the historical basis of "Amena" deepens. Tolstoy turns to a very difficult, in many ways tragic time in ancient history: the era of early Christianity. The flavor of this era is recreated in the details of the setting, the characters of the characters, and their behavior. At the same time, the historical time reflected in “Amen”, without losing its specific features, acquires a mythological character. The motives for the moral decline of Rome and the suffering of early Christians are intricately combined with fantastic motives. The mythological nature of time in “Amen”, as well as the eternal problems of friendship, love, betrayal and repentance developed in the passage, determine the universality of the theme. In a particular episode, general patterns of historical development are traced; history appears in its movement and manifests itself in the lives of specific people. An important idea for the author is developed that the history of mankind is an inextricable process, and events that happen once do not pass without a trace, but have lasting consequences.

Amen implements a double frame structure. From the point of view of genre, the text inserted into the frame is a philosophical literary parable, which combines a description of specific events and an allegorical layer containing religious and moral instruction. The crime committed by Ambrose is a crime against conscience, against general moral laws, the exponent of which is Christianity. Tolstoy departs from the tradition of early romanticism, which idealized antiquity, and finds himself closer to the religious ideas of the late romantics.

Further in the paragraph, the complexity and ambiguity of constructing the image of the main character of “Amena” Ambrose is subjected to special consideration. At first glance, his glare and behavior evokes associations with the image of an infernal villain: Ambrose tells a terrible instructive story. But gradually it becomes clear that the hero of this story is himself, and a dissonance arises between the conventional Gothic appearance and the complex inner world of man. The character of Ambrose is revealed in dynamics that reflect the complex transitional era in the history of mankind.

The third chapter - “Prince Silver as a romantic historical novel”– constitutes a study of the artistic world and genre nature of the novel “Prince Silver”.

The first paragraph is “On some patterns of development of Russian historical prose”– dedicated to the genre of historical novel in Russian literature and in the work of Tolstoy.

The dissertation defends the idea of ​​the regularity of the appearance of the historical novel in Tolstoy’s work, since interest in history, attention to historical flavor was already present in his early works. Historicism is naturally asserted in Tolstoy’s works.

Tolstoy's deep interest in history is associated with its understanding in romanticism. For the romantics, history was an expression of the idea of ​​life moving, happening before our eyes; the history of romance was understood as a dynamic process (,). In their works, romantics artistically comprehend reality, including historical reality, trying to penetrate into the patterns operating in it, emphasizing its complex and contradictory nature.

The development of the Russian historical novel is most often associated with the works of W. Scott. However, it is incorrect to explain the appearance of the historical novel in Russian literature only by European influence. Throughout the 18th century. Russia is actively joining the European cultural context, gradually moving from mechanical borrowing to meaningful and selective continuity. In this regard, the need for national self-identification, turning to one’s own history and culture, searching for one’s roots and original ideas in all spheres of public life is becoming increasingly obvious. Thus, the emergence of the genre of historical story, and then the historical novel, in Russian literature turns out to be quite natural. It seems logical to turn to the history of Tolstoy: a consistent romantic, he saw in history a reflection of life in progress, as well as the causes of many of the problems and difficulties of modern Russian society.

In the second paragraph - “Principles of romantic historicism"– based on existing research, some features of Tolstoy’s historical concept are clarified

As is known, Tolstoy retained his interest in national history and culture throughout his entire work. History provided Tolstoy with ample opportunities both for artistic creativity and for expressing his philosophical, ethical, aesthetic, and civic position. However, the most important in Tolstoy’s works are moral conflicts. History in its dynamics becomes both the embodiment and development of these conflicts, revealing the close connection between past eras and the present. In the novel “Prince Silver,” Tolstoy explores in artistic form the moral meaning of the era of Ivan the Terrible and comes to the conclusion that the lessons of history do not pass without leaving a trace. Tolstoy affirms the idea of ​​the connection between generations and the responsibility of one generation for what was done by the previous one. This idea, developed in the novel, has its origins in early fantastic prose.

Tolstoy, like many Russian writers, in the past was interested in bright, strong, strong-willed personalities, which were often not found in modern times. The novel presents a thorough (almost painstaking) study of the personality of Ivan the Terrible. Silver's character is manifested in his actions, which are carried out at the behest not so much of the mind as of the heart. The character of Godunov, whose life position, on the contrary, is fundamentally rationalistic, is revealed in disputes with Serebryany. A love conflict helps to understand Vyazemsky’s image, while Skuratov’s is a family conflict. And although the methods of psychologism that Tolstoy resorts to are different, through the images of all the heroes of the novel, the complexity and ambiguity of the transitional era in the history of Russia is expressed in one way or another.

As researchers have repeatedly noted, Tolstoy, while working with multiple sources when creating works and insisting on observing even historical spelling, still handles history itself quite freely. It allows for anachronisms and a peculiar montage of historical time. For Tolstoy, as a romantic writer, the highest moral meaning of history and its movement were of paramount importance, and not at all external historical verisimilitude. In romantic art, the most important thing is not the truth of fact, but the truth of the ideal, the fateful aspiration of history, its pattern and highest meaning. Tolstoy sees this meaning in overcoming evil with good, love, and forgiveness.

In the third paragraph - “Moral conflict and problems of the novel “Prince Silver””– the problems of the novel are analyzed and the transformation of themes, ideas and motives of early prose in the novel is traced.

Considering the conflict of “Prince Silver”, we note its romantic nature. In the novel, enthusiasm and despotism collide: acts for the benefit of people, which Serebryany commits without hesitation, are contrasted with the crimes of Ivan the Terrible, who deliberately suppresses both individual people and the entire Russian people in general.

Special attention in the dissertation is paid to the ending of the novel. The dissertation proves its complex, “promising” nature: the emergence of the theme of the conquest of Siberia, further Russian history, the depiction of the heroism and prowess of the Russian people create a brighter historical perspective and soften the gloomy image of the cruel age of Ivan the Terrible. The creation of a bright historical perspective is considered in the dissertation as a striking feature of the romantic historical novel.

In the novel, Tolstoy continues to develop the themes, ideas, and motives that he stated in his fantastic works, and resorts to some already proven artistic techniques.

Thus, in the organization of the novel one can feel traces of the framework structure characteristic of early fantastic prose. In the preface and at the end of the novel, the author's narrative principle is powerfully manifested, cementing the artistic unity of the work.

Another structural feature of Tolstoy’s early fantastic prose, realized in the novel, is the nodal element. In the novel, this is a scene of witchcraft-prophecy at a mill. The key element in Tolstoy’s works is the point in the development of the plot from which the further course of events and the fate of the heroes can be seen. The presence of key elements is an important principle of organization of Tolstoy’s prose works.

A number of motifs from Tolstoy’s early prose are refracted in an original way in the novel. “Prince Silver” is structured as a travel novel. Silver moves actively throughout the action; We get to know him and part ways on the road. Silver's journey, which has no visible final goal, is not meaningless. At every stage of the journey, the hero does what his moral duty dictates, loyalty to the king, devotion to the fatherland. Silver is an enthusiastic hero, and active movement is an important aspect of his image. Every time, acting as his conscience and honor tell him, Silver begins a new stage of his journey, with his actions in each situation unconsciously contributing to the establishment of goodness and justice.

The death of Serebryany, which caused bewilderment among Tolstoy’s contemporaries, seems to us natural. The hero himself admits: “My thoughts have gone crazy...<…>now everything in front of me has darkened; I no longer see where the lie is and where the truth is. All good perishes, all evil overcomes!<…>Often, Elena Dmitrievna, Kurbsky came to my mind, and I drove away these sinful thoughts from myself, while I still had a goal for my life, while I had strength; but I no longer have a goal, and my strength has reached its end...” The destruction of state foundations, the collapse of the ideals of fair government, and national disasters are perceived by Serebryany as a personal catastrophe. Throughout the novel, the hero follows his ideals, “the dictates of a noble heart,” but those events that he witnesses or participates in do not pass without a trace for him. By the end of the novel, the hero finds himself face to face with the need to reconsider his priorities and reassess spiritual and civic values. Serebryany's imminent death frees him from moral torment, which could turn into betrayal (of the fatherland or his ideals) and madness. Thus, throughout his entire life, Silver remains faithful to the ideals of honor, nobility and active goodness. Tolstoy's idea of ​​the integral existence of an integral personality was most fully embodied in the novel “Prince Silver”.

The motifs of family and home occupy an important place in the novel. The families depicted in the novel “Prince Silver” are characterized by dysfunctional conditions, but conflicts between members of the same family are based, as a rule, not on family, but on moral grounds (for example, the conflict between Maxim Skuratov and his father). The novel shows the process of disintegration of family ties, coupled with the motifs of homelessness and wandering, characteristic of the romanticism of the Byronic period.

Romantic fiction, which determines the main content of Tolstoy's early prose, also occupies an important place in his novel. The fantastic and real-historical principles are not opposed, but actively interact with each other, giving rise to the organic world of a work of art, the originality of which is ensured by the implementation of the author’s expanded concept of reality. Compared to early prose, where fantasy was explicit (terminology), in the novel it becomes veiled, but does not lose its significance. Firstly, the key element of the novel is associated with the interpenetration of the fantastic and the real. Secondly, the fantastic reflects the beliefs of people of the 16th century and helps to recreate the national and historical flavor of the novel.

In conclusion, the results of the dissertation research are summed up. Consideration of genre evolution led us to the conclusion that Tolstoy’s prose is a holistic phenomenon; it reveals the constancy of his aesthetic principles and literary interests. There was no sharp transition between the stages of Tolstoy’s work: what appeared in his novel was contained in his early prose works.

The main provisions of the dissertation are reflected

in the following publications:

Publications in peer-reviewed scientific publications included in the register of the Higher Attestation Commission of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation:

1. Gromova: on the issue of creative evolution // News of the Russian State Pedagogical University named after. . Series: Social Sciences and Humanities. – No. 000. – St. Petersburg: Russian State Pedagogical University named after. , 2011. – No. 000. – P. 54 – 61.

2. Gromova and the problems of prose // Bulletin of Tver State University. Series: Philology. – Tver: Tver. state University, 2011. – Issue. 3. – P. 206 – 210.

Publications in other publications:

3. Speaking of literary hoaxes and the Count’s creative quest (based on the stories “The Ghoul’s Family” and “Meeting after Three Hundred Years”) // Romanticism: Facets and Fates. Uch. zap. NIUL CYPRUS TvSU. – Tver: Tver. state univ., 2008. – pp. 44-48.

4. Gromov’s images in the story “Ghoul” in the context of the Russian historical and literary movement from romanticism to realism // World of Romanticism: materials of the International. scientific conference "The World of Romanticism". – Tver, May 26 – 29, 2008 – Tver: Tver. state univ., 2008. – T.13(37). – P. 253 – 258.

5. Grom’s fiction in early prose // Word: collection. scientific works of students and graduate students. – Tver, 2009. – Issue. 7. – pp. 18 – 23.

6. Gromov’s dualism and spatial organization of prose // World of Romanticism: collection. scientific tr.: To the 95th anniversary of the professor’s birth and the 50th anniversary of the romantic school he created. – Tver: Tver. state Univ., 2009. –T– P. 210-219.

7. Gromov’s fantasy and fiction in the aesthetics of Western European romantics // Romanticism: facets and destinies: Scientific notes. REC CYPRUS TvSU. – Tver: Scientific book, 2010. – Issue 9. – P.19–25.

8. Thunder’s nights in prose // Romanticism: facets and destinies: study. zap. REC CYPRUS TvSU. – Tver: Scientific book, 2010. – Issue 9. – pp. 81-86.

9. Gromov of Moscow in the novel “Prince Silver” // Moscow in Russian and world literature: abstract. report II International Scientific Conference. – Moscow, RAS IMLI named after. , 2010. – P.8 – 9.

10. Gromova Skopins-Shuiskys in creative comprehension // Materials of the regional scientific conference “Tver Book: Old Russian Heritage and Modernity”. – Tver, 2010. – P.37 – 49.

11. Gromova’s prose hero in the context of the theory of passionarity. // Materials of the International Scientific Conference “V Akhmatov Readings. , : Book. Piece of art. Document". – Tver: Tver. state University, 2009. – P.74 – 81.

12. “Amena” to the problem of the hero // Bulletin of Tver State University. Series: Philology. – Tver: Tver. state University, 2010. – Issue. 5. – P.176 – 180.

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Tver, st. Zhelyabova, 33.

Tel. RIU: (48

Fedorov fantastic prose and traditions of romanticism in Russian prose of the 40s: abstract of the dissertation... candidate of philological sciences. – M., 2000. – 33 p.

See: Fedorov. Op.

Literary manifestos of Western European romantics / ed. . – M.: Nauka, 1980. – P. 411.

Zhirmunsky romanticism and modern mysticism. – St. Petersburg: Akhyuma, 1996.

Kartashov’s fiction in the romantic works of the forties // World of Romanticism: collection. scientific works – Tver: TvGU, 2003. – T– P. 87.

Tolstoy's production of the tragedy "" // Tolstoy's works in 4 volumes - M.: Pravda, 1980. - T. 3. - P. 446.

See: Reizov’s novel of the 19th century. – M.: Higher School, 1977. – P. 9 – 31.

Memoirs of the Comte de Gramont. – M.: Khud. lit., 1993.

Kartashov into the theory of romanticism. –Tver: Tver State University, 1991. –S. 53.

Tolstoy to from 01.01.01 // Tolstoy. op.–T. 4. – P. 353.

According to most biographers, “Amena” was written in 1846. See about this: ,: Biography and analysis of his main works. – St. Petersburg: I. Zagryazhsky, 1909; Kondratiev: materials for the history of life and creativity. – St. Petersburg: Lights, 1912; “The heart is full of inspiration...”: Life and creativity. – Tula: Priok. book ed., 1973.

Tolstoy Silver // Tolstoy. Op. – T. 2. – P. 372.