And the war began, that is, it happened
contrary to human reason
and the whole human nature event...
L. Tolstoy
When Tolstoy began work on the novel War and Peace, all the questions, personal and social, that had worried the writer since the time of the Crimean campaign, now stood before him in full force. The peasant reform did not eliminate the deep contradictions between the landowner and the peasant. The “great benefit” promised to the people resulted in despair and protest of millions. “The man’s problem” still remained the main one in literature. Its decision largely depended on the fundamental social changes that awaited Russia in the future. The task was to "bring into the world the idea social order without land ownership...", an idea that, according to Tolstoy, has a future, that is, the possibility of spiritual unity of people on the basis of equality and brotherhood.
Tolstoy imagined the planned work as a reminder that the people are a huge moral force that subjugates everything. healthy forces society. The writer immerses himself in the material of history in order to find in it an explanation for many phenomena of his time. And when Tolstoy’s gaze stops at the era of 1812, “folk thought” captures his entire being. It took “five years of incessant and exceptional labor to best conditions life", in order to say something "that no one will ever say." The writing of "War and Peace" resulted in the birth of a previously unknown genre in literature - the epic novel. In terms of the breadth of life, the depth and power of revealing human characters, the world literature knows nothing equal.
“What is “War and Peace”?” Tolstoy wrote about the form of his work. “This is not a novel, even less a poem, even less a historical chronicle. “War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed." And in a conversation with Gorky he said: “Without false modesty, this is like the Iliad.”
Creative history“War and Peace” bears traces of numerous edits, corrections, and searches for that right word, which, as a result of hard work, crowns high skill and perfection. Tolstoy began and stopped writing his novel countless times until the era of 1812 appeared before him in clear and definite images and, as he says, asked to be written down on paper.
In War and Peace, Tolstoy tried to write the history of the people. The true hero of his work is the Russian people, those Karps and Vlass, who did not take hay to Moscow to sell hay to the French for big money, but burned it. Folk character The war affected not only the spiritual unity of the people and progressive strata of Russian society, but also the spontaneous growth of the partisan movement that unfolded in the territory captured by the enemy. Disregarding the rules of military art, the partisans dealt crushing blows to the French. Fascinating and interesting, with great tact and skill, Tolstoy depicts partisan raids behind enemy lines under the command of Denis Davydov, talks about the sexton who became the head of the detachment, about the elder Vasilisa, who exterminated hundreds of French. "Cudgel people's war“,” writes Tolstoy, “rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone’s tastes and rules, with stupid simplicity, but with expediency, without considering anything, it rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion was destroyed.” .
People's destinies are intertwined in the novel with the life destinies of individual heroes. This gives the whole picture the character of universality, aesthetic diversity, held together by the unity of the author’s thought. The life of Russian society in one of most interesting periods his story appeared in Tolstoy’s portrayal in its entirety due to the fact that in his novel he depicted people of various social groups and classes from the standpoint of popular ideas about life. The writer is merciless to all kinds of lies, hypocrisy, deception, public and family. And he stigmatizes this when he creates types of a circle of people alien to him - high dignitaries, representatives of the royal court, officials, staff officers who use the war for selfish purposes. And vice versa, he is full of high inspiration and optimism when depicting heroes and heroines close to his heart - they are the “guides” of the artist’s thoughts and feelings, the embodiment of his aesthetic and moral rules. This is how Andrei and Pierre, Natasha Rostova and Maria Bolkonskaya, Kutuzov and Bagration appear in the novel.
Considering the historical process as a movement of the masses themselves, Tolstoy attaches great importance to this movement outstanding personality. Kutuzov and Napoleon appear in the novel as two diametric opposites, towards which all the threads of the narrative are drawn. The law of repulsion and attraction operates in relation to these opposites according to their role and place in historical process. Napoleon, in Tolstoy's interpretation, is the embodiment of evil, the personification of the bourgeois civilization of the West, leading to the alienation of the individual from the people. Kutuzov is the bearer of popular feeling. The main thing about him is his deep understanding of people's needs, his spiritual closeness to the people. These qualities of Kutuzov’s character made it possible, says Tolstoy, to choose him, against the will of the tsar, as a representative of the people’s war.
In scenes depicting Kutuzov as a brilliant military strategist and outstanding statesman, Tolstoy remains faithful to historical truth. So, for example, Kutuzov regarded the Battle of Borodino as a victory for the Russians, and the surrender of Moscow as the threshold of the final death of Napoleonic army. However, in his philosophical reflections on the “boundaries of freedom and dependence” and interpretations of the driving forces of history, Tolstoy expresses judgments that contradict his artistic truth.
In the novel, the interpretation of the image of Platon Karataev is given in a discrepancy with historical truth. Tolstoy admires his gentleness, meekness, and his patient attitude towards life. He is the whole personification of something “kind, round.” It does not contain even a thousandth part of what characterizes everything Russian peasantry with his enormous will to win and indispensable participation in all vital processes. The idealization of the features of non-resistance in Platon Karataev opens a new stage in Tolstoy’s ideological activity, the stage of the writer’s gradual transition to the position of the patriarchal peasantry.
In War and Peace, Tolstoy sought to tell not only the truth about the human soul, but also the truth of history. And therefore, all the contradictions of the writer’s “personal thought” in no way detract from the artistic merits of the novel or reduce the level of the narrative. With this epic novel, Tolstoy entered world literature as the author of the greatest work ever written.
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Rejection traditional history, in particular, Tolstoy’s interpretation of the events of 1812 was developed gradually. The beginning of the 1860s was the time of a surge of interest in history, in particular in the era of Alexander I and Napoleonic Wars. Books dedicated to this era are published, historians give public lectures. Tolstoy does not stand aside: just at this time he approaches historical novel. Having read the official work of the historian Alexander Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, who portrayed Kutuzov as a faithful executor of the strategic ideas of Alexander I, Tolstoy expressed the desire to “compile a true true story Europe this century"; work Adolphe Thiers Adolphe Thiers (1797-1877) - French historian and politician. He was the first to write scientific history French Revolution, which was very popular - about 150 thousand copies were sold over half a century. He published “The History of the Consulate and the Empire,” a detailed coverage of the era of Napoleon I. Thiers was a major political figure: he twice headed the government under the July Monarchy and became the first president of the Third Republic. forced Tolstoy to devote entire pages of War and Peace to such pro-Napoleonic historiography. Extensive discussions about the causes, course of the war and, in general, about the force that moves peoples, begin with the third volume, but are fully crystallized in the second part of the epilogue of the novel, its theoretical conclusion, in which there is no longer a place for Rostov, Bolkonsky, Bezukhov.
Tolstoy's main objection to the traditional interpretation of historical events (not only the Napoleonic Wars) is that the ideas, moods and orders of one person, largely due to chance, cannot be the true causes of large-scale phenomena. Tolstoy refuses to believe that the murder of hundreds of thousands of people can be caused by the will of one person, no matter how great he is; he is rather ready to believe that these hundreds of thousands are governed by some kind of natural law, similar to those that operate in the animal kingdom. Russia’s victory in the war with France was led by the combination of many wills of the Russian people, which individually can even be interpreted as selfish (for example, the desire to leave Moscow, which the enemy is about to enter), but they are united by their reluctance to submit to the invader. By shifting the emphasis from the activities of rulers and heroes to the “homogeneous attractions of people,” Tolstoy anticipates the French school "Annals" A group of French historians close to the journal “Annals of Economic and social theory" In the late 1920s, they formulated the principles of the “new historical science”: history is not limited to political decrees and economic data; it is much more important to study the private life of a person, his worldview. “Annalists” first formulated the problem, and only then began to search for sources, expanded the concept of a source and used data from disciplines related to history. which made a revolution in the historiography of the 20th century, and develops the ideas Mikhail Pogodin Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin (1800-1875) - historian, prose writer, publisher of the magazine "Moskvityanin". Pogodin was born into a peasant family, and to mid-19th century, he became such an influential figure that he gave advice to Emperor Nicholas I. Pogodin was considered the center of literary Moscow, he published the almanac “Urania”, in which he published poems by Pushkin, Baratynsky, Vyazemsky, Tyutchev, and Gogol, Zhukovsky, Ostrovsky were published in his “Moskvityanin”. The publisher shared the views of the Slavophiles, developed the ideas of Pan-Slavism, and was close to the philosophical circle of wise men. Pogodin studied history professionally Ancient Rus', defended the concept that the Scandinavians laid the foundations of Russian statehood. He collected a valuable collection of ancient Russian documents, which was later bought by the state. and partly Henry Thomas Buckle Henry Thomas Buckle (1821-1862) - English historian. His main work- “History of Civilization in England”, in which he creates his own philosophy of history. According to Buckle, the development of civilization has general principles and patterns, and even the most seemingly random event can be explained by objective reasons. The scientist builds the dependence of the progress of society on natural phenomena, examines the influence of climate, soil, and food on it. “The History of Civilization in England,” which Buckle did not have time to finish, had a strong influence on historiosophy, including Russian. (both wrote in their own way about the common laws of history and states). Another source of Tolstoy’s historiosophy is the ideas of his friend, mathematician, chess player and amateur historian Prince Sergei Urusov, who was obsessed with the discovery of “positive laws” of history and applied these laws to the War of 1812 and the figure of Kutuzov. On the eve of the release of the sixth volume of War and Peace (initially the work was divided into six, not four volumes), Turgenev wrote about Tolstoy: “...Perhaps... I had a little time fall apart- and instead of muddy philosophizing, he will give us a drink of the pure spring water of his great talent.” Turgenev's hopes were not justified: it was the sixth volume that contained the quintessence of Tolstoy's historiosophical doctrine.
Andrei Bolkonsky is a nobody, like every other person, a novelist, not a writer of personalities or memoirs. I would be ashamed to publish if all my work consisted in copying the portrait, finding out, remembering
Lev Tolstoy
Tolstoy's ideas are partly contradictory. While Tolstoy refuses to see Napoleon or any other charismatic leader as a world-changing genius, he acknowledges that others do, and devotes many pages to this view. According to Efim Etkind, “the novel is driven by the actions and conversations of people who are all (or almost all) mistaken about their own role or the role of someone who seems ruler" 27 Etkind E. G. " Inner man"and external speech. Essays on the psychopoetics of Russian literature of the 18th-19th centuries. M.: School “Languages of Russian Culture”, 1998. P. 290. . Tolstoy suggests that historians “leave the kings, ministers and generals alone, and study the homogeneous, infinitesimal elements that lead the masses,” but he himself does not follow this prescription: a significant part of his novel is dedicated specifically to the kings, ministers and generals. However, in the end, Tolstoy makes judgments about these historical figures according to whether they were exponents of the popular movement. Kutuzov, in his procrastination, unwillingness to risk the lives of soldiers in vain, leaving Moscow, realizing that the war had already been won, coincided with the people's aspirations and understanding of the war. Ultimately, he is interesting to Tolstoy as a “representative of the Russian people”, and not as a prince or commander.
However, Tolstoy also had to defend himself from criticism of the historical authenticity of his novel, so to speak, from the other side: he wrote about the reproaches that “War and Peace” did not show “the horrors of serfdom, the pawning of wives in the walls, the flogging of adult sons, Saltychikha, etc.” Tolstoy objects that he did not find evidence of a particularly rampant “riot” in the numerous diaries, letters and legends he studied: “In those days they also loved, envied, sought truth, virtue, were carried away by passions; there was the same complex mental and moral life, sometimes even more refined than now, in the upper class.” “The horrors of serfdom” for Tolstoy are what we would now call “cranberries”, stereotypes about Russian life and history.
© Gulin A.V., introductory article, 2003
© Nikolaev A.V., illustrations, 2003
© Design of the series. Publishing house "Children's Literature", 2003
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
From 1863 to 1869, not far from ancient Tula, in the silence of the Russian province, perhaps the most unusual work in the entire history of Russian literature. Already a well-known writer by that time, a prosperous landowner, owner of an estate Yasnaya Polyana Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy worked on a huge art book about the events of half a century ago, about the War of 1812.
Russian literature has previously known stories and novels inspired by the people's victory over Napoleon. Their authors were often participants and eyewitnesses of those events. But Tolstoy - a man of the post-war generation, the grandson of a general of Catherine's era and the son of a Russian officer at the beginning of the century - as he himself believed, was not writing a story, not a novel, not a historical chronicle. He sought to take in, as it were, the entire past era, to show it through the experiences of hundreds of characters: fictional and real. Moreover, when starting this work, he did not at all think of limiting himself to any one time period and admitted that he intended to take many, many of his heroes through historical events 1805, 1807, 1812, 1825 and 1856. “I don’t foresee a resolution of the relationship between these individuals,” he said, “in any of these eras.” The story of the past, in his opinion, should have ended in the present.
At that time, Tolstoy more than once, including to himself, tried to explain the inner nature of his year-by-year growing book. He sketched out versions of the preface to it and finally, in 1868, published an article in which he answered, as it seemed to him, the questions that his almost incredible work might raise in readers. And yet the spiritual core of this titanic work remained not fully named. “That’s why it’s important good work art,” the writer noted many years later, “that its main content in its entirety can be expressed only by it.” It seems that only once did he manage to reveal the very essence of his plan. “The goal of the artist,” Tolstoy said in 1865, “is not to indisputably resolve the question, but to make one love life in its countless, never-exhaustive manifestations. If they had told me that I could write a novel in which I would undeniably establish what seems to me to be the correct view of all social issues, I would not have devoted even two hours of work to such a novel, but if I had been told that what I will write, today’s children will read it in 20 years and will cry and laugh over it and love life, I would devote my whole life and all my strength to it.”
Exceptional completeness and joyful power of worldview were characteristic of Tolstoy throughout the six years when he was creating a new work. He loved his heroes, these “young and old people, both men and women of that time,” he loved in their family life and events of universal scope, in the silence of home and the thunder of battles, idleness and labor, falls and ups... He loved historical era, to which he dedicated his book, he loved the country that he inherited from his ancestors, he loved the Russian people.
In all this, he never tired of seeing earthly, as he believed - divine, reality with its eternal movement, with its peace and passions. One of the main characters of the work, Andrei Bolkonsky, at the moment of his mortal wound on the Borodino field, experienced a feeling of the last burning attachment to everything that surrounds a person in the world: “I can’t, I don’t want to die, I love life, I love this grass, earth, air..." These thoughts were not just an emotional outburst of a person who saw death face to face. They largely belonged not only to Tolstoy’s hero, but also to his creator. In the same way, he himself endlessly valued every moment of his earthly existence at that time. His grandiose creation of the 1860s was permeated from beginning to end with a peculiar faith in life. This very concept - life - became truly religious for him and acquired a special meaning.
The spiritual world of the future writer took shape in the post-Decembrist era in an environment that gave Russia an overwhelming number of outstanding figures in all areas of its life. At the same time, people here were passionate about philosophical teachings West, assimilated under different types new, very shaky ideals. While remaining apparently Orthodox, representatives of the chosen class were often already very far from primordially Russian Christianity. Baptized in childhood and raised in Orthodox faith For many years, Tolstoy respected his father’s shrines. But his personal views were very different from those professed by Holy Rus' and the ordinary people of his era.
From a young age, he believed with all his soul in some impersonal, foggy deity, goodness without boundaries, which penetrates the universe. Man by nature seemed to him sinless and beautiful, created for joy and happiness on earth. Not the least role here was played by the works of his beloved French novelist and thinker of the 18th century, Jean Jacques Rousseau, although Tolstoy perceived them on Russian soil and in a completely Russian way. The internal disorder of the individual, wars, disagreements in society, and more - suffering as such looked from this point of view as a fatal mistake, the creation of the main enemy of primitive bliss - civilization.
But, in his opinion, Tolstoy did not consider this lost perfection to be lost once and for all. It seemed to him that it continued to be present in the world, and that it was very close, nearby. He probably would not have been able to clearly name his god at that time; he found it difficult to do so much later, already definitely considering himself the founder of a new religion. Meanwhile, even then, wild nature and the emotional sphere in the human soul, which is part of the natural principle, became his real idols. A palpable heart shudder, his own pleasure or disgust seemed to him an infallible measure of good and evil. They, the writer believed, were echoes of the same earthly deity for all living people - the source of love and happiness. He idolized direct feeling, experience, reflex - the highest physiological manifestations of life. It was in them that, in his opinion, the only authentic life. Everything else related to civilization - another, lifeless pole of existence. And he dreamed that sooner or later humanity would forget its civilized past and find boundless harmony. Perhaps then a completely different “civilization of feeling” will appear.
The era when the new book was created was alarming. It is often said that in the 60s years XIX century Russia faced a choice historical path. In fact, the country made such a choice almost a thousand years earlier, with the adoption of Orthodoxy. Now the question was being decided whether she would survive this choice, whether she would survive as such. The abolition of serfdom and other government reforms resonated in Russian society with real spiritual battles. The spirit of doubt and discord once visited 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. Tolstoy's book contained a kind of response to such Napoleonic plans.
Russian world of times Patriotic War with Napoleon represented, according to the writer, the complete opposite of modernity, poisoned by the spirit of discord. This clear, stable world concealed within itself the strong spiritual guidelines necessary for the new Russia, which were largely forgotten. But Tolstoy himself was inclined to see in the national celebration of 1812 the victory of precisely the religious values of “living life” that were dear to him. It seemed to the writer that his own ideal was the ideal of the Russian people.
He 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 terms of documentary, factual authenticity, his book noticeably expanded the previously known boundaries literary creativity. It included hundreds of non-fictional situations, real statements of historical figures and details of their behavior, in literary text Many of the original documents of the era were placed. Tolstoy knew the works of historians well, read notes, memoirs, diaries of people early XIX century.
Family legends and childhood impressions also meant a lot to him. He once said that he was writing “about that time, the smell and sound of which are still audible and dear to us.” The writer remembered how, in response to his childhood questions about his own grandfather, the old housekeeper Praskovya Isaevna would sometimes take out fragrant incense - tar - “out of the closet”; it was probably incense. “According to her, it turned out,” he said, “that grandfather brought this tar from near Ochakov. He lights the paper near the icons and lights the tar, and it smokes with a pleasant smell.” On the pages of the book about the past, a retired general, a participant in the war with Turkey in 1787-1791, the old Prince Bolkonsky in many ways resembled this relative of Tolstoy - his grandfather, N. S. Volkonsky. In the same way, the old Count of Rostov resembled the writer’s other grandfather, Ilya Andreevich. Princess Marya Bolkonskaya and Nikolai Rostov, with their characters and some life circumstances, brought to mind his parents - nee Princess M.N. Volkonskaya and N.I. Tolstoy.
Other characters, be it the modest artilleryman Captain Tushin, the diplomat Bilibin, the desperate soul Dolokhov, or the Rostovs’ relative Sonya, the little princess Liza Bolkonskaya, also, as a rule, also had not one, but several real prototypes. What can we say about the hussar Vaska Denisov, who is so similar (the writer, it seems, did not hide this) to the famous poet and partisan Denis Davydov! The thoughts and aspirations of really existing people, some features of their behavior and life turns were not difficult to discern in the destinies of Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. But still put an equal sign between the real person and literary character It turned out to be completely impossible. Tolstoy brilliantly knew how to create art types, characteristic of their time, environment, for Russian life as such. And each of them, to one degree or another, obeyed the author’s religious ideal hidden in the very depths of the work.
A year before starting work on the book, at thirty-four years of age, Tolstoy married a girl from a prosperous Moscow family, the daughter of the court physician Sofya Andreevna Bers. He was happy with his new position. In the 1860s, the Tolstoys had sons Sergei, Ilya, Lev, and daughter Tatyana. The relationship with his wife brought him previously unknown strength and fullness of feeling in its most subtle, changeable, and sometimes dramatic shades. “Before I thought,” Tolstoy remarked six months after the wedding, “and now, married, I am even more convinced that in life, in all human relationships, the basis of everything is the drama of feeling, and reasoning, thought not only does not lead feeling and action , but is counterfeited by feeling.” In his diary dated March 3, 1863, he continued to develop these new thoughts for him: “The ideal is harmony. Art alone feels this. And only the present, which takes as its motto: there are no guilty people in the world. He who is happy is right!” His large-scale work subsequent years became a comprehensive statement of these thoughts.
Even in his youth, Tolstoy amazed many who happened to know him with his sharp hostility towards any abstract concepts. An idea not trusted by feeling, unable to plunge a person into tears and laughter, seemed to him stillborn. He called a judgment free from direct experience a “phrase.” He ironically called general problems posed outside of everyday, sensually discernible specifics “questions.” He liked to “catch phrases” in a friendly conversation or on the pages of printed publications of his famous contemporaries: Turgenev, Nekrasov. He was also merciless to himself in this regard.
Now, in the 1860s, starting to new job, he especially made sure that there were no “civilized abstractions” in his story about the past. That’s why Tolstoy at that time spoke with such irritation about the works of historians (among them were, for example, the works of A.I. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky, Kutuzov’s adjutant in 1812 and a brilliant military writer), because, in his opinion, they distorted their “ scientific" tone, too "general" assessments of the true picture of existence. He himself sought to see long-ago affairs and days from a tangible, homely perspective. privacy, it doesn’t matter - a general or a simple peasant, show the people of 1812 in that only environment dear to him, where the “shrine of feeling” lives and manifests itself. Everything else looked far-fetched and non-existent in Tolstoy’s eyes. He created, based on the material of genuine events, a kind of new reality, which had its own deity, its own universal laws. And I thought that art world his books are the most complete, finally found truth of Russian history. “I believe,” said the writer, completing his titanic work, “that I have discovered a new truth. This conviction is confirmed by the painful and joyful perseverance and excitement, independent of me, with which I worked for seven years, step by step discovering what I consider to be the truth.”
The title “War and Peace” appeared from Tolstoy in 1867. It was featured on the cover of six separate books that were published over the next two years (1868–1869). Initially, the work, according to the will of the writer, later revised by him, was divided into six volumes.
The meaning of this title is not immediately and not completely revealed to a person of our time. The new spelling, introduced by the revolutionary decree of 1918, disrupted much of the spiritual nature of Russian writing and made it difficult to understand. Before the revolution in Russia there were two words “peace”, although related, but still different in meaning. One of them - "Mipъ"- corresponded to material, objective concepts, meant certain phenomena: the Universe, the Galaxy, the Earth, the globe, the whole world, society, community. Other – "World"– covered moral concepts: absence of war, harmony, harmony, friendship, goodness, calm, silence. Tolstoy used this second word in the title.
The Orthodox tradition has long seen in the concepts of peace and war a reflection of eternally irreconcilable spiritual principles: God - the source of life, creation, love, truth, and His hater, the fallen angel Satan - the source of death, destruction, hatred, lies. However, a war for the glory of God, to protect oneself and one’s neighbors from atheistic aggression, no matter what guises this aggression takes, has always been understood as a righteous war. The words on the cover of Tolstoy’s work could also be read as “harmony and enmity,” “unity and disunity,” “harmony and discord,” and ultimately, “God and the enemy of man—the devil.” They apparently reflected the great universal struggle that was predetermined in its outcome (Satan is only allowed to act in the world for the time being). But Tolstoy still had his own deity and his own hostile force.
The words in the title of the book reflected precisely the earthly faith of its creator. "World" And "Mipъ" for him, in fact, they were one and the same. great poet earthly happiness, Tolstoy wrote about life as if it had never known the Fall - life, which itself, in his conviction, concealed within itself the resolution of all contradictions and gave man eternal, undoubted good. “Wonderful are Your works, O Lord!” - generations of Christians have said for centuries. And they prayerfully repeated: “Lord, have mercy!” “Long live the whole world! (Die ganze Welt hoch!),” Nikolai Rostov exclaimed after the enthusiastic Austrian in the novel. It was difficult to express more precisely the writer’s innermost thought: “There are no guilty people in the world.” Man and the earth, he believed, are by nature perfect and sinless.
From the angle of such concepts, the second word received a different meaning: “war”. It began to sound like a “misunderstanding”, “mistake”, “absurdity”. The book about the most general paths of the universe seems to have reflected in its entirety the spiritual laws of true existence. And yet it was a problem, largely generated by the great creator’s own faith. The words on the cover of the work in the most general terms meant: “civilization and natural life" Such faith could only inspire a very complex artistic whole. His attitude to reality was complex. His secret philosophy hid great internal contradictions. But, as often happens in art, these complexities and paradoxes became the key to creative discoveries of the highest standard and formed the basis of unparalleled realism in everything that concerned the emotionally and psychologically distinguishable aspects of Russian life.
* * *
There is hardly another work in world literature that so broadly covers all the circumstances of human existence on earth. At the same time, Tolstoy always knew how to not only show the changeable life situations, but also to imagine in these situations to the utmost truth 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 the unstable realm of dreams, daydreams, and half-oblivion were depicted in “War and Peace” with unsurpassed skill. This gigantic “cast of existence” was distinguished by some exceptional, hitherto unprecedented verisimilitude. Whatever the writer talked about, everything seemed alive. And one of the main reasons for this authenticity, this gift of “clairvoyance of the flesh,” as the philosopher and writer D. S. Merezhkovsky once put it, was the constant poetic unity on the pages of “War and Peace” of internal and external life.
The mental world of Tolstoy's heroes, as a rule, came into motion under the influence of external impressions, even stimuli, which gave rise to the most intense activity of feeling and the thought that follows it. The sky of Austerlitz, seen by the wounded Bolkonsky, the sounds and colors of the Borodino field, which so amazed Pierre Bezukhov at the beginning of the battle, the hole on the chin of the French officer captured by Nikolai Rostov - large and small, even the smallest details seemed to fall into the soul of this or that character, became “active” facts of his innermost life. In War and Peace there were almost no objective pictures of nature shown from the outside. She also looked like an “accomplice” in the experiences of the book’s characters.
In the same way, the inner life of any of the characters, through unmistakably found traits, echoed in the external, as if returning to the world. And then the reader (usually from the point of view of another hero) followed the changes in Natasha Rostova’s face, distinguished the shades of Prince Andrei’s voice, saw - and this seems to be the most striking example - the eyes of Princess Marya Bolkonskaya during her farewell to her brother, who was leaving for the war , her meetings with Nikolai Rostov. Thus, a picture of the Universe appeared, as if illuminated from within, eternally permeated with feeling, based only on feeling. This unity emotional world, reflected and perceived, Tolstoy looked like the inexhaustible light of an earthly deity - the source of life and morality in War and Peace.
The writer believed: the ability of one person to be “infected” by the feelings of another, his ability to listen to the voice of nature are direct echoes of all-pervading love and goodness. With his art, he also wanted to “awaken” the emotional, as he believed, divine, sensitivity of the reader. Creativity was a truly religious activity for him.
Affirming the “shrine of feeling” with almost every description of “War and Peace,” Tolstoy could not ignore the most difficult, painful topic of his entire life - the topic of death. Neither in Russian nor in world literature, perhaps, is there another artist who would so constantly, persistently think about the earthly end of all things, so intensely peer into death and show it in different guises. It was not only the experience of early losses of family and friends that forced him again and again to try to lift the veil over the most significant moment in the fate of all living people. And not only a passionate interest in living matter in all its manifestations without exception, including its pre-mortem manifestations. If the basis of life is feeling, then what happens to a person at that hour when his sensory abilities die along with his body?
The horror of death, which Tolstoy, both before and after War and Peace, certainly had to experience with extraordinary, overwhelming force, was obviously rooted precisely in his earthly religion. This was not the fear for the future fate characteristic of every Christian. afterlife. Nor can it be explained by such an understandable fear of dying suffering, sadness from the inevitable parting with the world, with dear and loved ones, with the short joys allotted to man on earth. Here we inevitably have to remember Tolstoy, the ruler of the world, the creator of the “new reality”, for whom own death in the end, it should have meant nothing less than the collapse of the whole world.
The religion of feeling in its origins did not know “the resurrection of the dead and the life of the next century.” The expectation of personal existence beyond the grave, from the point of view of Tolstoy's pantheism (this word has long been used to describe any deification of earthly, sensory existence), should have seemed inappropriate. That's what he thought then, and that's what he thought in his dying days. It remained to believe that a feeling, dying in one person, does not disappear completely, but merges with its absolute beginning, finds continuation in the feelings of those who remained alive, in all of nature.
DESIGN
In 1855, an announcement appeared about the publication of “ North Star" On the cover of a book in a circle rising sun five portraits of executed Decembrists were depicted; under the portraits there is an ax and it is signed: “July 25, 1826.” The volume is marked with the day of the execution of the Decembrists.
There is a star in the clouds above the title.
Polar.
The announcement was a whole manifesto. Herzen spoke about the Decembrist uprising and the Sevastopol campaign; asked if “the Sevastopol soldier, wounded and hard as granite, having tested his strength, would expose his back to the stick as before ?» .
In 1860–1861, Tolstoy traveled abroad and met Herzen.
In 1861, on March 14 (26), Tolstoy wrote from Brussels to Herzen that he had just read the sixth book of “The Polar Star” and was delighted: “This whole book is excellent, this is not just my opinion, but that of everyone I have seen.”
The collapse of Nikolaev Russia was obvious to everyone. Tolstoy writes to Herzen about doubting people - he speaks both about new forces and about timid people: “... these people - timid - cannot understand that the ice is cracking and crumbling under their feet - this proves that a person is walking; and that the only way not to fail is to go without stopping.”
Tolstoy recalls the name of Ryleev in a letter: “If the soap bubble of history has burst for you and for me, then this is also proof that we are already inflating a new bubble, which we ourselves do not yet see. And this bubble is for me a firm and clear knowledge of my Russia, as clear as Ryleev’s knowledge of Russia could be in 25. We, practical people, cannot live without this.”
Not everything is resolved in Tolstoy's letter - there is a lot that is unclear. The Nicholas era turned out to be a soap bubble, but an echo of disappointment also found its way into the characterization of the new worldview.
Then he writes: “I started a novel about 4 months ago, the hero of which should be the returning Decembrist. I wanted to talk to you about this, but I never had time. My Decembrist should be 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.”
All that remains of the novel “The Decembrists” is the beginning; it somewhat parodies the liberal passions of the era of the “great reforms.” The long opening, written in periods, states that “all the Russians, as one person, were in indescribable delight” (17, 8).
Solemn periods and the word “Russians” sound like a parody of the high style of “History of the Russian State” written by Karamzin.
Tolstoy's irony is bitter. He speaks of this delight:
“A condition that was repeated twice for Russia in 19th century: the first time when we spanked Napoleon I in 12, and the second time when Napoleon III spanked us in 56” (17, 8).
Tolstoy says about himself: “The writer of these lines not only lived at this time, but was one of the leaders of that time. Not only did he himself sit in one of the dugouts in Sevastopol for several weeks, he wrote an essay about the Crimean War that gained him great fame, in which he clearly and in detail depicted how soldiers fired from rifles from the bastions, how they were bandaged at the dressing station with bandages and They were buried in the cemetery in the ground" (17, 8–9).
Thus, Tolstoy, with the briefest autobiographical information, strengthens his irony and distrust of the era of “great hopes.”
But irony refers not so much to hopes as to the timidity of hopes. Tolstoy moves towards a new understanding of history. The ice is cracking, but Tolstoy is moving into the future.
Reading “The Decembrists” now, you can’t help but be surprised by the appearance of the familiar family of Pierre Bezukhov. Pierre and Natasha, sent by Nicholas to hard labor, are returned after the Crimean defeat by Alexander II. The characterization that Tolstoy gives them, with its sympathetic irony, coincides with the revelation of characters in War and Peace.
Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya wrote in her diary that the Rostovs are Tolstoy’s family, that Natasha is Tatyana Kuzminskaya. The similarity of Tolstoy's heroes, according to his wife, reached the point of coincidence.
But Tolstoy, in his novel “The Decembrists,” described the characters as if he saw them as old men. The action of the novel seems to have begun from the end. But it is impossible to assume that Tolstoy saw the old woman Natalya Bezukhova in the girl Tatyana Bers (in The Decembrists she bears the name Labazova).
Pierre's fate is shown in "The Decembrists" at the end, but this is the same Pierre who self-confidently and enthusiastically went against Arakcheev, while at the same time fearing Pugachev. This is the same Pierre who will be defeated by the prudent landowner, the stubborn owner Nikolai Rostov.
The outlines of the future novel, or rather, the exploration of its future at that time, went in a different way.
In the anniversary year of the Patriotic War, 1862, Tolstoy published three articles in the Yasnaya Polyana magazine entitled “Yasnaya Polyana School for November and December.” The title of the article and its division into three parts were then reminiscent of three “ Sevastopol stories": "Sevastopol in December", "Sevastopol in May" and "Sevastopol in August 1855."
In the second article, Tolstoy describes a history lesson. The case begins with a story about the Crimean campaign: “I told the story of the Crimean campaign, told the reign of Emperor Nicholas and the history of the 12th year. All this is in an almost fairy-tale tone, for the most part historically incorrect and grouping events around one person. The greatest success, as one might expect, was the story about the war with Napoleon. This class remained a memorable hour in our lives. I will never forget him" (8, 100–101).
Tolstoy was going to publish this story and therefore shortened it, conveying only the impressions of his listeners. The children were shocked. The lesson lasted until night. Of course, this was not a summary of War and Peace, but it was a conversation of a person who was planning the book at that time. This is like a preface to the book, and it clearly reflects both the memories of the twelfth year - the victory of the people, and the memories of the Crimean defeat. This is the same theme that formed the basis of the unfinished novel “The Decembrists.” The Decembrists and the people, the fate of the people, which is summed up by war, the people and the revolution, was one of the themes of “War and Peace” at the time of the creation of the work.
“I am of the opinion that the strength of Russia is not in us, but in the people,” says the aged Pierre in the novel “Decembrists” (17, 36). The further Tolstoy went, the more he understood the strength of the people and the weakness of the Decembrists, with whom he sympathized, considering them iron among the rubbish of his society.
The strength of the people who defeated Napoleon could be understood by studying the era of 1812. Tolstoy, from the concept of the “Decembrists,” comes to a great construction about the struggle of the people against the conquerors.
BUILDING "WAR AND PEACE"
Tolstoy has varied and close connections with the era of the Patriotic War. Tolstoy’s father took part in the war with Napoleon, was captured, and among his father’s friends there were participants in the battles with Napoleon; Tolstoy was as distant from the Napoleonic invasion as an older writer of our time is from the Great Era. October revolution. He wrote about the past that was not past.
In 1852, in a village on the banks of the Terek, young Tolstoy read “Description of the War of 1813” by A. I. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky. He wrote in his diary: “There are few eras in history as instructive as this, and so little discussed” (46, 142).
