The idea to create epic work arose long before Leo Tolstoy wrote its first lines. Having started work on the next story in 1956, the author began to form the image of the main character. The courageous gray-haired man returns to Russia; he once had to flee abroad as a member of the Decembrist uprising of 1825. What was this old man like in his youth, what did he have to endure? - the writer asked himself a question. I had to involuntarily plunge into the events of 1812, the history of the creation of the novel “War and Peace” began to develop.
Why did the writer shorten the work?
Tolstoy's bibliographers have 5,200 sheets of the author's rough works, far exceeding the volume of the published four volumes. Lev Nikolaevich planned to talk about the fate of his people for half a century, with early XIX centuries to its middle. The author included in the content the turbulent events associated with the Decembrist Uprising and the life of Tsar Nicholas I.Tolstoy called the epic “Three Times,” dividing it initially into three parts. It was decided to squeeze events into the first part Patriotic War 1812. The second part, according to the primary plan, was main theme novel. Here the heroes of the Decembrists were displayed, their selfless idea to overthrow serfdom And difficult fate exiled to hard labor.
The author tentatively called the last part “The Third Time.” The content includes the events of the Crimean War at the final stage, the accession to the throne of Alexander II and the return from exile of the surviving Decembrists. In the third part, the writer was going to focus on the experiences and aspirations of the advanced strata of society. Good changes were expected from the new emperor.
As soon as Tolstoy began working on the beginning of the story, he realized that he had stumbled upon a deep philosophical layer of questions related to the essence of the people and its heroic manifestations at critical, fateful moments. Lev Nikolaevich wanted to reveal in detail the nature of the unity and patriotism of the ordinary masses of people.
The author told friends in letters that he was experiencing the stress of all his creative forces. The work he did did not fit into the usual format of books published by his contemporaries. The narrative style was different from the fiction of the time.
How the work progressed
Critics know 15 options for the beginning of the novel. Tolstoy in many letters says that he had lost hope of expressing his opinion about the people, and then that he had found the strength to resume writing an epic novel. The author had to study available historical materials about the Battle of Borodino and the Partisan movement for months.The writer studied biographical data to the smallest detail historical figures Kutuzov, Alexander I and Napoleon. He himself wrote in the article that he likes to recreate the smallest details of actual situations depicted in the documents found. Over the years of work on the novel, the Tolstoy family formed a full-fledged library of books dedicated to the period of the Patriotic War of 1812.
The idea of the novel was the liberation movement of the Russian people. Therefore, the author did not use orders, letters, documents and books telling about the war as a battle between two emperors. The author used memoirs with an objective assessment of the events of those times. These were the recordings of Zhikharev, Petrovsky, Ermolov. Tolstoy worked with newspapers and magazines published in 1812.
Description of the Battle of Borodino
Tolstoy wanted to depict the Borodino field in detail, with knowledge of every hillock mentioned by the generals in reports and reports. The writer personally went to the historical site and spent a lot of time there to immerse himself in the atmosphere of the battle. Then he wrote a letter to his wife, where he spoke about the inspiration that captured his imagination. In the letter, the author promised to create such a large-scale description of the battle that no one had ever created before.Among the writer's manuscripts, bibliographers found technical notes that he scribbled while on the Borodino field. Tolstoy pointed out that the horizon can be seen 25 miles away. At the bottom of the note is a drawing of the horizon. On the same sheet, dots are drawn indicating the located villages that the author mentioned in the plot of the novel.
All day long Tolstoy watched exactly how the sun moved around the plain. At what time do the sun's rays play on the hills, how does the shadow fall? How the morning dawn rises, from where the evening glow appears.
6 many years Leo Tolstoy worked on the creation of his brainchild until 1869. The plot was redrawn and changed many times. The author rewrote the entire novel 8 times, working with pen and ink. The writer reworked some episodes more than 20 times.
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy's epic novel "War and Peace" is the standard of Russian classical literature. The novel took about seven years to write; work on this titanic work requires a separate story.
L.N. Tolstoy began writing “War and Peace” in the fall of 1863. Literary scholars and historians studying War and Peace rely primarily on the 5,200-page manuscript stored in the archive. The history of the creation of the novel can be very clearly traced from the pages of the manuscript. Interesting fact is that Tolstoy initially conceived a novel about a participant in the Decembrist uprising who returned home from exile. According to the author, the plot began in 1856. Then L.N. Tolstoy rethought his original plan and decided to write about 1825 - about the Decembrist uprising. The author did not stop there either, and he sent his hero to the years of the Patriotic War of 1812, but since this war is directly connected with 1805, the story began from there, from the hero’s youth.
The original idea was to capture 50 years of the country's history, dividing them into three periods:
- Beginning of the century (wars with Napoleon, coming of age of the future Decembrists);
- 20s (the main event was the Decembrist uprising);
- Mid-century (defeat in the Crimean War, sudden death of Nicholas I, amnesty for participants in the uprising on Senate Square and their return to their native lands).
While writing his masterpiece, L.N. Tolstoy decided to shorten it and leave only the first period, slightly touching on the second at the end of the work. The author gave up writing the novel several times; for a whole year he wrote only the beginning; Tolstoy’s archive contains about 15 versions of the plot. When writing, the author used historical books, memoirs, and archival documents - the author wanted to be accurate down to the smallest detail, which cannot but command respect. L.N. Tolstoy visited the Borodino field, he stayed there for two days. The author finished writing his great work in 1869, spending huge amount strength
One of the main goals of the writer was not to depict the struggle of two emperors, but to show the liberation struggle of the people, and he succeeded. Tolstoy very skillfully described social life Petersburg and military operations, which are very closely interconnected. There has not been, and is not, a work like “War and Peace” in our literature. This work is a huge layer of Russian (and not only) classical literature.
The history of the creation of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace
Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is the world's greatest writer, who, with his works, could reveal the essence of Rus', the way of life and completely open his feelings to everything that was happening at that moment.
One of such works in which you can feel what is happening and understand what the author saw is the work “War and Peace”. This novel belongs to the works of a global scale, depicting very subtly the character and feelings of its heroes. Thanks to many years of effort, this is a work of art. Conquered the world. The main goal of the novel was the events that took place during the invasion of Napoleon's army, which began their journey across the lands of Europe and reached the Russian lands. These events reflected on the feelings of Lev Nikolaevich, and he expressed this in his letters, which he sent with concern to his relatives in other cities.
His literary skills made it possible to colorfully display in his work all the details of both the personal lives of the heroes of all these events, and to cover the scale of the grandiose battle. Thanks to his ability to express thoughts beautifully, the reader is completely immersed in the thick of current events. Lev Nikolaevich began narrating the novel in 1805, when a wave of emotions washed over him about the suffering of the Russian people. The author himself felt the pain and torment that the Russian people felt.
The main character of the novel turned out to be Platon Karataev, on whom hopes were pinned. In it, the author reflected all the willpower and endurance of the people. Main in a feminine way, became Natalya Rostova. She became a symbol of femininity and kindness in the novel. No less important heroes of this wonderful work were Kutuzov and Napoleon himself. These two heroes display greatness and courage, thoughtful military tactics, and general human qualities, each of them. The author mentioned absolutely all classes of society, which brought the work under discussion of world literary critics. Few of them understood that the work was written in real events, in disputes and discussions, there was a full discussion of the work of Lev Nikolaevich. A very striking moment in the novel was the murder of Vereshchagin.
The first part of the novel proceeded strictly in theoretical order. There was no strong spiritual impression in it, and no reversal of all events. Here, the author was not verbose and did not embellish the details. He just did general descriptions for readers of this work. At first glance, the novel could not interest the reader, but having reached the second part of the novel, the author introduces a clearly expressed heroine, Natalya, which completely enlivens the actions and the entire plot.
Natalya herself had a casual and simple appearance, which was combined with family life and vanity. Later, the author already draws the girl as a socialite, with the manners of a noble lady. She has a large circle of friends and fans, which in the work elevates her to a higher status in society.
Ultimately, this great and grandiose work, in its content and design, became historical narrative like the personal lives of different people with different classes, and military battles and fate ordinary people who took part in this battle.
Several interesting essays
- Essay The Little Man in Gogol's story The Overcoat
« Little man" is one of the archetypes of Russian literature. The gallery of “little people” opens with a portrait of Samson Vyrin in the story by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin “ Stationmaster"(cycle "Belkin's Tale")
One of minor characters The work is Arkhip Savelich, presented by the writer in the image of a faithful servant of the main character of the story, Pyotr Grinev.
Work on the historical novel began gradually. Back in 1852, Tolstoy said that he was beginning to “love history and understand its benefits.” At the same time, he read Hume’s “History of England,” Michaud’s “History of the Crusades,” Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky’s “Description of the Patriotic War of 1813,” many other historical books - and, of course, Karamzin’s “History of the Russian State.” Ten years before starting work on War and Peace, he wrote in his diary:
“I read the History of the War for 13 years. Only a lazy person or a person incapable of anything can say that he has not found something to do. - Compile a true, truthful History of Europe this century. This is a lifelong goal." And further: “Every historical fact it is necessary to explain humanly and avoid routine historical expressions.”
Reflecting in his pedagogical articles on what arouses historical interest in a person, Tolstoy found “two elements: the artistic feeling of poetry and patriotism.”
The idea of patriotism was reinforced by all his multi-page diaries, his entire life - and especially by memories of the Sevastopol redoubts...
Tolstoy, like a sculptor, felt in the block historical material internal unified content, but time was needed to chip away the “extra” from this block.
Direct work on the historical novel began in 1856. Initially, the novel was conceived as a work about modernity and should have been called “The Decembrists,” since Tolstoy was going to make the main character a Decembrist returning from Siberian exile. At the beginning of 1861, he already read the first chapter to Turgenev, and back in 1863, which is considered the first year of work on “War and Peace,” he wrote “The Decembrists.”
However, Tolstoy soon felt the need to expand the time frame of events.
Having started the story in 1856, the writer turned to the origins of the December uprising of 1825, then to the Patriotic War of 1812, then to the era of “failures and defeats” of 1805, when “the character of the Russian people and troops” was most fully expressed. Subsequently, Tolstoy would write that in “War and Peace” he “loved people’s thought.” (Just like in “Anna Karenina” - “family thought”).
The name "Decembrist" was rejected, as were the other two options - "Three Pores" and "All's Well That Ends Well." In 1865, the magazine "Russian Messenger" published the first two parts of a new novel by Count Tolstoy entitled "One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five." Subsequently, they were subjected to severe copyright editing.
Tolstoy expected to complete his work in a year. But even after two, three, and four years it was not completed, despite the fact that the publication of the novel had already begun.
Reading his work in print, Tolstoy saw more clearly the outlines of the future epic. He added and rewrote existing scenes and introduced new characters. It seemed that the novel was not written, but was built in the likeness of God’s creation of the world: each new change was as significant as it was inevitable. Tolstoy’s amazing phrase, which he once wrote down in his diary: “Too lazy to write in detail, I would like to write everything with fiery features,” came to life. The idea of how significant life can be in all its “details,” historical and private, when they become “fiery features” and make up a majestic picture of existence, Tolstoy proved with every page of the novel.
In 1867, he personally wrote the final title into the manuscript - “War and Peace.” Here “world” in the literal, written sense means “the Universe, the universe.” But, when spoken out loud, this word sounds the same as “peace” in the sense of “absence of quarrel, hostility, war.” Unfortunately, in the new spelling system this important nuance has disappeared.
It is noteworthy that while working on War and Peace, Tolstoy stopped writing in his diary. This suggests that his self-expression was fully realized on the pages of the novel. The writer expressed all his innermost thoughts in artistic form- the highest happiness for an artist! The greatness of the novel “War and Peace” lies in the organic combination of thought and its artistic embodiment. Even those places where the writer directly expresses his philosophical views, do not “overload” the text, and do not require special philosophical preparation from the reader. The language of “War and Peace” is understandable to any person, just as life itself is understandable; the combination of everyday life and significance of events fascinates the reader.
One of the important questions associated with War and Peace is the question of who were the prototypes of the heroes of the novel, in which Tolstoy considered “millions of possible combinations in order to choose 1/1,000,000 of them.” Each character in the preliminary sketches was characterized by the author according to “headings”: from the point of view of his position “property”, “social”, “poetic”, “mental”, “love”, “family”... It is not surprising that many people Some of these signs were found in prototypes of heroes among their relatives and friends.
In this sense, an excerpt from a letter from T. Kuzminskaya, the sister of Sofia Andreevna, who considered herself the main prototype of Natasha Rostova, is characteristic. At the end of 1864, Tolstoy read parts of his novel in the family circle.
“They said about the Rostov family that these are living people, but how close they are to me! ...Vera is the real Lisa. Her sedateness and attitude towards us is correct, that is, more towards Sonya, and not towards me. Countess Rostova - that’s how my mother reminds me, especially how she is with me. When they read about Natasha, Varenka (Perfilyeva) winked at me slyly. ...But you will laugh: my big doll, Mimi, ended up in a novel. ...Yes, you will find a lot, a lot in the novel. ...The ladies praised the little princess, but they couldn’t find who Lyovochka painted her from...”
Probably, Tolstoy himself gave an exhaustive answer to this question in one of his letters:
“Andrei Bolkonsky is a nobody, like every person a novelist, not a writer of personalities or memoirs.”
Everything that the mature artist knew by that time about people, about their living conditions and motives of behavior, about social, official, family and friendly relationships - in a word, about human life in all its manifestations, was embodied by him with such force of authenticity that it aroused in the very first readers a naive confidence: it is possible to write so vividly only about specific individuals.
The reader's success of the novel was enormous. However, not all critics were enthusiastic about it. Literary critic Viktor Shklovsky believes that “L. Tolstoy’s novel did not satisfy contemporary criticism precisely because in it Tolstoy set new tasks for literature, implemented a new structure and a new point of view.”
At the end of the 20th century, we are amazed at the greatness of War and Peace. Even a notorious modern snob understands that the author’s “mistakes and mistakes” are an organic part of his grand plan. Just as mistakes and mistakes are part of another grand design - life itself...
But here’s what they wrote about “War and Peace” more than a hundred years ago.
“The main drawback of Count L.N. Tolstoy’s novel is the intentional or unintentional oblivion of the artistic alphabet, the violation of the boundaries of possibility for poetic creativity. The author not only strives to overcome and subjugate history, but in the complacency of his apparent victory he introduces into his work almost theoretical treatises, that is, elements of ugliness in work of art, clay and brick flanked by marble and bronze.”
“Count Tolstoy’s mistake is that he gave too much space in his book to the description of actual historical events and the characteristics of actual historical figures. As a result, the artistic balance in terms of composition was disrupted, and the unity that connected it was lost.”
Errors and shortcomings were pointed out by the most different people: from critics Burenin and M. de Poulet to writers Vyazemsky and Turgenev.
It is instructive to read these lines. If “War and Peace” could be assessed in this way, then it is natural to ask ourselves the question: isn’t the fallacy of fair assessments eternal in man, and aren’t we in a hurry to see in any significant phenomenon primarily repulsive features?
Tolstoy was hardly left indifferent by the lack of understanding of his plan and work, to which he devoted almost seven years of his life; such indifference is simply impossible by the very essence of creativity. However, he was not indignant at the numerous and most often superficial criticisms with which periodicals were replete.
Perhaps his deep calm was the fatigue of a giant after exhausting, inhuman work. And it’s even more likely that, like everyone great artist, Tolstoy knew his own worth and followed the words of Pushkin: “You yourself are your own highest court, you know how to evaluate your work more strictly than everyone else.” Moreover, the highest severity of self-esteem was inherent in him to the highest degree. Therefore, his opinion about “War and Peace,” expressed many years later to Gorky: “Without false modesty, it’s like the Iliad,” does not look exaggerated or immodest.
In the article “A few words about the book “War and Peace,” Tolstoy wrote that work on the novel took place “under the best living conditions,” meaning the conditions that Sofya Andreevna created for him. Living conditions were not ideal - a young, inexperienced woman actually managed the household alone on a large and not very prosperous estate. Having a baby (Lev Nikolaevich insisted that his wife feed the children herself), being pregnant again, Sofya Andreevna also copied hundreds of pages of Tolstoy’s difficult-to-read handwriting, and spent many hours in his office, when Tolstoy simply could not work without seeing his wife next to him ! The difficult, contradictory life of his soul became more important for Sofia Andreevna than her own.
Most likely, only the colossal, long-term creative tension, beyond the ability of the ordinary mind, was the reason that Lev Nikolayevich took the burden of painful creative searches out on his wife. For the same reason, he wrote that he felt chained to Yasnaya Polyana gold chains...
When you try to comprehend the incomprehensible greatness of creativity, spiritual feat Tolstoy in these six years, a lot becomes clear. Including the nervous breakdown that overtook him after the completion of War and Peace.
Novel "War and Peace" - highest achievement artistic genius Tolstoy. The book required enormous efforts from the author, commensurate with its merits.
Typically, the boundaries of Tolstoy’s work on a novel are defined as seven years: 1863–1869. This version has become so established that it has already migrated to the pages of school textbooks. However, it is unfair, confuses the essence of the matter, and gives rise to many misconceptions. Tolstoy himself, in the article “A few words about the book “War and Peace”,” wrote about the five years of creation of the novel. This was in 1868, and he did not imagine then that it would take another two years of the same “incessant and exceptional labor under the best living conditions” to complete the text.
The fact is that in 1862, an 18-year-old girl, Sonechka Bers, the daughter of a doctor in the court department, became Countess Tolstoy. Her husband was 34 years old at the time; he finally entered the quiet family backwater. Work became more fun. However, firstly, it began much earlier, and secondly, an important circumstance was forgotten: Tolstoy never continued it continuously, without frequent stops, especially in its early stages. This was the case with Anna Karenina, Resurrection, and other plans. The writer had to interrupt his work to think about the future development of the plot and, as he said, to prevent the “scaffolding” of the building of the work under construction from collapsing. In addition, Tolstoy himself claimed, while working on the supposed preface to the novel, that back in 1856 he began writing a story about a Decembrist returning with his family from exile to Russia. This is a very important recognition in many ways. Peculiarity creative process Tolstoy was that, despite the exceptional power of imagination, he always proceeded from fact. This, figuratively speaking, was the “stove” from which the dance of his imagination began, and then in the process of work he went far away from this fact, creating a fictitious plot and fictitious persons. The story of the Decembrist, which Tolstoy remembered, was the plan for the future novel “The Decembrists” (its manuscripts were preserved and were published later). 1856 was the year of the Decembrist amnesty, when the few surviving participants in the movement who had not taken firm roots in Siberia flocked to their homeland. Tolstoy met some of them, and his Pierre Labazov, the hero of the original story, then the novel, had real prototypes.
It was necessary to find out the history of these people, and Tolstoy moved on to 1825, to the “era of delusions and misfortunes” of his hero; then it turned out to be necessary to turn to the hero’s youth, and it coincided with the “glorious era of 1812 for Russia.” But for the third time, Tolstoy abandoned what he had started, because he believed that the character of the people and the Russian army “should have been expressed even more clearly in the era of failures and defeats.” The action of the novel "War and Peace" begins in 1805, when in skirmishes with Napoleon, Russian troops suffered severe losses until 1807 with the fatal Battle of Austerlitz.
Thus, the start of work on “War and Peace” was not 1863, but 1856. We can talk about the existence of a coherent plan: a story about the Decembrist, which turned into the novels “The Decembrists” and “War and Peace.” There is also evidence that Tolstoy worked on this gradually changing plan in 1860, 1861 and even in 1862-1863. In addition, the famous name itself - "War and Peace" - arose very late. It only appeared in a typesetting manuscript in 1856! Until that time, there were several titles of the novel: “Three Times”, “All’s Well That Ends Well”, “From 1805 to 1814”, “One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five” (this was not the title of the entire novel, but only its beginning, which appeared V magazine version in "Russian Bulletin" 1865–1866). The title of the novel written by Tolstoy was originally as follows: “War and Mip.” Meaning of the word "mgr" completely different from the “world” that now structures the whole artistic system based on the principle of contrast with the concept of "war". "Mip" is a community, a people, a community, the working life of a mass of people. In one of the drafts of the novel, the author used the proverb: “The world reaps, but the army feeds,” i.e. the contrast was intended in a different way than it is now in the final, canonical text.
So, Tolstoy moved away from modernity in order to return to it again, but at the end of a new novel, the contours of which became increasingly clearer for him. The writer was going to end with where he once began his work. “My task,” he notes in one of the rough drafts of the unpublished preface, “is to describe the lives and conflicts of certain individuals during the period from 1805 to 1856.”
“War and Peace,” thus, with all its majestic scope, which even now amazes the imagination, is only part of a grandiose and not fully realized plan. In the cursory epilogue of the novel, omitting events after 1812, Tolstoy sketched scenes from the early 1820s, i.e. close eve of the Decembrist uprising. However, even in this form, this block of novel, not fully processed, with many events and persons, serves as a grandiose example of great creative will and great work. It didn’t take the author seven years, but twice as long – 14 years! In this case, everything falls into place: the writer will never have to experience such a powerful creative impulse into the unattainable, into the unattainable. Although even now the author of this brilliant novel is almost like God, because he made a titanic effort: he led his heroes from 1805 through several eras of Russian life, sketched the approach to the December catastrophe of 1825 and recreated the events of 1856 in advance (in the romance "The Decembrists", written long before work on "War and Peace" was completed). To fully implement the plan, a series of novels would be required, like Balzac's "Human Comedy".
The ridiculous version of working for seven years appeared because textual critics who studied the manuscripts of the novel were let down by... textual criticism. They decided that since there were no surviving manuscripts reflecting the work of 1856 and subsequent years, then there was no work! The well-known idea of Tolstoy’s famous letter to Fet turned out to be forgotten, where the paradoxical nature of his work was especially clearly expressed: “I don’t write anything, but I work painfully... It’s terribly difficult to think over millions of possible combinations in order to choose from 1/1000000.”
However, the surviving drafts in many ways exceed the volume of War and Peace. At the same time, the manuscripts, this true chronicle of Tolstoy’s hard work, destroy some of the legends associated with his work on the famous novel, for example, the also firmly rooted version that Tolstoy seven times rewrote War and Peace. It is clear that even if the author seven spans in the forehead, he would not be able to do this. But our admiration for Tolstoy is endless, and since they say this about him, it means it is so, because he can do anything. Famous in the past Soviet writer and the functionary, now completely forgotten, lecturing his readers, says: “Just think, Tolstoy rewrote War and Peace seven times,” and after thinking a little, adds, “by hand!” He apparently understands that this is hardly possible, because every time in such cases there is a need for many inevitable amendments, revisions of the text at every step and in almost every phrase, a chain reaction of more and more changes that have no end. In a word, it is difficult for a writer not to write, but rather to rewrite what has been written. If this had happened to Tolstoy, he would have spent his entire life writing one novel without ever finishing it.
That is why it is appropriate to say here that the appearance of “War and Peace” is a consequence not only of the exceptional intensity of Tolstoy’s artistic genius, but also of the fact that he was truly brilliant in organizing his work. The writer left for himself only creative element at work. He never rewrote, but wrote from a whitewashed text, i.e. from a copy taken from an autograph or from a manuscript that had already been copied more than once before, and then the copy was again at his fingertips, and an energetic creative search began again. Tolstoy firmly adhered to the rule he learned while working on Childhood: “We must forever discard the idea of writing without corrections.”
It is known how much effort it cost Tolstoy to carry out preliminary work, as he said, “deep plowing of the field” for a new work. A lot of concise characteristics of the characters were sketched out, the plot and its individual episodes were carefully thought out.
Even a solid system of rubrics was determined by which the idea of a particular character in War and Peace was formed: “property” (status), “social”, “love”, “poetic”, “mental”, “family”.
But now the plans seem to have been finally thought out, the heroes begin to show themselves directly in action, in clashes with each other, detailed descriptions of scenes, episodes, chapters appear - and everything to which so much effort was devoted collapses before the eyes of the author, and he is already pays little attention to pre-drawn notes and plans, following the logic of the characters emerging in his mind. That is why Tolstoy often noted with surprise that his heroes act as they tend to act, and not as he wants, and that, in fact, it is best when plans are developed by them, and not by the author.
How complex the process of creating an image was for Tolstoy is evidenced by the story of the appearance of one of the central figures in the novel - Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, told by Tolstoy himself. “In the Battle of Austerlitz,” the writer recalled, “I needed a brilliant young man to be killed; in the further course of my novel, I only needed the old man Bolkonsky and his daughter; but since it is awkward to describe a person who has nothing to do with the novel, I decided to make brilliant young man son of old Bolkonsky. Then he interested me, a role in the further course of the novel presented itself for him, and I pardoned him, only by severely wounding him instead of death.”
This story, however, does not exhaust the entire history of the creation of the image, which for Tolstoy himself, even in May 1865, when the letter was written, was still largely unclear. In one of the notes, Prince Andrei turned into a “rubbish russian”; in other drafts, the theme of a quarrel between father and son over Prince Andrei’s marriage to the “insignificant daughter of a landowner” was elaborated; a fragment of the manuscript was preserved, where he challenged Ippolit Kuragin, who persistently pursued him, to a duel wife, "little princess". The main difficulty was that the character of the hero was devoid of development, the play of light and shadows, the idea of an invariably cold, prim, arrogant aristocratic dandy was created, whose habits were ridiculed by those around him. Even after publishing “The Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five” in the magazine “Russian Messenger,” Tolstoy wrote to Fet in November 1866 that Prince Andrei was “monotonous, boring and only un homme com me il faut,” and that the character of the hero “is worth and doesn't move." Only in the autumn of 1866, when work on the novel was finishing, the image of Prince Andrei was finally determined, and the previous interpretation of the hero was discarded. Returning to the magazine text “One Thousand Eight Hundred and Five” in 1867, when preparing the first edition of “War and Peace,” Tolstoy gradually erased the features of contemptuous negligence, coldness, swagger and laziness that had previously distinguished Prince Andrei. The author already sees his hero differently. But what long haul passed! And this is only one character, and there are more than 500 of them in the novel.
It often happened that in the process of work, some of the heroes turned out to be rethought, as was the case, for example, with Ippolit Kuragin (in the early drafts of Ivan Kuragin), in whom, according to the original plan, there was not even a shadow of those features of physical and mental degeneration that would later turn out to be This character is endowed with a representative, in the words of Prince Andrei, of “court lackeys and idiots.”
The image of Pierre Bezukhov is far from the final version, the same should be said about Anna Pavlovna Scherer, Princess Drubetskaya, who aroused the obvious sympathy of the author at the beginning of work on the novel. Even Natasha Rostova in the first drafts sometimes bears little resemblance to the “sorceress” who will eventually appear on the pages of the book. In numerous sketches with endless authorial amendments, the work looms before us greatest artist world literature.
1. The history of the creation of the novel:
Created by the author over seven years (1863-1869);
the concept of the novel changed several times, as evidenced by the names of the early editions: “Three Times”, “All’s Well, It Ends Well”, “1805”;
Initially, the plot was supposed to be based on the life story of the main character (Decembrist), who in 1856, together with his family, returns from exile;
to explain the reason for the hero’s stay in Siberia, the author is forced to turn to the history of 1825;
the hero's youth dates back to 1812, from where Tolstoy intends to begin the novel in a new way;
In order to talk about the victories of the Russian army in the war of 1812, Tolstoy considers it necessary to talk about the tragic pages of history that date back to 1805. “I was ashamed to write about our triumph without describing the failures and our shame.”
Thus, Tolstoy changed the concept of the novel several times and acquired final version: “So, having returned from 1856 to 1805, from now on I intend to take not one, but many heroines and heroes through the historical events of 1805, 1807, 1812, 1825, 1856.” L. N. Tolstoy
Turning to the events of the Patriotic War between Russia and Napoleon in 1812, the writer, contrary to official data, showed that the true hero and defender of the Motherland was not the Tsar and his predecessors, but the Russian people. "I tried to write history of the people», - noted the author. It is no coincidence that Tolstoy considered Lermontov’s poem “Borodino”, glorifying the heroism of Russian soldiers, to be the “grain” of his novel.
On its topic “War and Peace” - historical novel
. It conveys the very “smell and sound” of a distant era. Without violating historical truth, the author connects the past with the exciting issues of the present.
Four volumes cover the events of 1805-1814. The epilogue takes the reader to the 20s, when secret societies of future Decembrists were born in Russia.
In the novel there are more 500 characters. Many of them are traced over the course of a decade, appearing in military settings and peaceful domestic circles.
First two volumes talk about the wars with Napoleon, which were fought outside Russia on Austrian lands. The central episodes here are the Battles of Shengraben and Austerlitz. (1805 – 1807)
In the third and fourth volumes talks about Napoleon's invasion of Moscow and the expulsion of the French from Russia. Special significance Here the famous Battle of Borodino (1812) acquires the “knot”, the culmination of the entire novel, according to Tolstoy: “The Russians fought for their land, this increased their strength tenfold and determined our moral victory.”
Showing the decisive role of the people in historical events national significance, Tolstoy created a special genre of the novel, a realistic epic grandiose in its scope of life and the scale of its narrative.
2. Features of the genre.
"This is not a novel, much less historical chronicle"War and Peace" is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed."
L.N. Tolstoy.
In our time, historians and literary scholars have called “War and Peace” as an epic novel.
Epic novel - large, monumental form epic literature, reflecting the process in its universality, the “panoramic” image of events and human destinies.
Characteristics:
a work of large volume;
multi-heroic character;
abundance of storylines.
3. The meaning of the novel's title.
History of the creation of the novel.ppt
History of the creation of the novel.ppt
Man, according to Tolstoy, is the world itself. L.N. In the novel, Tolstoy is more interested in the inner world of the characters close to him. Describing their inner life, the author uses his favorite technique, “Dialectics of the Soul.” Image inner world of a person is combined with the image of another world, of which its heroes are a part. In the novel we see a whole palette of worlds. This understanding of the world is associated with the image of a ball. The world-ball appears as a closed sphere. It has its own laws, which are not binding in other worlds. One world is often hostile to another.
The idea of peace is one of the main ones in the novel. From the world individual to universal unity with people, to unity with nature, with the Universe. And only such a person is truly happy
