Tolstoy's life and creative path. A short message about the life and work of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
“... To remember my ancestors - my fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers, I am not only not ashamed, but especially joyful,” wrote L. N. Tolstoy. Representatives of the Tolstoy dynasty, dating back to 1686, clearly distinguished themselves as military leaders, statesmen and politicians, priests, scientists, city planners, artists, writers, poets, doctors. Their occupations are varied, but they are all united by devoted, sincere service to their Fatherland, service to Russia.
Sitting at a set tea table on the croquet court, from left to right: L.N. Tolstoy in a light blouse, Vanechka, Sasha, Lev, Andrey (standing) Tolstoy, Tatyana Lvovna, Sofya Andreevna, Maria Lvovna (standing). Behind the sofa on which Leo Tolstoy is sitting is his son Misha.
“I always admire these Christmas trees, this is my favorite place. And in the morning this is my walk. Sometimes I sit here and write." (L.N. Tolstoy - A.B. Goldenweiser) At the request of L.N. Tolstoy, a wooden bench was built in “Yolochki”. This place is known as his favorite place of reflection in the peace and quiet of the young spruce forest, a place of rest after long walks around the estate and the surrounding area.
In 1857, the war between Russia and Turkey began. Tolstoy arrived in Sevastopol. Here he got to know the Russian people better and wrote “Sevastopol Stories.” The writer showed war as a phenomenon unnatural to humanity. He spoke about the heroism and patriotism of the Russian soldier.
The Patriotic War of 1812 in the novel “War and Peace” by L. N. Tolstoy The basis of the novel “War and Peace” is made up of historical military events, artistically translated by the writer. In volumes 3 and 4, Tolstoy depicts events Patriotic War 1812. This war for Russia was just, national liberation. The entire people came out to fight the invaders, closely rallying around their army.
Natasha Rostova. This poetic image. Natasha Rostova is the personification of youth and joy. She grew up in an old noble family. Its main features are the kindness and breadth of the Russian soul, friendliness, and hospitality. Natasha – perfect image women in Tolstoy's view.
Prince Andrei was the son of the old prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky. Throughout the entire novel, Bolkonsky is looking for his purpose in life, trying to choose a man of honor, and such petty inclinations and ignoble aspirations are unacceptable to him. That is why he quickly became disillusioned with social life. Marriage did not bring him happiness either.
L.N. Tolstoy showed a significant part of the events of the Battle of Borodino in the perception of Pierre Bezukhov. Pierre, who understands nothing about military affairs, perceives the war as psychological point vision. The hero realized here that history is created by the most powerful force in the world - the people. No efforts of the French could break the will of the Russians to fight to the death. A visit to the Borodino field at the time of the famous battle became important stage on the path of the hero's quest. Bezukhov approvingly perceives the words of the unknown soldier: “They want to attack all the people, one word - Moscow.” “To be a soldier, just a soldier!” - such a desire took possession of Pierre after the Battle of Borodino.
The novel “Anna Karenina” was created in the period from one thousand eight hundred and seventy-three to one thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven. Over time, the plan underwent great changes. The plan of the novel changed, its plot and compositions expanded and became more complex, the characters and their names changed. But with all the changes made by Tolstoy to the image of Anna Karenina, and in the final text, Anna Karenina remains, in Tolstoy’s terminology, both a “lost herself” and an “innocent” woman. She had abandoned her sacred duties as a mother and wife, but she had no other choice. Tolstoy justifies the behavior of his heroine, but at the same time tragic fate it turns out to be inevitable.
Novel "Resurrection" (years). The novel tells about the fate of a simple girl Katyusha Maslova and an aristocrat Dmitry Nekhlyudov. This is a novel condemning autocracy, callousness and corruption of judges. Tolstoy shows the resurrection of the soul of the hero D. Nekhlyudov.
"After the Ball" (1903, published 1911). The story “After the Ball” is based on a real event that Tolstoy learned about when he lived as a student with his brothers in Kazan. His brother Sergei Nikolaevich fell in love with the daughter of the local military commander L.P. Koreysha was going to marry her. But after Sergei Nikolaevich saw the cruel punishment commanded by the father of his beloved girl, he experienced a strong shock. He stopped visiting Koreish's house and gave up the idea of getting married.
At the end of his life, on an autumn night in 1910, Tolstoy secretly left the estate in search of truth, simple shapes being. But on the way he fell ill and died at the Astapovo station. It was November 7. In the silence of Yasnaya Polyana, above the ravine, in the Old Order, the grave of the writer.
Life and work of L.N. Tolstoy is inextricably linked with Moscow. Until 1901, the Tolstoy family lived in Khamovniki. The Tolstoy Museum is located here. Usually the whole family lived here in the winter and went to Yasnaya Polyana. In the museum you can hear the writer’s voice and his musical work.
After the death of Leo Tolstoy, representatives of the Minsk intelligentsia submitted a petition to city council about perpetuating the memory of the great writer. The petition was considered until the end of 1911 and, finally, a decision was made to open a library named after Tolstoy. She appeared in a three-room apartment on Novo-Moskovskaya Street (now Moskovskaya) not far from the station. The writer’s wife, Sofya Andreevna, came to the opening celebrations and brought with her 40 books.
The monument was made by order of the city administration by Moscow master V.I. Buyakin. According to the project, Tolstoy should be barefoot, but the authorities did not like this idea and as a result, Lev Nikolayevich’s feet ended up with boots that the writer never actually wore. The opening took place on September 9, 1973, on the day of the 145th anniversary of the birth of Leo Tolstoy. In the summer of 2008, restoration of the monument and the square near it was carried out.
Museum-Estate of L.N. Tolstoy's "Khamovniki" is memorial complex and preserves the atmosphere of the time L.N. was there. Tolstoy. In the Khamovniki estate, where the main building was completed according to Lev Nikolaevich’s instructions, not only memorial items have been preserved and the furnishings have been reconstructed, but there is also a protected area with an area of 0.96 hectares. This is one of the few estate complexes preserved in the center of Moscow.
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a great Russian writer, by origin a count from a famous noble family. He was born on August 28, 1828 in Tula province Yasnaya Polyana estate, and died on October 7, 1910 at Astapovo station.
The writer's childhood
Lev Nikolaevich was a representative of the big noble family, the fourth child in her. His mother, Princess Volkonskaya, died early. At this time, Tolstoy was not yet two years old, but he formed an idea of his parent from the stories of various family members. In the novel "War and Peace" the image of the mother is represented by Princess Marya Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya.
Biography of Leo Tolstoy early years marked by another death. Because of her, the boy became an orphan. Leo Tolstoy's father, a participant in the War of 1812, like his mother, died early. This happened in 1837. At that time the boy was only nine years old. Leo Tolstoy's brothers, he and his sister, were entrusted to the upbringing of T. A. Ergolskaya, a distant relative who had enormous influence on the future writer. Childhood memories have always been the happiest for Lev Nikolaevich: family legends and impressions of life in the estate became rich material for his works, reflected, in particular, in the autobiographical story “Childhood”.
Study at Kazan University
Biography of Leo Tolstoy early years marked as such important event like studying at a university. When the future writer turned thirteen years old, his family moved to Kazan, to the house of the children’s guardian, a relative of Lev Nikolaevich P.I. Yushkova. In 1844 future writer was enrolled in the Faculty of Philosophy at Kazan University, after which he transferred to the Faculty of Law, where he studied for about two years: his studies did not arouse keen interest in the young man, so he devoted himself passionately to various social entertainments. Having submitted his resignation in the spring of 1847, due to poor health and “domestic circumstances,” Lev Nikolaevich left for Yasnaya Polyana with the intention of studying full course legal sciences and pass an external exam, as well as learn languages, “practical medicine”, history, Agriculture, geographical statistics, study painting, music and write a dissertation.
Years of youth
In the fall of 1847, Tolstoy left for Moscow and then to St. Petersburg in order to pass candidate exams at the university. During this period, his lifestyle often changed: he spent his days teaching various items, then devoted himself to music, but wanted to start a career as an official, then dreamed of joining a regiment as a cadet. Religious sentiments that reached the point of asceticism alternated with cards, carousing, and trips to the gypsies. The biography of Leo Tolstoy in his youth is colored by the struggle with himself and introspection, reflected in the diary that the writer kept throughout his life. During the same period, interest in literature arose, and the first artistic sketches appeared.
Participation in the war
In 1851, Nikolai, Lev Nikolayevich’s older brother, an officer, persuaded Tolstoy to go to the Caucasus with him. Lev Nikolaevich lived for almost three years on the banks of the Terek, in a Cossack village, traveling to Vladikavkaz, Tiflis, Kizlyar, participating in hostilities (as a volunteer, and then was recruited). The patriarchal simplicity of life of the Cossacks and the Caucasian nature struck the writer with their contrast with the painful reflection of the representatives educated society and the life of the noble circle, provided extensive material for the story “Cossacks,” written in the period from 1852 to 1863 based on autobiographical material. The stories “Raid” (1853) and “Cutting Wood” (1855) also reflected his Caucasian impressions. They also left a mark in his story “Hadji Murat,” written between 1896 and 1904, published in 1912.
Returning to his homeland, Lev Nikolaevich wrote in his diary that he really fell in love with this wild land, which combines “war and freedom,” things that are so opposite in essence. Tolstoy began to create his story “Childhood” in the Caucasus and anonymously sent it to the magazine “Sovremennik”. This work appeared on its pages in 1852 under the initials L.N. and, along with the later “Adolescence” (1852-1854) and “Youth” (1855-1857), formed the famous autobiographical trilogy. His creative debut immediately brought real recognition to Tolstoy.
Crimean campaign
In 1854, the writer went to Bucharest, to the Danube Army, where the work and biography of Leo Tolstoy were further developed. However, soon a boring staff life forced him to transfer to besieged Sevastopol, to the Crimean Army, where he was a battery commander, showing courage ( awarded with medals and the Order of St. Anna). During this period, Lev Nikolaevich was captured by new literary plans and impressions. He began to write "Sevastopol stories" that had big success. Some ideas that arose even at that time allow one to guess in the artillery officer Tolstoy the preacher later years: he dreamed of a new “religion of Christ,” purified of mystery and faith, a “practical religion.”
In St. Petersburg and abroad
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy arrived in St. Petersburg in November 1855 and immediately became a member of the Sovremennik circle (which included N. A. Nekrasov, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov and others). He took part in the creation at that time Literary Fund, and at the same time found himself involved in conflicts and disputes between writers, but he felt like a stranger in this environment, which he conveyed in “Confession” (1879-1882). Having retired, in the fall of 1856 the writer left for Yasnaya Polyana, and then, at the beginning of the next year, 1857, he went abroad, visiting Italy, France, Switzerland (impressions from visiting this country are described in the story “Lucerne”), and also visited Germany. In the same year in the fall, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy returned first to Moscow and then to Yasnaya Polyana.
Opening of a public school
In 1859, Tolstoy opened a school for peasant children in the village, and also helped organize more than twenty similar educational institutions in the Krasnaya Polyana area. In order to get acquainted with the European experience in this area and apply it in practice, the writer Leo Tolstoy again went abroad, visited London (where he met with A.I. Herzen), Germany, Switzerland, France, and Belgium. However, European schools somewhat disappoint him, and he decides to create his own pedagogical system based on personal freedom, publishes teaching aids and works on pedagogy, applies them in practice.
"War and Peace"
Lev Nikolaevich in September 1862 married Sofya Andreevna Bers, the 18-year-old daughter of a doctor, and immediately after the wedding he left Moscow for Yasnaya Polyana, where he devoted himself entirely to household concerns and family life. However, already in 1863, he was again captured by a literary idea, this time creating a novel about the war, which was supposed to reflect Russian history. Leo Tolstoy was interested in the period of our country's struggle with Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century.
In 1865, the first part of the work “War and Peace” was published in the Russian Bulletin. The novel immediately evoked many responses. Subsequent parts provoked heated debate, in particular, the fatalistic philosophy of history developed by Tolstoy.
"Anna Karenina"
This work was created in the period from 1873 to 1877. Living in Yasnaya Polyana, continuing to teach peasant children and publish his pedagogical views, Lev Nikolaevich in the 70s worked on a work about the life of his contemporary high society, building his novel on the contrast of two storylines: the family drama of Anna Karenina and the home idyll of Konstantin Levin, who is close in psychological pattern, and in beliefs, and in the way of life to the writer himself.
Tolstoy strove for an externally non-judgmental tone of his work, thereby paving the way for the new style of the 80s, in particular folk stories. The truth of peasant life and the meaning of existence of representatives of the “educated class” - these are the range of questions that interested the writer. “Family thought” (according to Tolstoy, the main one in the novel) is translated into a social channel in his work, and Levin’s self-exposures, numerous and merciless, his thoughts about suicide are an illustration of the author’s spiritual crisis experienced in the 1880s, which had matured even while working on this novel.
1880s
In the 1880s, Leo Tolstoy's work underwent a transformation. The revolution in the writer’s consciousness was reflected in his works, primarily in the experiences of the characters, in the spiritual insight that changes their lives. Heroes like these occupy central place in such works as "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (years of creation - 1884-1886), "The Kreutzer Sonata" (a story written in 1887-1889), " Father Sergius"(1890-1898), the drama "The Living Corpse" (remained unfinished, begun in 1900), as well as the story "After the Ball" (1903).
Tolstoy's journalism
Tolstoy’s journalism reflects his spiritual drama: depicting pictures of the idleness of the intelligentsia and social inequality, Lev Nikolayevich posed questions of faith and life to society and himself, criticized the institutions of the state, going so far as to deny art, science, marriage, court, and the achievements of civilization.
The new worldview is presented in “Confession” (1884), in the articles “So what should we do?”, “On hunger”, “What is art?”, “I cannot remain silent” and others. The ethical ideas of Christianity are understood in these works as the foundation of the brotherhood of man.
As part of a new worldview and a humanistic understanding of the teachings of Christ, Lev Nikolaevich spoke out, in particular, against the dogma of the church and criticized its rapprochement with the state, which led to him being officially excommunicated from the church in 1901. This caused a huge resonance.
Novel "Sunday"
Tolstoy wrote his last novel between 1889 and 1899. It embodies the entire range of problems that worried the writer during the years of his spiritual turning point. Dmitry Nekhlyudov, main character, is a person internally close to Tolstoy, who goes through the path of moral purification in the work, ultimately leading him to comprehend the need for active good. The novel is built on a system of evaluative oppositions that reveal the unreasonableness of the structure of society (falsity social world and the beauty of nature, the falsehood of the educated population and the truth of the peasant world).
last years of life
The life of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy in last years was not easy. The spiritual turning point turned into a break with one’s environment and family discord. The refusal to own private property, for example, caused discontent among the writer’s family members, especially his wife. The personal drama experienced by Lev Nikolaevich was reflected in his diary entries.
In the fall of 1910, at night, secretly from everyone, 82-year-old Leo Tolstoy, whose life dates were presented in this article, accompanied only by his attending physician D.P. Makovitsky, left the estate. The journey turned out to be too much for him: on the way, the writer fell ill and was forced to disembark at the Astapovo railway station. In the house that belonged to her boss, Lev Nikolaevich spent last week life. The whole country was following reports about his health at that time. Tolstoy was buried in Yasnaya Polyana; his death caused a huge public outcry.
Many contemporaries came to say goodbye to this great Russian writer.
Count L.N. Tolstoy - a descendant of two noble noble families: Count Tolstoy and Prince Volkonsky (on his mother's side) - was born on August 28 (September 9), 1828 in the Yasnaya Polyana estate. Here he lived most of his life, wrote most of his works, including novels that were included in the golden fund of world literature: “War and Peace”, “Anna Karenina” and “Resurrection”.
The most important events of Tolstoy’s “pre-writing” biography are early orphanhood, moving with his brothers from Moscow to Kazan to live with his father’s sister, who was appointed their guardian, short and not very successful studies at Kazan University, first at the Eastern and then at the Faculty of Law (from 1844 . to 1847). After leaving the university, Tolstoy went to Yasnaya Polyana, inherited from his father.
From childhood, the future writer was fascinated by the idea of self-knowledge and moral self-determination. From 1847 until the end of his life, he kept a diary, which reflected his intense moral quest, painful doubts about the correctness of accepted life decisions, joyful moments of finding the meaning of existence and a bitter parting with what until recently seemed an unshakable truth... Entries in Tolstoy's! The diary became “human documents” that prepared the appearance of his autobiographical books. Tolstoy began his lifelong exploration of the human soul with himself.
First literary experiments Tolstoy dates back to 1850. Having arrived from Yasnaya Polyana to Moscow, he began work on autobiographical story“Childhood”, a story from the life of gypsies (remained unfinished), wrote “The History of Yesterday” - a psychological “report” about one of the days lived. Soon Tolstoy's life changed dramatically: in 1851 he decided to go to the Caucasus and join one of the army units as a cadet. Important role This decision was played by one of the most authoritative people for young Tolstoy - his older brother Nikolai, an artillery officer who served in the army.
In the Caucasus, the story “Childhood” was completed, which became Tolstoy’s literary debut (published in Nekrasov’s Sovremennik in 1852). This work, together with the later stories “Adolescence” (1852-1854) and “Youth” (1855-1857), became part of the famous autobiographical trilogy, in which Tolstoy, who was carried away by the pedagogical ideas of the French educator J.-J. Rousseau while still studying at Kazan University, explores the psychology of the child, teenager and young man Nikolai Irtenyev.
In 1851-1853 a former student and aspiring writer took part in the war with the highlanders. During Crimean War he was transferred to the Danube Army, which fought the Turks, and then to Sevastopol, besieged by Allied troops. Army life and episodes of the Crimean War served as a source of unforgettable impressions and provided abundant material for military works—the stories “Raid” (1852), “Cutting Wood” (1853-1855), “ Sevastopol stories"(1855). They show for the first time the “undressy” side of the war. "Trench" truth and inner world a man at war - that’s what interested the warrior writer. For the courage and bravery shown during the defense of Sevastopol, he was awarded the order Anna and medals “For the Defense of Sevastopol” and “In Memory of the War of 1853-1856.” Experience of a participant in the bloodiest war mid-19th V. and the artistic discoveries made in war stories of the 1850s were used by Tolstoy a decade later in his work on his main “military” work, the novel “War and Peace.”
Tolstoy's first publications evoked sympathetic responses from critics and readers. Perhaps the most insightful characteristic of creativity young writer belongs to the pen of N.G. Chernyshevsky. In the article “Childhood and adolescence. War stories gr. Tolstoy" (1856), the critic was the first to define with classical clarity the most important features creativity of Tolstoy: “purity moral sense"and psychologism - attention to the most complex side of human existence, which Chernyshevsky called the "dialectics of the soul."
In 1855, Tolstoy came to St. Petersburg, and in the fall of 1856 he retired, disappointed in military career. Work began on the previously planned “Novel of a Russian Landowner.” This work remained unfinished; only one of its fragments has survived - the story “The Morning of the Landowner,” the “echo” of which can be felt in all of Tolstoy’s novels.
In 1857, during his first trip to Europe (France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany), Tolstoy wrote the story “Lucerne.” Having created in it the image of Western “civilization”, he raised serious moral and philosophical problems. For the first time, the topic of human alienation was touched upon, continued in late creativity writer and in the works of his followers - writers of the 20th century. Tolstoy wrote with bitterness about how people, generally kind and humane, showed extraordinary spiritual callousness towards a specific person, but ended the story with an abstract philosophical conclusion about the “reasonableness” of the universe: “Infinite is the goodness and wisdom of the One who allowed and commanded exist for all these contradictions.”
In works of the 1850s. Tolstoy the artist avoided criticism of reality, coming into contact with, but not merging with, the critical trend in Russian realistic literature. The writer consciously went against the grain, believing that “the tendency to pay attention only to what outrages is a great vice, and specifically of our time.” He followed a moral maxim, which he formulated as follows: “Intentionally seek all that is good, kind, and turn away from what is bad.” Tolstoy sought to combine the accuracy of the realistic characteristics of the heroes, a deep analysis of their psychology with the search for the philosophical and moral foundations of life. Moral truth, according to Tolstoy, is concrete and achievable - it can be revealed to a person who is seeking, restless, and dissatisfied with himself.
The story “Cossacks” (1853-1863) is an artistic “manifesto” of Tolstoy’s “Rousseauism”. Despite the “literary” nature of the plot, which goes back to the “Caucasian” works of Pushkin (“Gypsies”) and Lermontov (“Hero of Our Time”), the story became the result of the writer’s creative development over ten years. There was a significant convergence of three themes, important for subsequent work on the novel “War and Peace”: “natural man”, folk life and Tolstoy’s traditional theme of the moral quest of a nobleman (the image of Olenin). In "Cossacks" "false" secular society contrasted with a harmonious community of people close to nature. “Naturality” for Tolstoy is the main evaluation criterion moral qualities and people's behavior. “True” life, in his opinion, can only be a “free” life based on an understanding of the wise laws of nature.
At the end of the 1850s, Tolstoy experienced an acute spiritual crisis. Dissatisfied with his work, disappointed in his secular and literary surroundings, he abandoned active participation in literary life and settled on the Yasnaya Polyana estate, where he took up farming, teaching and family (in 1862 Tolstoy married the daughter of a Moscow doctor S.A. Bers).
A new turn in the writer’s life significantly adjusted his literary plans. However, having retired from the literary “fuss,” he did not stop working on new works. Since 1860, when the novel “The Decembrists” was conceived, the plan for Tolstoy’s largest work of the 1860s gradually took shape. - epic novel "War and Peace". This work accumulated not only life and artistic experience, accumulated by Tolstoy in the 1850s, but also reflected his new interests. In particular, teaching activities, marriage and construction own family led to the writer's close attention to the problems of family and education. “Family Thought” in the work, dedicated to events half a century ago, turned out to be just as important as “popular thought”, philosophical, historical and moral problems.
His ascetic work—the creation of “War and Peace”—ended in 1869. For several years, Tolstoy hatched the idea of a new work on the “central”, in his opinion, historical topic- the theme of Peter I. However, work on the novel about the Peter I era did not progress beyond a few chapters. Only in 1873, having gone through a new passion for pedagogy (the ABCs and Books for Reading were written), he began to seriously begin to implement a new idea - a novel about modernity.
The novel “Anna Karenina” (1873-1877), the central work of the 1870s, - new stage V creative development Tolstoy. Unlike the epic novel “War and Peace,” dedicated to depicting the “heroic” era in the life of Russia, in the problems of “Anna Karenina” the “family thought” was in the foreground. The novel became a real “family epic”: Tolstoy believed that it was in the family that one should look for the knot of modern social and moral problems. The family in his portrayal is a sensitive barometer, reflecting changes in public morality caused by changes in the entire post-reform way of life. Anxiety for the fate of Russia dictated the famous words of Konstantin Levin: “We now, ... when all this has turned upside down and is just settling down, the question of how these conditions will fit in, there is only one important question in Russia.” The hero understands that his fragile family happiness depends on the well-being of the country.
Love and marriage, according to Tolstoy, cannot be considered only as a source of sensual pleasure. The most important thing is moral responsibilities to family and loved ones. The love of Anna Karenina and Vronsky is based only on the need for pleasure, and therefore leads to the spiritual separation of the heroes, making them unhappy. The tragedy of Anna's fate is predetermined not only by the callousness of the man whom she married not out of love, but out of calculation, by the cruelty and hypocrisy of the world, by Vronsky's frivolity, but also by the very nature of her feelings. The conflict between pleasure, obtained at the cost of destroying the family, and duty to the son turned out to be insoluble. The highest judge for Anna Karenina is not “the empty world,” but her son Seryozha: “he understood, he loved, he judged her.” The meaning of the relationship between Kitty and Levin is different: the creation of a family understood as a spiritual union loving people. The love of Kitty and Levin not only connects them with each other, but also connects them with the world around them and brings them true happiness.
Each change in Tolstoy’s worldview was reflected in his everyday life and in his work. Submitting to new moral imperatives, he began to follow them in practice: he left literary activity, cooling towards her, and even “renounced” the works written earlier. But after some time, Tolstoy returned to literature - a new turn took place in his work. This was the case in the late 1870s.
Tolstoy came to the conclusion that the life of the society to which he belonged by birth and upbringing was deceitful and empty. The severity of social criticism was combined in his works with the desire to find simple and clear answers to the “eternal” philosophical and moral issues. A keen sense of transience human life, the defenselessness of man in the face of inevitable death pushed Tolstoy to search for new foundations of life, a meaning that would not be destroyed by death. These quests were reflected in the “Confession” (1879-1882) and in the religious and philosophical treatise “What is my faith?” (1882-1884). In “Confession” Tolstoy concluded that it is faith that gives meaning to life, helping to get rid of a false, meaningless existence, and in the treatise “What is my faith?” outlined in detail his religious and moral teachings, called “Tolstoyism” by his contemporaries.
A change in moral and aesthetic guidelines led to the appearance of the treatise “What is Art?” (started in 1892, completed in 1897-1898). In the work, with the directness and categoricalness characteristic of the late Tolstoy, two problems are posed and solved: the author sharply criticizes modern Art, considering it not just useless, but destructive for people, and expresses his ideas about what it should be true art. Tolstoy's main idea: art should be useful, the task of the writer is to form moral character people, to help them search for the truths of life.
The story “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (1884-1886) is Tolstoy’s masterpiece, which influenced several generations of Russians and foreign writers, is the first work of art written after a turning point in his worldview. Tolstoy placed his hero, a successful St. Petersburg official, in the face of death, that is, in a “borderline situation” when a person must reconsider his previous attitude to service, career, family, and think about the meaning of his life.
The life of the main character of the story, Ivan Ilyich, is “the most ordinary and the most terrible,” although everything he wanted came true in it. A reassessment of the past, which was revealed to him from a new perspective, moral self-criticism and a mercilessly sober look at the lies and hypocrisy of those around him helped Ivan Ilyich overcome the fear of death. In the moral enlightenment of the hero, Tolstoy showed the victory of true spirituality. Unlike the works of the 1850s - 1870s, Ivan Ilyich’s insight was not the result of a long search for truth. The story clearly revealed a feature of Tolstoy’s late prose: the writer was no longer interested in the process moral development heroes, but sudden spiritual transformation, the “resurrection” of man.
The story “The Kreutzer Sonata,” written in 1887-1889, reflected the ideas of the late Tolstoy about the destructive power of sensual love, “lust.” Pozdnyshev’s family drama, in the author’s interpretation, is a consequence of the “power of darkness,” that is, unhealthy, inflamed passions that displace the true basis of family and marital relations—spiritual intimacy. In the afterword to The Kreutzer Sonata, Tolstoy declared chastity and celibacy as the ideal of life.
For ten years (1889-1899) Tolstoy worked on last novel"Resurrection", the plot of which was based on a real court case. The main idea of this novel, unprecedented in its power of social criticism, is the spiritual “resurrection” of man. Social institutions, religion, morality and law - all modern life The writer showed what disfigures people from the standpoint of his religious and moral philosophy. Reflecting on the “end of the century,” Tolstoy summed up the disappointing results of the 19th century, in which material civilization took precedence over spirituality, forcing people to worship false values. However, the writer is convinced that, just as the unrighteous, meaningless life of Prince Nekhlyudov ended with his insight and moral “resurrection,” the true prospect of the existence of all people should be overcoming lies, falsehood and hypocrisy. On the eve of the 20th century. Tolstoy thought about the coming “spring” of humanity, about the triumph of life, which will break through the “slabs of stones” like the first spring grass.
While working on “Resurrection,” Tolstoy simultaneously wrote the stories “Father Sergius” (1890-1898) and “Hadji Murad” (1896-1904). Both works were first published (with censored notes) only in 1912. In 1903, the story “After the Ball” was written (published in 1911). A striking phenomenon in Tolstoy’s late work were the plays “The Power of Darkness”, “The Fruits of Enlightenment” and “The Living Corpse”.
Despite the fact that in the 1880s - 1890s. Tolstoy devoted a lot of time and effort to working on journalistic works, believing that writing “art” was “shameful”; his literary activity did not stop. The very presence of the patriarch of Russian literature had a beneficial effect on artistic and social life Russia. His works turned out to be in tune with the ideological and creative quests young writers of the early XX
V. Many of them (I.A. Bunin, M. Gorky, A.I. Kuprin, M.P. Artsybashev, etc.), like thousands of people on different continents, went through the passion for “Tolstoyism.”
Tolstoy was not only a true artistic authority, but also a “teacher of life”, an example of an ascetic attitude towards moral duties person. His religious and moral teaching, which did not coincide with Orthodox dogma (in the early 1900s, the Holy Synod excommunicated Tolstoy from the church), was perceived as a clear program of life.
Tolstoy’s departure from Yasnaya Polyana on October 27 (November 10), 1910 was not only the end of an acute family crisis. This was the result of the writer’s painful reflections, who had long ago renounced property, about the falsity of his position as a preacher in the living conditions of a master’s estate. Tolstoy's death is symbolic: he died on the way to a new life, unable to benefit from the fruits of his “liberation.” Having contracted pneumonia, Tolstoy died at the small Astapovo railway station on November 7 (20) and was buried on November 10 (23), 1910 in Yasnaya Polyana.
Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828 in Yasnaya Polyana, Tula province, the fourth child in a wealthy aristocratic family. Tolstoy lost his parents early; his further upbringing was carried out by his distant relative T. A. Ergolskaya. In 1844, Tolstoy entered Kazan University at the Department of Oriental Languages of the Faculty of Philosophy, but because... classes did not arouse any interest in him, in 1847. submitted his resignation from the university. At the age of 23, Tolstoy, together with his older brother Nikolai, left for the Caucasus, where he took part in hostilities. These years of the writer's life were reflected in the autobiographical story "Cossacks" (1852-63), in the stories "Raid" (1853), "Cutting Wood" (1855), as well as in the later story "Hadji Murat" (1896-1904, published in 1912). In the Caucasus, Tolstoy began to write the trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”.
During the Crimean War he went to Sevastopol, where he continued to fight.
In the fall of 1856, Tolstoy, having retired, decided to interrupt his literary activity and become a landowner, went to Yasnaya Polyana, where he was engaged in educational work, opened a school, and created his own system of pedagogy. This activity fascinated Tolstoy so much that in 1860 he even went abroad to get acquainted with the schools of Europe.
In September 1862, Tolstoy married the eighteen-year-old daughter of a doctor, Sofya Andreevna Bers, and immediately after the wedding, he took his wife from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana, where he completely devoted himself to family life and household concerns, but by the fall of 1863 he was captured by a new literary plan, as a result of which the world was born. the fundamental work “War and Peace” appeared. In 1873-1877 created the novel Anna Karenina.
During these same years, the writer’s worldview, known as Tolstoyism, was fully formed, the essence of which is visible in the works: “Confession”, “What is my faith?”, “The Kreutzer Sonata”.
Admirers of the writer’s work came to Yasnaya Polyana from all over Russia and the world, whom they treated as a spiritual mentor. In 1899, the novel “Resurrection” was published. Latest works The writer's stories were “Father Sergius”, “After the Ball”, “
Posthumous notes Elder Fyodor Kuzmich" and the drama "The Living Corpse". In the late autumn of 1910, at night, secretly from his family, 82-year-old Tolstoy, accompanied only by his personal doctor D.P. Makovitsky, left Yasnaya Polyana, fell ill on the way and was forced to get off the train at the small Astapovo Ryazan-Uralskaya railway station
railway . . Here, in the house of the station chief, he spent the last seven days of his life. November 7 (20) Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy died.
Major milestones
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is a classic of world literature, the greatest, along with F.M. Dostoevsky, master of psychologism, creator of the epic novel genre, original thinker, “teacher of life.”. He was related to several aristocratic families. Orphaned early. He studied at Kazan University, but dropped out, preferring self-education according to his own program. Over the course of his long life, he learned many languages, became a most erudite person, and over time, he considered physical labor obligatory for himself - peasant work, handicraft work. In 1852 debuted in Nekrasov magazine "Contemporary» story"Childhood", followed by "Adolescence" (1854) and "Youth" (1857).skies' stories" (1855-1856), which appeared thanks to the author’s own experience - first as a cadet, then as an artillery officer, awarded an order and two medals. In a review article about a separate edition of “Childhood” and “Adolescence” and military stories (1856) N.G. Chernyshevsky noted the features of Tolstoy’s creative image that the writer preserved forever: “the dialectic of the soul” and “the purity of moral feeling.” In the images of officers, the young writer revealed the discrepancy between essence and appearance (both in a positive and negative sense), the displacement of natural thoughts and feelings corresponding to the cruel reality of war by considerations of prestige and career.
After retirement (1856) and traveling abroad, Tolstoy settled in his Tula estate Yasnaya Polyana, became interested in farming, 1859 opens a school for peasants for the first timetey (then he rediscovered it twice and taught it himself: teacherscreative hobbies came upon him in waves), publishes the pedagogical magazine “Yasnaya Polyana” (1862); e he happened to be a mediator between the landowners and the liberated peasants, in whose favor he sought to resolve matters. Back in 1856, Tolstoy publishedthe story “Morning of the Landowner”, clearly autobiographical, where the gap between the good-heartedness of the 19-year-old landowner-projector Prince Dmitry Nekhlyudov and the peasants whom he decided to benefit is soberly shown. Tolstoy spent his whole life trying to overcome this gulf. Important moral issues were raised incenter of stories 1856-1859. “Notes of a Marker”, “Two Hussars”, “AlBert", "Lucerne", "Three Deaths", the story "Family Happiness". In the story"Polikushka" (1863) it was about a timid and conscientious man who hanged himself because he lost the money entrusted to him by his lady. Tolstoy constantly turned to new and new topics. Compared to previous prose, he pays little attention to plot construction; he has no detailed descriptions. Back in 1853, in his diary, he called Pushkin’s style in “The Captain’s Daughter” outdated: “... in the new direction, the interest in the details of feelings replaces the interest in the events themselves.” Tolstoy develops dialogues, the image is associated with the point of view of one or another character, although the author with his evaluative position always rises above the characters. Unlike the realists of that time, Tolstoy was not at all inclined to specifically depict everyday life.
In 1852-1863 under the influence of the ideas of J.Zh. Rousseau wrote the story “Cossacks” about the need to bring modern civilized man closer to nature, to “natural people”. Its young hero, Olenin, for the first time in Tolstoy’s work tries to “settle down” among the Grebensky Cossacks, makes friends with the old hunter Uncle Eroshka, drinks chikhir with him, and becomes interested in the Cossack girl Maryana. But the realist Tolstoy is far from the utopianism of Rousseau. The village rejects the stranger, Maryana is much closer to Lukashka, a man of her circle. “Cossacks” is one of the few classic works about ordinary free people and the beauty of their life.
In the early 60s. the writer began work on the novel “The Decembrists,” but gradually moved from the idea of a work about a Decembrist who returned from Siberia to a large historical canvas . Having married at 34, starting a new stage in his biography (familythe topic was the most important for Tolstoy), he experienced a surge of creative strength.1863-1869 given to "War and Peace" (publication of the first parts underwith the title “1805”, one of the plans had the name"Everything is fine, "What ends well": it was supposed to leave Andrei Bol alivehorse and Petya Rostov). Realization of original intentionsvastly surpassed them. The most popular Russian of that timewriter I.S. Turgenev recognized Tolstoy "first place among all our modern writers" 1 .
After War and Peace, Tolstoy, who rightly considered the era of Peter I to be the “node” of the entire subsequent history of Russia, studied materials about it and made many sketches of a new historical novel, but finally recognizing this time as too distant (in psychological and other respects) ) from modern times, abandoned his plan. In 1873-1877 Anna Karenina was created. Although Tolstoy said that in it he loved the “family thought,” the moralistic plan was overcome, the heroine, who broke family ties for the sake of love, misunderstood by her lover and rejected by society, committed suicide in despair, evokes the sympathy of the author and the reader as a victim of her own complex experiences and secular norms of behavior, which are quite hypocritical. Parallel to the main storyline, the line of Konstantin Levin, a character very close to the author, pushes the content of this love story into a much broader and deeper socio-historical context. “We now,” Levin reflects on the post-reform reality, “when all this has been turned upside down and is just settling down, the question of how these conditions will fit in is only one important question in Russia...” But the result of the hero’s spiritual quest was artificially simplified: he sets himself as an example the old peasant Fokanych, who, according to the peasants, “lives for the soul, remembers God.” This result foreshadowed the ideological crisis of Tolstoy, which occurred in him at the turn of the 70-80s. an internal turning point that gave rise to a renunciation of his artistic creativity (sometimes the late Tolstoy wrote “artistic” in secret from his wife, tormented by the contradiction between the proclaimed teaching and creative need). “Tolstoyism” spread quite widely, capturing, for example, N.S. Leskova.
Since the 80s. Tolstoy lives mainly in Moscow, writes treatises, journalistic articles, compiles his own from the four Gospels (he did not recognize the divine nature of Jesus Christ), criticizes dogmatic theology, creates edifying, deliberately simplified “folk stories”. But then the stories appear " Canvas meter. The History of a Horse" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" (both publishedus in 1886), in which deep psychologism was combined with exceptionally sharp social criticism. The stories “The Kreutzer Sonata” (1891), “The Devil”, “Father Sergius” (the last two were written in 1889-1890 and 1890-1898, published posthumously) with unprecedented frankness they raised the question of the power of gender over a person, forbidden for Russian classical literature, but they were far from being reduced to it. Tolstoy also wrote several plays, the best of which is "Alivecorpse" (1900, published 1911), showing the inevitability of the death of a weak-willed but good person who is trying to leave the usual life of his social circle with its laws.
It took ten years to write the novel “Resurrection” (1899) - “testament of the passing century to the new” (A.A. Block) 2 . Tolstoy overcame the moralistic plan in him, the moral “resurrection” of Prince Dmitry Nekhlyudov was rather declared than artistically revealed, but the plot, which was based on the efforts of the hero for Katyusha Maslova, who was unfairly sentenced to hard labor, whom he once seduced and whose life he ruined, allowed to show numerous the social strata of Russia from top to bottom in a way that has never happened in any work. The caustically ironic depiction of the church service in the novel was one of the reasons that the Synod stated that Tolstoy had fallen away from the Orthodox Church (but did not literally “excommunicate” him, much less anathematize him). The last major artthe writer’s own work, on which he worked in 1896-1904, - historical story"Hadji Murat" from the times of the Caucasian War, where “imperious absolutism” is criticized in the person of both Nicholas I and Imam Shamil, the inner nobility and vitality of the protagonist are glorified. One of latest articles Tolstoy,“I Can’t Be Silent” (1908), was a protest against capital punishment caused by the revolution of 1905-1907.
Tolstoy as a writer and publicist is characterized by passionate conviction. For this truth-seeker, the idea that the truth is inaccessible to man is unacceptable.
Analysis of the novel - epic"WAR AND PEACE" (1863-1869)
The problem of genre. Tolstoy found it difficult to determine the genre of his main work. “This is not a novel, still less a poem, even lesshistorical chronicle», - he wrote in the article “A few words on the subject”from the book "War and Peace" (1868), adding that in general “in the new period of Russian literature there is not a single artistic prose work that is slightly beyond mediocrity, which would fully fit into the form of a novel, poem or story.” The poem was meant, of course, to be prosaic, Gogolian, focused on ancient epics and at the same time on a picaresque novel about modernity. The novel, as it developed in the West, was traditionally understood as a multi-event, with a developed plot, a narrative about what happened to one person or several people, who are given significantly more attention than others - not about their ordinary, regular life, but about more or a shorter incident with a beginning and an end, most often happy, consisting in the hero’s marriage to his beloved, less often unhappy, when the hero died. Even in the problematic Russian novel that preceded War and Peace, the hero’s “unique power” is observed and the endings are relatively traditional. In Tolstoy, like in Dostoevsky, “the unity of the central person is practically absent” 3, and the novel’s plot seems artificial to him: “...I can’t I can not And I do not know how to put certain boundaries on the persons I have imagined - such as marriage or death, after which the interest of the story would be destroyed. I couldn’t help but imagine that the death of one person only aroused interest in other people, and marriage seemed mostly like the beginning, not the end of interest” 4 .
"War and Peace", of course, is not a historical chronicle, although it isTolstoy pays great attention to theory. Counted: "Episodes fromstories and reasoning in which historical issues are developedsy, occupy 186 chapters out of 333 chapters of the book", while to the lineOnly 70 chapters are relevant to Andrei Bolkonsky. There are especially many historical chapters in the third and fourth volumes. So,in the second part of the fourth volume there are four chapters out of nineteen connectedwe are with Pierre Bezukhov, the rest are entirely military-historical.Philosophical, journalistic and historical reasoningthere are four chapters at the beginning of the first part of the epilogue and the entire second partPart. However, reasoning is not a sign of chronicle; chronicle is firstjust a summary of events.
There are signs of a chronicle in War and Peace, but not so much historical as family. Characters are rarely represented in literature by entire families. Tolstoy talks about the families of the Bolkonskys, Bezukhovs, Rostovs, Kuragins, Drubetskys, and mentions the Dolokhov family (although outside the family this hero behaves as an individualist and an egoist). The first three families, faithful to the family spirit, finally find themselves in kinship, which is very important, and the official kinship of Pierre, who through weakness of will married Helen, with the soulless Kuragins is liquidated by life itself. But “War and Peace” cannot be reduced to a family chronicle.
Meanwhile, Tolstoy compared his book with the Iliad 5, that is, with the ancient epic. The essence of the ancient epic is “the primacy of the general over the individual” 6. It tells about the glorious past, about events that are not just significant, but important for large human communities and nations. An individual hero exists in it as an exponent (or antagonist) of common life.
Clear signs of the epic beginning in War and Peace are its large volume and problem-thematic encyclopedicity. But, of course, Tolstoy’s worldview was very far from the people of the “age of heroes” and he considered the very concept of “hero” unacceptable for an artist. His characters are valuable individuals who by no means embody any extra-personal collective norms. In the 20th century War and Peace is often called an epic novel. This sometimes gives rise to objections, statements that “the leading genre-forming beginning of Tolstoy’s “book” should still be recognized as a “personal” thought, basically not epic, but romantic” 7, especially “the first volumes of the work, devoted primarily to family life and personal the fates of the heroes, dominate not the epic, but the novel, albeit unconventional” 8. Of course, War and Peace does not literally use the principles ancient epic. And yet, along with the novelistic beginning, there is also the primordially opposite epic, only they do not complement each other, but turn out to be mutually permeable, creating a certain new quality, an unprecedented artistic synthesis. According to Tolstoy, a person’s individual self-affirmation is detrimental to his personality. Only in unity with others, with “common life,” can he develop and improve himself, and receive a truly worthy reward for his efforts and searches in this direction. V.A. Nedzvetsky rightly noted: “ The world of Dostoevsky's novels andTolstoy for the first time in Russian prose is based onmutually directedmovement and interest in each other of the individual and the people" 9 . For Tolstoy, this means the synthesis of the novel and epic principles. Therefore, after all there are reasons to call “War and Peace” historical novel - epic, bearing in mind that both components in this synthesis are radically updated and transformed.
Meanings of the word "world". Although in Tolstoy’s time the word “peace” was printed in the title of his book as “mir” and not “m!r”, thereby meaning only the absence of war, in fact in the epic novel the meanings of this word, going back to one original one, are numerous and varied . This is the whole world (the universe), and humanity, and the national world, and the peasant community, and other forms of unification of people, and that which is beyond the boundaries of this or that community - so, for Nikolai Rostov, after losing 43 thousand to Dolokhov, “the whole world was divided into two uneven departments: one - our Pavlograd regiment, and the other - everything else." Certainty is always important to him. She is in the regiment. He decided to “serve well and be a completely excellent comrade and officer, that is, a wonderful person, which seemed so difficult in to the world, and in a regiment so possible” (vol. 2, part 2, chapter XV). At the beginning of the war of 1812, Natasha was deeply moved in church by the words “Let us pray to the Lord in peace,” she understood this as the absence of hostility, as the unity of people of all classes. “World” can mean a way of life, a worldview, a type of perception, a state of consciousness. Princess Marya, on the eve of her father’s death, forced to live and act independently, “was embraced by another world of everyday, difficult and free activity, completely opposite to that moral world, in which it was previously contained and in which the best consolation was prayer” (vol. 3, part 2, chapter VIII). The wounded Prince Andrei “wanted to return to the former world of pure thought, but he could not, and delirium pulled him into its realm” (vol. 3, part 3, chapter XXXII). Princess Marya, in the words, tone, and gaze of her dying brother, “felt a terrible alienation from everything worldly for a living person” (vol. 4, part 1, chapter XV). In the epilogue, Countess Marya is jealous of her husband for his household activities, because she cannot “understand the joys and sorrows brought to him by this separate, alien world for her” (Part 1, Chapter VII). And further it says: “As in every real family, in the Lysogorsk house there lived together several completely different worlds, which, each maintaining its own peculiarity and making concessions to one another, merged into one harmonious whole. Every event that happened in the house was equally important - joyful or sad - for all these worlds; but each world had its own reasons, independent of others, to rejoice or be sad about some event” (Chapter XII). Thus, the range of meanings of the word “peace” in “War and Peace” is from the universe, space to the internal state of the individual hero. Tolstoy's macrocosm and microcosm are inseparable. Not only in the Lysogorsk house of Marya and Nikolai Rostov - throughout the book, many and diverse worlds merge “into one harmonious whole” in accordance with an unprecedented genre.
Psychologism. Another reproach addressed to Tolstoy was the reproach for modernizing the psychology of the characters, for attributing to people the beginning of the 19th century. thoughts, feelings and experiences characteristic of the writer’s more spiritually developed contemporaries. Tolstoy's favorite heroes are truly portrayed in psychological depth. Although Nikolai Rostov is far from an intellectual, the sentimental song he sings (vol. 1, part 1, chapter XVII) seems too primitive for him. But it is a sign of historical times. In the spirit of this time, Nikolai’s letter to Sonya (vol. 3, part 1, chapter XII), Dolokhov’s thoughts about women (vol. 2, part 1, chapter X), Pierre’s Masonic diary (vol. 2, part 3, chapter VIII, X). When the inner world of the characters is supposedly directly reproduced, this should not be taken literally. The smart and subtle Bolkonsky understands: thought, feeling and their expression do not coincide. “It was obvious that Speransky could never come up with that usual thought for Prince Andrei, that it is still impossible to express everything that you think...” (vol. 2, part 3, chapter VI).
Inner speech, especially unconscious sensations and experiences, do not lend themselves to literal logical formulation. And yet, conventionally, Tolstoy does this, as if he translates the language of experiences into the language of concepts. Internal monologues in quotation marks are just such a translation, sometimes outwardly contrary to logic. Princess Marya suddenly realizes that the French will soon come to Bogucharovo and that she cannot stay: “So that Prince Andrei knows that she is in the power of the French! So that she, the daughter of Prince Nikolai Andreich Bolkonsky, asks Mr. General Rameau to provide her with patronage and enjoy his benefits!” (vol. 3, part 2, chapter X). Outwardly, it is direct speech, but Princess Marya does not think of herself in the third person. Such “inner speech,” taken literally, was not characteristic not only of people at the beginning of the 19th century, but also of no one subsequently. No person could ever have time to think about his love for life, grass, earth, air, like Prince Andrei, two steps away from a fan that was about to explode. This is how the perception of everything that the eye catches, heightened on the brink of life and death, is conveyed.
Tolstoy retells in his author’s speech the delirium of Prince Andrei, describes the “world” of a mortally wounded man: “And piti-piti-piti and ti-ti, and piti-piti - boom, the fly hit... And his attention was suddenly transferred to another world of reality and delirium in which something special happened. Still in this world, everything was erected without collapsing, a building, something was still stretching, the same candle was burning with a red circle, the same sphinx shirt was lying by the door; but, besides all this, something creaked, there was a smell of fresh wind, and a new white sphinx, standing, appeared in front of the door. And in the head of this sphinx there was the pale face and sparkling eyes of the very Natasha about whom he was now thinking” (vol. 3, part 3, chapter XXXII). The chain of visions and associations closes on reality; it was indeed Natasha who entered the door, and Prince Andrei did not even suspect that she was close, very close. The philosophical reflections of the dying man (sometimes formalized demonstratively logically) and his symbolic dying dream are retold. Even an uncontrollable psyche appears in specific, clear images. “Tolstoy’s work is the highest point of the analytical, I explaingood psychologism of the 19th century..." 13 - emphasizes L.Ya. Ginsburg.
Tolstoy's psychologism applies only to heroes close and dear to the author. From the inside, even the seemingly completely intact Kutuzov is shown, to whom the truth is known in advance, but by no means Napoleon, not Kuragins. Dolokhov can reveal his experiences in words, wounded in a duel, but such a world of sounds and visions, which is open to the inner gaze and hearing of Petya Rostov on his last night at the partisan bivouac, is inaccessible, by the will of Tolstoy, to characters primarily engaged in self-affirmation.
The composition of the epic novel and the originality of the style. The main action of War and Peace (before the epilogue) spans seven and a half years. This material is distributed unevenly across the four volumes of the epic novel. The first and third-fourth volumes cover six months each; two wars, 1805 and 1812, are compositionally correlated. The second volume is the most “novelistic”. War with the French 1806-1807 is no longer covered in such detail, despite the fact that in terms of political consequences (the Peace of Tilsit) it was more important than the campaign of 1805: politics as such is less interesting to Tolstoy (although he shows the meeting of two emperors in Tilsit) than the moral meaning of this or that another war with Napoleon. It is even shorter about the long Russian-Turkish war, a quick and bloodless victory in which Kutuzov brought, very briefly - about the war with Sweden (“Finland”), which became the next step in Berg’s career. The war with Iran, which dragged on during those years (1804-1813), is not even mentioned. The first volume clearly correlates the disparate scale battles of Shengraben and Austerlitz. Bagration's detachment covered the retreat of Kutuzov's army, the soldiers saved their brothers, and the detachment was not defeated; under Austerlitz there is nothing to die for, and this brings a terrible defeat to the army. The second volume describes the largely peaceful life of a number of characters over several years, which has its own difficulties.
In the last volumes, people like the Kuragins disappear one after another from the novel; in the epilogue not a word is said about Prince Vasily and his son Ippolit, Anna Pavlovna Sherer, the Drubetskys, Berg and his wife Vera (although she is in Rostov’s past), even about Dolokhov. St. Petersburg social life continues to flow even at the time of the Borodino battle, but the author now has no time to describe in detail those who live such a life. Nesvitsky, Zherkov, Telyanin turn out to be unnecessary. The death of Helen in the fourth volume is discussed briefly and summarily, in contrast to her characteristics in the first volumes. Napoleon after the scene Poklonnaya Hill He is only mentioned, in “visual” scenes, and as a full-fledged literary character he no longer appears. Partly the same thing happens with characters who did not cause the author’s rejection. For example, Bagration, one of the most significant heroes of the War of 1812, is practically not represented as a character in the third volume, he is only talked about, and not in too much detail; now he apparently seems to Tolstoy mainly as a figure of official history. The third and fourth volumes contain more direct images common people and actual historical episodes, criticism, analyticism, and at the same time pathos are intensified.
Real persons and fictional characters are drawn using the same means. They act in the same scenes and are even mentioned together in Tolstoy’s discussions. The writer willingly uses the point of view of a fictional character in depicting the author himself, Borodinsky - through the eyes of the same Bolkonsky, but mainly Pierre (a non-military, unusual person) and again the author, and the positions of the author and the hero here seem to be equal; The Tilsit meeting of the emperors is given from the points of view of Rostov and Boris Drubetsky with the presence of the author's commentary; Napoleon is seen by Prince Andrey on the Field of Austerlitz, and by the Cossack Lavrushka after the French invasion of Russia, etc.
The “conjugation” of different thematic layers and points of view of characters into a single whole corresponds to the “conjugation” of different forms of narration (in in a broad sense words): plastically representable pictures, overview reports of events, philosophical and journalistic reasoning. The latter belong only to the second half of the epic novel. Sometimes they are present in story chapters. Transitions from pictures to reasoning do not entail noticeable changes in the author’s speech. In one Tolstoy phrase, words of the high and low, figurative-expressive and logical-conceptual series can be combined as completely related words, for example, at the end of the second volume: “...Pierre joyfully, eyes wet with tears, looked at this bright star, which as if, with inexpressible speed, having flown through immeasurable spaces along a parabolic line, suddenly, like an arrow pierced into the ground, it slammed into one place in the black sky chosen by it and stopped, energetically raising its tail up... "The flow of life is complex, contradictory, and just as The composition of “War and Peace” is complex and sometimes naturally contradictory at all levels: from the arrangement of chapters and parts, plot episodes to the construction of one phrase. The focus on “conjugation” gives rise to a typically Tolstoyan extended and cumbersome phrase, sometimes with the same syntactic constructions, as if trying to cover all the shades of a given subject, including those that contradict one another - hence the oxymoronic epithets: out of curiosity, a “civilian” appears on the Schöngraben field official, auditor” “with a radiant, naive and at the same time sly smile...” (vol. 1, part 2, chapter XVII), as it seems to Pierre, the comet above his head “fully corresponded to what was in him. .. softened and encouraged soul” (vol. 2, part 5, chapter XXII), etc. A branched phrase, for example, about Kutuzov, the exhaustion of his historical role after the expulsion of the French from Russia, can be set off by a short, lapidary: “And he died” (vol. 4, part 4, chapter XI).
The historical originality of the characters’ speech is ensured by the names of the realities of the time and the abundant use of the French language, moreover, a varied use: often French phrases are given as directly depicted, sometimes (with the caveat that the conversation is in French, or without it, if the French speak) them immediately replaces the Russian equivalent, and sometimes the phrase more or less conventionally combines the Russian and French parts. The author's translation is sometimes inadequate; in Russian the French phrase is given some new connotation. The speech of the common people is carefully distinguished from the speech of the nobles, but the main characters generally speak the same language, which is indistinguishable from the author’s speech. Other means are quite sufficient for individualizing characters.
QUESTIONS AND TASKS
Define the innovation of L. N. Tolstoy within the framework of the genre experiments of Russian classics. How do the genre characteristics of an epic novel manifest themselves in the themes and narrative structure of War and Peace?
How do Tolstoy relate historical facts and persons with fiction and conjecture? List famous stories characters from War and Peace.
Why does Tolstoy describe the appearance of Napoleon and Kutuzov using similar means? Is the author's attitude towards Emperor Alexander evolving?
To what extent can philosophical and journalistic arguments be considered organic in the text of War and Peace? How is Tolstoy’s philosophy of history linked to the developing artistic world epic novel? Name the symbols used in War and Peace.
Why does L.N. Tolstoy force his favorite heroes to make many mistakes in life? Tell us about the life path of Nikolai Rostov. Why are female characters so important in a book set during wars?
Are peaceful and military episodes connected in the epic novel? Is a specific artistic effect achieved by one or another transfer of the scene of action, a change of characters? Find in the text “War and Peace” the rearrangement of events in time.
Why is this technique needed?
How do “family thought” and “folk thought” relate in the epic novel by L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace"?
List the meanings of the word "peace" in War and Peace. Why did Tolstoy perceive war as “disgusting?” to the human mind and all human nature
event"? Describe Napoleon as actor
and as a character in the author’s reflections in “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy.
What is the significance of the images of peasants for the artistic concept of “War and Peace” by L.N. Tolstoy?
Why are the fates of Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov so different despite the similarity of their moral quests?
Describe the psychologism of L.N. Tolstoy as a means of characterizing his characters.
How are St. Petersburg and Moscow shown in War and Peace? What is unique about the relationship between fictional and historical characters
at L.N. Tolstoy (“War and Peace”)?
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