Artistic and philosophical understanding of the essence of war in L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace.” Philosophy of history by Tolstoy Philosophy of history and war by Tolstoy

Teacher's word

Before going directly to analysis III volumes, I would like to draw attention to the fact that volumes III and IV were written by L.N. Tolstoy later than the first (in 1867–1869). By this time, changes had occurred in the writer’s worldview, which were reflected in the work we are analyzing. Do you remember that just at this time L.N. Tolstoy is interested in people's life and takes steps towards rapprochement with the patriarchal peasants. Therefore, it is natural that people appear more and more often on the pages of the novel. Tolstoy's new views were also reflected in the views of individual heroes.

Changes in the writer's worldview somewhat changed the structure of the novel. It includes journalistic chapters that introduce and explain artistic description events, lead to their understanding.

In order to get closer to understanding the work of L.N. Tolstoy, it is necessary to understand some concepts inherent directly to him. In particular, Tolstoy had his own understanding of the philosophy of history. Let us turn to the text (volume III, part I, chapter I, and then part III, ch. I). Let's read and answer the question: what are the causes of the Patriotic War of 1812 according to Tolstoy?

Answer

“An event contrary to human reason and all human nature took place.”

What caused this extraordinary event? What were the reasons for it?

1. It is impossible to explain the origin of historical events by individual actions of individual people. The will of an individual historical person can be paralyzed by the desires or unwillingnesses of a mass of people.

2. To make it happen historical event, “billions of reasons” must coincide, i.e. the interests of individual people who make up the masses, just as the movement of a swarm of bees coincides when a general movement is born from the movement of individual quantities. This means that history is made not by individuals, but by their totality, the people. Thus, historical events occur when the interests of the people coincide.

3. Why do the infinitesimal values of individual human desires coincide? “Nothing is a reason. All this is just a coincidence of the conditions under which every vital, organic, spontaneous event takes place.” “Man inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed to him.” “...The event had to happen only because it had to happen,” writes Tolstoy. “Fatalism in history,” in his opinion, is inevitable.

4. Tolstoy's fatalism is associated with his understanding of spontaneity. History, he writes, is “unconscious, general, swarm life humanity." Any act committed, seemingly unconsciously, spontaneously “becomes the property of history.” And the more unconsciously a person lives, the more, according to Tolstoy, he will participate in the commission of historical events. The preaching of spontaneity, the refusal of conscious, rational participation in events is one of Tolstoy’s features.

5. Tolstoy claims that personality does not and cannot play any role in history. According to Tolstoy, the spontaneity of the movement of the masses cannot be guided, and therefore historical figure All that remains is to obey the direction of events prescribed from above. "The king is a slave of history." So Tolstoy comes to the idea of submission to fate and sees the task of a historical figure in following events. Do you agree with this point of view?

When analyzing Volume III of the novel “War and Peace,” we will need to prove that the Patriotic War of 1812 raised the entire Russian people to fight the enemy. It will be important for us to see a nationwide patriotic upsurge and the unity of the bulk of Russian society, the people and most of the nobles in the fight against the invaders.

Exercise

Let us analyze the episode of the crossing of the Napoleonic army across the Neman (Part I, Chapter II).

Answer

In the scene of the crossing of the Neman, Tolstoy depicts Napoleon and his army at the very beginning of the campaign to Russia. There is also unity in the French army - both among the soldiers themselves and between them and their emperor. “On all the faces of these people there was one common expression of joy at the beginning of the long-awaited campaign and delight and devotion to the man in a gray frock coat standing on the mountain.”

Question

What is this unity based on?

Answer

The glory of the conqueror of the world led Napoleon. Somewhat earlier, Tolstoy noted that there was “the love and habit of the French emperor for war, which coincided with the disposition of his people, a passion for the grandeur of the preparations, and the costs of preparation, and the need for such benefits that would repay these costs...” (Part I, Chapter I).

But this unity is fragile. Then Tolstoy will show how it will disintegrate at the decisive moment. This unity is expressed in the soldiers' blind love for Napoleon and Napoleon's acceptance of it for granted. Not finding a ford, the lancers fell into the water, drowned and still “tried to swim forward to the other side and, despite the fact that there was a crossing half a mile away, they were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this river under the gaze of a man sitting on a log and didn’t even look at what they were doing.”

The unity of the Russian people is based on something else - on hatred of the invaders who cause them grief and ruin, on love and affection for native land and the people living on it.

Literature

T.G. Brage. A system of lessons for the holistic study of the novel “War and Peace.” // L.N. Tolstoy at school M., 1965. – P. 301–323.

G.Ya. Galagan. L.N. Tolstoy. // History of Russian literature. Volume three. Leningrad: Nauka, 1982.

Andrey Ranchin. Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. // Encyclopedias for children “Avanta+”. Volume 9. Russian literature. Part one. M., 1999.

43. The philosophy of the story of Leo Tolstoy and the ways of its implementation in the novel “War and Peace”. One of the main themes of Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” is military. Tolstoy describes the greatest events in Russian life in 1805-1812, which, together with peaceful events, “disasters on the spot,” create the history of mankind, where everything is clear to historians, but is a mystery to Tolstoy. The writer gives us a view of history that fundamentally contradicts the standard view of historians both on events and on the persons who “perform” them. The basis is a rethinking of the usual understanding of a historical event, such as its goals, its causes, as well as the actions and role of so-called great people in this event. As an example of such an event, Tolstoy takes the war of 1812, arguing that there can be no reason either for this war or for any other, even the most insignificant event: “Nothing is a reason.” And all those countless circumstances that historians call causes are just a coincidence of circumstances that took place at the moment when the event was supposed to happen. And it was precisely the event that had to happen: “So, all these reasons - billions of reasons - coincided in order to produce what happened. And, therefore, nothing was the exclusive cause of the event, and the event had to happen only because it had to happen.” But, consequently, “great” people (Napoleon is their example in the novel), who imagine themselves to be the initiators of this kind of events, are wrong and events cannot move solely by the will of this person: “In historical events, the so-called great people are labels, giving the name to the event...” The great man is only an instrument of history to accomplish an event. Moreover, Tolstoy says that the higher a person stands, the less free he is in his actions. After all, Napoleon initially resisted his ascent to the top, but “the sum of human tyranny made both the revolution and Napoleon, and only the sum of human tyranny tolerated them and destroyed them.” His arbitrariness depends on the will of the crowd, on the will of hundreds of people “led by him,” and at the same time he only takes his place in history as the person most suitable for this place, thereby fulfilling his destiny as history and the crowd: “But one has only to delve into the essence of the entire mass of people who participated in the event to be convinced that the will of the historical hero not only does not guide the actions of the masses, but is itself constantly guided.” And one cannot lead hundreds: “... the power of the wind is beyond influence.” But the crowd is also subject to the same mysterious force that moves the “great”. She blindly believes in one or another idol, plays with them, and yet she is not free, but subject to them. But why then are great people needed, “geniuses” who have neither the strength nor the power to control the events of history? Tolstoy argues that such people are needed by the crowd to justify cruelty, violence and murders that may happen: “He (Napoleon) alone, with his ideal of glory developed in Italy and Egypt and with his sincerity, he alone can justify what is about to happen. He is needed for the place that awaits him...” But if “great people” do not have the meaning that is invested in them, then the goals to which they subordinate the event are meaningless. Tolstoy explains to us that all events have a goal, but the goal is inaccessible to us, and all people striving for their personal goals, in fact, under the guidance of a higher power, contribute to one thing - the achievement of that secret goal that a person does not know about: “Having renounced knowledge of the final goal, we will clearly understand that just as it is impossible to come up with a name for any plant that is more appropriate to its color or name than those that it produces, in the same way it is impossible to come up with two other people with all their past, which would correspond to such an extent, to such the smallest detail, to the purpose that they were supposed to fulfill.” That is, they play their role, and when, in an unexpected turn of events, the mask is removed from them, then “... he... shows the whole world what it was that people took for strength when an invisible hand guided them. The manager, having finished the drama and undressed the actor, showed him to us - look what we believed! Here it is! Do you see now that it was not he, but I who moved you?” So, the goals that “great” people proclaim do not exist. Then it turns out that the greatness that mainly pursues these goals, the glory that those “leading” the huge masses taking part in the event hope to receive, also have no meaning, they do not exist. It turns out that the life of many people is empty, since its goal is glory and greatness. In the epic novel War and Peace, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy was especially interested in the question of the driving forces of history. The writer believed that even outstanding personalities are not given the opportunity to decisively influence the course and outcome of historical events. He argued: “If we assume that human life can be controlled by reason, then the possibility of life will be destroyed.” According to Tolstoy, the course of history is controlled by a higher super-rational foundation - God's providence. At the end of the novel, historical laws are compared with the Copernican system in astronomy: “Just as for astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the movement of the earth was to give up the immediate feeling of the immobility of the earth and the same feeling of the movement of the planets, so for history the difficulty of recognizing the subordination of the individual to the laws of space and time and the reason is to give up the immediate sense of independence of one’s personality. But as in astronomy, the new view said: “it is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by assuming its immobility, we come to nonsense; by allowing movement, which we do not feel, we come to laws,” and in history the new view says: “it is true that we do not feel our dependence, but by allowing our freedom, we come to nonsense; Having allowed our dependence on the external world, time and causes, we come to laws.” In the first case, it was necessary to abandon the consciousness of immobility in space and recognize the movement that we cannot sense; in the present case, it is just as necessary to renounce perceived freedom and recognize our imperceptible dependence.” Human freedom, according to Tolstoy, consists only in realizing such dependence and trying to guess what is destined in order to follow it to the maximum extent. For the writer, the primacy of feelings over reason, the laws of life over the plans and calculations of individual people, even geniuses, the real course of battle over the disposition that preceded it, the role of the masses over the role of great commanders and rulers was obvious. Tolstoy was convinced that “the course of world events is predetermined from above, depends on the coincidence of all the arbitrariness of the people participating in these events, and that the influence of Napoleon on the course of these events is only external and fictitious,” since “great people are labels that give a name to an event, which, like labels, have the least connection with the event itself.” And wars occur not from the actions of people, but by the will of Providence. According to Tolstoy, the role of the so-called “great people” comes down to following the highest command, if they are given the opportunity to guess it. This is clearly seen in the example of the image of the Russian commander M.I. Kutuzova. The writer tries to convince us that Mikhail Illarionovich “despised both knowledge and intelligence and knew something else that should have decided the matter.” In the novel, Kutuzov is contrasted with both Napoleon and the German generals in Russian service, who are united by the desire to win the battle only thanks to a previously developed detailed plan, where they try in vain to take into account all the surprises of living life and the future actual course of the battle. The Russian commander, unlike them, has the ability to “calmly contemplate events” and therefore “will not interfere with anything useful and will not allow anything harmful” thanks to supernatural intuition. Kutuzov influences only the morale of his army, since “from many years of military experience he knew and with his senile mind understood that it was impossible for one person to lead hundreds of thousands of people fighting death, and he knew that the fate of the battle is not decided by the orders of the commander-in-chief, not by the place, on which the troops stand, not the number of guns and killed people, but that elusive force called the spirit of the army, and he monitored this force and led it, as far as it was in his power.” This explains Kutuzov’s angry rebuke to General Wolzogen, who, on behalf of another general, foreign name, M.B. Barclay de Tolly, reports on the retreat of Russian troops and the capture of all main positions on the Borodino field by the French. Kutuzov shouts at the general who brought the bad news: “How do you... how dare you!.. How dare you, dear sir, say this to me. You don't know anything. Tell General Barclay from me that his information is unfair and that the real course of the battle is known to me, the commander-in-chief, better than to him... The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right flank... Please go to General Barclay and convey to him my indispensable message tomorrow intention to attack the enemy... They were repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave army. The enemy has been defeated, and tomorrow we will drive him out of the sacred Russian land.” Here the field marshal is being dishonest, because the truly unfavorable outcome of the Battle of Borodino for the Russian army, which resulted in the abandonment of Moscow, is known to him no worse than to Wolzogen and Barclay. However, Kutuzov prefers to paint such a picture of the course of the battle that can preserve the morale of the troops under his command, preserve that deep patriotic feeling that “lay in the soul of the commander-in-chief, as well as in the soul of every Russian person.” Tolstoy sharply criticized Emperor Napoleon. As a commander invading the territory of other states with his troops, the writer considers Bonaparte an indirect killer of many people. IN in this case Tolstoy even comes into some contradiction with his fatalistic theory, according to which the occurrence of wars does not depend on human arbitrariness. He believes that Napoleon was finally disgraced on the fields of Russia, and as a result, “instead of genius there are stupidity and meanness, which have no examples.” Tolstoy believes that “there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.” The French emperor after the occupation of Paris by the Allied troops “no longer makes sense; all his actions are obviously pathetic and disgusting...” And even when Napoleon again seizes power during the Hundred Days, he, according to the author of War and Peace, is only needed by history “to justify the last cumulative action.” When this action was completed, it turned out that “the last role was played. The actor was ordered to undress and wash off the antimony and rouge: he would no longer be needed. And several years pass in which this man, alone on his island, plays a pathetic comedy in front of himself, intrigues and lies, justifying his actions when this justification is no longer needed, and shows the whole world what it was that people accepted for strength when an invisible hand guided them. The manager, having finished the drama and undressed the actor, showed him to us. - Look what you believed! Here it is! Do you see now that it was not he, but I who moved you? But, blinded by the power of the movement, people did not understand this for a long time.” Both Napoleon and other characters in Tolstoy’s historical process are nothing more than actors playing roles in a theatrical production directed by a force unknown to them. This latter, in the person of such insignificant “great people,” reveals itself to humanity, always remaining in the shadows. The writer denied that the course of history could be determined by “countless so-called accidents.” He defended the complete predetermination of historical events. But, if in his criticism of Napoleon and other conquering commanders Tolstoy followed Christian teaching, in particular, the commandment “thou shalt not kill,” then with his fatalism he actually limited God’s ability to endow man with free will. The author of “War and Peace” left for people only the function of blindly following what was destined from above. However, the positive significance of Leo Tolstoy’s philosophy of history lies in the fact that he refused, unlike the overwhelming majority of historians of his time, to reduce history to the deeds of heroes designed to carry along an inert and thoughtless crowd. The writer pointed out the primacy of the masses, the aggregate of millions and millions of individual wills. As for what exactly determines their resultant, historians and philosophers argue to this day, more than a hundred years after the publication of War and Peace.

It may seem strange that the author of the most famous historical novel in the history of mankind did not like history. All his life he had a negative attitude towards history as a science, finding it unnecessary and meaningless, and simply towards history as the past, in which he saw the continuous triumph of evil, cruelty and violence. His internal task has always been to free himself from history, to enter a sphere where he can live in the present. Tolstoy was interested in the present, the current moment. His main moral maxim at the end of his life was “Do what you must, and come what may,” that is, do not think about the past or the future, free yourself from the pressure that the memory of the past and expectation have over you . IN later years During his life, he noted with great satisfaction in his diary the weakening of his memory. He stopped remembering his own life, and this pleased him endlessly. The weight of the past ceased to hang over him, he felt liberated, he perceived the passing of the memory of the past (in this case, the personal past) as liberation from a heavy burden. He wrote:

“How can one not rejoice at the loss of memory? Everything that I have worked out in the past (at least my inner work in the scriptures), I live and use all of this, but I don’t remember the work itself. Marvelous. Meanwhile, I think that this is a joyful change for all old people: life is all concentrated in the present. How good!”

And this was the ideal of human life in history - humanity, which does not remember the endless evil that it has committed against itself, has forgotten it and cannot think about retribution.

With such an attitude towards the past, it is extremely interesting how and how Tolstoy ended up on the territory historical prose. In addition to War and Peace, he had several more historical plans that remained unfinished and unrealized. His first negative reviews about history as a science appeared already with university years, at Kazan University, from which, as is known, he did not graduate. Tolstoy always excelled in languages there, but history was not good for him. And his diaries record a misunderstanding of why he was forced to take these strange disciplines: he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t remember numbers and dates and the like.

And despite his generally deeply negative attitude towards history, he begins with a story about himself, with “Childhood”, with a story about his own past. Tolstoy describes childhood through the eyes of a child. This is far from the first work in the history of world literature about childhood and memories of childhood, but it is the first or one of the first attempts to reconstruct the view of a child, to write from the present, when an adult describes how he perceived his life as a child. This is a brilliant and unexpected move for that time, both from an artistic point of view and based on the task that Tolstoy set for himself. But the goal was to describe an idyllic past, and the world he was describing was based on serfdom, and an adult could not help but be aware of the horror, evil and violence underlying the idyllic picture he was recreating. Tolstoy creates the image of a boy who does not see this evil due to his age and is able to perceive the world around him as an idyll. The autobiographical nature of “Childhood” should not be taken too literally: Tolstoy’s childhood was least of all idyllic; it was apparently quite terrible, and it is characteristic that the death of his mother, the main defining event of his childhood, was shifted from two years to eleven. That is, in “Childhood” the mother is still alive; the main catastrophe, the loss has not yet been experienced. Tolstoy lost his mother first and then his father as a child. But what he brings to literature is the reconstruction of the experience of an instantaneous experience of the present. They are also building Sevastopol stories”, which shocked readers and brought Tolstoy the fame of the most famous Russian writer. This is a report about something happening right before the eyes of the author.

And Tolstoy is slowly feeling his way to his main historical novel, also from direct journalistic reporting. As you know, “War and Peace” begins with: the first approach to “War and Peace” is the story of the exiled Decembrists. That is, the Decembrists were amnestied in 1856, and in 1856, Tolstoy, as he claimed, began to write this novel - we know that the surviving chapters were written in 1860, but he probably made the first approaches to this topic earlier. This is still a living historical experience, a sharp, immediate, today’s reflection on the people who experienced it. The Dec-Brists always interested Tolstoy. Describing the returning Decembrist, he, as he later admitted, decided to talk about the experience of his mistakes and delusions, that is, about 1825, about the main and decisive event in the life of the hero and the Russian history of the first half of the 19th century century. Having started talking about 1825, he had to go deeper into the root of these events - to show where the people of 1825 came from. And he moved from describing the victories of Russian weapons in 1812 to 1805 - to the first defeats, from which 1812 grew. That is, Tolstoy moved away, moved away from the present deeper and deeper, and so the novel from modern became historical.

At the same time - and this is very significant - the novel did not become truly historical for the author himself. Tolstoy spoke of his book as a work in which the action was to develop right up to the era of its creation, that is, he was interested in a continuing life. He tried to recreate not distant historical events, but the passage of time itself. The first part of the novel was published in the magazine “Russian Messenger” under the title “1805”. This is, apparently, the first work in the history of world literature in which a chronological marker, the year number, is included in the title. (Hugo’s novel “Nineteen Hundred and Three” began to be published nine years later.) But this is not even important, but the fact that the name, indicated by the number of the year, century, or the definition of the era, usually indicates the specifics of the historical period that will be described. This is not today's time, this is 1793, the golden age, the era of the Renaissance, what has passed and ended. Tolstoy's narrative, Tolstoy's narrative was structured in such a way that the reader knew from the very first moment that it would go further and the name would change. The center, the focus, moved from the image of a specific year to the description of the movement of time as such.

As is well known, Tolstoy drafted the prefaces to War and Peace. In one of them he made a startling confession. “...I knew,” writes Tolstoy, “that no one would ever say what I had to say. Not because what I had to say was very important for humanity, but because certain aspects of life, insignificant for others, only I, due to the peculiarities of my development and character... considered important.” And he continued: “I... was afraid that my writing would not fit any mold...”, and “the need to describe significant persons The year 12 will force me to be guided by historical documents, and not by the truth...” In this strikingly interesting quote, it is worth paying attention to two circumstances. Firstly, the reasoning that perhaps what I want to say does not have of great importance, but no one except me will say this - this is the standard beginning of any non-fiction narrative: I’m talking about what I personally saw, about my own experience, which is interesting precisely because of its uniqueness. Tolstoy attributes the uniqueness of personal experience work of art. This in itself is a very unusual move. Secondly, let us note the extravagant contrast: “not with historical documents, but with the truth.” How does the author know the truth, if not from historical documents? That is, both of these paradoxical rhetorical moves completely unambiguously indicate that this past, described from 1805 to 1820, in which the epilogue takes place, is available to Tolstoy in living experience, this is his personal individual experience.

Tolstoy was born in 1828, 16 years after the War of 1812, 23 years after the beginning of the novel, 8 years after the action takes place in the epilogue. Meanwhile, people who read War and Peace always talk about the effect of immersion in historical reality. What artistic means were used to achieve this effect? There are several significant points here that I would like to draw attention to, which are very important for Tolstoy’s attitude to history in general. One of these circumstances is the transformation of the country’s history, national history, into family history. Bolkonsky and Volkonsky: one letter is changed - and we get Tolstoy’s family on the mother’s side. The Rostov surname differs from the family name a little more, but if we rummage through the drafts, initially these heroes bore the surname Tolstoy, then Prostov, but the Prostov surname was probably too reminiscent of the moralistic comedies of the 18th century, as a result of which the letter “p” " disappeared - the Rostovs appeared. Yes, the simple hussar Nikolai Rostov bears little resemblance to the liberal aristocrat - Tolstoy's father, and the educated, secular and multilingual Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya bears little resemblance to the devout Princess Marya, immersed in religious issues. But the point is the reader’s feeling that this is a family chronicle.

But the line of Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya is still secondary in the novel. More interesting is how this effect is achieved on the main line. We know that both famous novel Tolstoy - both “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” - are built on the opposition of a rude, sincere, very kind, ugly, complex, neurotic person and ideal image a beautiful aristocrat. This is how Tolstoy saw himself and his idealized idea of what he should have been like. He gives two of his alter egos, splitting it between the heroes. This is the author’s personal history, which he only projects into the historical past. Each of the characters in “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina” (and Vronsky, and Levin, and Prince Andrei, and Pierre) is Tolstoy’s emotional story, and in both cases it is a story of competition for a woman, this love story. And initially the heroine falls in love with an aristocrat, and then finds her true self, herself and her future in love for that person, who in this case is a projection of the biographical Tolstoy.

The fact that Levin is an autobiographical character and a projection of Tolstoy’s personality is well known, but this can be said about Pierre with the same degree of certainty. And it is interesting that, although the novel takes place in early XIX century, in fact, the whole story of Natasha Rostova is a description in real time of the various love experiences of Tolstoy's sister-in-law Tatyana Andreevna Bers, in her marriage to Kuzminskaya: her story of infatuation with Anatoly Shostak - Tolstoy did not even bother to change his name - and then the story of her affair with Tolstoy's brother Sergei. (Tatyana Bers begged Tolstoy not to write about the circumstances of her personal life, saying that no one would marry her if Tolstoy described her, but this did not make the slightest impression on Lev Nikolayevich.) Moreover, the novel was begun when many of the events described in it had not yet occurred: Tolstoy described them “as they came.” According to the testimony of Tolstoy’s son Ilya Lvovich, Tolstoy was in love with his sister-in-law (platonically, of course, but Sofya Andreevna was very jealous of her husband’s sister) and described the history of their complex relationship. The story of the development of his personality and his beloved heroine, which happened right before the eyes and in the soul and imagination of the author, spilled out onto the pages of the historical novel. That is, time is united, compressed, folded, the present is projected into the past, and they turn out to be inseparable. This is a single complex of the directly experienced present, presented as the reality of the past.

There is one more, no less significant reception. In the epilogue of War and Peace we are dealing with a conventional, completely ordinary ending to a historical novel. How do novels end? Weddings. "War and Peace" ends with two weddings. Moreover, Tolstoy said that a wedding is an unsuccessful ending for a novel, because life does not end with a wedding, it continues further. Nevertheless, his novel ends with two weddings, and, as expected in a romantic epilogue, we see how the heroes live happily. Contrary to what is written in the first sentence of Anna Karenina, we see two happy families who are happy in completely different ways. But nevertheless, watching the happiness of Pierre and Natasha, we know exactly what will happen to them next. Heroes don't control their own future. Natasha says to Pierre: if only he had never left! She doesn't know what's through short time her husband will be sent into exile, she will have to go after him, and so on. But the reader already knows this. History seems to have stopped, for the heroes it does not exist, but the depiction of this family happiness is filled with the deepest irony contained in the dynamics of time. Natasha asks her husband, knowing that the main person for him was Platon Karataev: what would he say about what Pierre is doing now, about joining a secret society? And Pierre says: “No, he wouldn’t approve... What he would approve of is our family life.” But still he is ready to sacrifice family life for the sake of political chimeras and destroy his family, the children he loves so much, his wife for the sake of abstract, unrealistic ideals.

But the difference between Pierre and Nikolai... In their dispute, as always, the non-intellectual Nikolai is right (Tolstoy did not like intellectuals, although he was one himself), and not the intellectual Pierre. But Pierre turns out to be a historical man: he goes down in history in 1825, he becomes actor big story. Tolstoy seems to be writing at the same time historical novel about 1812 (today we know about the war of 1812 and imagine it in the image created by Tolstoy; he imposed his model of 1812 on us, not only to the Russian, but also to the world reader), but, on the other hand, we're talking about about the description of his own family, his own experiences at the current moment. And it was precisely this combination that Tolstoy’s other important historical plans lacked.

What else you should pay attention to: for all the uniqueness of Tolstoy’s experience, he was a man of his time. The time when the novel about the Decembrists begins is 1860. In 1859, the two most important books of the 19th century were published - “The Origin of Species by natural selection"Darwin and "Towards a Critique of Political Economy" by Marx. From the point of view of the authors of these two books, history is driven by colossal impersonal forces. Biological history, the evolution of mankind or the history of economic formations is a process in which individual has no meaning or role. How do both of these books begin? I will give short quotations from the preface to Political Economy and from the preface to the Origin of Species. What does Marx write? “My special subject was jurisprudence, which, however, I studied only as a subordinate discipline along with philosophy and history. In 1842-1843, as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I had to speak out for the first time about the so-called material interests...”, “The first work that I undertook to resolve the doubts that overwhelmed me was a critical analysis of Hegel’s philosophy of law...”, “What I began in Paris I continued the study of this latter in Brussels...", "Frederick Engels, with whom I, since the appearance of his brilliant sketches for the criticism of economic categories... maintained a constant written exchange of opinions, came by a different route to the same result as I; and when in the spring of 1845 he also settled in Brussels, we decided to jointly develop our views ...” - and so on.

The story about the change of economic formations begins with the fact that the author writes himself into history, this is his personal history, the formation of his worldview is part of history. How does Darwin's Origin of Species begin? “While traveling on Her Majesty's ship Beagle as a naturalist, I was struck by certain facts concerning the distribution of organic beings in South America and the geological relations between the former and modern inhabitants of that continent,” “On my return home I In 1837, I came to the idea that perhaps something could be done to resolve this issue by patiently collecting and pondering all kinds of facts...”, “... I expanded this sketch in 1844 into a general outline...” - and so further.

That is, the authors tell the history of species or the history of economic formations, adding their own personal history there - how they came to understand their themes, what happened to them, and so on. In the same way, Tolstoy writes his own history into the history of 1812, because the history of society, economic formation, biological species is the history of man. We learn history by moving away from ourselves into the depths of time, from current situation we go back, unwinding this ball. This is Tolstoy’s philosophy of history - as set out in War and Peace. From here he has access to the past: through himself, Tolstoy finds out how it really was. Not from historical documents, which he, of course, studied extremely carefully, but they are only a guide, important for the accuracy of details and so on. And most importantly, he learns by rewinding the current moment. This is how the restoration of the past occurs.

Tolstoy was extremely worried about the problem of the disintegration of the Russian people into Europeanized nobility and the peasant masses that were alien to each other. He thought a lot about this and, having written about the manifestations of this disintegration in War and Peace, turns to the era when this disintegration occurs - to the time of Peter I. His next plan is a novel about the Peter the Great era, when Europeanization began Russian elite, creating an insurmountable split in society between the educated and uneducated classes. After some time, he gives up this idea; it doesn’t work out for him.

As Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya wrote to her sister Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya (she read the first drafts), there are heroes, they are dressed, arranged, but not breathing. She said: well, maybe they’ll still breathe. Sofya Andreevna was well versed in what her husband wrote. She felt that she was short of breath. Tolstoy also wanted to include his family there, only on the paternal side: Count Tolstoy received the county from Peter I and so on, he was supposed to act in the novel. But the first crisis of working on the novel was due to the fact that Tolstoy could not imagine himself in this era. It was difficult for him to imagine the Petrine era as his own personal past. It was difficult for him to get used to the experiences of people of that time. He had enough artistic imagination, but he did not see himself living among the people of that time the way he saw himself among the heroes of War and Peace. Another idea was to bring out and show the meeting of exiled Decembrists and peasants in Siberia; to bring, so to speak, heroes and characters from history to geography, but by this time he, too, had lost interest in the life of the upper class.

It is interesting that, while intensely thinking about two historical novels, Tolstoy begins to write and delve into a novel, the action of which again takes place right now, in the current time. In 1873 he began work on Anna Karenina, which begins in 1872. The writing proceeds slowly, and as the work progresses, Tolstoy again reacts to the events taking place before his eyes: tours of foreign theaters, court intrigues - and most importantly, of course, the beginning of the Russian-Turkish War, which determines the fate of the heroes. At the end of the novel, Vronsky leaves for the war, but it had not yet begun when the novel began. That is, as it develops and moves, the novel absorbs the current larger story into itself, changing under its influence. Tolstoy works in the same range of mode switching between love story, the history of adultery, family history and journalistic reaction to current historical events. As they freeze, they become history; the report turns into a novel.

Already after Tolstoy’s spiritual crisis at the end of the 1870s, his previously formed idea that history as such is only a documentation of the evil and violence that some people do to others finally matures. In 1870, still between War and Peace and Anna Karenina, he read, in particular, for his novel about Peter, the history of pre-Petrine Russia as described by Sergei Mikhailovich Solovyov, the great Russian historian. And Tolstoy writes:

“In addition, reading about how they robbed, ruled, fought, ruined (this is the only thing that is discussed in history), you involuntarily come to the question: what was robbed and ruined? And from this question to another: who produced what was destroyed? Who and how fed all these people with bread? Who made the tunics, cloth, dresses, damasks that kings and boyars wore? Who caught black foxes and sables, which were given to ambassadors, who mined gold and iron, who bred horses, bulls, rams, who built houses, courtyards, churches, who transported goods? Who raised and gave birth to these people of the same root?<…>The people live, and among the functions of people’s life there is the need for people to ruin, rob, luxury and show off. And these are unfortunate rulers who must renounce everything human.”

The idea of a novel about Peter I was temporarily transformed by Tolstoy into the idea of a novel, which should be called “One Hundred Years.” He wanted to describe the hundred-year history of Russia from Peter I to Alexander I over a hundred years - what happens in a peasant hut, and what happens in a palace. And at the same time, he continued to think about a novel about the Decembrists in Siberia, which, together with the already written “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”, formed a picture of a monumental tetralogy that would describe the entire history of Russia from Peter the Great. th time and up to the moment when Tolstoy lived. All reigns, two centuries of Russian history. Nevertheless, the concept of “One Hundred Years” is experiencing a crisis, because it is one thing to write national history, and another thing is to write the history of a gangster gang. By the 1880s, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that any government and any ruling class there is just a gang, and the people, the people who actually create these values, live outside of history, there real story doesn’t happen, there’s nothing to tell in such a complex narrative. And this connection between the palace and peasant hut falls apart and doesn't hold together.

And Tolstoy gradually moves away from historical plans for a long time. His last idea of this kind was the idea of a novel about Alexander I “ Posthumous notes Elder Fyodor Kuzmich" (it appears earlier, but Tolstoy returns to it in 1905). This is a legend about how Alexander I did not die in 1825, but fled from the palace and began to live in Siberia on a farmstead as the elder Fyodor Kuzmich. And Tolstoy, as Grand Duke Nikolai Mikhailovich recalled, said that he was interested in the soul of Alexander I - “original, complex and two-faced, and if he really ended his life as a hermit, then redemption is probably It was full." What’s interesting here: this is a historical novel, but the essence of this novel is a person’s emergence from history. Alexander I, according to Tolstoy, according to the plan of the novel, renounces his own historicity. He goes to live in a space where there is no history. His life as an elder, where there is communication with God, and there is atonement for his sins as an emperor. Then, after reading Nikolai Mikhailovich’s book about Alexander I, Tolstoy became convinced that this was a legend, that it did not happen. And initially he said that “even though the impossibility of uniting the personalities of Alek-san-dr. and Kuzmich has been historically proven, the legend remains in all its beauty and truth. I started to write on this topic... but I will hardly bother to continue - there is no time, I have to get ready for the upcoming transition [to death]. And I really regret it. A lovely image.” Well, partly there was no time, but partly, apparently, it was still difficult for him to force himself to write a historical work when he stopped believing in the truth of what he was describing. Just writing about the legend was difficult. And the idea of leaving history, overcoming historicity, going into a space where there is no history, continued to excite him until last day life.

Literature. 10th grade

Lesson #103.

Lesson topic: Artistic and philosophical understanding of the essence of war in the novel.

Target: Expand compositional role philosophical chapters, explain the main provisions of Tolstoy’s historical and philosophical views.

Epigraphs: ...between them lay...a terrible line of uncertainty and fear, like a line separating the living from the dead.

Volume I , Part II , head XIX .

“In peace - all together, without distinction of classes, without enmity, and united by brotherly love - let us pray,” thought Natasha.

Volume III , Part II , head XVIII .

Just say the word, we will all go... We are not some kind of Germans.

Count Rostov, head XX .

Lesson progress

Introduction.

During the life of Leo Tolstoy, there were different points of view on the War of 1812. L.N. Tolstoy in his novel sets out his understanding of history and the role of the people as the creator and driving force of history.

(Chapter AnalysisIfirst part and chapterIthird part of the volumeIII.)

TomIIIAndIV, written by Tolstoy later (1867-69), reflected the changes that had occurred in the writer’s worldview and work by that time. Having taken another step along the path of rapprochement with the people's, peasant truth,ways of transition to the position of the patriarchal peasantry, Tolstoy embodied his idea of the people through scenes folk life, through the image of Platon Karataev. Tolstoy's new views were reflected in the views of individual heroes.

Changes in the writer's worldview changed the structure of the novel: journalistic chapters appeared in it, which precede and explain the artistic description of events, leading to their understanding; That’s why these chapters are either at the beginning of the parts or at the end of the novel.

Let's consider the philosophy of history, according to Tolstoy (views on the origin, essence and change of historical events) -h.I, Chapter 1; h.III, chapter 1.

What is war, according to Tolstoy?

Already starting from " Sevastopol stories", L.N. Tolstoy acts as a humanist writer: he exposes the inhumane essence of war. “The war began, that is, an event contrary to human reason and all human nature took place. Millions of people committed such countless atrocities, deceptions, exchanges, robberies, fires and murders against each other, which the chronicle of all the destinies of the world will collect over the centuries and which, during this period of time, the people who committed them did not look upon as a crime.” .

2. What caused this extraordinary event? What were the reasons for it?

The writer is convinced that it is impossible to explain the origin of historical events by individual actions of individual people. The will of an individual historical person can be paralyzed by the desires or unwillingnesses of a mass of people.

For a historical event to occur, “billions of reasons” must coincide, i.e. the interests of individual people who make up the masses, just as the movement of a swarm of bees coincides when a general movement is born from the movement of individual quantities. This means that history is made not by individuals, but by people. “To study the laws of history, we must completely change the object of observation ... - which leads the masses” (vol.III, h.I, chapter 1) - Tolstoy argues that historical events occur when the interests of the masses coincide.

What is necessary for a historical event to happen?

For a historical event to happen, “billions of reasons” must fall, that is, the interests of individual people who make up the masses, just as the movement of a swarm of bees coincides when a general movement is born from the movement of individual quantities.

4. Why do the small values of individual human desires coincide?

Tolstoy was unable to answer this question: “Nothing is a reason. All this is only a coincidence of the conditions under which every vital, organic, spontaneous event takes place,” “man inevitably fulfills the laws prescribed to him.”

5. What is Tolstoy’s attitude towards fatalism?

Tolstoy is a supporter of fatalistic views: “...an event must happen only because it must happen,” “fatalism in history” is inevitable. Tolstoy's fatalism is connected with his understanding of spontaneity. History, he writes, is “the unconscious, general, swarm life of humanity.” (And this is fatalism, i.e. belief in predetermined fate, which cannot be overcome). But any committed unconscious act “becomes the property of history.” And the more unconsciously a person lives, the more, according to Tolstoy, he will participate in the commission of historical events. But the preaching of spontaneity and the refusal of conscious, intelligent participation in events should be characterized and defined as weakness in Tolstoy’s views on history.

What role does personality play in history?

Correctly considering that personality, and even historical, i.e. one who stands high “on the social ladder” does not play a leading role in history, that she is connected with the interests of everyone who stands below her and next to her, Tolstoy incorrectly asserts that the individual does not and cannot play any role in history : “The king is a slave of history.” According to Tolstoy, the spontaneity of the movements of the masses cannot be guided, and therefore the historical figure can only obey the direction of events prescribed from above. This is how Tolstoy comes to the idea of submission to fate and reduces the task of a historical figure to following events.

This is the philosophy of history, according to Tolstoy.

But, reflecting historical events, Tolstoy does not always manage to follow his speculative conclusions, since the truth of history speaks somewhat differently. And we see, studying the contents of the volumeI, nationwide patriotic upsurge and unity of the bulk of Russian society in the fight against the invaders.

If during analysisIIsince the focus of attention was on an individual person with his individual, sometimes isolated from others, fate, then when analyzing the so-calledIII- IVVlet's look at a person as a particle of mass. Tolstoy's main idea is that only then does an individual person find his final, real place in life and always become a part of the people.

War for L.N. Tolstoy is an event committed by the people, and not by individuals or generals. And that commander, that people, whose goals are united and united by the high ideal of serving the Fatherland, wins.

The French army cannot win , since she submits to the adoration of the genius of Bonaparte. Therefore, the novel opens in the third volume with a description of the senseless death at the crossing of the Neman:chapterII, PartI, p.15.Summary of the crossing.

But the war within the fatherland is portrayed differently - as the greatest tragedy for the entire Russian people.

Homework:

1. Answer the questions on parts 2 and 3, volume 1 “War of 1805-1807”:

Is the Russian army ready for war? Are its goals clear to the soldiers? (chapter 2)

What Kutuzov is doing (chapter 14)

How did Prince Andrey imagine the war and his role in it? (chapter 3, 12)

Why, after meeting with Tushin, did Prince Andrei think: “It was all so strange, so unlike what he had hoped for”? (Ch. 12, 15,20-21)

What role does the Battle of Shengraben play in changing the views of Prince Andrei?

2. Make bookmarks:

a) in the image of Kutuzov;

b) Battle of Shengraben (chap. 20-21);

c) the behavior of Prince Andrei, his dreams of “Toulon” (Part 2, Chapter 3, 12, 20-21)

d) Battle of Austerlitz (part 3, chapter 12-13);

e) the feat of Prince Andrei and his disappointment in “Napoleonic” dreams (part 3, chapters 16, 19).

3. Individual tasks:

a) characteristics of Timokhin;

b) Tushin’s characteristics;

c) Dolokhov’s characteristic.

4. Scene analysis

“Review of troops in Braunau” (chapter 2).

“Review of troops by Kutuzov”

"The first fight of Nikolai Rostov"

Literature

10th grade

Lesson No. 47

Philosophy of history of Tolstoy. True and false patriotism

List of issues discussed in the topic

Objective of the lesson:

Unity between Tolstoy's philosophy of history and artistic depiction historical events in the novel;
Features of Tolstoy’s creation of the image of the people as the leading force of historical events;
Tolstoy's concept of “folk thought” in the novel.

Glossary

Author's digression ( digression) - extra-plot element of the work; special shape author's speech, the author's deviation from the direct course of the plot narrative; the author’s assessment of the characters or plot situation, the author’s reasoning on philosophical, journalistic, aesthetic, moral and other topics, the author’s memories of events own life and so on.

Idea of the work- main idea about the range of phenomena that are depicted in the work; expressed by the writer in artistic images.

Concept - a system of views on something, the main idea of something.

Philosophy of history - views on the origin, essence and change of historical events.

References

Basic literature on the topic of the lesson

Lebedev Yu. V. Russian language and literature. Literature. 10th grade. Textbook for general education organizations. Basic level. In 2 hours. Part 2. M.: Education, 2016. - 368 p.

Additional literature on the topic of the lesson

Bilinkis Y. S. Russian classics and the study of literature at school. M.: Education, 1986. - 208 p.

Linkov V. Ya. War and Peace of L. Tolstoy. M.: Moscow State University Publishing House, 2003. - 104 p.

Lyssy Yu. I. Russian literature XIX century: 10th grade: Workshop. Auto-stat. G. I. Belenky, E. A. Krasnovsky and others. M.: Education, 1997. - 380 p.

Theoretical material for self-study

The 60s of the 19th century in Russia were an amazing time: after a long period of silence (1825–1855), it became possible, albeit under the supervision of censorship, to express publicly Political Views through magazines. In just four years, from 1856 to 1860, 145 publications appeared in Russia. Coming new era in the development of society and the country.

In literature, the decisive question is who and how should control the course of history, who will lead the country to a happy future. All literary heroes of this era (Bazarov, Oblomov, Stolz, Rakhmetov, Rudin) are inseparable from the temporal context.

The concept of history in War and Peace is clearly polemical in nature. The writer wants to show his contemporaries what her driving forces, and who controls them. Lev Nikolaevich believes: in order for a historical event to take place, “billions of reasons” must coincide. History, according to Tolstoy, is made not by individuals, but by the people. The most striking illustration of this idea is the description of the abandonment of Moscow by its residents. People leave the city not by order, but by their own free will, without thinking about glory, feat, or greatness. They “each left for himself, and at the same time, only because they left, that magnificent event took place, which will forever remain the best glory of the Russian people.”

Prominent figures - generals, sovereigns - are the least free in their decisions: “The Tsar is a slave of history.” Following this concept gives a unique color to the images of Kutuzov, Napoleon, Alexander I, and Rastopchin. In the epic novel there are episodes when Alexander I appoints Kutuzov as commander-in-chief against his wishes, fulfilling the will of the people.

But there are also examples in War and Peace when a fateful decision depends on the will of one person. This, for example, is Kutuzov’s order to leave Moscow without a battle.

The historical movement, according to the writer, stems from “countless human tyranny.” Here we can recall a comparison of the course of history with the work of a clock mechanism, when dozens of small gears rotate and transmit impulse to each other, but the main action occurs unexpectedly, as if by itself and is in no way connected with the independent rotation of each part. The human mind “is inaccessible to the totality of the causes of phenomena,” and therefore fatalism in history is inevitable.

That is why for his work the writer chooses an era of real patriotic upsurge: at such a time, in the face of a common misfortune, people unite en masse, differences between classes and estates are erased.

It is no coincidence that the author depicted two wars in the novel: in the first, the Russians were defeated, because the fight as part of the allied army on the territory of Austria had no moral purpose. Patriotic War of 1812 - a fair battle, "club" people's war rose with all her formidable and majestic strength and... nailed the French until the entire invasion was destroyed.”

The writer depicts the will to victory both in mass scenes (the surrender of Smolensk, preparation for the Battle of Borodino and others), and in vivid separate images real folk heroes: captains Tushin and Timokhin, partisan Tikhon Shcherbaty. Their names are associated in the novel with the concept of true heroism, modest, inconspicuous, devoid of solemnity and loudness. These “little heroes” of the big war are the most important characters in the novel for Tolstoy.

How unpleasant in comparison are the staff officers who strive only to “get a cross or a ribbon”! How insignificant are the representatives of the highest nobility who pompously rant about how the Fatherland is in danger and impose fines for speaking French.

All heroes, all their thoughts and actions are tested by a national cause - the Patriotic War: thus, Prince Andrei feels an unprecedented upsurge before the Battle of Borodino. The highest praise that Bolkonsky receives is the nickname “our prince”, given to him by the soldiers.

All Pierre's thoughts are aimed at helping drive out the invaders. At his own expense, he equips a thousand militia, develops a plan to kill Napoleon, and during the Battle of Borodino he is at Raevsky’s battery.

Natasha Rostova, overwhelmed by a feeling of unity with the people, gives carts to the wounded, and her younger brother Petya dies in a battle with the enemy. This is how all beloved heroes go through their path of unity with the people, which for Tolstoy is the highest measure of a true personality.

So, in the epic novel War and Peace, Tolstoy expresses his own special view of the development of history, arguing that it occurs spontaneously. In fact, many small events ultimately led to the expulsion of Napoleon's troops. But most Russian people acted on the basis of the same feeling that lay in the soul of each of them - “the hidden warmth of patriotism.” The idea of unity, which is clearly visible at all levels of the ingenious creation, was the decisive factor in such a large-scale historical achievement - the victory of the Russian people in Patriotic War 1812.

Examples and analysis of solutions to training module tasks

Single choice.

Continue L.N. Tolstoy’s statement: “In War and Peace, I loved the thought...”

folk
family
philosophical
historical

Correct answer: folk.

Hint: Tolstoy mentions “family thought” in connection with the novel “Anna Karenina”.

“In the epic, the writer built a huge artistic pyramid, placed on a solid foundation, whose name is the people. The image of the people in Tolstoy’s epic is not only and not so much an object of depiction, but an artistic concept of the world,” notes literary critic Nikolai Gey. Tolstoy wrote “War and Peace” for the sake of one simple thought that permeates his entire creation - this is “the thought of the people.”