War and peace criticism citation summary. Coursework: Epic Novel L

A.E. In 1863, Bersom wrote a letter to his friend, Count Tolstoy, reporting on a fascinating conversation between young people about the events of 1812. Then Lev Nikolaevich decided to write a grandiose work about that heroic time. Already in October 1863, the writer wrote in one of his letters to a relative that he had never felt such creative forces in himself; the new work, according to him, would not be like anything he had done before.

Initially, the main character of the work should be the Decembrist, returning from exile in 1856. Next, Tolstoy moved the beginning of the novel to the day of the uprising in 1825, but then the artistic time moved to 1812. Apparently, the count was afraid that the novel would not be released for political reasons, since Nicholas the First tightened censorship, fearing a repeat of the riot. Since the Patriotic War directly depends on the events of 1805, it was this period that in the final version became the foundation for the beginning of the book.

“Three Pores” - that’s what Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy called his work. It was planned that the first part or time would tell about the young Decembrists, participants in the war; in the second - a direct description of the Decembrist uprising; in the third - the second half of the 19th century, the sudden death of Nicholas 1, the defeat of the Russian army in the Crimean War, an amnesty for members of the opposition movement who, returning from exile, expect changes.

It should be noted that the writer rejected all the works of historians, basing many episodes of War and Peace on the memoirs of participants and witnesses of the war. Materials from newspapers and magazines also served as excellent informants. In the Rumyantsev Museum, the author read unpublished documents, letters from ladies-in-waiting and generals. Tolstoy spent several days in Borodino, and in letters to his wife he enthusiastically wrote that if God grants health, he will describe the Battle of Borodino in a way that no one has described before.

The author spent 7 years of his life creating War and Peace. There are 15 variations of the beginning of the novel; the writer repeatedly abandoned and started his book again. Tolstoy foresaw the global scope of his descriptions, wanted to create something innovative and created an epic novel worthy of representing the literature of our country on the world stage.

Themes of War and Peace

1. Family theme. It is the family that determines the upbringing, psychology, views and moral principles of a person, and therefore naturally occupies one of the central places in the novel. The forge of morals shapes the characters' characters and influences the dialectic of their souls throughout the entire narrative. The description of the Bolkonsky, Bezukhov, Rostov and Kuragin families reveals the author’s thoughts about house building and the importance he attaches to family values.
2. The theme of the people. The glory for a won war always belongs to the commander or emperor, and the people, without whom this glory would not have appeared, remain in the shadows. It is this problem that the author raises, showing the vanity of the vanity of military officials and elevating ordinary soldiers. became the topic of one of our essays.
3. Theme of war. Descriptions of military operations exist relatively separately from the novel, independently. It is here that phenomenal Russian patriotism is revealed, which became the key to victory, the boundless courage and fortitude of a soldier who goes to any length to save his homeland. The author introduces us to war scenes through the eyes of one or another hero, plunging the reader into the depths of the bloodshed taking place. Large-scale battles echo the mental anguish of the heroes. Being at the crossroads of life and death reveals the truth to them.
4. Theme of life and death. Tolstoy's characters are divided into “living” and “dead”. The first include Pierre, Andrey, Natasha, Marya, Nikolai, and the second include old Bezukhov, Helen, Prince Vasily Kuragin and his son Anatole. The “living” are constantly in motion, and not so much physical as internal, dialectical (their souls come to harmony through a series of trials), while the “dead” hide behind masks and come to tragedy and internal split. Death in “War and Peace” is presented in 3 forms: bodily or physical death, moral death, and awakening through death. Life is comparable to the burning of a candle, someone’s light is small, with flashes of bright light (Pierre), for someone it burns tirelessly (Natasha Rostova), Masha’s wavering light. There are also 2 hypostases: physical life, like that of “dead” characters, whose immorality deprives the world of the necessary harmony within, and the life of the “soul”, this is about the heroes of the first type, they will be remembered even after death.

Main characters

• Andrey Bolkonsky- a nobleman, disillusioned with the world and seeking glory. The hero is handsome, has dry features, short stature, but athletic build. Andrei dreams of being famous like Napoleon, and that’s why he goes to war. He is bored with high society; even his pregnant wife does not give him any relief. Bolkonsky changes his worldview when, wounded at the battle of Austerlitz, he encountered Napoleon, who seemed like a fly to him, along with all his glory. Further, the love that flared up for Natasha Rostova also changes the views of Andrei, who finds the strength to live a full and happy life again after the death of his wife. He meets death on the Borodino field, because he does not find the strength in his heart to forgive people and not fight with them. The author shows the struggle in his soul, hinting that the prince is a man of war, he cannot get along in an atmosphere of peace. So, he forgives Natasha for betrayal only on his deathbed, and dies in harmony with himself. But finding this harmony was possible only in this way - for the last time. We wrote more about his character in the essay "".
• Natasha Rostova– a cheerful, sincere, eccentric girl. Knows how to love. He has a wonderful voice that will captivate the most picky music critics. In the work, we first see her as a 12-year-old girl, on her name day. Throughout the entire work, we observe the growing up of a young girl: first love, first ball, Anatole’s betrayal, guilt before Prince Andrei, the search for her “I”, including in religion, the death of her lover (Andrei Bolkonsky). We analyzed her character in the essay "". In the epilogue, the wife of Pierre Bezukhov, his shadow, appears before us from a cocky lover of “Russian dances”.
• Pierre Bezukhov- a plump young man who was unexpectedly bequeathed a title and a large fortune. Pierre discovers himself through what is happening around him, from each event he learns a moral and a life lesson. His wedding with Helen gives him confidence; after being disappointed in her, he finds interest in Freemasonry, and in the end he gains warm feelings for Natasha Rostova. The Battle of Borodino and capture by the French taught him not to philosophize and find happiness in helping others. These conclusions were determined by acquaintance with Platon Karataev, a poor man who, while awaiting death in a cell without normal food and clothing, looked after the “little baron” Bezukhov and found the strength to support him. We've already looked at it too.
• Graph Ilya Andreevich Rostov- a loving family man, luxury was his weakness, which led to financial problems in the family. Softness and weakness of character, inability to adapt to life make him helpless and pitiful.
• Countess Natalya Rostova– the Count’s wife, has an oriental flavor, knows how to present herself correctly in society, and loves her own children excessively. A calculating woman: she strives to upset the wedding of Nikolai and Sonya, since she was not rich. It was her cohabitation with a weak husband that made her so strong and firm.
• NickOlai Rostov– the eldest son is kind, open, with curly hair. Wasteful and weak in spirit, like his father. He squanders his family's fortune on cards. He longed for glory, but after participating in a number of battles he understands how useless and cruel war is. He finds family well-being and spiritual harmony in his marriage to Marya Bolkonskaya.
• Sonya Rostova– the count’s niece – small, thin, with a black braid. She had a reasonable character and good disposition. She has been devoted to one man all her life, but lets her beloved Nikolai go after learning about his love for Marya. Tolstoy exalts and appreciates her humility.
• Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky- Prince, has an analytical mind, but a heavy, categorical and unfriendly character. He is too strict, therefore he does not know how to show love, although he has warm feelings for children. Dies from the second blow in Bogucharovo.
• Marya Bolkonskaya– modest, loving her family, ready to sacrifice herself for the sake of her loved ones. L.N. Tolstoy especially emphasizes the beauty of her eyes and the ugliness of her face. In her image, the author shows that the charm of forms cannot replace spiritual wealth. are described in detail in the essay.
• Helen Kuragina– Pierre’s ex-wife is a beautiful woman, a socialite. She loves male company and knows how to get what she wants, although she is vicious and stupid.
• Anatol Kuragin- Helen's brother is handsome and belongs to high society. Immoral, lacking moral principles, wanted to secretly marry Natasha Rostova, although he already had a wife. Life punishes him with martyrdom on the battlefield.
• Fedor Dolokhov- officer and leader of the partisans, not tall, has light eyes. Successfully combines selfishness and care for loved ones. Vicious, passionate, but attached to his family.

Tolstoy's favorite hero

In the novel, the author's sympathy and antipathy for the characters is clearly felt. As for female characters, the writer gives his love to Natasha Rostova and Marya Bolkonskaya. Tolstoy valued the true feminine in girls - devotion to a lover, the ability to always remain blooming in the eyes of her husband, the knowledge of happy motherhood and caring. His heroines are ready for self-denial for the benefit of others.

The writer is fascinated by Natasha, the heroine finds the strength to live even after the death of Andrei, she directs love to her mother after the death of her brother Petya, seeing how hard it is for her. The heroine is reborn, realizing that life is not over as long as she has a bright feeling for her neighbor. Rostova shows patriotism, without a doubt helping the wounded.

Marya also finds happiness in helping others, in feeling needed by someone. Bolkonskaya becomes a mother for Nikolushka’s nephew, taking him under her “wing”. She worries about ordinary men who have nothing to eat, passing the problem through herself, and does not understand how the rich can not help the poor. In the final chapters of the book, Tolstoy is fascinated by his heroines, who have matured and found female happiness.

The writer’s favorite male characters were Pierre and Andrei Bolkonsky. Bezukhov first appears to the reader as a clumsy, plump, short young man who appears in Anna Scherer’s living room. Despite his ridiculous, ridiculous appearance, Pierre is smart, but the only person who accepts him for who he is is Bolkonsky. The prince is brave and stern, his courage and honor come in handy on the battlefield. Both men risk their lives to save their homeland. Both are rushing around in search of themselves.

Of course, L.N. Tolstoy brings his favorite heroes together, only in the case of Andrei and Natasha, happiness is short-lived, Bolkonsky dies young, and Natasha and Pierre find family happiness. Marya and Nikolai also found harmony in each other's company.

Genre of the work

“War and Peace” opens the genre of the epic novel in Russia. The features of any novels are successfully combined here: from family novels to memoirs. The prefix “epic” means that the events described in the novel cover a significant historical phenomenon and reveal its essence in all its diversity. Typically, a work of this genre has a lot of plot lines and characters, since the scale of the work is very large.

The epic nature of Tolstoy’s work lies in the fact that he not only invented a story about a famous historical event, but also enriched it with details gleaned from the memories of eyewitnesses. The author did a lot to ensure that the book was based on documentary sources.

The relationship between the Bolkonskys and the Rostovs was also not invented by the author: he depicted the history of his family, the merger of the Volkonsky and Tolstoy families.

Main problems

1. The problem of finding real life. Let's take Andrei Bolkonsky as an example. He dreamed of recognition and glory, and the surest way to earn authority and adoration was through military exploits. Andrei made plans to save the army with his own hands. Bolkonsky constantly saw pictures of battles and victories, but he was wounded and went home. Here, in front of Andrei’s eyes, his wife dies, completely shaking the prince’s inner world, then he realizes that there is no joy in the murders and suffering of the people. This career is not worth it. The search for oneself continues, because the original meaning of life has been lost. The problem is that it is difficult to find.
2. The problem of happiness. Take Pierre, who is torn away from the empty society of Helen and the war. He soon becomes disillusioned with a vicious woman; illusory happiness has deceived him. Bezukhov, like his friend Bolkonsky, tries to find a calling in the struggle and, like Andrei, abandons this search. Pierre was not born for the battlefield. As you can see, any attempts to find bliss and harmony result in the collapse of hopes. As a result, the hero returns to his former life and finds himself in a quiet family haven, but only by making his way through thorns did he find his star.
3. The problem of the people and the great man. The epic novel clearly expresses the idea of ​​commanders-in-chief inseparable from the people. A great man must share the opinion of his soldiers and live by the same principles and ideals. Not a single general or king would have received his glory if this glory had not been presented to him on a “platter” by the soldiers, in whom the main strength lies. But many rulers do not cherish it, but despise it, and this should not happen, because injustice hurts people painfully, even more painfully than bullets. The People's War in the events of 1812 is shown on the side of the Russians. Kutuzov protects the soldiers and sacrifices Moscow for their sake. They sense this, mobilize the peasants and launch a guerrilla struggle that finishes off the enemy and finally drives him out.
4. The problem of true and false patriotism. Of course, patriotism is revealed through images of Russian soldiers, a description of the heroism of the people in the main battles. False patriotism in the novel is represented in the person of Count Rostopchin. He distributes ridiculous pieces of paper throughout Moscow, and then saves himself from the wrath of people by sending his son Vereshchagin to certain death. We have written an article on this topic, called “”.

What is the point of the book?

The writer himself speaks about the true meaning of the epic novel in the lines about greatness. Tolstoy believes that there is no greatness where there is no simplicity of soul, good intentions and a sense of justice.

L.N. Tolstoy expressed greatness through the people. In the images of battle paintings, an ordinary soldier shows unprecedented courage, which causes pride. Even the most fearful aroused in themselves a feeling of patriotism, which, like an unknown and frantic force, brought victory to the Russian army. The writer protests against false greatness. When put on the scales (here you can find their comparative characteristics), the latter flies up: its fame is lightweight, since it has very flimsy foundations. The image of Kutuzov is “folk”; none of the commanders has ever been so close to the common people. Napoleon is only reaping the fruits of fame; it is not without reason that when Bolkonsky lies wounded on the field of Austerlitz, the author, through his eyes, shows Bonaparte like a fly in this huge world. Lev Nikolaevich sets a new trend of heroic character. He becomes the “people's choice”.

An open soul, patriotism and a sense of justice won not only in the War of 1812, but also in life: the heroes who were guided by moral principles and the voice of their hearts became happy.

Thought Family

L.N. Tolstoy was very sensitive to the topic of family. Thus, in his novel “War and Peace,” the writer shows that the state, like a clan, transmits values ​​and traditions from generation to generation, and good human qualities are also sprouts from roots going back to the forefathers.

Brief description of families in the novel “War and Peace”:

1. Of course, the beloved family of L.N. Tolstoy's were the Rostovs. Their family was famous for its cordiality and hospitality. It is in this family that the author’s values ​​of true home comfort and happiness are reflected. The writer considered the purpose of a woman to be motherhood, maintaining comfort in the home, devotion and the ability to self-sacrifice. This is how all the women of the Rostov family are depicted. There are 6 people in the family: Natasha, Sonya, Vera, Nikolai and parents.
2. Another family is the Bolkonskys. Restraint of feelings, the severity of Father Nikolai Andreevich, and canonicity reign here. Women here are more like “shadows” of their husbands. Andrei Bolkonsky will inherit the best qualities, becoming a worthy son of his father, and Marya will learn patience and humility.
3. The Kuragin family is the best personification of the proverb “no oranges are born from aspen trees.” Helen, Anatole, Hippolyte are cynical, seek benefits in people, are stupid and not the least bit sincere in what they do and say. “A show of masks” is their lifestyle, and in this they completely took after their father, Prince Vasily. There are no friendly and warm relations in the family, which is reflected in all its members. L.N. Tolstoy especially dislikes Helen, who was incredibly beautiful on the outside, but completely empty on the inside.

People's thought

She is the central line of the novel. As we remember from what was written above, L.N. Tolstoy abandoned generally accepted historical sources, basing “War and Peace” on memoirs, notes, letters from ladies-in-waiting and generals. The writer was not interested in the course of the war as a whole. Individual personalities, fragments – that’s what the author needed. Each person had his own place and significance in this book, like pieces of a puzzle, which, when assembled correctly, will reveal a beautiful picture - the power of national unity.

The Patriotic War changed something inside each of the characters in the novel, each made their own small contribution to the victory. Prince Andrei believes in the Russian army and fights with dignity, Pierre wants to destroy the French ranks from their very heart - by killing Napoleon, Natasha Rostova without hesitation gives carts to crippled soldiers, Petya fights bravely in partisan detachments.

The people's will to victory is clearly felt in the scenes of the Battle of Borodino, the battle for Smolensk, and the partisan battle with the French. The latter is especially memorable for the novel, because volunteers who came from the ordinary peasant class fought in the partisan movements - the detachments of Denisov and Dolokhov personified the movement of the entire nation, when “both old and young” stood up to defend their homeland. Later they would be called the “club of the people’s war.”

The War of 1812 in Tolstoy's novel

The War of 1812, as a turning point in the lives of all the heroes of the novel War and Peace, has been mentioned several times above. It was also said that it was won by the people. Let's look at the issue from a historical perspective. L.N. Tolstoy draws 2 images: Kutuzov and Napoleon. Of course, both images are drawn through the eyes of a person from the people. It is known that the character of Bonaparte was thoroughly described in the novel only after the writer was convinced of the fair victory of the Russian army. The author did not understand the beauty of war, he was its opponent, and through the mouths of his heroes Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, he speaks of the meaninglessness of its very idea.

The Patriotic War was a national liberation war. It occupied a special place on the pages of volumes 3 and 4.

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION OF THE REPUBLIC OF BASHKORTOSTAN

Outline

literature lesson on the topic:

“War and Peace” L.N. Tolstoy in

perception of Russian criticism I

half XX century"

(Grade 10)

Teacher of Russian language and literature MBOU secondary school No. 101 with in-depth study of economics, Ufa Tatyana Vasilievna Sysoeva

Ufa

Lesson topic: “War and Peace” L.N. Tolstoy in the perception of Russian criticism of the first half of the 20th century."

Lesson objectives; Educational :

1) reveal the compositional role of the philosophical chapters of the epic novel;

2) explain the main provisions of historical and philosophical views
Tolstoy.

Developmental:

trace the attitude of critics of the first half of the twentieth century to the “War”

and to the world" L.N. Tolstoy.

Educational:

nurturing a culture of mental work based on such mental operations as analysis, synthesis, grouping;

instilling a sense of beauty in students.

Equipment: portrait of L.N. Tolstoy; exhibition of photographic materials; illustrations based on the writer’s work; I. Tolstoy’s book “The Light in Yasnaya Polyana”; text "War and Peace"; book “L.N. Tolstoy in Russian criticism." Methodical techniques: teacher's lecture, teacher's story, elements of text analysis, group work, student reports, conversation on issues. Lesson plan:

I. Teacher's lecture.

II. Student messages.

Work in groups.

Summarizing. Commenting on ratings.

V. Homework explanation.
Epigraphs for the lesson:

“Tolstoy told us almost as much about Russian life as the rest of our literature” (M. Gorky).

“Every person is a diamond who can purify or not purify himself. To the extent that it is purified, eternal light shines through it. Therefore, a person’s job is not to try to shine, but to try to purify himself” (L.N. Tolstoy).

“If only you could write like Tolstoy and make the whole world listen!” (T. Dreiser).

During the classes: I.

TEACHER'S LECTURE.

In the second half of the 19th century, new principles emerged in Russian realism. Three peaks rose on the literary horizon during this period - Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov. Each of them is the initiator of new creative trends not only in Russian, but also in world literature.

In the works of L.N. Tolstoy reveals not just the conflict between the individual and society, but the individual’s search for unity with the people based on the revision of all social institutions. Tolstoy's social and aesthetic ideal is a fair common life.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy (1828 - 1910) - a brilliant artist and a brilliant personality. Tolstoy left a huge literary legacy: three major novels, dozens of novellas, hundreds of short stories, several folk dramas, a treatise on art, many journalistic and literary critical articles, thousands of letters, entire volumes of diaries. And all this difficult-to-see legacy bears the stamp of the great writer’s tireless ideological quest.

Tolstoy L.N. was an ardent defender of the people. He showed, in particular in War and Peace, its decisive role in the historical development of society. But this was not the only characteristic of Tolstoy.

Tolstoy's epico-psychological realism is not a simple continuation of the realism of Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov. Developed in the work of his predecessors - not only in Russian, but also in the world

literature, the epic principle in Tolstoy’s works acquires new content and meaning.

In revealing psychology, Tolstoy comes into contact with Stendhal and
Lermontov. However, Tolstoy’s “dialectics of the soul” constitutes a truly
a new word in literature. The synthesis of the epic and psychological opened
literature has enormous possibilities for aesthetic development
reality..,

However, in all of world literature there are not many books that could compare with War and Peace in terms of richness of content and artistic power. A historical event of enormous significance, the deepest foundations of the national life of Russia, its nature, the fate of its best people, the masses set in motion by the course of history, the richness of our beautiful language - all this was embodied on the pages of the great epic. Tolstoy himself said: “Without false modesty, it’s like the Iliad,” that is, he compared his book with the greatest creation of the ancient Greek epic.

"War and Peace" is one of the most fascinating and exciting novels in world literature. The horizon of a huge book is vast, where peace and life overcome death and war, where with such depth, with such insight, the history of the human soul is traced - that “mysterious Russian soul” with its passions and delusions, with a frantic thirst for justice and patient faith in goodness, oh which was written so much all over the world both before and after Tolstoy. It was aptly said once: “If God wanted to write a novel, he could not do it without taking War and Peace as a model.” , G

On the novel “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy worked from 1863 to 1869. Initially, a story was conceived on a contemporary theme of that era, “The Decembrists,” of which three chapters remain. First L.N. Tolstoy was going to write about the Decembrist who returned from Siberia, and the action of the novel was supposed to begin in 1856. In the process of work, the writer decided to talk about the uprising of 1825, then pushed back the beginning of the action to 1812 -

the time of childhood and youth of the Decembrists. But since the Patriotic War was closely connected with the campaign of 1805 - 1807, Tolstoy decided to begin the novel from that time.

As the plan progressed, there was an intense search for the title of the novel. The original, “Three Times,” soon ceased to correspond to the content, because from 1856 to 1825 Tolstoy moved further and further into the past; Only one time was in the spotlight - 1812. So a different date appeared, and the first chapters of the novel were published in the magazine “Russian Messenger” under the title “1805”. In 1866, a new version emerged, no longer specifically historical, but philosophical: “All’s well that ends well.” And finally, in 1867 - another title where the historical and philosophical formed a certain balance - “War and Peace”.

So, in relation to all previous work of L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" was a kind of result, synthesis and a huge step forward.

World fame came to Tolstoy during his lifetime. In Western countries, first of all, the greatness of the artist was revealed; In the East, interest in philosophical, social and religious-moral works first arose. As a result, it became clear that the artist and the thinker in Tolstoy were inseparable. II . STUDENT MESSAGES.

Pre-prepared students make presentations.

1. The subjectivist method of critics in assessing “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy.

The multifaceted life of L.N. Tolstoy and his exceptionally rich creativity have been the subject of the most diverse and contradictory critical assessments over the course of many years. Newspapers and magazines of all political trends wrote about Tolstoy, and in other years his name did not leave the pages of periodicals. In total, thousands of critical articles and reviews have been written about him, but the predominant

Most of them have already been rightly forgotten and have become the property of bibliographers, a much smaller part is still of known historical interest, and very few have retained all their living significance to this day.

Only Tolstoy's early works were appreciated in revolutionary-democratic criticism; the outstanding representatives of this criticism, Chernyshevsky and Dobrolyubov, were no longer able to say their word about the masterpieces of the great writer - his novels. Therefore, such a novel as “War and Peace” did not receive real disclosure and coverage in contemporary criticism.

The criticism noted that Tolstoy, with his stories, opened up to readers a completely new world, hitherto unknown to them, that his works, distinguished by deep and genuine poetry, are a true and happy innovation in the description of military scenes.

The novel “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy has generated widespread critical literature. Articles and reviews began to appear already in 1868, the year the first three volumes of the novel were published. The novel was lively discussed in literary circles, and issues of historical and aesthetic order were touched upon; everyone was interested not only in the correspondence of what was depicted to the true historical truth, but also in the unusual form of the work, its deep artistic originality. “What is “War and Peace”? - this question was asked by many critics and reviewers, but none of them understood the deeply innovative essence of Tolstoy’s work.

2. Novel - epic L.N. Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” in the assessment of the philosopher N.A. Berdyaev.

Let us turn to the assessment of the novel “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy, given by the famous philosopher N.A. Berdyaev. In his judgments, he noted the genius of Tolstoy as an artist and personality, but denied him as a religious thinker. “He was not given the gift of expression in words, of expressing his religious life, his religious quest.”

It has long been noted that the works of Tolstoy the artist reflected our entire life, from the tsar to the peasant. These poles are outlined correctly: indeed, in War and Peace, for example, there is a strikingly vivid and real image of the tsar in the person of Alexander I. This is on the one hand. On the other, we have the almost speechless soldier Karataev and the peasant Akim (from “The Power of Darkness”). Between these extremes there are many characters - the aristocracy, village nobles, serfs, courtyards, men.

Tolstoy the thinker is entirely the product of Tolstoy the artist. L.N. Tolstoy is a shining example of aspiration, restless, selfless, tireless and contagious. The formulas in which Tolstoy from time to time concludes this desire, as a ready-made truth and as a moral for behavior, have changed more than once, just as they changed with his hero, Pierre Bezukhov. If you look at Tolstoy from this point of view, then all of him - throughout his long and brilliant work - is one fragile contradiction. Here, for example, is one of these formulas: “...It is good for the people who, not like the French in 1813, saluted according to all the rules of art and turned the sword over with the hilt, gracefully and courteously handing it over to the magnanimous winner, but good for the people who minute of testing, without asking how others acted according to the rules in similar cases with simplicity and ease he picks up the first club he comes across and nails it until while in his soul feeling of insult and revenge not replaced by feeling contempt and pity..."

These words, in which the feeling of “resistance” was expressed in all its immediacy and even extremes, where even a defeated enemy has no other attitude than pity mixed with contempt.

This motive, one and never changed in Tolstoy, is the search for truth, the desire for an integral mental structure, which is given only by deep, indecomposable analysis, faith in one’s truth and its direct application to life.

Next N.A. Berdyaev points out the antinomy of Tolstoy's views. After all, on the one hand, L.N. Tolstoy is striking in his belonging to the noble life. On the other hand, Tolstoy, with the power of negation and genius, rebels against the “light” not only in the narrow, but also in the broad sense of the word, against the entire “cultured” society.

Thus, N.A. Berdyaev comes to the conclusion that the brilliant personality and life of L.N. Tolstoy bears the stamp of some special mission. III . WORK IN GROUPS.

The teacher divides the class into two halves, gives questions to each group, and after a certain amount of time, students comment on the answer to the question given to them, citing the text of the epic novel and critical articles. 1 GROUP. V.G. Korolenko about “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy (Articles by V.G. Korolenko “Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy” (article one); “L.N. Tolstoy” (article two)).

“Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy” (first article) was first published in the magazine “Russian Wealth” (1908, No. 8, August). “L.N. Tolstoy" (article two) was first published in the newspaper "Russian Vedomosti" (1908, No. 199, August 28).

Tolstoy is a great artist. This is a truth already recognized by the reading world and, it seems, not seriously disputed anywhere or by anyone. Tolstoy is truly a great artist, the kind that has been born for centuries, and his work is crystal clear, light and beautiful.

V.G. Korolenko noted that Tolstoy, a publicist, moralist and thinker, was not always sufficiently grateful to Tolstoy the artist. Meanwhile, if the artist had not risen to a height from where he is known and heard by the whole world, the world would hardly have listened with such attention to the words of the thinker. And, besides, Tolstoy the thinker is entirely contained in Tolstoy the artist. Here are all its major advantages and no less major disadvantages.

GROUP 2. M. Gorky about the novel by L.N. Tolstoy “War and Peace” (“Leo Tolstoy” (notes); “Leo Tolstoy” (excerpt)).

"Lev Tolstoy". For the first time, the main part of the “Notes” was published in a separate publication under the title “Memories of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.” Publisher Z.I. Grzhebina, St. Petersburg, 1919. "Lev Tolstoy". The excerpt represents the final part of a lecture on Tolstoy from The History of Russian Literature.

Having once experienced a passion for the countryside, the Caucasus, Lucerne, Tolstoy returns to Yasnaya Polyana again, opens a school there, teaches children, writes articles on pedagogy, polemicizes and writes the greatest work of world literature in the 19th century, “War and Peace.”

In it, the brightest type of peasant is Platon Karataev, a man who is deprived of the consciousness of his individuality, considers himself an insignificant part of a huge whole and says that the death and misfortunes of one person are replaced by the fullness of life and joy for some other, and this is the world order, harmony. The whole world is justified, with all its evil, with all the misfortunes and the brutal struggle of people for power over each other. But this harmony is doubtful; after all, evil is justified only because the Russian peasant supposedly agreed good-naturedly. Tolstoy puts all his observations of the peasant before the reform into the saint Platon Karataev.

Tolstoy is a deeply truthful man; he is also valuable to us because all his works of art, written with terrible, almost miraculous power - all his novels and stories - fundamentally deny his religious philosophy.

Reality is a living process, constantly flowing,

changing, this process is always wider and deeper than all possible generalizations.

He was often crudely tendentious in his attempts to confirm his conclusions with directly taken reality, even sometimes confirming the tendency of passivism, but still indicated

The longing for spontaneity and the search for faith, which gives integrity to the spiritual structure - this is the main note of the main characters of Tolstoy the artist, in whom his own personality was most fully reflected.

At one time, it seemed not only to Tolstoy that spiritual integrity remained only among the common people, as a gift of fate for the heavy burden of suffering and labor. But this gift is worth all the benefits that the lucky ones who walk on the sunny side of life took with them. It is more precious than even knowledge, science and art, because it contains complete, all-resolving wisdom. The illiterate soldier Karataev is taller and happier than the educated Pierre Bezukhov. And Pierre Bezukhov tries to penetrate the secret of this integral wisdom of an illiterate soldier, just as Tolstoy himself strives to comprehend the wisdom of the common people.

It is hardly accidental that the great artist chose for the most significant of his works an era in which the direct feeling of the people saved the state at a critical moment, when all “rational” organized forces turned out to be powerless and insolvent. Tolstoy sees the genius of Kutuzov as a commander only in the fact that he alone understood the power of spontaneous popular feeling and surrendered to this powerful current without reasoning. Tolstoy himself, like his Kutuzov, during this period was also at the mercy of the great elements. The people, their immediate feelings, their views on the world, their faith - all this, like a mighty ocean wave, carried with it the artist’s soul, dictated to him cruel maxims about “the first club that came his way”, about contempt for the vanquished. This is whole, and, therefore, this is the law of life.

In the era of “War and Peace,” an ocean of spiritual integrity swayed before Tolstoy’s admiring gaze, just as powerful, just as spontaneous and just as exciting. He was inspired by the mood of another people who, at the dawn of Christianity, under the roar of the collapsed old world, were preparing to conquer humanity not with a feeling of enmity and revenge, but with the teaching of love and meekness.

the only direction worthy of a person is towards activism, towards direct intervention in the life of human will and reason.

Tolstoy saw this and himself ridiculed his attempts, but, having ridiculed them, he again took up the same thing - that is, he wanted to process reality in the interests of his tendency.

Personally, Tolstoy always sought to separate himself from all people, to stand above them - this is the only motivation of a person who knows that he is the person who completes an entire period in the history of his country, a person who embodies everything that he has achieved in his hundred years. team, its class.

IV. SUMMARIZING. COMMENTING ON RATINGS.

Thus, the documents indicate that Tolstoy did not have the gift of easy creativity, he was one of the most sublime, most patient, most diligent workers. Two thousand pages of the huge epic “War and Peace” were rewritten seven times; sketches and notes filled large drawers. Every historical detail, every semantic detail is substantiated by similar documents.

The opinions of critics on the novel “War and Peace” by L.N. were also not uniform. Tolstoy. But basically the work was highly appreciated; it was noted for its fidelity to reality, deep knowledge of life and the subtle observation of the artist, who can not only picturesquely reproduce the life of peasants, but also convey “their view of things.”

V. HOMEWORK EXPLANATION.

1. Review volume III, highlight the main events of the novel.

2. Individual tasks - messages (brief retelling with elements of analysis): a) Kutuzov and Napoleon in the assessment of critics of the first half of the 20th century; b) Patriotism and heroism of the people in the Patriotic War of 1812.

A lot has been written about Leo Tolstoy, too much. It may seem pretentious to want to say something new about him. And yet it must be admitted that the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy was not subjected to sufficiently in-depth study, little was assessed on its merits, regardless of utilitarian points of view, from its usefulness for liberal-radical or conservative-reactionary purposes. Some, with utilitarian-tactical goals, praised L. Tolstoy as a true Christian, others, often with equally utilitarian-tactical goals, anathematized him as a servant of the Antichrist. In such cases, Tolstoy was used as a means to their own ends, and thus they insulted a man of genius. The memory of him was especially insulted after his death; his death itself was turned into a utilitarian tool. The life of L. Tolstoy, his quest, his rebellious criticism is a great, worldwide phenomenon; it requires an assessment sub specie of eternal value rather than temporary utility. We would like Leo Tolstoy's religion to be examined and assessed without regard to Tolstoy's accounts with the ruling spheres and without regard to the feud between the Russian intelligentsia and the Church. We do not want, like many of the intelligentsia, to recognize L. Tolstoy as a true Christian precisely because he was excommunicated from the Church by the Holy Synod, just as we do not want, for the same reason, to see in Tolstoy only a servant of the devil. We are essentially interested in whether L. Tolstoy was a Christian, how he related to Christ, what was the nature of his religious consciousness? Clerical utilitarianism and intellectual utilitarianism are equally alien to us and equally prevent us from understanding and appreciating Tolstoy’s religious consciousness. From the extensive literature about L. Tolstoy, it is necessary to highlight the very remarkable and very valuable work of D.S. Merezhkovsky “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky,” in which for the first time the religious element and religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy were essentially examined and Tolstoy’s paganism was revealed. True, Merezhkovsky used Tolstoy too much to further his religious concept, but this did not prevent him from telling the truth about Tolstoy’s religion, which will not be obscured by Merezhkovsky’s later utilitarian-tactical articles about Tolstoy. Yet Merezhkovsky’s work remains the only one for assessing Tolstoy’s religion.

First of all, it must be said about L. Tolstoy that he is a brilliant artist and a brilliant personality, but he is not a genius or even a gifted religious thinker. He was not given the gift of expression in words, of expressing his religious life, his religious quest. A powerful religious element raged within him, but it was wordless. Brilliant religious experiences and untalented, banal religious thoughts! Every attempt by Tolstoy to express in words, to logicize his religious element, gave rise only to banal, gray thoughts. In essence, Tolstoy of the first period, before the revolution, and Tolstoy of the second period, after the revolution, are one and the same Tolstoy. The worldview of the young Tolstoy was banal; he always wanted to “be like everyone else.” And the worldview of the brilliant husband Tolstoy is just as banal, he also wants to “be like everyone else.” The only difference is that in the first period “everyone” is a secular society, and in the second period “everyone” is men, the working people. And throughout his entire life, L. Tolstoy, who thought banally and wanted to become like secular people or peasants, was not only not like everyone else, but was like no one, was the only one, was a genius. And the religion of the Logos and the philosophy of the Logos were always alien to this genius; his religious element always remained wordless, not expressed in the Word, in consciousness. L. Tolstoy is exceptional, but he is original and brilliant, and he is also extremely banal and limited. This is the striking antinomy of Tolstoy.

On the one hand, L. Tolstoy amazes with his organic secularism, his exclusive belonging to the life of the nobility. In "Childhood, Adolescence and Youth" the origins of L. Tolstoy are revealed, his secular vanity, his ideal of man comme il faut. This leaven was in Tolstoy. From “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” one can see how close to his nature was the secular table of ranks, the customs and prejudices of the world, how he knew all the bends of this special world, how difficult it seemed to him to overcome this element. He longed to leave the secular circle for nature (“Cossacks”) as a person too connected with this circle. In Tolstoy one can feel the whole weight of the world, the life of the nobility, the whole force of the life law of gravity, attraction to the earth. There is no airiness or lightness in it. He wants to be a wanderer and cannot be a wanderer, cannot become one until the last days of his life, chained to his family, to his clan, to his estate, to his circle. On the other hand, the same Tolstoy, with unprecedented power of negation and genius, rebels against “light” not only in the narrow, but also in the broad sense of the word, against godlessness and nihilism not only of the entire noble society, but also of the entire “cultured” society. His rebellious criticism turns into a denial of all history, all culture. From childhood, imbued with secular vanity and convention, worshiping the ideal of “comme il faut” and “being like everyone else,” he knew no mercy in flagellating the lies that society lives by, in tearing off the veils from all conventions. The noble, secular society and the ruling classes must go through Tolstoy's denial in order to purify themselves. Tolstoy's denial remains a great truth for this society. And here is another Tolstoy antinomy. On the one hand, one is struck by Tolstoy’s peculiar materialism, his apology for animal life, his exceptional penetration into the life of the mental body and the alienness of his life of the spirit. This animal materialism is felt not only in his artistic work, where he reveals an exceptionally brilliant gift of insight into the primary elements of life, into the animal and plant processes of life, but also in his religious and moral preaching. L. Tolstoy preaches sublime, moralistic materialism, animal and plant happiness as the implementation of the highest, divine law of life. When he talks about a happy life, there is not a single sound from him that even hints at a spiritual life. There is only spiritual life, mental and physical life. And the same L. Tolstoy turns out to be a supporter of extreme spirituality, denies the flesh, preaches asceticism. His religious and moral teaching turns out to be some kind of unprecedented and impossible, sublimely moralistic and ascetic materialism, some kind of spiritualistic animality. His consciousness is suppressed and limited by the mental-physical plane of existence and cannot break through into the kingdom of the spirit.

And another Tolstoyan antinomy. In everything and always, L. Tolstoy amazes with his sobriety, rationality, practicality, utilitarianism, lack of poetry and dreams, misunderstanding of beauty and dislike, turning into persecution of beauty. And this unpoetic, sober-utilitarian persecutor of beauty was one of the greatest artists in the world; He who denied beauty left us creations of eternal beauty. Aesthetic barbarism and rudeness were combined with artistic genius. No less antinomic is the fact that L. Tolstoy was an extreme individualist, so antisocial that he never understood social forms of struggle against evil and social forms of creative creation of life and culture, that he denied history, and this antisocial individualist did not feel personality and, in essence, denied personality, was entirely in the element of the race. We will even see that the absence of sensation and consciousness of the individual is associated with the fundamental features of his worldview and worldview. The extreme individualist in War and Peace delightedly showed the world a baby's diaper, soiled in green and yellow, and discovered that the self-consciousness of the individual had not yet conquered the tribal element in him. Isn’t it antinomic that the one who is completely chained to the immanent world and cannot even imagine another world denies the world and world values ​​with unprecedented audacity and radicalism? Isn’t it antinomic that a man full of passions, angry to the point that when his estate was searched, he went into a rage, demanded that this matter be reported to the sovereign, that he be given public satisfaction, threatened to leave Russia forever, that a man this one preached the vegetarian, anemic ideal of non-resistance to evil? Isn’t it antinomic that he was Russian to the core, with a national manly-lordly face, and preached an Anglo-Saxon religiosity alien to the Russian people? This brilliant man spent his entire life searching for the meaning of life, thought about death, did not know satisfaction, and he was almost devoid of feeling and consciousness of the transcendental, was limited by the horizons of the immanent world. Finally, the most striking Tolstoy antinomy: a preacher of Christianity, exclusively occupied with the Gospel and teachings of Christ, he was so alien to the religion of Christ, as few were alien after the appearance of Christ, he was deprived of any feeling of the personality of Christ. This amazing, incomprehensible antinomy of L. Tolstoy, to which not enough attention has yet been paid, is the secret of his brilliant personality, the secret of his fate, which cannot be completely solved. The hypnosis of Tolstoy's simplicity, his almost biblical style, cover up this antinomy and create the illusion of integrity and clarity. L. Tolstoy is destined to play a big role in the religious revival of Russia and the whole world: with the power of genius he turned modern people back to religion and the religious meaning of life, he marked the crisis of historical Christianity, he is a weak, feeble religious thinker, by his element and consciousness alien to the mysteries of the religion of Christ, he is a rationalist. This rationalist, a preacher of rational-utilitarian well-being, demanded madness from the Christian world in the name of consistent fulfillment of the teachings and commandments of Christ and forced the Christian world to think about its non-Christian life, full of lies and hypocrisy. He is a terrible enemy of Christianity and the forerunner of the Christian revival. The brilliant personality and life of Leo Tolstoy bears the stamp of some special mission.

Leo Tolstoy's attitude and worldview are completely non-Christian and pre-Christian in all periods of his life. This must be said decisively, regardless of any utilitarian considerations. A great genius first of all demands that the essential truth be told about him. L. Tolstoy is all about the Old Testament, about paganism, about the Father’s Hypostasis. Tolstoy's religion is not a new Christianity, it is an Old Testament, pre-Christian religion, preceding the Christian revelation of personality, the revelation of the second, Filial, Hypostasis. Self-awareness of the individual is as alien to L. Tolstoy as it could be alien only to a person of the pre-Christian era. He does not feel the uniqueness and uniqueness of every person and the mystery of his eternal destiny. For him, there is only a world soul, and not a separate personality; he lives in the element of the race, and not in the consciousness of the individual. The element of the race, the natural soul of the world, was revealed in the Old Testament and paganism, and the religion of the pre-Christian revelation of the Father's Hypostasis is connected with them. The self-awareness of a person and his eternal destiny are connected with the Christian revelation of the Filial Hypostasis, Logos, and Personality. Every person religiously resides in the mystical atmosphere of the Son Hypostasis, Christ, the Person. Before Christ, in the deep, religious sense of the word, there is no person yet. The individual finally recognizes himself only in the religion of Christ. The tragedy of personal fate is known only to the Christian era. L. Tolstoy does not feel the Christian problem of personality at all, he does not see the face, the face drowns for him in the natural soul of the world. Therefore, he does not feel or see the face of Christ. He who does not see any face does not see the face of Christ, for truly in Christ, in His Sonly Hypostasis, every person abides and is conscious of itself. The very consciousness of the face is connected with the Logos, and not with the soul of the world. L. Tolstoy has no Logos and therefore no personality for him, no individualist for him. And all individualists who do not know the Logos do not know personality; their individualism is faceless and resides in the natural soul of the world. We will see how alien the Logos is to Tolstoy, how alien Christ is to him, he is not the enemy of Christ the Logos in the Christian era, he is simply blind and deaf, he is in the pre-Christian era. L. Tolstoy is cosmic, he is entirely in the soul of the world, in created nature, he penetrates into the depths of its elements, the primary elements. This is Tolstoy’s strength as an artist, unprecedented strength. And how different he is from Dostoevsky, who was anthropological, was entirely in Logos, and brought the self-awareness of the individual and his destiny to the extreme limits, to the point of illness. Connected with Dostoevsky's anthropologism, with an intense sense of personality and its tragedy, is his extraordinary sense of the personality of Christ, his almost frantic love for the Face of Christ. Dostoevsky had an intimate relationship with Christ, Tolstoy has no relationship with Christ, with Christ Himself. For Tolstoy, there is not Christ, but only the teachings of Christ, the commandments of Christ. The “pagan” Goethe felt Christ much more intimately, saw the Face of Christ much better than Tolstoy. For L. Tolstoy, the face of Christ is obscured by something impersonal, elemental, and general. He hears the commandments of Christ and does not hear Christ Himself. He is unable to understand that the only thing that is important is Christ Himself, that only His mysterious and close Personality saves us. The Christian revelation about the Person of Christ and about any Person is alien to him. He accepts Christianity impersonally, abstractly, without Christ, without any Face.

L. Tolstoy, like no one else before, longed to fulfill the will of the Father to the end. All his life he was tormented by a devouring thirst to fulfill the law of life of the Master who sent him into life. Such a thirst for fulfilling the commandment and the law cannot be found in anyone except Tolstoy. This is the main thing, the root thing in it. And L. Tolstoy believed, like no one else ever, that the will of the Father is easy to fulfill to the end; he did not want to admit the difficulties of fulfilling the commandments. Man himself, with his own strength, must and can fulfill the will of the Father. This fulfillment is easy, it gives happiness and well-being. The commandment, the law of life, is fulfilled exclusively in man’s relationship to the Father, in the religious atmosphere of the Father’s Hypostasis. L. Tolstoy wants to fulfill the will of the Father not through the Son, he does not know the Son and does not need the Son. Tolstoy does not need the religious atmosphere of sonship with God, the Filial Hypostasis, to fulfill the will of the Father: he himself, he himself will fulfill the will of the Father, he himself can. Tolstoy considers it immoral when the will of the Father is recognized as possible to be fulfilled only through the Son, Redeemer and Savior; he treats with disgust the idea of ​​redemption and salvation, i.e. treats with disgust not Jesus of Nazareth, but Christ the Logos, who sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. The religion of L. Tolstoy wants to know only the Father and does not want to know the Son; The Son prevents him from fulfilling the Father’s law on his own. L. Tolstoy consistently professes the religion of the law, the religion of the Old Testament. The religion of grace, the religion of the New Testament, is alien and unknown to him. Tolstoy is more likely a Buddhist than a Christian. Buddhism is a religion of self-salvation, just like the religion of Tolstoy. Buddhism does not know the identity of God, the identity of the Savior and the identity of the one being saved. Buddhism is a religion of compassion, not love. Many say that Tolstoy is a true Christian, and contrast him with the deceitful and hypocritical Christians with whom the world is full. But the existence of deceitful and hypocritical Christians who do deeds of hatred instead of deeds of love does not justify the abuse of words, playing with words that give rise to lies. One cannot be called a Christian to whom the very idea of ​​redemption, the very need for a Savior, was alien and disgusting, i.e. the idea of ​​Christ was alien and disgusting. The Christian world has never known such hostility to the idea of ​​redemption, such flagellation of it as immoral. In L. Tolstoy, the Old Testament religion of law rebelled against the New Testament religion of grace, against the mystery of redemption. L. Tolstoy wanted to turn Christianity into a religion of rules, law, moral commandment, i.e. into an Old Testament, pre-Christian religion that does not know grace, into a religion that not only does not know redemption, but also does not thirst for redemption, as the pagan world thirsted for it in its last days. Tolstoy says that it would be better if Christianity did not exist at all as a religion of redemption and salvation, that then it would be easier to fulfill the will of the Father. All religions, in his opinion, are better than the religion of Christ the Son of God, since they all teach how to live, give a law, a rule, a commandment; the religion of salvation transfers everything from man to the Savior and to the mystery of redemption. L. Tolstoy hates church dogmas because he wants a religion of self-salvation as the only moral one, the only one fulfilling the will of the Father, His law; These dogmas speak of salvation through the Savior, through His atoning sacrifice. For Tolstoy, the only salvation is the commandments of Christ, fulfilled by a person with his own strength. These commandments are the will of the Father. Tolstoy does not need Christ himself, who said about himself: “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he not only wants to do without Christ the Savior, but considers any appeal to the Savior, any help in fulfilling the will of the Father, immoral. For him, the Son does not exist, only the Father exists, that is, it means that he is entirely in the Old Testament and does not know the New Testament.

It seems easy to L. Tolstoy to fulfill to the end, with his own strength, the law of the Father, because he does not feel and does not know evil and sin. He does not know the irrational element of evil, and therefore he does not need redemption, he does not want to know the Redeemer. Tolstoy looks at evil rationalistically, Socratically, in evil he sees only ignorance, only a lack of rational consciousness, almost a misunderstanding; he denies the bottomless and irrational mystery of evil associated with the bottomless and irrational mystery of freedom. He who has realized the law of good, according to Tolstoy, will, by virtue of this consciousness alone, wish to fulfill it. Only those without consciousness do evil. Evil is rooted not in irrational will and not in irrational freedom, but in the absence of rational consciousness, in ignorance. You cannot do evil if you know what good is. Human nature is naturally good, sinless, and does evil only out of ignorance of the law. Good is reasonable. Tolstoy especially emphasizes this. Doing evil is stupid, there is no reason to do evil, only good leads to well-being in life, to happiness. It is clear that Tolstoy looks at good and evil the way Socrates did, i.e. rationalistically, identifying good with the reasonable, and evil with the unreasonable. A rational consciousness of the law given by the Father will lead to the final triumph of good and the elimination of evil. This will happen easily and joyfully; it will be accomplished by man’s own efforts. L. Tolstoy, like no one else, castigates the evil and lies of life and calls for moral maximalism, for the immediate and final implementation of good in everything. But his moral maximalism in relation to life is precisely connected with ignorance of evil. With a naivety that contains brilliant hypnosis, he does not want to know the power of evil, the difficulty of overcoming it, the irrational tragedy associated with it. At a superficial glance, it may seem that it was L. Tolstoy who saw the evil of life better than others and revealed it more deeply than others. But this is an optical illusion. Tolstoy saw that people did not fulfill the will of the Father who sent them into life; people seemed to him to be walking in darkness, since they live according to the law of the world, and not according to the Law of the Father, Whom they do not understand; people seemed unreasonable and crazy to him. But he saw no evil. If he had seen evil and comprehended its mystery, he would never have said that it is easy to fulfill the will of the Father to the end with the natural forces of man, that good can be defeated without atonement for evil. Tolstoy did not see sin; sin was for him only ignorance, only the weakness of the rational consciousness of the Father’s law. I did not know sin, I did not know redemption. Tolstoy’s denial of the burden of world history, Tolstoy’s maximalism, also stems from naive ignorance of evil and sin. Here we again come to what we have already said, where we started. L. Tolstoy does not see evil and sin because he does not see personality. The consciousness of evil and sin is associated with the consciousness of the individual, and the selfhood of the individual is recognized in connection with the consciousness of evil and sin, in connection with the individual’s resistance to natural elements, with the setting of boundaries. The lack of personal self-awareness in Tolstoy is precisely the lack of consciousness of evil and sin. He does not know the tragedy of personality—the tragedy of evil and sin. Evil is invincible by consciousness, reason, it is bottomlessly deeply embedded in a person. Human nature is not good, but fallen nature, human mind is fallen mind. A mystery of redemption is needed for evil to be defeated. But Tolstoy had some kind of naturalistic optimism.

L. Tolstoy, rebelling against the entire society, against the entire culture, came to extreme optimism, denying the depravity and sinfulness of nature. Tolstoy believes that God himself brings about good in the world and that there is no need to resist His will. Everything natural is good. In this, Tolstoy approaches Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the 18th century doctrine of the state of nature. Tolstoy's doctrine of non-resistance to evil is connected with the doctrine of the natural state as good and divine. Do not resist evil, and good will come true on its own without your activity; there will be a natural state in which the divine will, the highest law of life, which is God, is directly realized. L. Tolstoy's teaching about God is a special form of pantheism, for which there is no personality of God, just as there is no personality of man and no personality at all. For Tolstoy, God is not a being, but a law, a divine principle diffused throughout everything. For him, there is no such thing as a personal God, just as there is no personal immortality. His pantheistic consciousness does not allow the existence of two worlds: the natural-immanent world and the divine-transcendent world. Such pantheistic consciousness presupposes that good, i.e. the divine law of life is carried out in a natural-immanent way, without grace, without the entry of the transcendent into this world. Tolstoy's pantheism confuses God with the soul of the world. But his pantheism is not sustained and at times acquires a taste of deism. After all, God, Who gives the law of life, the commandment and does not give grace, help, is the dead God of deism. Tolstoy had a powerful feeling for God, but a weak consciousness of God; he spontaneously abides in the Father’s Hypostasis, but without the Logos. Just as L. Tolstoy believes in the goodness of the natural state and in the feasibility of good by natural forces, in which the divine will itself operates, he also believes in the infallibility, infallibility of natural reason. He does not see the decline of reason. Reason for him is sinless. He does not know that there is a mind that has fallen away from the Divine Mind, and there is a mind united with the Divine Mind. Tolstoy clings to naive, natural rationalism. He always appeals to reason, to the rational principle, and not to will, not to freedom. In Tolstoy's rationalism, at times very crude, the same faith in the blissful natural state, in the goodness of nature and the natural, is reflected. Tolstoy's rationalism and naturalism are unable to explain deviations from the rational and natural state, but human life is filled with these deviations and they give rise to that evil and that lie of life that Tolstoy so powerfully castigates. Why did humanity fall away from the good natural state and the rational law of life that reigned in this state? So, there was some kind of falling away, a fall? Tolstoy will say: all evil comes from the fact that people walk in darkness and do not know the divine law of life. But where does this darkness and ignorance come from? We inevitably come to the irrationality of evil as the ultimate mystery - the mystery of freedom. Tolstoy’s worldview has something in common with the worldview of Rozanov, who also knows no evil, who does not see the Face, who also believes in the goodness of the natural, who also abides in the Father’s Hypostasis and in the soul of the world, in the Old Testament and paganism. L. Tolstoy and V. Rozanov, with all their differences, are equally opposed to the religion of the Son, the religion of redemption.

There is no need to present in detail and systematically the teachings of L. Tolstoy in order to confirm the correctness of my characterization. Tolstoy's teachings are known to everyone too well. But usually books are read with bias and they see in them what they want to see, and do not see what they do not want to see. Therefore, I will still cite a number of the most striking passages that confirm my view of Tolstoy. First of all, I will take quotes from Tolstoy’s main religious and philosophical treatise “What Is My Faith.” “It has always seemed strange to me why Christ, knowing in advance that the fulfillment of His teachings is impossible by human forces alone, gave such clear and beautiful rules that apply directly to each individual person. Reading these rules, it always seemed to me that they apply directly to me , they only require execution from me.” “Christ says: “I find that the way of providing for your life is very stupid and bad. I offer you something completely different." “It is human nature to do what is best. And every teaching about people’s lives is only a teaching about what is best for people. If people are shown what is best for them to do, then how can they say that they want to do what better, but they can't? People can't do only what's worse, but they can't help but do what's better." “As soon as he (a person) reasons, he recognizes himself as reasonable, and, recognizing himself as reasonable, he cannot help but recognize what is reasonable and what is unreasonable. Reason does not command anything; it only illuminates.” “Only the false idea that there is something that is not, and there is no something that is, can lead people to such a strange denial of the feasibility of what, according to them, gives them good. The false idea that led to this is that , which is called the dogmatic Christian faith - the same one that is taught from childhood to all those who profess the church Christian faith according to various Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant catechisms." "It is stated that the dead continue to be alive. And since the dead can in no way confirm that they are dead or that they are alive, just as a stone cannot confirm that it can or cannot speak, then this the absence of denial is taken as proof and it is affirmed that people who died did not die. And with even greater solemnity and confidence it is affirmed that after Christ, by faith in Him, a person is freed from sin, i.e. that a person after Christ no longer needs illuminate his life with reason and choose what is best for him. He only needs to believe that Christ has redeemed him from sin, and then he is always sinless, i.e. absolutely good. According to this teaching, people should imagine that reason is powerless in them and that that is why they are sinless, i.e. cannot be mistaken." "What according to this teaching is called true life is personal, blessed, sinless and eternal life, i.e. such as no one has ever known and which does not exist." "Adam sinned for me, i.e. made a mistake (my italics)." L. Tolstoy says that, according to the teachings of the Christian Church, "true, sinless life is in faith, that is, in the imagination, that is, in madness (my italics)." And a few lines later adds about church teaching: “After all, this is complete madness”! “Church teaching gave the main meaning of people’s lives in that a person has the right to a blissful life and that this bliss is achieved not through human efforts, but by something external, and this is a worldview and became the basis of all our science and philosophy." "Reason, the one that illuminates our lives and forces us to change our actions, is not an illusion, and it can no longer be denied. Following reason to achieve good - this has always been the teaching of all the true teachers of mankind, and this is the entire teaching of Christ (emphasis added), and his, i.e. reason, it is absolutely impossible to deny with reason." "Before and after Christ, people said the same thing: that in man lives the divine light that came down from heaven, and this light is reason, and that it is necessary to serve him alone and in him alone seek good." "People heard everything, understood everything, but they just ignored what the teacher said only about the fact that people need to make their own happiness here, in the courtyard where they met, and imagined that this an inn, and somewhere there will be a real one." "No one will help if we don't help ourselves. And there is nothing to help ourselves. Just don’t expect anything from heaven or earth, but stop destroying yourself.” “To understand the teaching of Christ, you must first come to your senses, come to your senses.” “He never spoke about the carnal, personal resurrection.” “The concept of the future personal life did not come to us from Jewish teaching and not from the teaching of Christ. It entered church teaching completely from the outside.

Strange as it may seem, one cannot help but say that belief in a future personal life is a very base and crude idea, based on confusing sleep with death and characteristic of all savage peoples." "Christ contrasts personal life not with the afterlife, but with a common life, connected with the present, past and future life of all mankind." "The whole teaching of Christ is that His disciples, realizing the illusory nature of personal life, renounced it and transferred it to the life of all mankind, to the life of the Son of Man. The doctrine of the immortality of personal life not only does not call for renunciation of one’s personal life, but forever secures this personality... Life is life, and it must be used as best as possible. Living for yourself alone is unwise. And therefore, since there have been people, they have been looking for goals for life outside of themselves: they live for their child, for the people, for humanity, for everything that does not die with personal life." "If a person does not grab onto what saves him, then this only means that the person did not understand his position." "Faith comes only from the awareness of his position. Faith is based only on the rational consciousness of what is best to do, being in a certain position." "It is terrible to say: if there were no teaching of Christ at all with the church teaching that grew on it, then those who are now called Christians would be much closer to the teaching of Christ , i.e. to a reasonable teaching about the good of life than they are now. The moral teachings of the prophets of all mankind would not be closed to them." "Christ says that there is a true worldly calculation not to care about the life of the world... One cannot help but see that the position of the disciples of Christ should be better already because the disciples of Christ, doing everything good, will not arouse hatred in people." "Christ teaches exactly how we can get rid of our misfortunes and live happily." Listing the conditions for happiness, Tolstoy cannot find almost a single condition related to spiritual life; everything is connected with material, animal and plant life, such as physical labor, health, etc. “You should not be a martyr in the name of Christ, this is not what Christ teaches. He teaches us to stop torturing ourselves in the name of the false teachings of the world... Christ teaches people not to do stupid things (my italics). This is the simplest meaning of Christ’s teaching, accessible to everyone... Don’t do stupid things, and you will be better off.” “Christ... teaches us not to do what is worse, but to do what is best for us here, in this life." "The gap between the teaching about life and the explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul, who did not know the ethical teaching expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, and preached a metaphysical-kabbalistic theory alien to Christ." “All that is needed for a pseudo-Christian is the sacraments. But the believer himself does not perform the sacraments, but others perform them on him.” “The concept of a law, undoubtedly reasonable and obligatory in the inner consciousness of everyone, has been lost to such an extent in our society that the existence among the Jewish people of a law that determined their entire life, which would have been obligatory not by force, but by the inner consciousness of everyone, is considered exclusive property of one Jewish people." "I believe that the fulfillment of this teaching (of Christ) is easy and joyful."

I will cite more characteristic passages from L. Tolstoy’s letters. “So: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner,” I don’t really like now, because this is a selfish prayer, a prayer of personal weakness and therefore useless.” “I would really like to help you,” he writes to M.A. Sopotsko, “in the difficult and dangerous situation in which you are. I am talking about your desire to hypnotize yourself into the church faith. This is very dangerous, because with such hypnotization the most precious thing in a person is lost - his mind (my italics)." “You cannot allow into your faith with impunity anything unreasonable, anything that is not justified by reason. Reason is given from above to guide us. If we suppress it, it will not go unpunished. And the death of reason is the most terrible death (my italics) ". “The miracles of the Gospel could not happen, because they violate the laws of the mind through which we understand life; miracles are not needed, because they cannot convince anyone of anything. In the same wild and superstitious environment in which Christ lived and acted, legends about miracles could not fail to develop, as they, without ceasing, and in our time, easily develop in the superstitious environment of the people.” “You are asking me about Theosophy. I myself was interested in this teaching, but, unfortunately, it allows for the miraculous; and the slightest admission of the miraculous already deprives religion of the simplicity and clarity that are characteristic of the true attitude towards God and neighbor. And therefore in this teaching there may be "There is a lot of very good things, as in the teachings of the mystics, as in even spiritualism, but we must beware of it. The main thing, I think, is that those people who need the miraculous do not yet understand the completely true, simple Christian teaching." “In order for a person to know what He who sent him into the world wants from him, He put into him reason, through which a person can always, if he really wants this, know the will of God, i.e. , what the One who sent him into the world wants from him... If we adhere to what the mind tells us, then we will all unite, because everyone has one mind and only the mind unites people and does not interfere with the manifestation of the love inherent in people to friend". “Reason is older and more reliable than all scriptures and traditions, it was already there when there were no traditions and scriptures, and it was given to each of us directly from God. The words of the Gospel are that all sins will be forgiven, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit , in my opinion, relate directly to the statement that reason does not need to be trusted. Indeed, if you do not believe the reason given to us by God, then who should we trust? Is it really those people who want to force us to believe what is not in accordance with the reason given by God? and it’s impossible.” “It would be possible to ask God and come up with ways to improve ourselves only if we were given any obstacles to this matter and we ourselves did not have the strength to do this.” “We are here in this world , as in an inn, in which the owner arranged everything that we, travelers, definitely needed, and he himself left, leaving instructions on how we should behave in this temporary shelter. Everything we need is at our fingertips; So what else should we come up with and what should we ask for? If only we could do what is prescribed to us. So in our spiritual world, everything we need is given to us, and the matter is only up to us." "There is no more immoral and harmful teaching than that a person cannot improve on his own." "The perverse and absurd concept that the human mind cannot approach the truth through his own efforts, stems from the same terrible superstition as the one according to which a person cannot approach fulfilling the will of God without outside help. The essence of this superstition is that the complete, perfect truth is supposedly revealed by God himself... Superstition is terrible... A person stops believing in the only means of knowing the truth - the efforts of his mind." "Apart from reason, no truth can enter the human soul." "The rational and the moral always coincide." "Belief in communication with the souls of the dead to such an extent, not to mention the fact that I do not need it at all, to such an extent violates everything that is based on reason, my worldview, that, if I heard the voice of spirits or saw their manifestation, I would turn to a psychiatrist, asking him to help my obvious brain disorder." "You say,” writes L.N. priest S.K., that since man is a person, then God is also a Person. It seems to me that a person’s consciousness of himself as a person is a person’s consciousness of his limitations. Any limitation is incompatible with the concept of God. If we assume that God is a Person, then the natural consequence of this will be, as has always happened in all primitive religions, the attribution of human properties to God... Such an understanding of God as a Person and His law, expressed in any book, is completely impossible for me." It would be possible to cite many more passages from various works of L. Tolstoy to confirm my view of Tolstoy’s religion, but that’s enough.

It is clear that the religion of Leo Tolstoy is a religion of self-salvation, salvation by natural and human forces. Therefore, this religion does not need a Savior, does not know the Sons of the Hypostasis. L. Tolstoy wants to be saved by virtue of his personal merits, and not by the atoning power of the bloody sacrifice made by the Son of God for the sins of the world. L. Tolstoy’s pride is that he does not need God’s gracious help to fulfill God’s will. The fundamental thing about L. Tolstoy is that he does not need redemption, since he does not know sin, does not see the invincibility of evil in a natural way. He does not need a Redeemer and Savior and is stranger, like no one else, to the religion of atonement and salvation. He considers the idea of ​​redemption to be the main obstacle to the implementation of the law of the Father-Master. Christ, as the Savior and Redeemer, as “the way, the truth and the life,” is not only unnecessary, but interferes with the fulfillment of the commandments, which Tolstoy considers Christian. L. Tolstoy understands the New Testament as a law, a commandment, a rule of the Master Father, i.e. understands it as the Old Testament. He does not yet know the secret of the New Testament, that in the Son's Hypostasis, in Christ, there is no longer law and subordination, but there is grace and freedom. L. Tolstoy, as being exclusively in the Father's Hypostasis, in the Old Testament and paganism, could never comprehend the mystery that not the commandments of Christ, not the teaching of Christ, but Christ Himself, His mysterious Person, is “the truth, the way and the life.” The religion of Christ is the teaching about Christ, not the teaching of Christ. The doctrine of Christ, i.e. The religion of Christ has always been madness for L. Tolstoy, he treated it like a pagan. Here we come to another, no less clear side of L. Tolstoy’s religion. This is a religion within the limits of reason, a rationalistic religion that rejects all mysticism, every sacrament, every miracle as contrary to reason, as madness. This rational religion is close to rationalistic Protestantism, Kant and Harnack. Tolstoy is a crude rationalist in relation to dogmas, his criticism of dogmas is elementary and rational. He triumphantly rejects the dogma of the Trinity of the Deity on the simple grounds that he cannot be equal. He directly says that the religion of Christ the Son of God, Redeemer and Savior is madness. He is an irreconcilable enemy of the miraculous and mysterious. He rejects the very idea of ​​revelation as nonsense. It is almost incredible that such a brilliant artist and a brilliant person, such a religious nature, was obsessed with such crude and elementary rationalism, such a demon of rationality. It is monstrous that such a giant as L. Tolstoy reduced Christianity to the fact that Christ teaches not to do stupid things, teaches well-being on earth. The brilliant religious nature of L. Tolstoy is in the grip of elementary rationality and elementary utilitarianism. As a religious person, he is a dumb genius who does not have the gift of the Word. And this incomprehensible mystery of his personality is connected with the fact that his entire being resides in the Father’s Hypostasis and in the soul of the world, outside the Son’s Hypostasis, outside the Logos. L. Tolstoy was not only a religious nature, burning with religious thirst all his life, he was also a mystical nature, in a special sense. There is mysticism in “War and Peace”, in “Cossacks”, in its relation to the primary elements of life; there is mysticism in his very life, in his destiny. But this mysticism never meets the Logos, i.e. can never be realized. In his religious and mystical life, Tolstoy never encounters Christianity. The non-Christian nature of Tolstoy is artistically revealed by Merezhkovsky. But what Merezhkovsky wanted to say about Tolstoy also remained outside of Logos, and the Christian question of personality was not posed by him.

It is very easy to confuse Tolstoy’s asceticism with Christian asceticism. It has often been said that in his moral asceticism, L. Tolstoy is flesh and blood of historical Christianity. Some said this in defense of Tolstoy, others blamed him for it. But it must be said that L. Tolstoy’s asceticism has very little in common with Christian asceticism. If we take Christian asceticism in its mystical essence, then it has never been a preaching of the impoverishment of life, simplification, or descent. Christian asceticism always has in mind the infinitely rich mystical world, the highest level of existence. There is nothing mystical in Tolstoy’s moral asceticism, there is no wealth of other worlds. How different is the asceticism of poor St. Francis of God from Tolstoy’s simplification! Franciscanism is full of beauty, and there is nothing in it like Tolstoy’s moralism. From St. Francis was born the beauty of the early Renaissance. Poverty was for him a Beautiful Lady. Tolstoy did not have a Beautiful Lady. He preached the impoverishment of life in the name of a happier, more prosperous order of life on earth. The idea of ​​a messianic feast, which mystically inspires Christian asceticism, is alien to him. The moral asceticism of L. Tolstoy is a populist asceticism, so characteristic of Russia. We have developed a special type of asceticism, not mystical asceticism, but populist asceticism, asceticism for the good of the people on earth. This asceticism is found in the lordly form, among the repentant nobles, and in the intellectual form, among the populist intellectuals. This asceticism is usually associated with the persecution of beauty, metaphysics and mysticism as an illicit, immoral luxury. This religious asceticism leads to iconoclasm, to the denial of the symbolism of the cult. L. Tolstoy was an iconoclast. Icon veneration and all the symbolism of the cult associated with it seemed immoral, an unaffordable luxury, prohibited by his moral and ascetic consciousness. L. Tolstoy does not admit that sacred luxury and sacred wealth exist. To the brilliant artist, beauty seemed to be an immoral luxury, a wealth not permitted by the Master of life. The owner of life gave the law of good, and only good is valuable, only good is divine. The owner of life did not set before man and the world an ideal image of beauty as the supreme goal of existence. Beauty comes from the evil one, from the Father only the moral law. L. Tolstoy is a persecutor of beauty in the name of good. He asserts the exclusive predominance of goodness not only over beauty, but also over truth. In the name of exceptional good, he denies not only aesthetics, but also metaphysics and mysticism as ways of knowing the truth. Both beauty and truth are luxury, wealth. The feast of aesthetics and the feast of metaphysics are prohibited by the Master of life. One must live by the simple law of goodness, by exceptional morality. Never before has moralism been taken to such extreme limits as in Tolstoy. Moralism becomes terrible, it makes you suffocate. After all, beauty and truth are no less divine than goodness, no less valuable. Good does not dare to dominate truth and beauty; beauty and truth are no less close to God, to the Source, than good. Exclusive, abstract moralism, taken to the extreme limits, raises the question of what there can be demonic good, good that destroys being, lowering the level of being. If there can be demonic beauty and demonic knowledge, then there can also be demonic goodness. Christianity, taken in its mystical depth, not only does not deny beauty, but creates unprecedented, new beauty, not only does not deny gnosis, but creates a higher gnosis. Rationalists and positivists rather deny beauty and gnosis and often do this in the name of illusory good. L. Tolstoy's moralism is associated with his religion of self-salvation, with the denial of the ontological meaning of redemption. But Tolstoy’s ascetic moralism with only one side is directed towards the impoverishment and suppression of existence; with its other side it is turned towards the new world and boldly denies evil.

In Tolstoy's moralism there is an inert conservative beginning and a revolutionary rebellious beginning. L. Tolstoy with unprecedented strength and radicalism rebelled against the hypocrisy of a quasi-Christian society, against the lies of a quasi-Christian state. He brilliantly exposed the monstrous untruth and deadness of official, official Christianity, he put a mirror in front of the feigned and deathly Christian society and made people with a sensitive conscience horrified. As a religious critic and as a seeker, L. Tolstoy will forever remain great and dear. But Tolstoy's strength in the cause of religious revival is exclusively negatively critical. He did an enormous amount to awaken from religious slumber, but not to deepen religious consciousness. It must be remembered, however, that L. Tolstoy addressed his searches and criticism to a society that was either openly atheistic, or hypocritical and feignedly Christian, or simply indifferent. This society could not be damaged religiously; it was completely damaged. And the deathly everyday, external ritual Orthodoxy was useful and important to disturb and excite. L. Tolstoy is the most consistent and most extreme anarchist-idealist that the history of human thought has ever known. It is very easy to refute Tolstoy's anarchism; this anarchism combines extreme rationalism with real madness. But the world needed Tolstoy's anarchic rebellion. The “Christian” world has become so deceitful in its foundations that an irrational need for such a rebellion has arisen. I think that it is Tolstoy’s anarchism, which is essentially untenable, that is purifying and its significance is enormous. Tolstoy's anarchic rebellion marks a crisis in historical Christianity, a turning point in the life of the Church. This revolt anticipates the coming Christian revival. And it remains a mystery to us, rationally incomprehensible, why the cause of Christian revival was served by a person alien to Christianity, who was entirely in the element of the Old Testament, pre-Christian. Tolstoy's final fate remains a mystery, known only to God. It's not for us to judge. L. Tolstoy himself excommunicated himself from the Church, and the fact of his excommunication by the Russian Holy Synod pales in comparison to this fact. We must say directly and openly that L. Tolstoy has nothing in common with Christian consciousness, that the “Christianity” he invented has nothing in common with that genuine Christianity, for which the image of Christ is invariably preserved in the Church of Christ. But we dare not say anything about the final secret of his final relationship with the Church and what happened to him at the hour of death. We know from humanity that with his criticism, his quests, his life, L. Tolstoy awakened a world that had religiously fallen asleep and become dead. Several generations of Russian people passed through Tolstoy, grew up under his influence, and God forbid that this influence be identified with “Tolstoyism,” a very limited phenomenon. Without Tolstoy's criticism and Tolstoy's quest, we would have been worse and would have woken up later. Without L. Tolstoy, the question of the vital rather than rhetorical meaning of Christianity would not have become so acute. The Old Testament truth of Tolstoy was needed by the lying Christian world. We also know that Russia is unthinkable without L. Tolstoy and that Russia cannot refuse him. We love Leo Tolstoy like our homeland. Our grandfathers, our land - in "War and Peace". He is our wealth, our luxury, he is the one who did not love wealth and luxury. The life of L. Tolstoy is a brilliant fact in the life of Russia. And everything ingenious is providential. The recent “departure” of L. Tolstoy excited the whole of Russia and the whole world. It was a brilliant "departure". This was the end of Tolstoy's anarchist revolt. Before his death, L. Tolstoy became a wanderer, tore himself away from the earth to which he was chained with all the burden of everyday life. At the end of his life, the great old man turned to mysticism, mystical notes sound stronger and drown out his rationalism. He was preparing for the final coup.

Introduction

Today we can say that the epic novel “War and Peace” is a valuable asset of world literature. Not many works by famous writers could compare with the richness of the novel's content. This reflects a historical event of enormous significance, and the deep foundations of the national life of Russia, and the fate of individual people.

In modern society, amid moral desolation, it is very important to turn to life examples presented in Russian classics. The epic novel War and Peace can convey to us irreplaceable values ​​that modern man may lack. The pages of this work exalt ideals such as nobility, truth, family unity, obedience, respect and, of course, love. To develop spiritually, you should pay attention to these principles.

The relevance of the chosen topic is manifested in the possibility of applying some aspects revealed in the work in practice in modern life.

The purpose of the work is to understand the meaning of creating an epic novel and to study its features.

Presented tasks:

1. Determine the idea of ​​the novel, understand what the author of the work wanted to convey.

2. Present the context of events and the conditions for the creation of the novel.

3. Reveal the development of the main characters of the novel.

4. Assess the global significance of the epic novel from the point of view of famous classics and literary scholars of the 19th century.

When creating this work, materials from various researchers of Leo Tolstoy’s work were used, who examined the epic novel “War and Peace” from various angles. In the works of various authors, the moral ideal of the heroes, the style of the work were studied, and characteristics of the main events and their meaning were given. Also, when preparing the work, materials from correspondence and writings of writers, critical essays by Russian and foreign contemporaries were studied. All this together made it possible to present a complete picture of the work, its place in world literature, and its significance for contemporaries and descendants.

1 The history of the creation of the epic novel

1.1 Idea and concept of the work

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is one of the most outstanding personalities in Russian life of the last two centuries. Already at an early stage of his work they spoke of him as a future master of words. “I received new Russian magazines - a lot of interesting things. A little story by gr. Tolstoy (“Blizzard”) is a miracle, in general a huge movement,” wrote A. Herzen M.K. Reichel back in 1856

However, the end of the 50s is characterized by a crisis in the creative biography of Leo Tolstoy. A brilliant beginning (“Childhood”, 1852), Sevastopol essays (1855), success among St. Petersburg writers turned out to be recent, but a thing of the past. Almost everything that Tolstoy writes in the second half of the 50s is not successful. "Lucerne" (1857) was received with bewilderment, "Albert" (1858) failed, and there was sudden disappointment in "Family Happiness" (1859), which was being worked on with enthusiasm. This is followed by eight years of fruitless work, the result of which is merciless: “Now, as a writer, I am no longer good for anything. I don’t write and haven’t written since “Family Happiness” and, it seems, I won’t write. - Why is that? Long and difficult to tell. The main thing is that life is short, and it’s shameful to spend it in adulthood writing stories like the ones I wrote. You can and should and want to get down to business. If the content were good, something that yearned, asked to come out, gave insolence, pride, strength, then it would be so. And to write stories that are very sweet and pleasant to read at 31 years old, by God, I can’t raise my hands.”

In search of peace, Tolstoy moves to Yasnaya Polyana, “home.” Here, living a quiet and calm life (in 1862 he married S.A. Bers), the writer communicated more and more with the peasants. As a peace mediator, he settles land disputes after the abolition of serfdom (“Mediation is interesting and exciting, but the bad thing is that all the nobility hated me with all the strength of their souls...”). Classes are going on with peasant children at the Yasnaya Polyana school (“The urgent need of the Russian people is public education”). Tolstoy tries not to engage in literary activities: “I live through the winter well. There are a lot of things to do, and the classes are good, not like writing stories.”

However, the need to write still takes over. In 1862, “Cossacks,” a story begun ten years earlier, was completed, the story “Polikushka” was written, and “Kholstomer” was begun, which would be completed only twenty years later. But through this work, the main idea grows imperceptibly and inevitably. In February 1863, S.A. Tolstaya would write to her sister Tatyana: “Leva has begun a new novel.” Thus began a book that would take seven years of incessant labor under the best living conditions, a book that would contain years of historical research.

To understand what served as the prerequisites for the creation of the greatest masterpiece, let us return to the beginning of L.N.’s creative activity. Tolstoy.

In the early days for the writer, the “main interest” of creativity lay in the history of characters, in their continuous and complex movement and development. V.G. Korolenko, who arrived in Yasnaya Polyana in 1910, remarked: “You have given the types of changing people...”. – In response to L.N. Tolstoy clarified: “We can talk about the ability to guess with a direct feeling a type that is not changing, but moving.” Tolstoy believed in the “power of development.” The main character’s ability to overcome the usual framework of existence, not to become stagnant, but to constantly change and renew itself, to “flow” contains the guarantee of change, provides a solid moral support and, at the same time, the ability to withstand the attacks of the environment. This was a fundamental feature of the writer’s creative quest. L.N. Tolstoy believed that it was important not only to change depending on external changes, but also to grow morally, improve, and resist the world, relying on the strength of one’s own soul.

Within the genre framework of the narrative about childhood, adolescence and youth, there was no room for historical excursions and philosophical reflections on Russian life, which occupied such an important place in War and Peace. However, the writer found an opportunity to express all the general disorder and anxiety that his hero - like himself during the years of work on the first book - experienced as a mental conflict, as internal discord and anxiety.

L.N. Tolstoy did not paint a self-portrait, but rather a portrait of a peer who belonged to that generation of Russian people whose youth fell in the middle of the century. The War of 1812 and Decembrism were the recent past for them, the Crimean War was the immediate future; in the present they found nothing solid, nothing on which they could rely with confidence and hope. All this was reflected in Tolstoy’s early work and gave an imprint for the future.

In the story “Adolescence” the writer begins to express his feelings through images and landscapes. In Tolstoy's narrative, landscapes are far from impersonal; they are dramatized and animated. This technique, widely developed by writers of the late 19th century, especially perfected by Chekhov, is common in the early Tolstoy. These landscape sketches foreshadow the paintings of War and Peace.

During the period of work on the first book, when Tolstoy’s aesthetic views, poetics, and style were formed, his attitude to various directions and schools of Russian literature was also determined. His reading circle included French (Lamartine, Rousseau), German (Goethe), English (Stern, Dickens) and, of course, Russian writers. As a reader, Tolstoy early accepted the tradition of Russian realistic prose and even argued for it in the creative manner of Romanticism.

Each time promising the reader to continue the story at the end, Tolstoy hardly imagines that none of his books will receive a traditional ending. Apparently, only at the time of “War and Peace” did he understand that the open ending is a literary law, first founded by Pushkin and then approved by his successors. Thus, the writer left the right to decide the fate of the heroes to the readers, only hinting at a possible outcome.

The theme of war, expressed in the epic novel, arose over many years. The author himself experienced the war impressions so strongly that this was embodied in the pages of the work. Without his own study of the simple realities of war, human behavior in war, which is carried out by the writer on the material of the Crimean campaign in Sevastopol essays, of course, there could not be “War and Peace”. Among these realities, first of all, is the problem of man in war. In the article “A few words about the book “War and Peace”,” published in 1868, during the completion of the novel, Tolstoy explained his depiction of the war. In Sevastopol, the writer fully learned what danger and military valor are, how the fear of being killed is experienced and what the courage is that conquers and destroys this fear. He saw that the appearance of war is inhuman, that it manifests itself “in blood, in suffering, in death,” but also that in battles the moral qualities of the fighting parties are tested and the main features of the national character emerge.

In the Caucasus and Sevastopol, Tolstoy got to know better and fell in love with ordinary Russian people - soldiers and officers. He felt like a part of a huge whole - a people, an army defending their land. In one of the drafts of the novel “War and Peace,” he wrote about this feeling of involvement in a common action, a military feat: “This is a feeling of pride, the joy of expectation and, at the same time, insignificance, the consciousness of brute force - and supreme power.” The main thing that Tolstoy saw and learned in the war was the psychology of different types of soldiers, different - both base and sublime - feelings that guided the behavior of officers. The truth, which is so difficult to tell about the war, paves a wide path on the pages of the epic about the Patriotic War. In this truth, the disclosure of psychology and emotional experiences means a lot. It is in war stories that Tolstoy’s “dialectics of the soul” includes in the field of study ordinary people, as if not at all inclined to in-depth work. Revealing his hero, Tolstoy does not erase the individual in a person, but, on the contrary, reveals him in all his richness. He shows the general experiences of the people through individual characters, while not typifying them, but endowing them with special properties inherent only to them.

Following the Caucasian stories, the writer continues to explore human behavior in war, this time in the most difficult conditions of unsuccessful battles. He bows “before this silent, unconscious greatness and fortitude, this modesty before one’s own dignity.” In the faces, posture, movements of the soldiers and sailors defending Sevastopol, he sees “the main features that make up the strength of the Russian.” It celebrates the resilience of ordinary people and shows the failure of “heroes” - or rather those who want to seem like heroes. Here the world of repulsions and confrontations is much richer than the world of attractions. In contrast, ostentatious courage and modest courage are placed in contrast. Moreover, entire regions of life, social strata, and not just individuals are opposed. At the same time, the writer shows people with their own characters, habits, and manners. He conveys with feeling the “wrong” colloquial speech of the soldiers. Tolstoy, both in his youth and in the later days of his work, knew and loved simple folk language. In his works this looked like an embellishment of speech, and not as a flaw.

The defense of Sevastopol and the victory over Napoleon in 1812 for Tolstoy are events of different historical scales, but equal in moral outcome - the “consciousness of indomitability” of the people. Indomitability, despite the different outcome: Sevastopol, after almost a year of heroic defense, was surrendered, and the war with Napoleon ended with its expulsion from Russia. The point of this comparison is that ordinary people, sacrificing themselves for a common cause, deserve more honors than “heroes.” Here, perhaps, there is even a feature of the moral perfection of the common people.

It cannot be said that in ideological terms, “War and Peace” was prepared by Tolstoy’s pedagogical articles, just as in artistic terms, the work was prepared throughout the writer’s entire creative life. In the articles of the early 60s, in addition to pedagogical issues (as Tolstoy is known to have been involved in teaching peasant children), the writer raises the most important, from his point of view, question - about the right of the people to decide the matter of their education, as well as the entire historical development, about social reorganization - by introducing people to education. Later in his work he touches on this issue: “You say schools,<…>teachings and so on, that is, you want to take him [the man] out of his animal state and give him moral needs. But it seems to me that the only possible happiness is animal happiness, and you want to deprive it of it...”

The strength of Tolstoy's position is his deeply convinced democracy. Tolstoy speaks passionately and strongly about his love for the people and peasant children, about their advantages over city children:

“The advantage of intelligence and knowledge is always on the side of a peasant boy who has never studied, in comparison with a lordly boy who has studied with a tutor from the age of five”;

“The people of the people are fresher, stronger, more powerful, more independent, fairer, more humane and, most importantly, more necessary than people, no matter how they were brought up”;

“... in the generations of workers lies more strength and more consciousness of truth and goodness than in the generations of banker barons and professors.”

Despite the fact that the main events are built around representatives of high society, the theme of the people, their simple Russian soul, is constantly found on the pages of War and Peace. This characterizes the need of the soul of Tolstoy himself to express his affection for ordinary people.

As a result of the first chapter, I would like to note that the epic novel “War and Peace” was not born thanks to an instant idea. It became the meaningful fruit of the writer’s long creative life. This was already the creation of an established, experienced and life-taught author. It should be noted that the work has a solid and solid foundation, based on Tolstoy’s personal experiences, on his memories and reflections. All the bright episodes of the writer’s life, his moral principles, which arose in the early days of his work, were reflected in the great masterpiece of the Russian classic “War and Peace”. Next, I would like to touch on some of the features of creating an epic novel.

1.2 Birth of the epic novel

The meaning of a completed work becomes clearer when we know its history, the path taken by the writer before starting work, and the creative history of the work.

Seven years of “incessant and exceptional labor, under the best living conditions” (L.N. Tolstoy was calm, happy, living with his young wife almost constantly in Yasnaya Polyana), devoted to the creation of the great book: 1863 - 1869. During these years, the writer almost did not keep a diary, made rare notes in notebooks, and was very little distracted by other plans - all his energy was spent on the novel.

In the history of the creation of the novel, the most important feature of the artistic genius of Leo Tolstoy was revealed - the desire to “reach the end”, to explore the deepest layers of national life.

The story of the initial stage is told in one of the rough drafts of the preface:

“In 1856, I began to write a story with a well-known title, the hero was supposed to be a Decembrist returning with his family to Russia. Involuntarily, I moved from the present to 1825, the era of my hero’s delusions and misfortunes, and left what I started. But even in 1825, my hero was already a mature family man. To understand him, I needed to travel back to his youth, and his youth coincided with the glorious era of 1812 for Russia. Another time I abandoned what I had started and began to write from the time of 1812, the smell and sound of which are still audible and dear to us, but which is now so distant from us that we can think about it calmly. But the third time I left what I had started, but not because I needed to describe the first youth of my hero, on the contrary: between those semi-historical, semi-public, semi-fictional great characters of the great era, the personality of my hero receded into the background, and into the foreground became, with equal interest for me, both young and old people, and men and women of that time. For the third time I returned back with a feeling that may seem strange to most readers, but which, I hope, will be understood by those whose opinions I value; I did this out of a feeling similar to shyness and which I cannot define in one word. I was ashamed to write about our triumph in the fight against Bonaparte’s France without describing our failures and our shame. Who has not experienced that hidden but unpleasant feeling of shyness and distrust when reading patriotic essays about the 12th year. If the reason for our triumph was not accidental, but lay in the essence of the character of the Russian people and troops, then this character should have been expressed even more clearly in the era of failures and defeats. So, having returned from 1856 to 1805, from now on I intend to take not one, but many of my heroines and heroes through the historical events of 1805, 1807, 1812, 1825 and 1856.”

“...You can’t imagine how interested I am in all the information about the Decembrists in “Polar Star.” About four months ago I started a novel, the hero of which should be the returning Decembrist. I wanted to talk to you about this, but I never had time. My Decembrist must have been an enthusiast, a mystic, a Christian, returning to Russia in 56 with his wife, son and daughter and trying on his strict and somewhat ideal view of the new Russia... Turgenev, to whom I read the beginning, liked the first chapters.”

But then the novel about the Decembrist did not develop beyond the first chapters. From a story about the fate of one Decembrist hero, he moved on to a story about a generation of people who lived during the period of historical events that shaped the Decembrists. It was assumed that the fate of this generation would be traced to the end - until the Decembrists returned from exile. The search for the right start took place for a whole year. Only the 15th option satisfied Tolstoy.

One of the first sketches is entitled “Three Pores. Part 1. 1812." It begins with a chapter about Catherine’s general-in-chief “Prince Volkonsky, father of Prince Andrei.” Apparently, the three seasons are 1812, 1825 and 1856. Then the time of action is preserved, and the place is transferred to St. Petersburg - to the “ball of Catherine’s nobleman.” But this did not suit the writer. Only in the 7th version is the final countdown found: “On November 12, 1805, Russian troops, under the command of Kutuzov and Bagration... in Olmütz were preparing to review the Austrian and Russian emperors.” But this fragment did not become the beginning of the novel. The military operations will be discussed in the second part of the first volume.

The twelfth option is entitled: “From 1805 to 1814. Novel by Count L.N. Tolstoy. The year is 1805. Part 1” - and begins with a direct indication that the future Pierre Bezukhov belongs to Decembrism:

“Those who knew Prince Pyotr Kirillovich B. at the beginning of the reign of Alexander II, in the 1850s, when Pyotr Kirillovich was returned from Siberia as an old man as white as a harrier, it would be difficult to imagine him as the carefree, stupid and extravagant young man that he was. was at the beginning of the reign of Alexander I, shortly after his arrival from abroad, where, at the request of his father, he completed his education. Prince Pyotr Kirillovich, as you know, was the illegitimate son of Kirill Vladimirovich B. ... According to the papers, he was called not Pyotr Kirillich, but Pyotr Ivanovich, and not B., but Medynsky, after the name of the village in which he was born.”

Peter's closest friend is Andrei Volkonsky; together with him, Peter is going to “go to the old maid of honor Anna Pavlovna Sherer, who really wanted to see young Medynsky”20. This was the beginning of the epic novel.

From the first months of 1864 to the beginning of 1867, the first edition of the entire novel was created. In November 1864, part of the manuscript had already been submitted for printing to the Russian Messenger. Under the title “One thousand eight hundred and five” (meaning the name of the first “time”), the chapters appeared in 1865 in a magazine with the subtitles: “In St. Petersburg”, “In Moscow”, “In the Village”. The next group of chapters is called “War”, and is devoted to the Russian campaign abroad, ending with the Battle of Austerlitz. Contents of the first three parts: “1 hour - what is printed. 2 hours – up to Austerlitz inclusive. 3 hours – up to and including Tilsit.” I had to write: “4 hours - St. Petersburg up to and including the explanation of Andrei and Natasha and the explanation of Andrei and Pierre. 6 hours – to Smolensk. 7 hours - to Moscow. 8 o'clock - Moscow. 9 o’clock – Tambov. 10" The number 10 is set, but not deciphered.

The composition of the book was determined: alternating parts and chapters telling about peaceful life and military events. A plan written by Tolstoy with a count of sheets has been preserved.

Throughout 1866 and the beginning of 1867, the first edition of the novel was created. In a letter to A. A. Fet, L. N. Tolstoy gives it the title “All’s well that ends well.” There is no title in the manuscripts.

This first draft of the novel differs from the final one. Here the fates of the heroes are different: Andrei Bolkonsky and Petya Rostov do not die, but Andrei Bolkonsky, who, like Nikolai Rostov, is going on a foreign campaign of the Russian army, “yields” Natasha to his friend Pierre. But the main thing is that here the historical-romantic narrative has not yet become an epic, it is not yet imbued, as it will become in the final text, with “people's thought” and is not “the history of the people.” Only at the final stage of the work, in the outline of the epilogue, will Tolstoy say: “... I tried to write the history of the people.”

Of course, “1805” and especially the first completed edition of the entire novel were not a chronicle of several noble families. History and historical characters were part of the author's plan from the very beginning. There is an opinion that at the beginning “War and Peace” was created as a family chronicle. L.N. Tolstoy himself wrote about this: “In my work only princes who speak and write in French, counts, etc. act, as if all Russian life of that time was concentrated in these people. I agree that this is wrong and illiberal, and I can say one, but irrefutable answer. The life of officials, merchants, seminarians and peasants is uninteresting and half incomprehensible to me, the life of the aristocrats of that time, thanks to the monuments of that time and other reasons, is otherwise understandable and sweet.” It’s hard to believe that this was said by the creator of War and Peace, but it is true.

Three years of intense creative work at the final stage led precisely to the fact that the historical novel - “a picture of morals built on a historical event,” a novel about the fate of a generation - turned into an epic novel, into a “history of the people.” The book became not about people, not about events, but about life in general, about the flow of life. The philosophical thought of L.N. Tolstoy (about freedom and necessity, about the causes and laws of historical movement, etc.) sought the paths of universal truth.

In the summer of 1967, an agreement to publish the novel was signed with the owner of the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, F. F. Rees. But the novel did not yet have its final form; its second half, dedicated to the Patriotic War, was still awaiting revision and changes.

In September, L.N. Tolstoy decided to inspect the field of the Borodino battle. Together with his wife's younger brother, 12-year-old Stepan Bers, he stayed in Borodino for two days; took notes, drew a plan of the area to understand the actual disposition of the troops, and on the day of departure “got up at dawn and drove around the field again” to clearly see the area just at the hour when the battle began. Returning to Moscow, he said in a letter to his wife: “I am very pleased, very happy with my trip... If only God gives me health and peace, and I will write a battle of Borodino that has never happened before... I felt pleasant in Borodino, and there was a consciousness of that that I'm doing the job."

To describe the Battle of Borodino, a copy of the first edition was used only to a small extent; almost the entire description of the battle, Pierre’s observations, Napoleon’s hesitation, confidence in Kutuzov’s victory and the author’s reasoning about the significance of the Battle of Borodino, which “remained forever... the best military feat unparalleled in history” - all this was almost entirely written anew.

New details have appeared in the latest volume. A description of the guerrilla war and the author’s considerations about its national character have been added.

On December 17, 1867, the Moskovskie Vedomosti newspaper announced the publication of the first three volumes of the epic novel. The fourth volume has already been published.

The success of the novel among readers was so great that in 1868 a second building was needed. It was printed in the same printing house. The final two volumes (5th and 6th) were printed in both editions from one set. An announcement about the 6th volume appeared in the same newspaper on December 12, 1869.

At the beginning of 1869, A. Fet’s relative I. P. Borisov met with L. N. Tolstoy in Moscow and in one of the letters of that time noted that the 5th volume was not the last and that “Lev Nikolaevich hopes for five more, but maybe - and so on... Much, much has been written, but all this is not for the Vth, but forward.” As you can see, there were a lot of plans.

However, as happened with L.N. Tolstoy and earlier, the grandiose plan to include “two more periods” in the narrative of 1825, 1856. was not implemented. The epic was over. In essence, based on the material of other, subsequent eras, it could not have taken place as an epic. Rather, it would be a trilogy of independent works, like “Childhood”, “Adolescence” and “Youth”. The fulfilled end is the only possible one.

As a result, I would like to note that “War and Peace” can proudly bear the title of an epic novel. It was truly a titanic work of the writer, which took many years to develop. This is an entire era in the life of the author, which changed the idea of ​​the War of 1812, its representatives and events. Here the reader can see and feel the spirit of the people, in the form in which it was during the Patriotic War. Of course, the initial plan to create the image of the Decembrist failed; the novel did not include the intended “three pores”. But this has led to the fact that now “War and Peace” is a “mirror” of the era, through which we, descendants, can learn about the life and customs of Russia, and learn moral values.

2 Ideological and thematic originality of the epic novel

2.1 Characters of the main characters and their evolution

There is hardly another work in world literature that so broadly covers all the circumstances of human existence on earth. At the same time, L.N. Tolstoy always knew how not only to show changing life situations, but to imagine in these situations, to the last degree, truthfully the “work” of feelings and reason in people of all ages, nationalities, ranks and positions, always unique in their nervous structure. Not only waking experiences, but also the realm of dreams, reveries, and half-oblivion were depicted in “War and Peace with unsurpassed art.

The era when the new book was created was alarming. The abolition of serfdom and other government reforms resonated in Russian society with real spiritual trials. The spirit of doubt and discord visited the once united people. The European principle “how many people, so many truths”, penetrating everywhere, gave rise to endless disputes. “New people” appeared in large numbers, ready to completely rebuild the life of the country at their own whim. The Russian world during the Patriotic War was, according to the writer, the complete opposite of modernity. This clear, stable world, Tolstoy well understood, concealed within itself the strong spiritual guidelines necessary for the new Russia, which were largely forgotten. But he himself was inclined to see in the national celebration of 1812 the victory of precisely the values ​​of “living life” that were dear to him.

Tolstoy sought to cover the events of the past with unprecedented breadth. As a rule, he also made sure that everything he said strictly corresponded to the facts of actual history down to the smallest detail. In the sense of documentary, factual authenticity, his work noticeably expanded the boundaries of literary creativity. It included non-fictional situations, statements of historical figures and details of their behavior, texts of authentic documents of the era. Leo Tolstoy knew the works of historians well, studied notes, memoirs, and diaries of famous people of the 19th century.

The mental world of the writer’s heroes, as a rule, came into motion under the influence of external impressions, which gave rise to the most intense activity of feelings and thoughts in them. The sky of Austerlitz, seen by the wounded Andrei Bolkonsky, the view of the Borodino field, which so amazed Pierre Bezukhov at the beginning of the battle, “most not for the battlefield, ... but the simplest indoor face” of a French officer captured by Nikolai Rostov - large and small, details were included in the soul of the characters became the active facts of his innermost life.

The concept of happiness, which was at the origins of War and Peace, would be incorrect to reduce to everyday well-being. Fortunately, the heroes led a relaxed life of feelings. The rich world of feelings contained an indestructible, ever-living “instinct of love.” In War and Peace he found diverse, but almost always physically tangible manifestations. The moments of “roll call of souls” formed the core of the work.

The statement of L.N. is widely known. Tolstoy: “... In “Anna Karenina” I love the family thought, in “War and Peace” I loved the people’s thought, as a result of the war of the 12th year...”. Nevertheless, popular thought could not develop even to a small extent in the writer outside of family thought, which is essential for “War and Peace.” A family is a free unity of people. It is not limited only to family ties, it is rather the unity of kindred souls. Happiness lies in this unity. In the novel, a family is not a clan closed in on itself, not isolated from everything around it; on the contrary, it interacts with those around them.

Pictures of family life constituted the most powerful, ever-fading side of War and Peace. The Rostov family and the Bolkonsky family, new families that arose as a result of the long journey traveled by the heroes: Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha, Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya, captured the truth of the Russian way of life as fully as possible within the confines of Tolstoy’s philosophy.

The family was represented here both as a connecting link in the fate of generations, and as the environment where a person receives his first experiences of “love,” discovers elementary moral truths, and learns to reconcile his own will with the desires of other people.

The descriptions of family life in War and Peace have always had a deeply Russian character. Whichever of the truly living families shown on its pages came to the attention of L.N. Tolstoy, it was a family where moral values ​​meant more than earthly success. There is no family egoism, no turning of the house into an impregnable fortress, no indifference to the fate of those who are outside its walls. The most striking example, of course, is the Rostov family. But the Bolkonsky family, completely different, sometimes even opposite, closed, also included a variety of people: from the architect Mikhail Ivanovich to the teacher Desalles.

In the family, earthly life manifests itself, in the family it flows, and in the family it ends. The family seemed to Leo Tolstoy to be a kind of “crossroads” of living emotions. In it, he believed, there eternally resides a responsiveness unclouded by reason, which, without any truths, will itself tell a person what is good and what is bad in the world. Such concepts were most fully reflected in the image of Natasha Rostova. In relation to Natasha as a kind of center of the work, the hidden essence of all the main characters was revealed. In contact with her fate, Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky found a point of support independent of their beliefs. To a certain extent, Natasha in War and Peace served as a measure of the authenticity of everything that happened.

Sketching preliminary characteristics of the future heroes of the book, the writer wrote: “Natalia. 15 years. Insanely generous. Believes in himself. Capricious, and everything works out, and bothers everyone, and is loved by everyone. Ambitious. He possesses music, understands it and feels it to the point of madness. Suddenly sad, suddenly incredibly joyful. Dolls". Even then, in Natasha’s character one could easily discern the very quality that best met the requirement of true being: complete ease. Starting from the first appearance of the heroine in front of the guests of the Rostov house, she was all movement, impulse, the incessant beating of life. This eternal restlessness only manifested itself in different ways. Tolstoy saw here not just the childish mobility of Natasha the teenager, the enthusiasm and readiness to fall in love with the whole world of Natasha the girl, the fear and impatience of Natasha the bride, the anxious worries of the mother and wife, but the infinity of feelings shown in the most unclouded form.

Natasha Rostova was highly endowed with the mind of the heart. The concept of prudence was excluded by the very structure of War and Peace. Instead, independent sensitivity remained in a new meaning for the heroine. It was she who revealed to Natasha who was who and forced her, as happened once in the novel, to look for definitions of familiar people that were “free” from general concepts.

In the epilogue of his work, Tolstoy showed a different heroine: devoid of the charm with which the writer so often characterized young Natasha, carried away by family concerns. And yet, he could not help but mention that Natasha the mother is a strong, beautiful, fertile female.” Richly gifted living nature remained truly sacred for him. The former “lovely” beginnings have only now become more closely connected with their source. This was the natural result of the development of the image.

“Family thought” and “folk thought” appeared in “War and Peace” as interpenetrating thoughts, going back to the same philosophical fundamental principle. The image of Natasha connected them together in its own way. The moral values ​​of the Russian people, like the ideal features in the image of the heroine, seemed to Tolstoy to be just as natural and earthly, rooted directly in the harmony of the world.

There were no negative characters in the generally accepted sense of the word on the pages of War and Peace. Tolstoy's characters were initially divided into two groups that did not agree on anything: those who understood and those who did not understand. And if the first of these worlds contained natural life with its moral flow, then the second was artificial, dead and, accordingly, devoid of any moral foundations. On one side were the Rostovs, Bolkonskys, soldiers, officers; on the other - Kuragins, Bergs, Drubetskys. The concepts of nepotism accepted among them differed sharply from those that lived in the Rostov house. Unlike the former, for the latter, the family was only a means of achieving momentary interest.

Among the many characters in War and Peace, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov occupied an exceptional place. Both heroes had different roads to the same goal. Open, careless, naive, idle Pierre Bezukhov. Restrained, outwardly cold, concentratedly active Prince Andrei. In the fate of each of them, the same logic came true, but in their own way.

Throughout the entire book, Bolkonsky and Bezukhov were distinguished by a kind of “honesty of thought”; both of them sincerely served what they considered the truth at the moment. Their own mind was not a toy for them. Conviction and life followed inseparably. That is why the mental and life catastrophes that befell them were so painful and profound.

Throughout the first volumes of the novel, Bolkonsky and Bezukhov were defeated more than once. Prince Andrei had a Napoleonic dream, he had a lonely, philosophically justified life in Bogucharovo, broken hopes of family happiness and a desire to take revenge on his offender Anatoly Kuragin... Bezukhov was “led astray” by an imposed marriage with the secular libertine Helen, Masonic mysticism.

In 1812, the heroes had to be “reborn” through participation in the people’s war, to discover deep truths about human life and the world. The decisive struggle with Napoleon really turned out to be a moment of such insight for many of those who lived in Russia at that time. It cannot be said that the fates of the heroes at the first stage of the war were free from previous “obscurations.” Prince Andrei only pushed back his proud plans for revenge on Kuragin. The enthusiastic Pierre took an active part in the Moscow meeting of the sovereign and even volunteered to field a new regiment with his own money.

The War of 1812 would find Prince Andrei at the moment of his greatest spiritual crisis. But it is precisely the national misfortune that brings him out of this state.

The fate of Prince Andrey, mortally wounded on the Borodino field, was in almost every way similar to the fate of thousands of Russian soldiers who died in this battle. But the hero of the novel made his sacrifice in an artistic world where exceptional morality was assumed. The last weeks on earth became for the dying Bolkonsky the time of its final comprehension. Simply and directly, the hero discovered in himself the very values ​​in the name of which he went into battle.

Borodino finally delivered Prince Andrei from his vengeful plans, his ambitious hopes. Love for all people came to him after he saw his past enemy, Anatoly Kuragin, sobbing on the operating table. But this new love, acquired by the hero with a completeness almost impossible on earth, already foreshadowed his inevitable departure.

“Living Life” took Pierre away from the “well-trodden path”, freed him for a while from the “habits of civilization”, and took him up on the simplest interests related to maintaining his own body. “Yawning Infinity” was revealed to Bezukhov through the figure of his fellow captured soldier Platon Karataev.

In the long path of search that Bezukhov followed throughout the four volumes of the novel, the moment of the death of the “righteous” Karataev meant the achievement of the final goal. The vivid picture of the universe that Bezukhov saw went far beyond the hero’s own experiences. What Karataev unconsciously included in himself, Bezukhov discovered quite meaningfully. Taught by the life of a soldier and more by his death, he approached the comprehension of Karataev’s truths, the very ones that, the writer believed, were professed by the entire Russian people. Platon Karataev was a reflection of the Russian people, their breath and life. This is what Pierre realized, this was the result of his many years of searching for the truth that lay in this simple soldier.

The last chapters in “War and Peace” showed its heroes in a different historical era, directly directed towards the contemporary Tolstoy of the 60s of the 19th century. The epilogue depicted the post-war period: the time of the Decembrist secret meetings, the time of government reaction. Pierre Bezukhov thought about how to rebuild Russia on a humane, “loving” basis. His relative Nikolai Rostov adhered to the official line, which did not allow changes, was oppressive and inflexible.

Depicting the ideological split between the characters, the writer did not seek to take the side of one or the other of them, almost without revealing his attitude to what was happening. Both of them were dear to him. Here, one might say, the heroes began to “live their own lives.”

Pierre, perhaps the future Decembrist, whom the writer wanted to approach at the beginning of the novel, appears before us in the epilogue as a man with already strong humanistic beliefs and a desire to change everything around him.

Conclusion: throughout the novel, the characters changed their views and beliefs more than once. Of course, first of all, this was due to decisive, turning points in their lives. The quest for the main characters that they came to had been in their minds for more than one year. And this is natural. This is a manifestation of human nature. Only by going through your life's path can you know the truth to which the soul strives.

2.2 The novel “War and Peace” and its characters in literary criticism

After the publication of the novel was completed, by the beginning of the 70s. There were mixed responses and articles. Critics became more and more strict, especially the 4th, “Borodinsky” volume and the philosophical chapters of the epilogue caused a lot of objections. But, nevertheless, the success and scale of the epic novel became more and more obvious - they manifested themselves even through disagreement or denial.

Writers' opinions about the books of their colleagues are always of particular interest. After all, the writer examines someone else’s artistic world through the prism of his own. This view, of course, is more subjective, but it can reveal unexpected sides and facets in a work that professional criticism does not see.

F. M. Dostoevsky’s statements about the novel are fragmentary. He agreed with Strakhov's articles, denying only two lines. At the request of the critic, these two lines are named and commented on: “Two lines about Tolstoy, with which I do not completely agree, are when you say that L. Tolstoy is equal to everything that is great in our literature. It is absolutely impossible to say! Pushkin, Lomonosov are geniuses. To appear with “Arap of Peter the Great” and with “Belkin” means to decisively appear with a brilliant new word, which until then had never been said anywhere and never been said. To appear with “War and Peace” means to appear after this new word, already spoken by Pushkin, and this is all in any case, no matter how far and high Tolstoy goes in developing the new word already spoken for the first time by a genius.” At the end of the decade, while working on “The Adolescent,” Dostoevsky once again recalled “War and Peace.” But this remained in drafts; detailed reviews of F.M. Dostoevsky are no longer known.

Even less is known about the reader's reaction to M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. In T.A. Kuzminskaya relayed his remark: “These war scenes are nothing but lies and vanity. Bagration and Kutuzov are puppet generals. In general, it’s the chatter of nannies and mothers. But our so-called “high society” the Count famously grabbed.”

Poet close to Leo Tolstoy A.A. Fet wrote several detailed letters of analysis to the author himself. Back in 1866, having read only the beginning of “1805,” Fet foresaw the judgments of Annenkov and Strakhov about the nature of Tolstoy’s historicism: “I understand that the main task of the novel is to turn a historical event inside out and view it not from the official gold-embroidered side of the front door.” caftan, but from a shirt, that is, a shirt that is closer to the body and under the same shiny general uniform.” The second letter, written in 1870, develops similar ideas, but A. Fet’s position becomes more critical: “You write the lining instead of the face, you have turned the content around. You are a free artist and you are quite right. But artistic laws for all content are unchangeable and inevitable, like death. And the first law is unity of representation. This unity in art is achieved completely differently than in life... We understood why Natasha gave up her roaring success, we realized that she was not drawn to sing, but was drawn to be jealous and strained to feed her children. They realized that she didn’t need to think about belts and ribbons and ringlets of curls. All this does not harm the whole idea of ​​​​her spiritual beauty. But why insist on the fact that she had become a slob? This may be in reality, but this is intolerable naturalism in art... This is a caricature that violates harmony.”

The most detailed writer's review of the novel belongs to N.S. Leskov. His series of articles in the Stock Exchange Gazette, dedicated to the 5th volume, is rich in thoughts and observations. The stylistic compositional form of Leskov’s articles is extremely interesting. He breaks the text into small chapters with characteristic headings (“Upstarts and horonyaks”, “The unreasoning hero”, “Enemy power”), and boldly introduces digressions (“Two anecdotes about Yermolov and Rastopchin”).

The attitude towards the novel by I.S. was complex and changing. Turgenev. Dozens of his reviews in letters are accompanied by two printed ones, very different in tone and focus.

In 1869, in the article “About “Fathers and Sons”,” I.S. Turgenev casually mentioned “War and Peace” as a wonderful work, but still devoid of “true meaning” and “true freedom.” Turgenev's main reproaches and complaints, repeated several times, are collected in a letter to P.V. Annenkov, written after reading his article “Historical addition, from which readers are delighted, puppet comedy and quackery... Tolstoy amazes the reader with the toe of Alexander’s boot, Speransky’s laugh, making him think that he knows about all this, if he even got to these little things, and he only knows these little things... There is no real development in any character, but there is an old habit of conveying vibrations, vibrations of the same feeling, position, what he so mercilessly puts into the mouth and consciousness of each of the heroes... Tolstoy seems to not know another psychology or with the intention of it ignores." In this detailed assessment, the incompatibility of Turgenev’s “secret psychologism” and Tolstoy’s “penetrating” psychological analysis is clearly visible.

The final review of the novel is equally mixed. “I read the sixth volume of War and Peace,” writes I.S. Turgenev to P. Borisov in 1870, “of course, there are first-class things; but, not to mention children's philosophy, it was unpleasant for me to see the reflection of the system even on the images drawn by Tolstoy... Why does he try to assure the reader that if a woman is smart and developed, then she is certainly a phrase-monger and a liar? How did he lose sight of the Decembrist element, which played such a role in the 20s, - and why are all his decent people some kind of blockheads - with a little bit of foolishness? .

But time passes, and the number of questions and complaints is gradually decreasing. Turgenev comes to terms with this novel, moreover, he becomes its faithful propagandist and admirer. “This is a great work of a great writer, and this is genuine Russia” - this is how I. S. Turgenev’s fifteen-year reflections on “War and Peace” end.

One of the first to write an article about “War and Peace” was P.V. Annenkov, long-standing, from the mid-50s. acquaintance of the writer. In his article, he revealed many features of Tolstoy's plan.

Tolstoy boldly destroys the boundary between “romantic” and “historical” characters, Annenkov believes, depicting both in a similar psychological key, that is, through everyday life: “The dazzling side of the novel lies precisely in the naturalness and simplicity with which it brings down world events and major phenomena of social life to the level and horizon of vision of any witness he has chosen... Without any sign of rape of life and its usual course, the novel establishes a constant connection between the love and other adventures of its persons and Kutuzov, Bagration, between historical facts of enormous significance - Shengraben, Austerlitz and troubles Moscow aristocratic circle..."

“First of all, it should be noted that the author adheres to the first vital principle of any artistic narrative: he does not try to extract from the subject of description what he cannot do, and therefore does not deviate a single step from a simple mental study of it.”

However, the critic had difficulty finding “a knot of romantic intrigue” in “War and Peace” and found it difficult to determine “who should be considered the main characters of the novel”: “It can be assumed that we were not the only ones who, after the rapturous impressions of the novel, had to ask: where is himself, this novel, where did he put his real business - the development of a private incident, his “plot” and “intrigue”, because without them, no matter what the novel does, it will still seem like an idle novel.

But, finally, the critic astutely noticed the connection of Tolstoy’s heroes not only with the past, but also with the present: “Prince Andrei Bolkonsky introduces into his criticism of current affairs and in general into his views on his contemporaries the ideas and ideas that have formed about them in our time. He has the gift of foresight, which came to him like an inheritance, without difficulty, and the ability to stand above his age, obtained very cheaply. He thinks and judges wisely, but not with the mind of his era, but with another, later one, which was revealed to him by a benevolent author.”

N.N. Strakhov paused before speaking about the work. His first articles about the novel appeared in early 1869, when many opponents had already expressed their point of view.

Strakhov rejects the reproaches of the “elitism” of Tolstoy’s book, which were made by a variety of critics: “Despite the fact that one family is a count, and the other a prince, “War and Peace” does not have even a shadow of a high-society character... The Rostov family and the Bolkonsky family, in their internal life, in the relationships of their members, they are the same Russian families as any other.” Unlike some other critics of the novel, N.N. Strakhov does not speak the truth, but seeks it.

“The idea of ​​“War and Peace,” the critic believes, “can be formulated in different ways. We can say, for example, that the guiding thought of the work is the idea of ​​heroic life.”

“But the heroic life does not exhaust the author’s tasks. Its subject is obviously broader. The main idea that guides him when depicting heroic phenomena is to reveal their human basis, to show people in the heroes.” This is how the main principle of Tolstoy’s approach to history is formulated: unity of scale in the depiction of different characters. Therefore, Strakhov has a very special approach to the image of Napoleon. He convincingly demonstrates why exactly such an artistic image of the French commander was needed in War and Peace: “So, in the person of Napoleon, the artist seemed to want to present to us the human soul in its blindness, wanted to show that a heroic life can contradict true human dignity, that goodness, truth and beauty can be much more accessible to simple and small people than to other great heroes. A simple person, a simple life, are placed above heroism in this - both in dignity and in strength; for ordinary Russian people with hearts like those of Nikolai Rostov, Timokhin and Tushin, defeated Napoleon and his great army.”

These formulations are very close to Tolstoy’s future words about “people’s thought” as the main one in “War and Peace.”

D.I. Pisarev spoke positively about the novel: “A new, not yet finished novel by gr. L. Tolstoy can be called an exemplary work regarding the pathology of Russian society.”

He viewed the novel as a reflection of the Russian, old nobility.

“The novel War and Peace presents us with a whole bouquet of diverse and superbly finished characters, male and female, old and young.” In his work “The Old Nobility” he very clearly and completely analyzed the characters of not only the main but also the secondary characters of the work, thereby expressing his point of view.

With the publication of the first volumes of the work, responses began to arrive not only from Russia, but also abroad. The first major critical article appeared in France more than a year and a half after the publication of Paskevich’s translation - in August 1881. The author of the article, Adolf Baden, was able to give only a detailed and enthusiastic retelling of “War and Peace” over almost two printed pages. Only in conclusion did he make several evaluative remarks.

The early responses to Leo Tolstoy's work in Italy are noteworthy. It was in Italy, at the beginning of 1869, that one of the first articles in the foreign press and “War and Peace” appeared. It was “correspondence from St. Petersburg”, signed by M.A. and entitled “Count Leo Tolstoy and his novel “Peace and War”. Its author spoke in an unkind tone about the “realistic school” to which L.N. belongs. Tolstoy.

In Germany, as in France, as in Italy, the name of Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy by the end of the last century fell into the orbit of intense political struggle. The growing popularity of Russian literature in Germany caused concern and irritation among the ideologists of the imperialist reaction.

The first extensive review of War and Peace to appear in English was by critic and translator William Rolston. His article, published in April 1879 in the English magazine “Nineteenth Century”, and then reprinted in the USA, was called “The Novels of Count Leo Tolstoy,” but in essence it was, first of all, a retelling of the content of “War and Peace” - namely retelling, not analysis. Rolston, who spoke Russian, tried to give the English public at least an initial idea of ​​L.N. Tolstoy.

As we see at the end of the last chapter, during its first publications the novel was characterized by different authors in different ways. Many tried to express their understanding of the novel, but not many were able to feel its essence. A great work requires great and deep thought. The epic novel “War and Peace” allows you to think about many principles and ideals.

Conclusion

Work by L.N. Tolstoy is undoubtedly a valuable asset of world literature. Over the years, it has been studied, criticized, and admired by many generations of people. The epic novel “War and Peace” allows you to think and analyze the course of events; this is not just a historical novel, although the details of significant events are revealed to us, it is a whole layer of the moral and spiritual development of the heroes, which we should pay attention to.

In this work, materials were studied that made it possible to consider the work of L. Tolstoy in the context of historical significance

The first chapter examined the features of the novel, its composition, and presents the history of the creation of the work. We can note that what we have now is thanks to the long and hard work of the writer. This was a reflection of his life experience and developed skill. Family legends and folk experiences found their place here. “Family thought” and “folk thought” in the novel merge into a single whole, creating harmony and unity of the image. By studying this work, you can understand the life and morals of the people of the time of 1812, grasp the mentality of the people through its characteristic representatives.

The epic novel “War and Peace” changed the understanding of the war of 1812. The writer’s idea was to show the war not only by exalting the victory, but also by conveying all the psychological and physical torment that had to be endured to achieve it. Here the reader can experience the situation of events as they were during the Patriotic War.

The second chapter examined the peculiarities of the development of the destinies of the main characters of the work, their spiritual and moral quests. Throughout the novel, the characters changed their views and beliefs more than once. Of course, first of all, this was due to decisive, turning points in their lives. The work examines the development of the characters of the main characters.

To fully evaluate the work, the points of view of various writers and critics were presented. In the course of the work, it was revealed that, despite the significance of the epic novel “War and Peace”, in the first years of its publication, the assessment of contemporaries was not unambiguous. There is an opinion that contemporaries were not ready to understand the meaning of the work. However, those small critical reviews were a natural reaction to the appearance of a huge, complex work. Having comprehended its full significance, most literary scholars agreed that this is a truly remarkable legacy of the “Golden Age” of literature.

To sum up the work, we can say that the epic novel “War and Peace” can with dignity bear the title of a masterpiece of Russian literature. Here, not only are the main events of the early 19th century reflected in their full breadth, but also the main principles of the nationality, both its high society and ordinary people, are revealed. All this in a single stream is a reflection of the spirit and life of the Russian people.

List of used literature

1. Annenkov P.V. Critical Essays. – St. Petersburg, 2000. P. 123-125, 295-296, 351-376.

2. Annenkov P.V. Literary Memoirs. – M., 1989. P. 438-439.

3. Bocharov S.G. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace". – M., 1978. P. 5.

4. War over "War and Peace". Roman L.N. Tolstoy in Russian criticism and literary criticism. – St. Petersburg, 2002. pp. 8-9, 21-23, 25-26.

5. Herzen A.I. Thoughts on art and literature. – Kyiv, 1987. P. 173.

6. Gromov P.P. About the style of Leo Tolstoy. "Dialectics of the Soul" in "War and Peace". - L., 1977. P. 220-223.

7. Gulin A.V. Leo Tolstoy and the paths of Russian history. – M., 2004. P.120-178.

8. Dostoevsky F.M. Complete works in 30 volumes - L., 1986. - T. 29. - P. 109.

9. Kamyanov V. The poetic world of the epic, about Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”. - M., 1978. P. 14-21.

10. Kurlyandskaya G.B. The moral ideal of the heroes of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky. – M., 1988. pp. 137-149.

11. Libedinskaya L. Living heroes. – M., 1982, S. 89.

12. Motyleva T.L. "War and Peace" abroad. – M., 1978. S. 177, 188-189, 197-199.

13. Ogarev N.P. About literature and art. – M., 1988. P. 37.

14. Opulskaya L.D. Epic novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace". - M., 1987. pp. 3-57.

15. Writer and criticism of the 19th century. Kuibyshev, 1987. pp. 106-107.

16. Slivitskaya O.V. “War and Peace” L.N. Tolstoy. Problems of human communication. – L., 1988. P. 9-10.

17. Tolstoy L.N. War and Peace. – M., 1981. – T. 2. – P. 84-85.

18. Tolstoy L.N. Correspondence with Russian writers. – M., 1978. S. 379, 397 – 398.

19. Tolstoy L.N. Full collection cit.: In 90 volumes - M., 1958 - T. 13. - P. 54-55.

Motyleva T.L. "War and Peace" abroad. – M., 1978. P. 177.

145 years ago, a major literary event took place in Russia - the first edition of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” was published. Separate chapters of the novel had been published earlier - Tolstoy began publishing the first two parts in Katkov’s Russky Vestnik several years earlier, but the “canonical”, complete and revised version of the novel was published only a few years later. Over the century and a half of its existence, this world masterpiece and bestseller has acquired both a mass of scientific research and reader legends. Here are some interesting facts about the novel that you may not know.

How did Tolstoy himself evaluate War and Peace?

Leo Tolstoy was very skeptical about his “main works” - the novels “War and Peace” and Anna Karenina.” So, in January 1871, he sent Fet a letter in which he wrote: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” Almost 40 years later, he has not changed his mind. On December 6, 1908, an entry appeared in the writer’s diary: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.” There is even more recent evidence. In the summer of 1909, one of the visitors to Yasnaya Polyana expressed his delight and gratitude to the then generally recognized classic for the creation of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”. Tolstoy’s answer was: “It’s the same as if someone came to Edison and said: “I respect you very much because you dance the mazurka well.” I attribute meaning to completely different books.”

Was Tolstoy sincere? Perhaps there was some authorial coquetry here, although the whole image of Tolstoy the Thinker strongly contradicts this guess - he was too serious and unfeigned a person.

"War and Peace" or "War and Peace"?

The name “War Peace” is so familiar that it has already become ingrained into the subcortex. If you ask any more or less educated person what the main work of Russian literature of all times is, a good half will say without hesitation: “War and Peace.” Meanwhile, the novel had different versions of the title: “1805” (an excerpt from the novel was even published under this title), “All’s well that ends well” and “Three Times”.

There is a well-known legend associated with the name of Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Often they try to play off the title of the novel. Claiming that the author himself put some ambiguity into it: either Tolstoy meant the opposition of war and peace as the antonym of war, that is, peace, or he used the word “peace” in the meaning of community, society, land...

But the fact is that at the time when the novel was published, such ambiguity could not exist: two words, although pronounced the same, were written differently. Before the spelling reform of 1918, in the first case it was written “mir” (peace), and in the second case “mir” (Universe, society).

There is a legend that Tolstoy allegedly used the word “world” in the title, but all this is the result of a simple misunderstanding. All editions of Tolstoy’s novel during his lifetime were published under the title “War and Peace,” and he himself wrote the title of the novel in French as “La guerre et la paix.” How could the word “peace” sneak into the name? Here the story bifurcates. According to one version, this very name was handwritten on a document submitted by Leo Tolstoy to M.N. Lavrov, an employee of Katkov’s printing house during the first full publication of the novel. It is very possible that there really was a typo by the author. This is how the legend arose.

According to another version, the legend could have appeared later due to a typo made during the publication of the novel under the editorship of P. I. Biryukov. In the edition published in 1913, the title of the novel is reproduced eight times: on the title page and on the first page of each volume. “World” was printed seven times and “mir” only once, but on the first page of the first volume.
About the sources of "War and Peace"

When working on the novel, Leo Tolstoy took his sources very seriously. He read a lot of historical and memoir literature. In Tolstoy’s “list of used literature” there were, for example, such academic publications as: the multi-volume “Description of the Patriotic War in 1812”, the history of M. I. Bogdanovich, “The Life of Count Speransky” by M. Korf, “Biography of Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov” by M. P. Shcherbinina. The writer used materials from French historians Thiers, A. Dumas Sr., Georges Chambray, Maximelien Foix, Pierre Lanfré. There are also studies about Freemasonry and, of course, memoirs of direct participants in the events - Sergei Glinka, Denis Davydov, Alexei Ermolov and many others; there was also a solid list of French memoirists, starting with Napoleon himself.

559 characters

Researchers have calculated the exact number of heroes of War and Peace - there are exactly 559 of them in the book, and 200 of them are completely historical figures. Many of the remaining ones have real prototypes.

In general, when working on the surnames of fictional characters (coming up with first and last names for half a thousand people is already a lot of work), Tolstoy used the following three main ways: he used real surnames; modified real names; created completely new surnames, but based on real models.

Many episodic characters in the novel have completely historical surnames - the book mentions the Razumovskys, Meshcherskys, Gruzinskys, Lopukhins, Arkharovs, etc. But the main characters, as a rule, have quite recognizable, but still fake, encrypted surnames. The reason for this is usually cited as the writer’s reluctance to show the character’s connection with any specific prototype, from which Tolstoy took only some features. These are, for example, Bolkonsky (Volkonsky), Drubetskoy (Trubetskoy), Kuragin (Kurakin), Dolokhov (Dorokhov) and others. But, of course, Tolstoy could not completely abandon fiction - so, on the pages of the novel appear quite noble-sounding, but still not associated with a specific family surnames - Peronskaya, Chatrov, Telyanin, Desalles, etc.

The real prototypes of many of the novel's heroes are also known. So, Vasily Dmitrievich Denisov is a friend of Nikolai Rostov, his prototype was the famous hussar and partisan Denis Davydov.
A friend of the Rostov family, Maria Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, was copied from the widow of Major General Nastasya Dmitrievna Ofrosimova. By the way, she was so colorful that she also appeared in another famous work - Alexander Griboedov portrayed her almost portraitally in his comedy “Woe from Wit.”

Her son, raider and reveler Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov, and later one of the leaders of the partisan movement, embodied the features of several prototypes at once - the war heroes of the partisans Alexander Figner and Ivan Dorokhov, as well as the famous duelist Fyodor Tolstoy the American.

Old Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, an elderly nobleman of Catherine, was inspired by the image of the writer’s maternal grandfather, a representative of the Volkonsky family.
But Tolstoy saw Princess Maria Nikolaevna, the daughter of the old man Bolkonsky and the sister of Prince Andrei, in Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya (in Tolstoy’s marriage), his mother.

Film adaptations

We all know and appreciate the famous Soviet film adaptation of “War and Peace” by Sergei Bondarchuk, released in 1965. The 1956 production of “War and Peace” by King Vidor is also known, the music for which was written by Nino Rota, and the main roles were played by Hollywood stars of the first magnitude Audrey Hepburn (Natasha Rostova) and Henry Fonda (Pierre Bezukhov).

And the first film adaptation of the novel appeared just a few years after the death of Leo Tolstoy. The silent film by Pyotr Chardynin was published in 1913; one of the main roles (Andrei Bolkonsky) in the film was played by the famous actor Ivan Mozzhukhin.

Some numbers

Tolstoy wrote and rewrote the novel over the course of 6 years, from 1863 to 1869. As researchers of his work have calculated, the author manually rewrote the text of the novel 8 times, and rewrote individual episodes more than 26 times.

First edition of the novel: twice as long and five times more interesting?

Not everyone knows that in addition to the generally accepted one, there is another version of the novel. This is the very first edition that Leo Tolstoy brought to Moscow to the publisher Mikhail Katkov in 1866 for publication. But Tolstoy was unable to publish the novel this time.

Katkov was interested in continuing to publish it in pieces in his “Russian Bulletin”. Other publishers did not see any commercial potential in the book at all - the novel seemed too long and “irrelevant” to them, so they offered the author to publish it at his own expense. There were other reasons: Sofya Andreevna demanded that her husband return to Yasnaya Polyana, as she could not cope alone with running a large household and looking after the children. In addition, in the Chertkovo Library, which had just opened for public use, Tolstoy found a lot of materials that he certainly wanted to use in his book. Therefore, having postponed the publication of the novel, he worked on it for another two years. However, the first version of the book did not disappear - it was preserved in the writer’s archive, was reconstructed and published in 1983 in the 94th volume of “Literary Heritage” by the Nauka publishing house.

Here is what the head of the famous publishing house Igor Zakharov, who published it in 2007, wrote about this version of the novel:

"1. Twice shorter and five times more interesting.
2. Almost no philosophical digressions.
3. It’s a hundred times easier to read: the entire French text has been replaced by Russian in Tolstoy’s own translation.
4. Much more peace and less war.
5. Happy ending...”

Well, it's our right to choose...

Elena Veshkina