Leo Tolstoy devoted the ten most difficult years in the life of Russia after the abolition of serfdom to “family matters,” and these ten years were perhaps the happiest for him. The writer included in the concept of family not only a close circle of people, relatives and relatives, but also his former serfs. He believed that he had a moral responsibility for this “big family.” The writer builds a school, teaches peasant children and writes for them teaching aids, methodological developments for other teachers. In addition, during this period of his life he married Sofya Andreevna. We can safely say that the “family thought” completely took possession of the writer’s consciousness at that time.
Therefore, in the seventies of the nineteenth century, Tolstoy decided to reflect this idea in literary work. IN Yasnaya Polyana he worked fruitfully on the novel “Anna Karenina” about the life of his contemporary society. The writer built the composition of the work on the opposition of two storylines: Anna Karenina’s family drama is portrayed in direct contrast to the life and home life of the young landowner Konstantin Levin, who faces considerable mental strength in the struggle for family happiness as an hourly compromise for the sake of general harmony. In the image of Levin we find so much common features with the writer himself, that he can be considered a conventional portrait of Tolstoy the landowner and caring father of the family. Levin is close to both the writer’s lifestyle and his beliefs, manner of behavior in communicating with people and neighbors, and even the psychology of perceiving domestic troubles.
The book turned out to be dynamic, easy to read, as if written in one breath. The apparent simplicity of the style of the novel "Anna Karenina" obviously came to Tolstoy after the experience of teaching in his own rural school, for which he specially wrote “folk stories”. Tolstoy wants his thoughts to reach the widest circle of readers, and not become the property of only select people. Critics at the time accused the writer, as they now say, of deliberately “commercializing” the novel: love story, simple and intelligible language contributed to the extraordinary popularity of the novel among readers. In fact, in addition to the “family thought,” which also includes the families of Stiva Oblonsky, Kitty Shcherbatskaya, Levin himself, and the exciting “love intrigue” of Vronsky and Anna Karenina, the novel has many other narrative layers and themes: from the position of the artist-painter in society with the personal tragedy of creativity to the fashionable “nihilism”, to which Levin’s brother, dying of consumption, fell victim.
The second most important thing that runs through the entire novel is “folk thought.” The writer contrasts the meaning of the existence of the “educated class” with the deep truth of peasant life. Moreover, he clearly exaggerates the moral purity of the common people in comparison with the “loose” morals of the local nobility and higher officials. Levin and Anna, the main exponents of “folk thought” and “family thought,” allow themselves to neglect the conventions and laws of their contemporary life. Anna, in front of the shocked public, leaves her old husband for her young lover, and Levin, not in words, but in deeds, acts as an ardent opponent of the serfdom, a supporter of capitalist relations in agriculture.
But if Levin manages to prove the correctness of his convictions with the flourishing of his landowner’s economy and family happiness, then Anna Karenina turns out to be crushed by fate directly and figuratively words.
Introduction
The novel “War and Peace” by Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy is considered a historical novel. It describes the real events of the military campaigns of 1805-1807 and the Patriotic War of 1812. It would seem that apart from battle scenes and discussions about the war, nothing should worry the writer. But Tolstoy prescribes the central plot line of the family as the basis of all Russian society, the basis of morality and ethics, the basis of human behavior in the course of history. Therefore, the “family thought” in Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” is one of the main ones.
L.N. Tolstoy introduces us to three secular families, which he shows for almost fifteen years, reveals family traditions and the culture of several generations: fathers, children, grandchildren. These are the Rostov, Bolkonsky and Kuragin families. The three families are so different from each other, but the fates of their pupils are so closely intertwined.
Rostov family
One of the most exemplary families of society presented by Tolstoy in the novel is the Rostov family. The origins of family are love, mutual understanding, sensual support, harmony of human relationships. Count and Countess Rostov, sons Nikolai and Peter, daughters Natalya, Vera and niece Sonya. All members of this family form a certain circle of living participation in each other’s destinies. The elder sister Vera can be considered a certain exception; she behaved somewhat colder. “...beautiful Vera smiled contemptuously...” Tolstoy describes her manner of behaving in society; she herself said that she was raised differently and was proud that she had nothing to do with “all sorts of tenderness.”
Natasha has been an eccentric girl since childhood. Childhood love for Boris Drubetsky, adoration for Pierre Bezukhov, passion for Anatoly Kuragin, love for Andrei Bolkonsky - truly sincere feelings, absolutely devoid of self-interest.
The manifestation of true patriotism of the Rostov family confirms and reveals the importance of “family thought” in “War and Peace.” Nikolai Rostov saw himself only as a military man and enlisted in the hussars to go defend the Russian army. Natasha gave up carts for the wounded, leaving behind all her acquired property. The Countess and Count provided their home to shelter the wounded from the French. Petya Rostov goes to war as a boy and dies for his homeland.
Bolkonsky family
In the Bolkonsky family, everything is somewhat different than in the Rostovs. Tolstoy does not say that there was no love here. She was there, but her manifestation did not carry such a tender feeling. The old prince Nikolai Bolkonsky believed: “There are only two sources of human vices: idleness and superstition, and that there are only two virtues: activity and intelligence.”
Everything in their family was subject to strict order - “the order in his way of life was brought to the utmost degree of precision.” He himself taught his daughter, studied mathematics and other sciences with her.
Young Bolkonsky loved his father and respected his opinion, he treated him worthy of a princely son. When leaving for war, he asked his father to leave his future son to be raised, since he knew that his father would do everything with honor and justice.
Princess Marya, Andrei Bolkonsky's sister, obeyed the old prince in everything. She lovingly accepted all her father's strictures and cared for him with zeal. To Andrey’s question: “Is it difficult for you with him?” Marya answered: “Is it possible to judge my father?.. I am so pleased and happy with him!”
All relationships in the Bolkonsky family were smooth and calm, everyone minded their own business and knew their place. True patriotism Prince Andrei showed this by giving his own life for the victory of the Russian army. Until the last day, the old prince kept notes for the sovereign, followed the progress of the war and believed in the strength of Russia. Princess Marya did not renounce her faith, prayed for her brother and helped people with her entire existence.
Kuragin family
This family is presented by Tolstoy in contrast to the previous two. Prince Vasily Kuragin lived only for profit. He knew who to be friends with, who to invite to visit, who to marry children to in order to get a profitable life. In response to Anna Pavlovna’s remark about his family, Sherer says: “What to do! Lavater would say that I don’t have the lump of parental love.”
The secular beauty Helen is bad at heart, the “prodigal son” Anatole leads an idle life, in revelries and amusements, the eldest, Hippolytus, is called a “fool” by his father. This family is incapable of loving, empathizing, or even caring for each other. Prince Vasily admits: “My children are a burden to my existence.” The ideal of their life is vulgarity, debauchery, opportunism, deception of people who love them. Helene destroys the lives of Pierre Bezukhov, Anatole interferes in the relationship between Natasha and Andrei.
We are not even talking about patriotism here. Prince Vasily himself constantly gossips in the world about Kutuzov, now about Bagration, now about Emperor Alexander, now about Napoleon, without having a constant opinion and adapting to circumstances.
New families in the novel
At the end of the novel “War and Peace” L.N. Tolstoy creates a situation of mixing of the Bolkonsky, Rostov and Bezukhov families. New strong, loving families connect Natasha Rostova and Pierre, Nikolai Rostov and Marya Bolkonskaya. “Like in every real family, in the Lysogorsk house several completely different worlds lived together, which, each maintaining its own peculiarity and making concessions to one another, merged into one harmonious whole,” says the author. The wedding of Natasha and Pierre took place in the year of the death of Count Rostov - the old family collapsed, a new one was formed. And for Nikolai, marrying Marya was salvation for both the entire Rostov family and himself. Marya, with all her faith and love, preserved family peace of mind and ensured harmony.
Conclusion
After writing an essay on the topic “Family Thought in the Novel “War and Peace”,” I became convinced that family means peace, love, and understanding. And harmony in family relationships can only come from respect for each other.
Work test
The main thought in L.N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace,” along with the people’s thought, is “family thought.” The writer believed that the family is the basis of the entire society, and it reflects the processes that occur in society.
The novel shows heroes who go through a certain path of ideological and spiritual development; through trial and error, they try to find their place in life and realize their purpose. These characters are shown against the backdrop of family relationships. So, the Rostov and Bolkonsky families appear before us. Tolstoy depicted the entire Russian nation from top to bottom in his novel, thereby showing that the top of the nation had become spiritually dead, having lost contact with the people. He shows this process using the example of the family of Prince Vasily Kuragin and his children, who are characterized by the expression of all the negative qualities inherent in people high society, - extreme selfishness, baseness of interests, lack of sincere feelings.
All the heroes of the novel are bright individuals, but the members of the same family have a certain common feature that unites them all.
So, main feature The Bolkonsky family can be called the desire to follow the laws of reason. None of them, except, perhaps, Princess Marya, is characterized by an open manifestation of their feelings. The image of the head of the family, the old prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, embodies the best features of the ancient Russian nobility. He is a representative of an ancient aristocratic family, his character bizarrely combines the morals of an imperious nobleman, before whom all the household tremble, from the servants to his own daughter, an aristocrat proud of his long pedigree, the traits of a man of great intelligence and simple habits. At a time when no one required women to display any special knowledge, he teaches his daughter geometry and algebra, motivating it like this: “And I don’t want you to be like our stupid ladies.” He educated his daughter in order to develop in her the main virtues, which, in his opinion, were “activity and intelligence.”
mysl_semeynaya_v_romane_l.n.tolstogo_voyna_i_mir.ppt
mysl_semeynaya_v_romane_l....tolstogo_voyna_i_mir.ppt
His son, Prince Andrei, also embodies the best features of the nobility, the advanced noble youth. Prince Andrei has his own path to understanding real life. And he will go through errors, but his unerring moral sense will help him get rid of false ideals. So, . Napoleon and Speransky turn out to be debunked in his mind, and love for Natasha will enter his life, so unlike all the other ladies of high society, the main features of which, in his opinion and the opinion of his father, are “selfishness, vanity, insignificance in everything” . Natasha will become for him the personification of real life, opposing the falsehood of the world. Her betrayal of him is tantamount to the collapse of an ideal. Just like his father, Prince Andrei is intolerant of simple human weaknesses that his wife, a very ordinary woman, has, a sister who is looking for some special truth from “God’s people,” and many other people whom he encounters in life.
A peculiar exception in the Bolkonsky family is Princess Marya. She lives only for the sake of self-sacrifice, which is elevated to moral principle, defining her entire life. She is ready to give all of herself to others, suppressing personal desires. Submission to her fate, to all the whims of her domineering father, who loves her in his own way, religiosity is combined in her with a thirst for simple, human happiness. Her humility is the result of a peculiarly understood sense of duty as a daughter who does not have the moral right to judge her father, as she says to Mademoiselle Burien: “I will not allow myself to judge him and would not want others to do this.” But nevertheless, when self-esteem demands, she can show the necessary firmness. This is revealed with particular force when her sense of patriotism, which distinguishes all Bolkonskys, is insulted. However, she can sacrifice her pride if it is necessary to save another person. So, she asks for forgiveness, although she is not guilty of anything, from her companion for herself and the serf servant, on whom her father’s wrath fell.
Another family depicted in the novel is in some way opposed to the Bolkonsky family. This is the Rostov family. If the Bolkonskys strive to follow the arguments of reason, then the Rostovs obey the voice of feelings. Natasha is little guided by the requirements of decency, she is spontaneous, she has many child traits, which is highly valued by the author. He emphasizes many times that Natasha is ugly, unlike Helen Kuragina. For him, it is not the external beauty of a person that is important, but his internal qualities.
The behavior of all members of this family shows high nobility of feelings, kindness, rare generosity, naturalness, closeness to the people, moral purity and integrity. Local nobility, unlike the highest St. Petersburg nobility, that’s right national traditions. It was not for nothing that Natasha, dancing with her uncle after the hunt, “knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, and in Anisya’s father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian person.”
Tolstoy attaches great importance to family ties and the unity of the whole family. Although the Bolkonsikh clan should unite with the Rostov clan through the marriage of Prince Andrei and Natasha, her mother cannot come to terms with this, cannot accept Andrei into the family, “she wanted to love him like a son, but she felt that he was a stranger and terrible to her Human". Families cannot unite through Natasha and Andrei, but are united through the marriage of Princess Marya to Nikolai Rostov. This marriage is successful, it saves the Rostovs from ruin.
The novel also shows the Kuragin family: Prince Vasily and his three children: the soulless doll Helen, the “dead fool” Ippolit and the “restless fool” Anatole. Prince Vasily is a calculating and cold intriguer and ambitious man who claims the inheritance of Kirila Bezukhov, without having a direct right to do so. He is connected with his children only by blood ties and common interests: they care only about their well-being and position in society.
The daughter of Prince Vasily, Helen, is a typical social beauty with impeccable manners and reputation. She amazes everyone with her beauty, which is described several times as “marble,” that is, cold beauty, devoid of feeling and soul, the beauty of a statue. The only thing that occupies Helen is her salon and social receptions.
The sons of Prince Vasily, in his opinion, are both “fools.” His father managed to place Hippolytus in the diplomatic service, and his fate is considered settled. The brawler and rake Anatole causes a lot of trouble for everyone around him, and, in order to calm him down, Prince Vasily wants to marry him to the rich heiress Princess Marya. This marriage cannot take place due to the fact that Princess Marya does not want to part with her father, and Anatole indulges in his former amusements with renewed vigor.
Thus, people who are not only related by blood, but also spiritually, unite into families. The ancient Bolkonsky family is not interrupted by the death of Prince Andrei, Nikolenka Bolkonsky remains, who will probably continue the tradition moral quest his father and grandfather. Marya Bolkonskaya brings high spirituality to the Rostov family. So, “family thought,” along with “folk thought,” is the main one in L. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace.” Tolstoy's family is being studied in turning points history. Having shown three families most fully in the novel, the writer makes it clear to the reader that the future belongs to such families as the Rostov and Bolkonsky families, who embody sincerity of feelings and high spirituality, the most prominent representatives of which each go through their own path of rapprochement with the people.
“War and Peace” is one of the best works of Russian and world literature. In it, the author historically correctly recreated the life of Russian people at the beginning of the 19th century. The writer describes in detail the events of 1805-1807 and 1812. Despite the fact that the “family thought” is the main one in the novel “Anna Karenina”, in the epic novel “War and Peace” it also occupies a very important place. Tolstoy saw the beginning of all beginnings in the family. As you know, a person is not born good or bad, but his family and the atmosphere that prevails within it make him so. The author brilliantly outlined many of the characters in the novel, showed their formation and development, which is called the “dialectics of the soul.” Tolstoy, paying great attention to the origins of the formation of a person’s personality, has similarities with Goncharov. The hero of the novel “Oblomov” was not born apathetic and lazy, but life in his Oblomovka, where 300 Zakharovs were ready to fulfill his every desire, made him so.
Following the traditions of realism, the author wanted to show and also compare various families that are typical of their era. In this comparison, the author often uses the technique of antithesis: some families are shown in development, while others are frozen. The latter includes the Kuragin family. Tolstoy, showing all its members, be it Helen or Prince Vasily, pays great attention to the portrait, appearance. This is no coincidence: the external beauty of the Kuragins replaces the spiritual. There are many human vices in this family. Thus, the meanness and hypocrisy of Prince Vasily are revealed in his attitude towards the inexperienced Pierre, whom he despises as an illegitimate. As soon as Pierre receives an inheritance from the deceased Count Bezukhov, his opinion about him completely changes, and Prince Vasily begins to see in Pierre an excellent match for his daughter Helen. This turn of events is explained by the low and selfish interests of Prince Vasily and his daughter. Helen, having agreed to a marriage of convenience, reveals her moral baseness. Her relationship with Pierre can hardly be called a family one; the spouses are constantly separated. In addition, Helen ridicules Pierre's desire to have children: she does not want to burden herself with unnecessary worries. Children, in her understanding, are a burden that interferes with life. Tolstoy considered such a low moral decline to be the most terrible thing for a woman. He wrote that the main purpose of a woman is to become a good mother and raise worthy children. The author shows all the uselessness and emptiness of Helen's life. Having failed to fulfill her destiny in this world, she dies. None of the Kuragin family leaves behind heirs.
Complete opposite Kuragin family Bolkonskikh. Here you can feel the author’s desire to show people of honor and duty, highly moral and complex characters.
The father of the family is Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, a man of Catherine’s temperament, who places honor and duty above other human values. This is most clearly manifested in the scene of farewell to his son, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who is leaving for the war. The son does not let his father down, does not lose honor. Unlike many adjutants, he does not sit at headquarters, but is on the front line, in the very center of military operations. The author emphasizes his intelligence and nobility. After the death of his wife, Prince Andrey was left with Nikolenka. We can have no doubt that he will become a worthy person and, like his father and grandfather, will not tarnish the honor of the old Bolkonsky family.
The daughter of the old Prince Bolkonsky is Marya, a person of pure soul, pious, patient, kind. The father did not show his feelings for her, since it was not in his rules. Marya understands all the prince’s whims and treats them resignedly, because she knows that her father’s love for her is hidden in the depths of his soul. The author emphasizes in the character of Princess Marya self-sacrifice for the sake of another, a deep understanding of daughterly duty. The old prince, unable to pour out his love, withdraws into himself, sometimes acting cruelly. Princess Marya will not contradict him: the ability to understand another person, to enter into his position - this is one of the main traits of her character. This trait often helps save a family and prevents it from falling apart.
Another antithesis to the Kuragin clan is the Rostov family, showing whom Tolstoy emphasizes such qualities of people as kindness, spiritual openness within the family, hospitality, moral purity, innocence, closeness to folk life. Many people are drawn to the Rostovs, many sympathize with them. Unlike the Bolkonskys, an atmosphere of trust and mutual understanding often reigns within the Rostov family. This may not always be the case in reality, but Tolstoy wanted to idealize openness and show its necessity between all family members. Each member of the Rostov family is an individual.
Nikolai, the eldest son of the Rostovs, is a brave, selfless man, he passionately loves his parents and sisters. Tolstoy notes that Nikolai does not hide from his family his feelings and desires that overwhelm him. Vera, the Rostovs' eldest daughter, is noticeably different from other family members. She grew up an outsider in her family, withdrawn and angry. The old count says that the countess “did something tricky with her.” Showing the Countess, Tolstoy focuses on her trait of selfishness. The Countess thinks exclusively about her family and wants to see her children happy at all costs, even if their happiness is built on the misfortune of other people. Tolstoy showed in her the ideal of a female mother who worries only about her cubs. This is most clearly demonstrated in the scene of the family's departure from Moscow during the fire. Natasha, having a kind soul and heart, helps the wounded leave Moscow, giving them carts, and leaves all the accumulated wealth and belongings in the city, since this is a profitable business. She does not hesitate to make a choice between her well-being and the lives of other people. The Countess, not without hesitation, agrees to such a sacrifice. Blind maternal instinct shines through here.
At the end of the novel, the author shows us the formation of two families: Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya Bolkonskaya, Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova. Both the princess and Natasha, each in their own way, are morally high and noble. They both suffered a lot and finally found their happiness in family life and became the guardians of the family hearth. As Dostoevsky wrote: “Man is not born for happiness and deserves it through suffering.” These two heroines have one thing in common: they will be able to become wonderful mothers, they will be able to raise a worthy generation, which, according to the author, is the main thing in a woman’s life, and Tolstoy, in the name of this, forgives them some of the shortcomings characteristic of ordinary people.
As a result, we see that “family thought” is one of the fundamental ones in the novel. Tolstoy shows not only individuals, but also families, shows the complexity of relationships both within one family and between families.
“War and Peace” is a Russian national epic, which is reflected national character of the Russian people at the moment when their historical fate was being decided. L.N. Tolstoy worked on the novel for almost six years: from 1863 to 1869. From the very beginning of work on the work, the writer’s attention was attracted not only by historical events, but also by the private, family life of the characters. Tolstoy believed that the family is a unit of the world, in which the spirit of mutual understanding, naturalness and closeness to the people should reign.
The novel “War and Peace” describes the life of several noble families: the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys and the Kuragins.
The Rostov family is an ideal harmonious whole, where the heart prevails over the mind. Love binds all family members. It manifests itself in sensitivity, attention, and closeness. With the Rostovs, everything is sincere, it comes from the heart. Cordiality, hospitality, hospitality reign in this family, and the traditions and customs of Russian life are preserved.
Parents raised their children, giving them all their love. They can understand, forgive and help. For example, when Nikolenka Rostov lost a huge amount of money to Dolokhov, he did not hear a word of reproach from his father and was able to pay off his gambling debt.
The children of this family have absorbed all the best qualities of the “Rostov breed”. Natasha is the personification of heartfelt sensitivity, poetry, musicality and intuitiveness. She knows how to enjoy life and people like a child.
Life of the heart, honesty, naturalness, moral purity and decency determine their relationships in the family and behavior among people.
Unlike the Rostovs, the Bolkonskys live with their minds, not their hearts. This is an old aristocratic family. In addition to blood ties, the members of this family are also connected by spiritual closeness.
At first glance, the relationships in this family are difficult and devoid of cordiality. However, internally these people are close to each other. They are not inclined to show their feelings.
Old Prince Bolkonsky embodies the best features of a serviceman (nobility, devoted to the one to whom he “sworn allegiance.” The concept of honor and duty of an officer was in the first place for him. He served under Catherine II, participated in Suvorov’s campaigns. He considered intelligence and activity to be the main virtues , and his vices are laziness and idleness. The life of Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky is a continuous activity. He either writes memoirs about past campaigns, or manages the estate. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky greatly respects and honors his father, who was able to instill in him a high concept of honor. road-road honor,” he says to his son. And Prince Andrei fulfills his father’s instructions both during the campaign of 1806, in the Battles of Shengraben and Austerlitz, and during the War of 1812.
Marya Bolkonskaya loves her father and brother very much. She is ready to give all of herself for the sake of her loved ones. Princess Marya completely submits to her father's will. His word is law for her. At first glance, she seems weak and indecisive, but at the right moment she shows strength of will and fortitude.
Both the Rostovs and the Bolkonskys are patriots, their feelings were especially clearly manifested during the Patriotic War of 1812. They express folk spirit war. Prince Nikolai Andreevich dies because his heart could not stand the shame of the retreat of the Russian troops and the surrender of Smolensk. Marya Bolkonskaya rejects the French general's offer of patronage and leaves Bogucharovo. The Rostovs give their carts to the soldiers wounded on the Borodino field and pay the most dearly - with the death of Petya.
Another family is shown in the novel. This is Kuragin. The members of this family appear before us in all their insignificance, vulgarity, callousness, greed, and immorality. They use people to achieve their selfish goals. The family is devoid of spirituality. For Helen and Anatole, the main thing in life is the satisfaction of their base desires. They are completely cut off from people's life, they live in a brilliant but cold world, where all feelings are perverted. During the war, they lead the same salon life, talking about patriotism.
In the epilogue of the novel, two more families are shown. This is the Bezukhov family (Pierre and Natasha), which embodied the author's ideal of a family based on mutual understanding and trust, and the Rostov family - Marya and Nikolai. Marya brought kindness and tenderness, high spirituality to the Rostov family, and Nikolai shows kindness in his relationships with those closest to him.
By showing different families in his novel, Tolstoy wanted to say that the future belongs to families such as the Rostovs, Bezukhovs, and Bolkonskys.
Anyone who sincerely wants the truth is already terribly strong...
Dostoevsky
Great works of art - and the novel “The Teenager” is certainly one of the pinnacles of Russian and world literature - have the undeniable property that they, as the author of “The Teenager”, Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, argued, - always modern and urgent. True, in the conditions of ordinary everyday life, we sometimes do not even notice the constant powerful influence of literature and art on our minds and hearts. But at one time or another, this truth suddenly becomes obvious to us, no longer requiring any proof. Let us at least remember, for example, that truly national, state and even in the full sense of the word - world-historical sound that the poems of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, Blok acquired during the Great Patriotic War... Lermontov’s “Borodino” with its immortal patriotic: “ Guys! Isn’t Moscow behind us?!..” or Gogol’s “Taras Bulba” with its future-oriented word-prophecy about the immortality of the Russian spirit, about the strength of Russian camaraderie, which cannot be overcome by any enemy force, have truly acquired the power and significance of the spiritual and moral weapons of our people. Many works of Russian literature were completely rethought in that era. classical literature and abroad. For example, in the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition during the war, the edition of Leo Tolstoy’s epic “War and Peace” was published with maps of the Napoleonic and Hitlerian invasions, which “suggested an analogy between the failure of Napoleonic campaign against Moscow and the upcoming defeat of the German fascist army... The main thing in the novel Tolstoy... found the key to understanding the spiritual qualities of Soviet people defending their homeland.”
Of course, all these are examples of the cutting-edge, civil, patriotic sound of the classics in extreme conditions. But - after all, this is still facts. Real historical facts.
And, however, the “Teenager” that will be discussed, in terms of its social civic charge, is obviously far from “Borodino”, not “Taras Bulba” and not “War and Peace” or “What is to be done?” Chernyshevsky or, say, “Quiet Don” by Sholokhov. Isn't it?
Before us is an ordinary, I almost said - family, although rather non-family, with elements of a detective story, but still - a fairly ordinary story, and, it seems, nothing more.
In fact: about twenty years ago, then twenty-five-year-old Andrei Petrovich Versilov, an educated, proud man, full of great ideas and hopes, suddenly became interested in eighteen-year-old Sofia Andreevna, the wife of his servant, fifty-year-old Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky. The children of Versilov and Sofya Andreevna, Arkady and Lisa, were recognized by Dolgoruky as his own, gave them his last name, and he himself, with his bag and staff, set off to wander around Rus' in search of the truth and meaning of life. For essentially the same purpose, Versilov sets off to wander around Europe. Having experienced many political and love passions and hobbies in twenty years of wandering, and at the same time squandering three inheritances, Versilov returns to St. Petersburg almost beggarly, but with hopes of finding a fourth, having won the trial against the Sokolsky princes.
Young nineteen-year-old Arkady Makarovich also comes from Moscow to St. Petersburg, who, during his short life, has already accumulated many grievances, painful questions, and hopes. Arrives - open father: after all, he will essentially meet Andrei Petrovich Versilov for the first time. But it is not only the hope of finally finding a family that draws his father to St. Petersburg. Sewn into the lining of the teenager's coat is something material - a document, or rather, a letter from a young widow unknown to him, General Akhmakova, the daughter of the old Prince Sokolsky. The teenager knows for sure - Versilov, and Akhmakova, and maybe some others would give a lot to get this letter. So Arkady, about to finally throw himself into what seems to him to be real life, the life of a St. Petersburg metropolitan society, has plans to penetrate into it not sideways, past the gaping doorman, but downright the master of other people's destinies, which are in his hands, or rather, for now - behind the lining of his frock coat.
And so, almost throughout the entire novel, we are intrigued by the question: what is there in this letter? But this intrigue (by no means the only one in “The Teenager”) is more of a detective nature than a moral or ideological one. And this, you see, is not at all the same interest that haunts us, say, in the same “Taras Bulba”: will Ostap withstand inhuman torture? Will old Taras escape the enemy's pursuit? Or in “Quiet Don” - who will Grigory Melekhov eventually find his way to, on which bank will he find the truth? And in the novel “The Teenager” itself, it turns out in the end that, perhaps, nothing so special will be found in the letter. And we feel that the main interest is not at all in the content of the letter, but in something completely different: will a teenager’s conscience allow him to use the letter for the sake of his own self-affirmation? Will he allow himself to become, at least temporarily, the ruler of the destinies of several people? But he had already been infected with the thought of his own exclusivity, they had already awakened in him pride, a desire to try for himself, by taste, by touch, all the blessings and temptations of this world. The truth is that he is also pure in heart, even naive and spontaneous. He has not yet done anything that his conscience would be ashamed of. He still has teenage soul: she is still open to goodness and heroism. But if such an authority were to be found, if only one soul-shattering impression happened, he would equally and according to conscience- will be ready to go one way or another in life. Or - worse than that - he will learn to reconcile good and evil, truth and lies, beauty and ugliness, heroism and betrayal, and even justify himself according to his conscience: I’m not the only one, everyone is the same, and nothing - they are healthy, and others are the same are thriving.
Impressions, temptations, new surprises, adult, St. Petersburg life literally overwhelms young Arkady Makarovich, so that he is hardly even ready to fully perceive its lessons, to grasp their internal connections behind the stream of facts falling upon him, each of which is almost a discovery for him. The world either begins to take on pleasant forms in the consciousness and feelings of the teenager, and then suddenly, as if collapsing all at once, it again plunges Arkady Makarovich into chaos, into a disorder of thoughts, perceptions, and assessments.
What is this world like in Dostoevsky’s novel?
The socio-historical diagnosis that Dostoevsky made to the bourgeois-feudal society of his time, and, moreover, as always, he made in proportion to the future, trying, and in many ways managing to unravel the future results of his current condition, this diagnosis was impartial and even cruel, but also historically fair. “I’m not a master at lulling to sleep,”- Dostoevsky responded to accusations that he was exaggerating things too much. What, according to Dostoevsky, are the main symptoms of the disease of society? “The idea of decomposition is in everything, for everything is apart... Even the children are apart... Society is chemically decomposing"- he writes down thoughts for the novel “Teenager” in a notebook. Increase in murders and suicides. Family breakdown. Dominate random families. Not families, but some kind of marital cohabitation. “Fathers drink, mothers drink... What generation can be born from drunkards?”
Yes, the social diagnosis of society in the novel “Teenager” is given primarily through the definition of the state of the Russian family, and this state, according to Dostoevsky, is as follows: “...never has the Russian family been more shaken, disintegrated...as it is now. Where will you now find such “Childhood and Adolescence” that could be recreated in such a harmonious and clear presentation, in which he presented, for example, to us my era and his family, Count Leo Tolstoy, or as in “War and Peace” by him? Nowadays this is not the case... The modern Russian family is becoming more and more random family."
The random family is a product and indicator of the internal decomposition of society itself. And, moreover, an indicator that testifies not only to the present, but also to an even greater extent depicts this state, again - in proportion to the future: after all, “the main pedagogy,” Dostoevsky rightly believed, “is the parental home,” where the child receives his first impressions and lessons that form his moral foundations, spiritual strengths, often for the rest of his life.
What “persistence and maturity of convictions” can be demanded from teenagers, asks Dostoevsky, when the overwhelming majority of them are brought up in families where “impatience, rudeness, ignorance prevail (despite their intelligence) and where almost everywhere real education is replaced only by impudent denial from someone else's voice; where material motives dominate over every higher idea; where children are brought up without soil, outside of natural truth, in disrespect or indifference to the fatherland and in mocking contempt for the people... - is it here, from this spring, that our young people will draw the truth and the infallibility of the direction of their first steps in life?..”
Reflecting on the role of fathers in raising the younger generation, Dostoevsky noted that most fathers try to fulfill their duties “properly,” that is, they dress, feed, send their children to school, their children, finally, even enter university, but with all that - there was still no father here, there was no family, the young man enters life alone like a finger, he did not live with his heart, his heart is in no way connected with his past, with his family, with his childhood. And this is even at best. As a rule, the memories of teenagers are poisoned: they “remember, until a very old age, the cowardice of their fathers, disputes, accusations, bitter reproaches and even curses on them... and, worst of all, sometimes they remember the meanness of their fathers, base actions for achieving places, money, vile intrigues and vile servility." Most “carry with them into life more than just dirt memories, and even the dirt itself...” And, most importantly, “modern fathers have nothing in common,” “there is nothing connecting them themselves. There is no great thought... there is no great faith in their hearts in such a thought.” “There is no great idea in society,” and therefore “there are no citizens.” “There is no life in which the majority of the people participate,” and therefore there is no common cause. Everyone is divided into groups, and everyone is busy with their own business. There is no leadership, connecting idea. But almost everyone has their own idea. Even Arkady Makarovich. Seductive, not petty: the idea of becoming a Rothschild. No, not just rich or even very rich, but precisely Rothschild - the uncrowned prince of this world. True, to begin with, Arkady only has a hidden letter, but after playing with it, on occasion, you can already achieve something. And Rothschild did not immediately become Rothschild. So it’s important to decide to take the first step, and then things will work out on their own.
“Without a higher idea, neither a person nor a nation can exist,” asserts Dostoevsky in the “Diary of a Writer” for 1876, as if summing up and continuing the problematics of “The Teenager”. In a society that is unable to develop such an idea, tens and hundreds of ideas for oneself, ideas of personal self-affirmation are born. The Rothschildian (bourgeois in essence) idea of the power of money is attractive for the consciousness of a teenager who has no unshakable moral foundations because it does not require either genius or spiritual achievement to achieve it. It requires, to begin with, only one thing - the rejection of a clear distinction between the boundaries of good and evil.
In a world of destroyed and destructible values, relative ideas, skepticism, and vacillation in the main beliefs - Dostoevsky's heroes still search, suffering and making mistakes. “The main idea,” Dostoevsky writes in his preparatory notebooks for the novel. “Although the teenager arrives with a ready-made idea, the whole idea of the novel is that he is looking for the guiding thread of behavior, good and evil, which does not exist in our society...”
It is impossible to live without a higher idea, and society did not have a higher idea. As one of the heroes of “Teenager”, Kraft, says, “ moral ideas now not at all; suddenly there wasn’t a single one, and, most importantly, with such an air that it was as if they had never existed... The current time... is a time of the golden mean and insensibility... inability to do anything and the need for everything ready. Nobody thinks; Rarely would anyone survive the idea... Nowadays Russia is being deforested and the soil is being depleted. If a man appears with hope and plants a tree, everyone will laugh: “Will you live to see it?” On the other hand, those who wish well talk about what will happen in a thousand years. The binding idea was completely gone. Everyone is definitely at the inn and is getting ready to leave Russia tomorrow; everyone lives, as long as they have had enough...”
It is this spiritual (more precisely, unspiritual) state of the “inn” that is imposed on the young teenager, who is looking for solid foundations in life, ready-made ideas, like his “Rothschild” idea, and, moreover, as their own, born, as it were, from his own life experience .
In fact, the real reality of this world of moral relativism, the relativity of all values gives rise to skepticism in a teenager. “Why should I absolutely love my neighbor,” young Arkady Dolgoruky is not so much asserting as he is still provoking a refutation of his statements, “to love my neighbor or your humanity, which will not know about me and which in turn will decay without a trace and memories?..” The eternal question, known since biblical times: “There is no memory of the former; and what will happen will not be remembered by those who come after... for who will bring him to see what will happen after him?
And if so, then the question of the young truth-seeker Arkady Dolgoruky is fair: “Tell me, why do I absolutely have to be noble, especially since everything lasts one minute? No, sir, if this is so, then I will live for myself in the most discourteous way, and at least everything will fail!” But a person, if he is a person and not a “louse,” we repeat once again the writer’s cherished thought, “cannot exist without a guiding idea, without solid foundations of life. Losing faith in some, he still tries to find new ones and, not finding them, stops at the first idea that struck his consciousness, as long as it seems to him truly reliable. In a world of destroyed spiritual values, the consciousness of a teenager looks for what seems to him to be the most reliable foundation, an instrument of self-affirmation - money, for “this is the only path that brings even insignificance to the first place... I,” the teenager philosophizes, “maybe not insignificance, but I, for example, know from the mirror that my appearance harms me, because my face is ordinary. But if I were rich, like Rothschild, who would cope with my face, and wouldn’t thousands of women, just whistling, come to me with their beauties?.. I may be smart. But even if I were seven spans in the forehead, there would certainly be a man with eight spans in the forehead right there in society - and I died. Meanwhile, if I were Rothschild, would this smart guy of eight spans mean anything near me?.. I may be witty; but next to me is Talleyrand, Piron - I am darkened, and just as I am Rothschild - where is Piron, and maybe where is Talleyrand? Money, of course, is despotic power..."
The author of “The Teenager” had an idea of the true power of the bourgeois idol, the golden calf, the real, living representative of which, a kind of “prophet and governor” on earth, was Rothschild for Dostoevsky. Not for Dostoevsky alone, of course. The name of Rothschild became a symbol of the spirit and meaning of “this world,” that is, the world of the bourgeoisie, long before Dostoevsky. The Rothschilds profited from the blood of the peoples of those lands where they came to take over the power of money. In the era of Dostoevsky, the most famous was James Rothschild (1792 - 1862), who profited so much from money speculation and state usury that the name Rothschild became a household name.
Heinrich Heine wrote about the power of the true “tsar” of the bourgeois world in his book “On the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany,” first published in Russian in Dostoevsky’s journal “Epoch.” “If you, dear reader,” wrote Heine, “... go to rue Lafitte, house 15, you will see how a heavy carriage gets out of a heavy carriage in front of the high entrance fat man. He goes up the stairs to a small room where a young blond man sits, in whose lordly, aristocratic disdain there is something so stable, so positive, so absolute, as if all the money in this world were in his pocket. And in fact, all the money in this world is in his pocket. His name is Monsieur James de Rothschild, and the fat man is Monsignor Grimbaldi, the envoy of His Holiness the Pope, in whose name he brought interest on the Roman loan, the tribute of Rome.”
Dostoevsky learned an equally impressive story from Herzen’s book “The Past and Thoughts.” Forced to leave Russia, Herzen the tsarist government refused to give money for his Kostroma estate. Herzen was advised to seek advice from Rothschild. And the all-powerful banker did not fail to demonstrate his power, to show, as they say, with his own eyes who the true “prince of this world” is. The emperor was forced to yield to this power.
“The King of the Jews,” writes Herzen, “sat calmly at his table, looked at the papers, wrote something on them, probably all millions...
Well,” he said, turning to me, “are you satisfied?..
After a month or a month and a half, the St. Petersburg merchant of the 1st guild Nikolai Romanov, frightened ... paid, according to the greatest command of Rothschild, the illegally detained money with interest and interest on interest, justifying himself by ignorance of the laws ... "
How can Rothschild not become an ideal, an idol for a young consciousness that does not have any higher idea in front of it, in a world of general instability of beliefs and the relativity of spiritual values? Here, at least, there really is “something so stable, so positive, so absolute” that, continuing the thought of Arkady Dolgoruky about the insignificance of the greats of this world, all these Pirons and Talleyrands before Rothschild, one can say even more: and almost I’m Rothschild , and where is the Pope and even where is the Russian autocrat?..
The “Rothschild idea” of a teenager, the idea of the power of money - indeed highest and indeed leading idea bourgeois consciousness, which took possession of the young Arkady Dolgoruky, was, according to Dostoevsky, one of the most seductive and most destructive ideas of the century.
Dostoevsky reveals in the novel not so much the social, economic and similar essence of this idea, but rather its moral and aesthetic nature. Ultimately, it is nothing more than the idea of the power of nonentity over the world, and above all, over the world of true spiritual values. True, Dostoevsky was fully aware that it was precisely in this very nature of ideas that the power of its seductiveness lay to a large extent. Thus, the young hero of the novel admits: “I loved terribly imagining a creature, namely mediocre and mediocre, standing before the world and saying to it with a smile: you are Galileos and Copernicus, Charlemagne and Napoleons, you are Pushkins and Shakespeares... but I am mediocrity and illegality, and yet above you, because you yourself submitted to it.”
In the novel, Dostoevsky also reveals the direct connections of the “Rostildian idea” of a teenager with the psychology of social, moral inferiority, inferiority of Arkady Makarovich as one of the consequences, products of a “random family”, spiritual fatherlessness.
Will a teenager find the strength to rise above mediocrity, overcome the inferiority of consciousness, and defeat the temptation of the ideal of the golden calf? He still has doubts; his pure soul still questions, still seeks truth. Maybe this is also why he is so eager to go to St. Petersburg, to Versilov, that he hopes to find in him father. Not legal, but above all spiritual. He needs a moral authority who would answer his doubts.
What will Versilov offer him? - the smartest, most educated person ideas; a person in intelligence and experience, as intended by Dostoevsky, is no lower than Chaadaev or Herzen. And the teenager will have other, no less serious meetings with people of ideas. Dostoevsky's novel is, in a certain sense, a unique walking a teenager in ideological and moral torment in search of truth, in search of a great guiding idea.
As we see, even a seemingly quite detective story involving a letter will suddenly turn into a very important social issue. civil problem: the problem of the first moral act, which determines the spirit and meaning of almost everything that follows life path a young man, the problem of conscience, good and evil. The problem is how to live, what to do and in the name of what? Ultimately - the problem of the future destinies of the country, “for from teenagers generations are made”- the novel “The Teenager” ends with this warning thought.
A family thought will turn into a thought of national, world-historical significance; thoughts about ways to form the spiritual and moral foundations of Russia of the future.
Yes, let us repeat once again, the socio-practical idea did not become dominant for Arkady, but at the same time it was precisely this that shook in the teenager’s mind his faith in the “Rothschild idea” as the only real and, moreover, great one.
The teenager is especially shocked by the idea of Kraft, who is also still a very young thinker, who mathematically concluded that the Russian people are a secondary people and that in the future they are not given any independent role in the destinies of humanity, but are only intended to serve as material for the activities of another, “nobler” tribe. And therefore, - Kraft decides, - there is no point in living as a Russian. A teenager is struck by Kraft's idea because he is suddenly convinced of the truth: an intelligent, deep, sincere person can suddenly believe in the most absurd and destructive idea as a great idea. In his mind he must naturally compare it with his own idea; he can't help but wonder if the same thing happened to himself? The idea that a personal life idea can only be truly great when it is at the same time a general idea concerning the destinies of the people, of all of Russia, is perceived by the teenager as a revelation.
Neither the smart Kraft nor the naive Arkady can understand what we, the readers of the novel, take away from Kraft’s experience: “mathematical beliefs,” by which Dostoevsky himself understood positivist beliefs, built on the logic of facts snatched from life, without penetration into their idea, without moral convictions verified with the logic - such “mathematical convictions are nothing,” says the author of “The Teenager.” To what monstrous perversions of thoughts and feelings positivist, immoral beliefs can lead, and Kraft’s fate is clear to us. What will the teenager take away from his experience? He is by no means an immoral person. If only that was all there was to it. Craft itself is also deeply honest and moral person, sincerely loving Russia, suffering from her pains and troubles much more than his own.
The origins of the guiding ideas of Kraft and the teenager himself, so different in appearance, but equally related in essence, are in that soulless state public life, which Kraft himself, let me remind you, defines in the novel as follows: “... everyone lives, as long as they have enough...” Kraft is not capable of living with the idea of an “inn.” He doesn’t find any other idea in real life. Will Arkady be able to live “if only he’s had enough”? His soul is confused, it requires, if not a ready-made, final answer, then at least guiding advice, moral support in the person of a living concrete person. To him spiritually I need a father. And Versilov even seems to laugh at him, does not take him seriously, in any case, is in no hurry to help him answer the damned questions: how to live? What to do? In the name of what? And does he himself have any higher goals, at least some idea that guides him, at least any moral convictions for which, as the teenager says, “Every honest father should send his son even to death, like the ancient Horace of his sons for the idea of Rome.” Living according to the laws of that environment, which increasingly draws him in, Arkady still hopes for a different life in the name of an idea, for life is a feat. The need for achievement and ideal is still alive in him. True, Versilov finally sets out his cherished idea, a kind of either aristocratic democracy, or democratic aristocracy, the idea of the need for consciousness or the development in Russia of a certain upper class, to which both the most prominent representatives of the ancient clans and all other classes who committed a feat of honor, science, valor, art, that is, in his opinion, all the best people of Russia must unite into unity, which will be the guardian of honor, science and the highest idea. But what is this idea that all these best people, the class of aristocrats of family, thought and spirit, will have to preserve? Versilov does not answer this question. Doesn't want or doesn't know the answer?
But can a teenager be captivated by a utopia, a dream, rather than by Versilov’s idea? Perhaps she would have captivated him - after all, this is something much higher than “you’ve had enough”, “live to your belly”, “after us there may be a flood”, “we live alone” and similar common practical ideas of society , where Arkady lives. Maybe. But for this, he would first need to believe in Versilov himself, as a father, as truly a man of honor, heroism, “a fanatic of a higher, although for the time being hidden by him, idea.”
And finally, Versilov really reveals himself to his son, a teenager, as “the bearer of the highest Russian cultural thought,” according to his own definition. As Versilov himself is aware, he does not just profess an idea, no, he himself is already an idea. He, as a person, is a type of person that was historically created in Russia and unprecedented in the whole world - a type of worldwide pain for everyone, for the fate of the whole world: “This is the Russian type,” he explains to his son, “... I have the honor of belonging to it. It holds within itself the future of Russia. There may be only a thousand of us... but all of Russia has lived only so far in order to produce this thousand.”
The utopia of the Russian European Versilov can and should, in his conviction, save the world from universal decay with the moral thought of the opportunity to live not for oneself, but for everyone - about the “golden age” of the future. But Versilov’s idea of world reconciliation, world harmony is deeply pessimistic and tragic, because, as Versilov himself is aware, no one except him in the whole world understands this idea of his: “I wandered alone. I’m not talking about myself personally, I’m talking about Russian thought.” Versilov himself is clearly aware of the impracticability and, therefore, impracticality of his own idea, at least in the present, because both in Europe and in Russia now everyone is on his own. And then Versilov puts forward a practical, although at the same time no less utopian task as the first step towards realizing the dream of a “golden age”, a task that has long troubled the consciousness of Dostoevsky himself: “The best people must unite.”
This thought also captivates young Arkady. However, it also worries him: “And the people?.. What is their purpose? - he asks his father. “There are only a thousand of you, and you say humanity...” And this question from Arkady is clear evidence of the serious internal maturation of both his thoughts and himself as a person: because this is what - according to Dostoevsky - main question For younger generation, the answer to which will largely determine the paths of Russia's future development: who is considered the “best people” - the nobility, the financial-Rothschild oligarchy or the people? Versilov clarifies: “If I am proud that I am a nobleman, it is precisely as a pioneer of great thought,” and not as a representative of a certain social elite of society. “I believe,” he continues, answering Arkady’s question about the people, “that the time is not far when the entire Russian people will become a nobleman like me and conscious of their highest idea.”
Both Arkady’s question and Versilov’s answer in Dostoevsky’s novel do not arise by chance and have by no means a purely theoretical significance for both. The problem of the people itself arises in the novel in a conversation between Versilov and his son in direct connection with a specific person - the peasant Makar Dolgoruky. Dostoevsky did not set himself the task of discovering a new type of hero in Russian literature. He was well aware that his Makar would produce not so much the impression of surprise as of recognition, typological kinship with Nekrasov’s Vlas, to some extent with Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev, but above all with his own “peasant Marey.” Dostoevsky's artistic and ideological discovery lay in something else: the peasant, a former serf of Versilov, in Dostoevsky's novel is placed on a par with the highest cultural type. And not just from a general humanistic point of view - as a person, but - as a person of ideas, as a type of personality.
Versilov is a European wanderer with a Russian soul, ideologically homeless both in Europe and in Russia. Makar is a Russian wanderer who set off on a journey across Rus' to explore the whole world; the whole of Russia and even the whole universe is his home. Versilov is the highest cultural type of Russian person. Makar is the highest moral type of a Russian person from the people, a kind of “national saint”. Versilov is a Russian product of global “ugliness,” decay, chaos; Versilov's idea opposes this disgrace. Makar is the living embodiment of just good looks; he, according to Dostoevsky’s idea, seems to carry within himself already now, in the present, that “golden age” that Versilov dreams of as the most distant goal of humanity.
The main direction of the central chapters of the novel is created by the dialogue between Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky and Andrei Petrovich Versilov. This dialogue is not direct, it is mediated by Arkady, conducted as if through him. But this is not only a dialogue, but a real battle between two fathers - adopted and actual - for the soul, for the consciousness of a teenager, a battle for the future generation, and therefore for the future of Russia.
The everyday, purely family situation in the novel also has a different, broader socio-historical content. Versilov - an ideologist, a bearer of the highest Russian cultural thought, a Westernist direction - having failed to understand Russia in Russia, tried to understand it through Europe, as happened, according to Dostoevsky, with Herzen or morally with Chaadaev. No, he did not intend to reproduce in his hero the real traits of the fate and personality of Herzen or Chaadaev, but their spiritual quests were reflected in the novel in the very idea of Versilov. In the guise or type of Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky, according to Dostoevsky, the ancient idea of the Russian people's truth-seeker should have been embodied. He is precisely the type, the image of a truth-seeker from among the people. Unlike Versilov, Makar Ivanovich is looking for the truth not in Europe, but in Russia itself. Versilov and Makar Ivanovich - this is a kind of bifurcation of one Russian idea, which should answer the question about the future fate of Russia: it is no coincidence that in the novel both have the same wife, the mother of their one child - the future generation. To just imagine this kind of symbolic, or rather, socio-historical meaning of this “family” situation, let us recall one extremely revealing thought of Herzen, which did not escape Dostoevsky’s attention and was artistically reflected in the novel “Teenager”:
“They and we, that is, the Slavophiles and Westerners,” wrote Herzen in “The Bell,” “felt with early years one strong... passionate feeling... a feeling of boundless, embracing all existence, love for the Russian people, the Russian way of life, for the way of thinking... They transferred all the love, all the tenderness to the oppressed mother... We were in the arms of a French governess, we learned late that our mother was not she, and a persecuted peasant woman... We knew that her happiness was ahead, that under her heart... - our little brother..."
Versilov is an all-European with a Russian soul - and is now trying spiritually and morally to find this peasant woman and the child she carried under her heart.
And, apparently, neither the idea of Versilov, a Russian European who does not separate the destinies of Russia from the destinies of Europe, who hopes to reconcile and unite in his idea the love of Russia with the love of Europe, nor the idea of the people's truth-seeking of Makar Ivanovich, in themselves, will give the teenager an answer to his question in life: what should he, personally, do? It is unlikely that he will go, like Versilov, to look for the truth in Europe, just as he, obviously, will not go wandering around Rus' following Makar Ivanovich. But, of course, the lessons of spiritual, ideological quests of both cannot fail to leave an imprint on his young soul, on his still-forming consciousness. We cannot, of course, imagine the influence of even impressive moral lessons as something straightforward and immediate. This is an internal movement, sometimes fraught with breakdowns, new doubts, and falls, but still inevitable. And the teenager still has to go through the temptation of Lambert, decide on a monstrous moral experiment - but, seeing its result, the soul, conscience, consciousness of Arkady Makarovich will still shudder, be ashamed, be offended for the teenager, move him to a moral decision, to act according to his conscience.
The problem of the role of the people and the individual in history.
With its gigantic volume, "War and Peace" can give the impression of chaos, scatteredness and uncoordinatedness of many characters, plot lines, and all the varied content. But the genius of Tolstoy the artist was manifested in the fact that all this enormous content was imbued with with one thought, a concept of the life of the human community, which is easy to discern with thoughtful, attentive reading.
The genre of "War and Peace" is defined as an epic novel. What is the meaning of this definition? Through the infinite number of destinies of many people, taken in various circumstances of life: in war and peace, in youth and old age, in prosperity and sorrow, in private and general, swarm life- and woven into a single artistic whole, the main artistically mastered antithesis of the book passes through: the natural, simple and conventional, artificial in people’s lives; simple and eternal moments of human existence: birth, love, death - and the conventions of the world, the class of society, property differences. The author of "War and Peace" was reproached for a fatalistic understanding of history and life in general, but in his book the concept of fate and fate, characteristic of the ancient, classical epic, was replaced by the concept of life in its spontaneous flow and overflow, in eternal renewal. It is not for nothing that there are so many metaphors in the novel related to the ever-changing water element.
There is also a main, key verbal and artistic “image” in “War and Peace”. Under the impression of communication with Platon Karataev, the embodiment of everything eternal and round, Pierre has a dream. “And suddenly Pierre introduced himself to a living, long-forgotten, meek old teacher who taught Pierre geography in Switzerland.
“Wait,” said the old man. And he showed Pierre the globe. This globe was a living, oscillating ball that had no dimensions. The entire surface of the ball consisted of drops tightly compressed together. And these drops all moved, moved, and then merged from several into one, then from one they were divided into many. Each drop sought to spread out, to capture the greatest possible space, but others, striving for the same thing, compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it.
This is life,” said the old teacher. “How simple and clear this is,” thought Pierre. “How could I not have known this before... Here he is, Karataev, now he has spilled over and disappeared.” This understanding of life is optimistic pantheism, a philosophy that identifies God with nature. The God of the author of War and Peace is all life, all existence. This philosophy determines the moral assessments of the heroes: the goal and happiness of a person is to achieve the roundness of a drop and spill, merge with everyone, join everything and everyone. The closest to this ideal is Platon Karataev; it is not for nothing that he was given the name of the great ancient Greek sage, who stood at the origins of world philosophical thought. Many representatives of the noble-aristocratic world, especially the court circle, depicted in the novel, are not capable of this.
The main characters of “War and Peace” come to exactly this, they overcome Napoleonic egoism, which became the banner of the era at the time described in the novel and finally became it during the writing of the novel. By the way, Dostoevsky also wrote “Crime and Punishment” at the same time. The main characters overcome class isolation and proud individuality. Moreover, at the center of the novel Tolstoy places such characters whose movement along this path proceeds especially dramatically and strikingly. These are Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre and Natasha.
For them, this path full of drama is the road of acquisitions, enrichment of their personality, deep spiritual discoveries and insights. A little further from the center of the novel are the supporting characters, who lose more along the way. This is Nikolai Rostov, Princess Marya, Petya. The periphery of War and Peace is filled with numerous figures who, for one reason or another, are not able to take this path.
Numerous female characters"War and Peace". The answer to this question will be specific, i.e. you just need to know and retell the text, the content of the novel; there is no need to look for any special ideological concept here. Tolstoy created the images of Natasha and Sonya, Princess Marya and "Buryenka", the beautiful Helen and old Anna Pavlovna in the era of the 60s, simultaneously with Chernyshevsky's novel "What is to be done?", in which the ideas of women's freedom and equality with men. Naturally, Tolstoy rejected all this and looked at women in a patriarchal spirit.
He embodied his ideals of female love, family and parental happiness not only in the character and fate of Natasha, who most vividly of all the characters (including male ones) expresses his idea of "real life", but also reality, having married a young woman in 1862 Sofya Andreevna Bers. And we must admit with regret that the “deception that elevates us” of the image of Natasha turned out to be much prettier and more attractive than the “theme of base truths” of Tolstoy’s family drama. Despite the fact that Tolstoy purposefully raised his young wife in the spirit of his ideals, the same ones that so convince us when reading War and Peace, the wife of the great writer, and then the numerous children who grew up, made the last thirty years of Tolstoy’s life unbearable. And how many times did he decide to leave them!
We can say that “real life” with its “bizarreness, surprises, sudden whims and whims - what every female nature contains - turned out to be even more “real” than Tolstoy assumed. And no matter who we are talking about - about the uncomplainingly meek Princess Marya or about the daringly demanding Helen, victoriously confident in her strength. Very soon after writing “War and Peace”, life showed its author that the extremes of female characters, so confidently distinguished by him on the scale of moral assessments (Natasha - “excellent” , Princess Marya - “mediocre”, Helen - “poor”) in reality can converge in the person of one, closest, most beloved person - his wife, mother of three children. Thus, with all its depth and comprehensiveness, the life philosophy of the author of “War and. world" is quite schematic, "living life", "real life" is more complex, richer, you cannot deal with it with the stroke of a pen at your own discretion, at the request of artistic unity, as Tolstoy did, quickly "killing" something that had become unnecessary for his ideological and moral a building so attractive and invincible in its immorality, Helen. The idea of “real life” permeates the image historical characters. The spirit of the army that Kutuzov feels and which dictates strategic decisions to him, in essence, is also a form of communion, merging with the ever-flowing life. His antagonists - Napoleon, Alexander, learned German generals - are incapable of this. Simple, ordinary war heroes - Tushin, Timokhin, Tikhon Shcherbaty, Vaska Denisov - do not strive to make all of humanity happy, because they are deprived of a sense of separateness, why, they are already merged with this world.
The antithesis idea revealed above, which permeates the entire huge novel, is already expressed in its title, which is very capacious and polysemantic. The second word of the novel's title denotes a community of people, the whole people, life as a whole, in the world, with people, as opposed to monastic solitude. Therefore, it is incorrect to think that the title of the novel indicates the alternation of military and peaceful, non-military episodes. The above meaning of the word world changes and expands the meaning of the first title word: war is not only a manifestation of militarism, but in general the struggle of people, the life battle of a disconnected humanity, divided into atomic drops.
In 1805, with which Tolstoy’s epic opens, the human community remains disunited, fragmented into classes, the noble world is alienated from the national whole. The culmination of this state is the Tilsit Peace, fragile, fraught with a new war. The antithesis of this state is the year 1812, when “the whole people wanted to rush in” on the Borodino field. And then from volumes 3 to 4, the heroes of the novel find themselves on the brink of war and peace, constantly making transitions back and forth. They are faced with real, full life, with war and peace. Kutuzov says: “Yes, they reproached me a lot... both for the war and for the peace... but everything came on time,” and these concepts are connected in his mouth into a single leading way of life. In the epilogue, the original state returns, again disunity in the upper class and the upper class with common people. Pierre is outraged by the “shagism, the settlements - they torture the people, they stifle education,” he wants “independence and activity.” Nikolai Rostov will soon be “chopping and strangling everything from the shoulder.” As a result, “everything is too tense and will certainly burst.” By the way, Platon Karataev would not approve of the sentiments of the two surviving heroes, but Andrei Volkonsky would approve. And so his son Nikolenka, born in 1807, reads Plutarch, highly valued by the Decembrists. His future fate is clear. The epilogue of the novel is full of polyphony of different opinions. Unity and inclusion remain a desirable ideal, but with the epilogue Tolstoy shows how difficult the path to it is.
According to Sofia Andreevna, Tolstoy said that he loved “people's thought” in “War and Peace”, and “family thought” in “Anna Karenina”. It is impossible to understand the essence of both Tolstoy formulas without comparing these novels. Like Gogol, Goncharov, Dostoevsky, Leskov, Tolstoy considered his age a time when disunity, the disintegration of the common whole, triumphed in the world of people, among people. And his two “thoughts” and two novels are about how to regain lost integrity. In the first novel, paradoxical as it may sound, the world is united by war, a single patriotic impulse against a common enemy, it is against him that individual individuals unite into a whole people. In Anna Karenina, disunity is opposed by the unit of society - the family, the primary form of human unification and inclusion. But the novel shows that in an era when “everything is mixed up,” “everything has turned upside down,” the family, with its short-term, fragile fusion, only increases the difficulties on the path to the desired ideal of human unity. Thus, the disclosure of “folk thought” in “War and Peace” is closely connected and is largely determined by Tolstoy’s answer to the main question - “what is real life?”
As for the role of the people and the individual in history, the solution to this issue is especially heavily clogged with Marxist-Leninist literary criticism. Tolstoy, as already mentioned, was often accused of historical fatalism (the view that the outcome of historical events is predetermined). But this is unfair. Tolstoy insisted only that the laws of history are hidden from the individual human mind. His view on this problem is very accurately expressed by the famous quatrain of Tyutchev (1866 - again the time of work on “War and Peace”):
"You can't understand Russia with your mind,
The general arshin cannot be measured:
She will become special -
You can only believe in Russia."
For Marxism, the non-decisive importance of the masses as the engine of history and the inability of the individual to influence history otherwise than by joining the tail of these masses was an immutable law. However, it is difficult to illustrate this “law” with material from military episodes of War and Peace. In his epic, Tolstoy picks up the baton of the historical views of Karamzin and Pushkin. Both of them showed extremely convincingly in their works (Karamzin in “History of the Russian State”) that, in the words of Pushkin, chance is a powerful tool of Providence, i.e. fate. It is through the accidental that the natural and necessary act, and even they are recognized as such only retroactively, after their action. And the bearer of chance turns out to be a person: Napoleon, who turned the destinies of all of Europe, Tushin, who turned the tide of the Battle of Shengraben. That is, to paraphrase a well-known saying, we can say that if Napoleon did not exist, it would be worth inventing him, in much the same way as Tolstoy “invented” his Tushin.
