(349 words) The title is extremely important for creating literary work. A real writer can spend a lot of time searching for just a few words above the body of the text. A well-chosen title can not only attract the reader’s attention, but also accurately convey the thoughts and ideas of the author himself. We can observe such a situation in the epic novel by L. N. Tolstoy “War and Peace”.
Initially, it seems that the secret of the name is simple. Tolstoy depicts the era of the Napoleonic wars before us. Detailed picture, which tells the story of people's lives during this highly controversial historical moment, is intended to teach us about peaceful and military life to create historical authenticity. This is where the name comes from, as a designation for the entire era. But Tolstoy in this case looked much deeper. The novel itself begins during the war in Austria, in the St. Petersburg salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. First of all, we are presented with images of typical nobles of the nineteenth century - these are narcissistic careerists and hypocrites who do not care about anything but themselves. A little later, already at the theater of military operations, we see a similar picture: politician-commanders, careerist officers and demoralized soldiers create an atmosphere of complete hopelessness and decay. The main thing that Tolstoy wants to show us is a divided, disorganized society that knows where to direct its forces. It is in this that the secret of the first part of the title of the novel “War...” is revealed. The war that members of a decaying society wage against each other destroys the country and the people. Tolstoy denies and despises such orders prevailing in Russia. To revive a sense of community in people, the writer brings down a terrible test on them. The invasion of foreign invaders puts the Russian people on the brink of death. And it is because of the threat of an external enemy that the country truly unites. Tolstoy remains true to himself, not forgetting to show us a small, decayed aristocratic elite. But at the same time, the absolute majority of the people helps their country as best they can. And it is precisely this state of a single people, passionate about the idea of protecting their land from invaders, that reveals to us the secret of the second part of the name “...peace.” Peace in society, a clear awareness of the Russian people's brotherhood. The sacrificial struggle of each individual for the benefit of the majority, as opposed to the struggle of individuals only for their own interests.
War and peace are two states of society, diametrically opposed to each other, based on different ideals. Actually exists huge amount interpretations of the novel's title. And this once again emphasizes the depth of Tolstoy’s thoughts and the versatility of his greatest creation.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!From his father, a participant in the foreign campaigns of the Russian army during the Patriotic War, L. Tolstoy inherited a sense of his own dignity, independence of judgment, and pride. Having entered Kazan University, he showed extraordinary abilities in learning foreign languages, but quickly became disillusioned with student life. At the age of 19 he leaves the university and goes to Yasnaya Polyana, deciding to devote himself to improving the lives of peasants. The time begins for Tolstoy to search for a purpose in life. He is either getting ready to go to Siberia, or going first to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg; then he decides to join the Horse Guards Regiment... During these same years, L. Tolstoy was seriously involved in music, pedagogy, and philosophy. In a painful search, Tolstoy comes to the main task of his life - literary creativity. Total great writer created over 200 works, including the epic novel War and Peace. According to I. S. Turgenev, “nothing better has ever been written by anyone.” It is enough to note that the text of the novel was rewritten 7 times; its composition is striking in its complexity and harmony.
The novel “War and Peace” was conceived as a novel about a Decembrist who returned from exile, reconsidered his views, condemned the past and became a preacher of moral self-improvement.
The creation of the epic novel was influenced by the events of that time (60s of the 19th century) - Russia’s failure in the Crimean War, the abolition of serfdom and its consequences.
The theme of the work is formed by three circles of questions: the problems of the people, the noble community and the personal life of a person, determined by ethical standards. The main artistic device used by the writer is antithesis. This technique is the core of the entire novel: the novel contrasts two wars (1805-1807 and 1812), and two battles (Austerlitz and Borodino), and military leaders (Kutuzov and Napoleon), and cities (St. Petersburg and Moscow ), And characters. But in fact, this opposition is already inherent in the very title of the novel: “War and Peace.”
This name reflects a deep philosophical meaning. The fact is that the word “world” before the revolution had a different letter designation for the sound [i] - i decimal, and the word was written “mir”. This spelling of the word indicated that it had many meanings. Indeed, the word “peace” in the title is not a simple designation of the concept of peace,
a state opposite to war. In the novel, this word carries many meanings and illuminates important aspects of people’s life, views, ideals, life and morals of various strata of society.
The epic beginning in the novel “War and Peace” connects the pictures of war and peace into a single whole with invisible threads. In the same way, the word “war” means not only the military actions of warring armies, but also the belligerent hostility of people in peaceful life, separated by social and moral barriers. The concept of “world” appears and is revealed in the epic in its various meanings. Peace is the life of a people who are not in a state of war. The world is a peasant gathering that started a riot in Bogucharovo. The world is everyday interests, which, unlike abusive life, so prevent Nikolai Rostov from being a “wonderful man” and so annoy him when he comes on vacation and understands nothing in this “stupid world.” Peace is a person’s immediate environment, which is always next to him, no matter where he is: in war or in peaceful life.
But the world is the whole world, the universe. Pierre speaks about him, proving to Prince Andrei the existence of the “kingdom of truth.” Peace is the brotherhood of people, regardless of national and class differences, to which Nikolai Rostov proclaims his toast when meeting the Austrians. The world is life. The world is also a worldview, a circle of ideas of heroes.
The study of human consciousness and the process of self-observation allowed Tolstoy to become a deep psychologist. In the images he created, especially in the images of the main characters of the novel, the inner life of a person is revealed - a complex contradictory process, usually hidden from prying eyes. Tolstoy, according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, reveals the “dialectic human soul”, i.e. “barely perceptible phenomena of inner life”, replacing one another with extreme speed...
Peace and war go side by side, intertwine, interpenetrate and condition each other. In the general concept of the novel, the world denies war, because the content and need of the world is work and happiness, a free and natural and therefore joyful manifestation of personality. And the content and properties of war are disunion, alienation and isolation of people, hatred and hostility, defending one’s selfish interests, this is the self-affirmation of one’s egoistic “I” - bringing destruction, grief, and death to others. The horror of the death of hundreds of people on the dam during the retreat of the Russian army after Austerlitz is shocking, especially since Tolstoy compares all this horror with peaceful pictures, with the view of the same dam at another time, when an old miller sat here with fishing rods , and his grandson, having rolled up the sleeve of his shirt, was sorting through a silver quivering fish in a watering can.
The terrible outcome of the Borodino battle is depicted in the following picture: “Several tens of thousands of people lay dead in different positions in the fields and meadows... on which for hundreds of years the peasants of the villages of Borodino, Gorok, Kovardin and Sechenevsky." Here the horror of murder in war becomes clear to Rostov when he sees “the roomy face of the enemy with a hole in the chin and blue eyes.”
To tell the truth about the war, Tolstoy concludes, is very difficult. And here the writer was an innovator, truthfully showing a man at war. He was the first to discover the heroism of war, at the same time presenting war as an everyday matter and as a test of all the spiritual strength of a person. And it inevitably happened that the bearers of true heroism were simple, modest people, such as captain Tushin or Timokhin, forgotten by history; “sinner” Natasha, who achieved the allocation of transport for the Russian wounded; General Dokhturov and Kutuzov, who never spoke about his exploits.
The very combination of “war and peace” was not new in Russian literature. In particular, it was used in A. S. Pushkin’s tragedy “Boris Godunov”:
Describe without further ado,
All that you will witness in life:
War and peace, the rule of sovereigns,Holy miracles for the saints.
Tolstoy, like Pushkin, uses the combination “war and peace” as a universal category.
The problems raised in the novel “War and Peace” have universal significance. This novel, according to Gorky, is “a documentary presentation of all the quests that a strong personality undertook in the 19th century in order to find a place and business for himself in the history of Russia...”
At first glance, the title of the great epic novel by L.N. Tolstoy seems to be the only possible one. But the original title of the work was different: “All’s well that ends well.” And, it would seem, such a title successfully emphasizes the course of the war of 1812 - great victory Russian people.
Why was the writer not satisfied with this name? Probably because his plan was much broader and deeper than just a story about Patriotic War 1812. Tolstoy wanted to present in all its diversity, contradictions and struggles the life of an entire era.
The theme of the work is formed by three circles of issues: problems of the people, the noble community and the personal life of a person, determined by ethical standards. Main artistic device, which the writer uses, becomes an antithesis. This technique is the core of the entire novel: the novel contrasts two wars (1805-1807 and 1812), and two battles (Austerlitz and Borodino), and military leaders (Kutuzov and Napoleon), and cities (St. Petersburg and Moscow), and active faces. But in fact, this opposition is inherent in the very title of the novel: “War and Peace.”
This name reflects a deep philosophical meaning. The fact is that the word “world” before the revolution had a different letter designation for the sound [i] - i decimal, and the word was written “mir”. This spelling of the word indicated that it had multiple meanings. Indeed, the word “peace” in the title is not a simple designation of the concept of peace, a state opposite to war. In the novel, this word carries many meanings and illuminates important aspects of people’s life, views, ideals, life and customs of various strata of society.
The epic beginning in the novel “War and Peace” connects the pictures of war and peace into a single whole with invisible threads. In the same way, the word “war” means not only the military actions of warring armies, but also the bellicose hostility of people in peaceful life, separated by social and moral barriers. The concept of “world” appears and is revealed in the epic in its various meanings. Peace is the life of a people who are not in a state of war. The world is a peasant gathering that started a riot in Bogucharovo. The world is everyday interests, which, unlike abusive life, so prevent Nikolai Rostov from being “ wonderful person"And they annoy him so much when he comes on vacation and understands nothing in this “stupid world.” Peace is a person’s immediate environment, which is always next to him, no matter where he is: in war or in peaceful life.
And finally, behind all these meanings is Tolstoy’s philosophical idea of the world as the Universe, the universe in its main opposing states, which act as internal forces development and life of peoples, history, and destinies of individuals.Pierre speaks about him, proving to Prince Andrei the existence of the “kingdom of truth.” Peace is the brotherhood of people, regardless of national and class differences, to which Nikolai Rostov proclaims a toast when meeting with the Austrians.
The life that Tolstoy paints is very rich. The episodes, whether they relate to “war” or “peace,” are very different, but each expresses the deep, inner meaning of life, the struggle of opposite principles in it. Internal contradictions - prerequisite movements of life of an individual and humanity as a whole. Moreover, “war” and “peace” do not exist separately. One event is connected with another, follows from another and entails the next.
In my opinion, Tolstoy uses another means artistic expression to reveal the meaning of the novel's title. Thisoxymoron . Military events included in the plot of the novel create peace and harmony in the internal and external lives of the heroes, while peaceful events, on the contrary, sow discord, misunderstanding, and fragmented destinies of the heroes. . If you look at how the heroes behave when the war reached Moscow, it becomes obvious that these military difficulties united the heroes and awakened in them feelings of compassion and sympathy for their neighbors. An example of this is the Rostov family, which receives the sick and wounded in their home, helps them with provisions and medicines, Natasha herself acts as a nurse and nurse. During this difficult time in the city, the edges of social inequality seemed to be erased, traces of everyday quarrels and scandals between heroes, misunderstandings that reigned in peacetime, disappeared. That is, the war brought into the lives of the heroes that unity, brotherhood, cohesion, mutual assistance, equality that did not exist in peacetime. In addition, war also determines the spiritual order of thoughts and feelings of the heroes. It is during the war that Andrei Bolkonsky’s attitude to life changes: if before his first combat wound Bolkonsky dreamed of glory, for which he was ready to put his life on the line: “Death, wounds, loss of family, nothing is scary to me,” then after the wound received during the battle of Austerlitz, the attitude towards life changes. Having touched death, Bolkonsky begins to notice the beauty of life (blue sky), its uniqueness and the insignificance of war (Napoleon already seems small, and everything that happens around is meaningless). During the war, Pierre Bezukhov also settled down. That is, war not only creates the external world of the heroes, but also the internal one. The world, on the contrary, brings discord and disharmony into the lives of the heroes. For example, everyday life brought turmoil into the soul of Andrei Bolkonsky - disappointment from Natasha’s refusal and the news about her affair with Anatoly Kuragin. To find inner harmony, Bolkonsky goes to war. For him, war is a spiritual insight and a spiritual hospital, and the world is a place of temptations and sorrows. Even the fact that Bolkonsky begins to look at his rival Anatoly Kuragin differently when he meets him with an amputated leg in a hospital speaks of the beneficial effect of war on Bolkonsky’s soul. In the world he felt hatred and rivalry towards Anatoly Kuragin, he even wanted to challenge him to a duel, and in the hospital he felt a feeling of compassion and empathy, that is, the war reconciled enemies and rivals. Dolokhov also reconciles with Pierre during the war, when a prayer service was served in front of the Smolensk miraculous icon on the Borodin field. (in the world they quarreled over Helen Kuragina, Pierre’s wife, who had an affair with Dolokhov). All these examples suggest that war contains both external and internal peace. And the pre-war time, the life of the heroes, on the contrary, is presented in the constant fragmentation of the heroes, misunderstandings, divisions: they divide the inheritance of the old Count Bezukhov, gossip in the Scherer salon, waste their lives in absurd searches and actions, such as Pierre Bezukhov (then he will join the Masonic lodge, sometimes he dances with a bear for a bet, sometimes he takes part in city carousings, etc. ), betrayal (for example, Helen), rivalry (Dolokhov-Rostov because of Sonya; Anatol Kuragin-Bolkonsky because of Natasha; Dolokhov-Pierre because of Helen), etc. All these facets of rivalry and hostility are erased by war. Reconciles the heroes, spiritually enriches them and puts everything in its place. In addition, war awakens in the heroes and strengthens their sense of patriotism. Conclusion: everyday life, full of temptations and entertainment, the pleasures of life, takes the heroes away from spiritual riches and worldly peace, but war and grief lead them.
That is why Tolstoy’s novel “rises to the highest peaks of human thoughts and feelings, to peaks usually inaccessible to people” (N. N. Strakhov).
Meaning. "War and Peace". This title of Tolstoy's great epic seems to us, readers, the only possible one. But the original title of the work was different: “All’s well that ends well.” And at first glance, this title successfully emphasizes the course of the War of 1812 - the great victory of the Russian people in the fight against the Napoleonic invasion.
Why was the writer not satisfied with this name? Probably because his plan was much broader and deeper than just a story about the Patriotic War of 1812. Tolstoy wanted to present the life of an entire era in all its diversity, contradictions and struggles, and he brilliantly accomplished this task.
The new title of the epic novel is as large-scale and multi-valued as this work itself, like all human life.
Indeed, what is Tolstoy’s great creation about? The simplest answer: about the life of Russia in the first quarter of the XIX century, about the wars of 1805-1807 and 1812, about the peaceful life of the country between these wars and how people lived (both fictional and historical characters) after them.
But this generally correct answer does not reflect the depth of Tolstoy’s thought. Really, what is war? In the usual sense, these are military actions with the aim of resolving some interstate conflicts; according to Tolstoy, “an event contrary to human reason and all human nature.” Peace is the absence of such actions.
But “war” also means internal contradictions between the people and the authorities, between different classes, between different groups of people and by individuals within the same class, even within the same family. Moreover, the “war”, that is, the internal struggle, goes on in every individual person. L. N. Tolstoy wrote about this as an indispensable condition for an honest life in his “Diary”: “To live honestly, you have to struggle, get confused, fight, make mistakes, start and give up, and start again, and give up again, and forever fight and to lose. And calmness is spiritual meanness.”
The concept of “peace” is even more ambiguous. This is not only the absence of war, but also harmony, concord and unity of classes, agreement (“peace”) of a person with himself and with other people. “The world” is also a peasant community. The concept of “world” also includes “real life”, as the great writer understood it: “Life in the meantime; the real life of people with their essential interests of health, illness, work, rest, with their interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, passions, went on, as always, independently and without political affinity or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and beyond all possible transformations."
So, “War and Peace” is a book about good and evil, about birth and death, about love and hate, about joy and sorrow, about happiness and suffering, about youth and old age, about honor, nobility and dishonor, about hopes and disappointments, losses and searches. This book covers everything that a person lives by, from the most insignificant personal events to the unprecedented unity of people in an hour of common misfortune, the common struggle of the people.
The life that Tolstoy paints is very rich. The episodes, whether they relate to “war” or “peace,” are very different, but each expresses the deep, inner meaning of life, the struggle of opposite principles in it.
Internal contradictions are a prerequisite for the movement of the life of an individual and humanity as a whole.
Moreover, “war” and “peace” do not exist separately, autonomously, independently of each other (Tolstoy himself refutes his definition “ real life", showing how war destroys habitual relationships, connections, interests and becomes the basis of existence). One event is connected to another: it follows from another and in turn entails the next.
Here's one example. Prince Andrei Bolkonsky goes to war because life in high society not for him. The prince, a man of honor, behaves with dignity in battle and is not looking for a warm place. Dreaming of glory, “human love,” he accomplishes a feat, but realizes that glory cannot and should not be the meaning of a real person’s life. Internal conflict leads to the deepest spiritual crisis. The war of 1805-1807 ended, but there was no peace in his soul.
It's amazing how one matches storyline, the “search for thought” of one hero is the name of the entire epic.
And what efforts did it take to find “peace” from Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova - Tolstoy’s favorite heroes, whom he leads through the cleansing crucible of the War of 1812.
With amazing power, the depth of the title of the novel “War and Peace” is revealed in Volume III, dedicated to the Patriotic War of 1812, when the entire “world” (people) realized the impossibility of surrendering to the mercy of the invaders. The defenders of Moscow “want to attack the whole people, they want to make one end.” The unanimity of Kutuzov, Prince Andrei, Pierre, Timokhin and the entire Russian army, the entire ... “world” determined the outcome of the war, because national unity was created, the peace of the twelfth year. ...
The title “War and Peace” is also brilliant because it contains a contrast that became the main principle of constructing the epic: Kutuzov - Napoleon; Rostov, Bolkonsky - Kuragin and at the same time Rostov - Bolkonsky; N. Rostova - Princess Marya, Borodinado field and after the battle, Pierre before and after the events of 1812….
In the epilogue of the novel, the principle of contrast as the main compositional device of War and Peace is emphasized by an episode of a dispute between Pierre Bezukhov, the future Decembrist, and the unreasoning, “law-abiding” N. Rostov. In this most important episode, “vicious people” are directly opposed to “honest people.”
War and peace are eternal concepts, even if there is no military action. That is why Tolstoy’s novel “rises to the highest peaks of human thoughts and feelings, to peaks usually inaccessible to people” (N. N. Strakhov).
There are no more such books and no such brilliant titles.
Krinitsyn A.B.
So, now we are closer to understanding the general philosophical meaning novel. Let's try to draw final conclusions about what Tolstoy understood by war and peace. These are two philosophical categories that explain the principle of the existence of life on earth, two models of development human history.
War in the novel is not only the fighting of two powers, but also any conflict, any hostile confrontation, even between individuals, which does not necessarily lead to death. War sometimes emanates from the seemingly peaceful scenes of the novel. Let us remember the struggle between Prince Vasily and Drubetskaya, the duel between Bezukhov and Dolokhov, Pierre’s furious quarrels with Helen and Anatole, constant conflicts in the Bolkonsky family, and even in the Rostov family, when Natasha, secretly from her relatives, wants to run away with Anatole, or when her mother forces Sonya to give up her marriage with Nikolai. Taking a closer look at the participants in these clashes, we will notice that the most frequent participants or culprits are Kuragins. Where they are, there is always war, generated by vanity, pride and low selfish interests. Dolokhov also belongs to the world of war, who clearly takes pleasure in tormenting and killing (sometimes “as if bored with everyday life,” he “felt the need for some strange, for the most part to get out of it with a cruel act,” as in the case of the policeman, whom he tied with his back to the bear for fun, with Pierre or Rostov). Dolokhov feels in his element in a real war, where, thanks to his fearlessness, intelligence and cruelty, he quickly advances to command positions. So, by the end of the war of 1812 we find him already at the head of a partisan detachment.
The very embodiment of war and the military element in the novel is Napoleon, who at the same time embodies a personal principle. Napoleon illuminated the entire 19th century with the brilliance of his fame and the charm of his personality (let us remember that Dostoevsky made him the idol of Raskolnikov, a representative of the younger generation already in the 60s), but during his lifetime Napoleon was a thunderstorm, a fiend of hell or an object of servile worship throughout Europe. His figure turned out to be symbolic for everything European romanticism with his cult of a strong and free personality. Already Pushkin saw in “Napoleonism” a whole social phenomenon, noticing as if in passing in “Eugene Onegin”: “We all look at Napoleons, two-legged creatures millions are one weapon for us.” Thus, Pushkin was the first in Russian literature to begin rethinking the image of Napoleon, pointing out the terrible trait underlying the personality of the dictator - monstrous selfishness and unprincipledness, thanks to which Napoleon achieved exaltation, not disdaining any means (“We honor everyone as zeros, and ourselves as ones” ). It is known that one of his decisive steps on the path to power was the suppression of the anti-republican uprising in Paris, when he shot the rebellious crowd from cannons and drowned them in blood, the first in history to use grapeshot on the streets of the city.
Tolstoy uses all kinds of arguments and artistic means to debunk Napoleon. The novelist was faced with a very difficult task: to portray the famous hero as an insignificant vulgar, a man of the sharpest mind as stupid (there were legends about the quick thinking, efficiency and phenomenal memory of Napoleon, who remembered the face of almost every officer of his army), and finally, to show the example of the greatest commander of all times and peoples, who won countless victories and conquered all of Europe - the impossibility of an individual to influence the course of history and - moreover - the illusory convention of the art of military leadership as such. He calls Napoleon “complacent and narrow-minded” and describes him in such a way as to lower his image, to make us physically disgusted with him: “His entire plump, short figure with broad, thick shoulders and an involuntarily protruding belly and chest had that representative, dignified appearance , which forty-year-old people living in the hall have.” Elsewhere, Tolstoy shows the emperor at his morning toilet, describing in detail how he, “snorting and grunting, turned first with his thick back, then with his overgrown fat chest under the brush with which the valet rubbed his body.” Napoleon is surrounded by helpful servants and flattering courtiers. Feeling like the main character of the story, he takes false poses, showing off in front of others, and lives exclusively an invented, “external” life, without noticing it. According to Tolstoy, a person who is capable of sacrificing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people to his own lust for power and vanity cannot understand the essence of life, because his “mind and conscience are darkened”: “Never, until the end of his life, could he understand either goodness or beauty, no truth, no meaning of his actions, which were too opposite to goodness and truth, too far from everything human for him to understand their meaning.” Napoleon is fenced off from the world, because he is occupied only with himself: “It was clear that only what was happening in his soul was of interest to him. Everything that was outside of him did not matter to him, because everything in the world, as it seemed to him, depended only on his will.” But this is precisely what Tolstoy is ready to argue decisively and to the end: in his opinion, Napoleon’s power over other people (millions of people!) is imaginary, existing only in his imagination. Napoleon imagined himself as a chess player playing a game on the map of Europe, reshaping it at his own discretion. In fact, according to the author, he himself is a toy in the hands of history, called to power precisely by those historical events which seem to him to occur according to his free will. According to the author, who inexorably “rips off the masks” from his heroes, Napoleon has long, unknown to himself, been engaged in self-deception: “And he was again transported to his former artificial world of ghosts of some greatness, and again he obediently began to fulfill that cruel, sad and the difficult, inhuman role that was destined for him.” But for Tolstoy, “there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.” Napoleon “imagined that by his will there was a war with Russia, and the horror of what had happened did not strike his soul. He boldly accepted the full responsibility of the event, and his darkened mind saw justification in the fact that among hundreds of thousands dead people there were fewer French than Hessians and Bavarians."
Tolstoy's attitude towards war is determined by his all-conquering pacifism. For him, war is an absolute evil, contrary to God and human nature, the killing of one’s own kind. Tolstoy tries in every possible way to destroy the historical-bookish, heroic perception of wars: seeing them as wars of kings and generals fighting for great ideas and performing glorious deeds. Tolstoy deliberately avoids any glorification of war and depiction of exploits on the battlefield. For him, war can only be terrible, dirty and bloody. Tolstoy is not interested in the course of the battle itself from the point of view of the commander: he is interested in the feelings of an ordinary, random participant in the battle. What does he feel and experience, unwillingly exposed to mortal danger? What does he feel when he kills his own kind, taking away from him the most precious thing - life? Tolstoy depicts these feelings with exceptional truthfulness and psychological authenticity, convincingly proving that everything beautiful descriptions exploits and heroic feelings are composed later, in retrospect, since everyone sees that his feelings in battle were not heroic at all and were sharply different from those that are usually heard in the descriptions. And then, involuntarily, so as not to be worse than others, so as not to seem like a coward to himself and others, a person begins to embellish his memories (as Rostov, talking about his wound, imagined himself as a hero, although in reality he showed a very pathetic picture in his first battle), and so a general lie about the war arises, embellishing it and attaching the interest of more and more generations to it.
In fact, everyone in war feels, first of all, an insane, animal fear for their life, for their body, natural for every living creature, and it takes a lot of time until a person gets used to the constant danger to life so that this protective instinct of self-preservation becomes dull. Then he looks brave from the outside (like Captain Tushin in the Battle of Shengraben, who managed to completely abandon the threat of death).
Pierre comes closest to the author's understanding of the war on the pages of the novel when he notices how, at the sound of a marching drum, the expression on the faces of all the French soldiers with whom he had already become close suddenly changes to cold and cruel. He realizes the sudden presence of a mysterious, silent and terrible force, whose name is war, but stops, unable to understand its source.
The depiction of the wars of 1805 and 1812 follows from the philosophy of war in general. The first is seen by Tolstoy as a “political” war, a “power game” of diplomatic offices, conducted in the interests of ruling circles. Russia's defeat in this war was explained by the fact that the soldiers did not understand why it was being fought and why they had to die, so they were in a depressed mood. At Austerlitz, the Russians, according to Andrei Bolkonsky, had almost the same loss as the French, but we told ourselves very early that we had lost the battle - and we lost.” It was in vain that Napoleon attributed the victory to his military genius. “The fate of the battle is decided not by the orders of the commander-in-chief, not by the place where the troops stand, not by the number of guns and killed people, but by that elusive force called the spirit of the army.” It was this force that predetermined Russia's victory in the war of liberation, when soldiers fought for their land. On the eve of the Battle of Borodino, Prince Andrei confidently says that “tomorrow, no matter what happens,<...>we will win the battle!”, and his battalion commander Timokhin confirms: “The truth is true.<...>Why feel sorry for yourself now! The soldiers in my battalion, believe me, didn’t drink vodka: it’s not that kind of day, they say.” This example speaks more eloquently than any loud words about the seriousness of the fighting spirit and the patriotism that is not expressed in beautiful speeches. Quite the contrary: those who speak well of patriotism and selfless service always lie and embellish themselves. Tolstoy, as we remember, generally attaches little value to words, believing that they rarely express true feelings.
Thus, Tolstoy justifies the war of liberation. The War of 1812 fully corresponds to his ideas that the course of the war does not depend on the will of rulers and generals. The famous commander Napoleon was defeated practically without battles, despite the victorious offensive that culminated in the capture of Moscow. The only major battle - Borodino, unusually bloody for both sides, was outwardly unsuccessful for the Russian army: it suffered greater losses than the French, as a result of which it had to retreat and give up Moscow. And yet Tolstoy joins Kutuzov, believing Battle of Borodino won, because there for the first time the French received a repulse from a strong-willed enemy, who inflicted a mortal wound on them, from which they were never able to recover.
Kutuzov's role as commander-in-chief was only to understand the historical pattern of the war and not interfere with its natural course. What was important was not his orders, but his authority and the trust in him of all the soldiers, inspired by his Russian name alone, for in a moment of danger for the fatherland, a Russian commander-in-chief was needed, just as a father would be better looked after by a son during a mortally dangerous illness than by himself. skilled nurse. Kutuzov understood and accepted the immutable course of events, did not try to change it with his will and fatalistically waited for the outcome he had guessed. Realizing that the French invasion would choke and die by itself, but only “patience and time” would defeat them, which would force the invaders to “eat horse meat,” Kutuzov only tried not to waste his troops in meaningless battles, wisely biding his time.
Andrei Bolkonsky makes important observations about the field marshal: “The more he saw the absence of everything personal in this old man, in whom there seemed to be only habits of passions and instead of intelligence<...>one ability to calmly contemplate the course of events, the more he was calm that everything would be as it should be. “He won’t have anything of his own. He won't think of anything, won't do anything,<...>but he will listen to everything, remember everything, put everything in its place, will not interfere with anything useful and will not allow anything harmful. He understands that there is something stronger and more significant than his will - this is the inevitable course of events, and he knows how to see them, knows how to understand their meaning and, in view of this meaning, knows how to renounce participation in these events, from his personal will aimed at other."
Thus, Tolstoy endows Kutuzov with his vision of history and its laws, and, accordingly, his attitude towards the war of 1812. Appearance Kutuzova tells us about his old age (heaviness, fatigue felt in every movement, an senile trembling voice, he moves his heavy body heavily, falls asleep at military councils), intelligence and experience (flabby folds of skin in place of a lost look, as well as the fact that he only looks and listens to people for one second in order to understand them and understand the situation), as well as kindness and even sentimental soulfulness, strange for a field marshal (softness of hands, soulful notes in his voice, tearfulness, reading French romance novels). He is the complete opposite of Napoleon, there is not a drop of self-confidence, vanity, conceit, or blindness in him own strength.
Moreover, a popular guerrilla war unfolded against the French invaders - spontaneous, without any rules or measures. According to Tolstoy, the Russian people (like any patriarchal people not spoiled by civilization) are good-natured, peace-loving, and consider war to be an unworthy and dirty matter. But if he is attacked, threatening his life, then he will be forced to defend himself without considering any means. The most effective means, as always, turned out to be guerrilla warfare, which is opposed to regular war (due to the absence of a visible enemy and organized resistance). Tolstoy praises it for its spontaneity, which testifies to its necessity and justification. "club" people's war rose with all her formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone’s tastes and rules, with stupid simplicity, but with expediency, without understanding anything, she rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion was destroyed. And good for that people<...>who, in a moment of testing, without asking how others acted according to the rules similar cases“, with simplicity and ease, he picks up the first club he comes across and nails it with it until in his soul the feeling of insult and revenge is replaced by contempt and pity.”
Among the Russian people, the instinct of self-preservation turned out to be so strong that all the efforts of the French were smashed against it, like against an invisible wall. “The won battle did not bring the usual results, because the men Karp and Vlas, who after the French came to Moscow with carts to plunder the city and did not personally show heroic feelings at all, and all the countless number of such men did not carry hay to Moscow for good money, which They offered it to them, but they burned it.”
The most complete expression of the people's idea in the novel is the image of Platon Karataev with his dovelike gentleness and endless sympathy for all living things. For Tolstoy, he embodies the deep features of the Russian soul and the age-old wisdom of the people. Let us remember that he is friendly and loving even towards the French guarding him. We simply cannot imagine that Plato could fight and kill anyone. Plato responds to Pierre’s story about the execution of prisoners of war with contrition and horror: “It’s a sin! It’s a sin!”
To depict the partisan war, Tolstoy needed a completely different hero from the people’s environment - Tikhon Shcherbaty, who kills the French with the cheerful dexterity and passion of a hunter. He, too, like all heroes from the people, is natural and spontaneous, but his naturalness is the naturalness and necessity of a predator in the forest as one of the links in the ecosystem. It is no coincidence that Tikhon is constantly compared by the author to a wolf (“Tikhon did not like to ride and always walked, never lagging behind the cavalry. His weapons were a blunderbuss, which he wore more for fun, a pike and an ax, which he wielded like a wolf wields his teeth , equally easily picking out fleas from wool and biting through thick bones”). Admiring guerrilla warfare, Tolstoy is unlikely to sympathize with Tikhon himself to the right person in the detachment that killed the most French.
Thus, Tolstoy’s two views on the war of 1812 come into conflict with each other: on the one hand, he admires it as a people’s, liberation, just war that united the entire nation with an unprecedented rise of patriotism; on the other hand, already at the very late stage of work on the novel, Tolstoy comes to the denial of any war, to the theory of non-resistance to evil through violence, and makes Platon Karataev the spokesman for this idea. The images of Karataev and Shcherbatov are simultaneously opposed and mutually complement each other, creating complete picture image of the Russian people. But the main, essential features of the people are still embodied in the image of Karataev, since a peaceful state is the most natural for the people.
Let us remember the scene when the French, lagging behind, exhausted from fatigue, hungry, officer Rambal and his orderly Morel, come out of the forest to the Russian bivouac, and the soldiers take pity on them, friendly let them warm themselves by the fire, and feed the hungry Morel to his fill with porridge. And it’s amazing how quickly Morel, who doesn’t know Russian at all, wins the favor of the soldiers, laughs with them, drinks the offered vodka and devours more and more pots of porridge on both cheeks. The French folk songs that he, drunk, begins to sing, enjoy extraordinary success, despite the incomprehensibility of the words. The fact is that, having ceased to be an enemy-invader in the eyes of the soldiers, he turns out to be for them simply a man in trouble, and moreover, thanks to his humble origins - his brother, a peasant. It also means a lot that the soldiers saw him up close - thereby he immediately became for them just like them, a concrete and living person, and not an abstract “Frenchman.” (remember the scene of the truce between the Russians and the French before the Battle of Shengraben from the first volume, where Tolstoy shows how quickly the soldiers of the two hostile armies became friends). What Morel finds common language with Russian soldiers, should clearly show the reader: the common people, regardless of nationality, have a common psychology and are always kindly disposed towards their fellow man.
The region of the world, as Tolstoy understands it, is devoid of any contradictions, strictly ordered and hierarchical. Just like the concept of “war,” the concept of the word “peace” is very ambiguous. It includes the following meanings: 1) peace in relations between people (the antonym of “war”); 2) a long-established, well-established human community, which can be of different sizes: this and separate family with its unique spiritual and psychological atmosphere, and the village peasant community, the cathedral unity of those praying in the church (“Let us pray to the Lord in peace!” - the priest exclaims at the litany in the church, when Natasha prays for the victory of the Russian troops), the warring army (“All the people want to attack “, says Timokhin before the Battle of Borodino), finally, all of humanity (for example, in the mutual greeting of Rostov and the Austrian peasant: “Long live the Austrians! Long live the Russians! - and long live the whole world!”); 3) the world as a space inhabited by someone, a universe, a cosmos. Separately, it is worth highlighting the opposition in the religious consciousness of the monastery as a closed, sacred space to the world as an open (passions and temptations, complex problems), everyday space. From this meaning the adjective “worldly” was formed and special shape prepositional case “in mira” (i.e. not in the monastery), different from the later form “in mira” (i.e. without war).
In pre-revolutionary spelling, the word “peace” in the meaning of “not war” (English “peace”) was written as “peace”, and in the meaning of “universum” it was written as “mir” through the Latin “i”. All meanings modern word“world” would have to be conveyed in five or six English or French words, so the entire lexical completeness of the word would inevitably be lost during translation. But, although in the title of Tolstoy’s novel the word “world” was written as “mir”, in the novel itself Tolstoy combines the semantic possibilities of both spellings into one universal philosophical concept that expresses Tolstoy’s social and philosophical ideal: the worldwide unity of all people living on earth in love and world. It must be created, ascending to the all-encompassing whole:
1) inner peace, peace with oneself, which is achieved only through understanding the truth and self-improvement; without it, peace with other people is impossible;
2) peace in the family, shaping personality and fostering love for one’s neighbor;
3) peace that unites the entire society into an indestructible family, the most expressive example of which Tolstoy sees in the peasant community, and the most controversial in secular society;
4) peace, gathering the nation into a single whole, just as it is shown in the novel using the example of Russia during the War of 1812;
5) the world of humanity, which has yet to take shape and to the creation of which, as the highest goal of humanity, Tolstoy tirelessly calls on the readers of his novel. When it is created, then there will be no place for enmity and hatred on earth, there will be no need to divide humanity into countries and nations, there will never be wars (thus the word “peace” again acquires its first meaning - “peace but not war”). This is how a moral and religious utopia emerged - one of the most artistically brilliant in Russian literature.
Nothing needs to be done based on cold considerations; let the feeling, the immediate feeling of joy and love, break through unhindered and unite all people into one family. When a person does everything according to calculation, thinking through his every step in advance, he breaks out of swarm life alienated from the general, because calculation is selfish in its essence, and what brings people together, draws them to each other is an intuitive feeling.
Happiness lies in living a true, not a false life - in loving unity with the whole world. This is main idea Tolstoy's novel.
The oracle of Apollo at Delphi was the most famous and authoritative in the era of antiquity: prophecies were given there, the truth of which was believed by all countries of the ancient Mediterranean.
In operatic art, a leitmotif is called theme song hero, preceding his phrases.
This term was introduced into scientific use by Viktor Shklovsky.
Grief. The topic of the essay is very difficult; it is more suitable for graduates of the Institute of Philology or graduate students who are engaged in research into Tolstoy’s works. I did not fully reflect everything in my essay philosophical problems The 4-volume novel "War and Peace", and this is understandable: it is impossible to fit all the thoughts of Tolstoy on two pages, he is a genius, but I still reflected the main ones. ...
Differently. Many tried to express their understanding of the novel, but not many were able to feel its essence. A great work requires great and deep thought. The epic novel “War and Peace” allows you to think about many principles and ideals. Conclusion The work of L.N. Tolstoy is undoubtedly a valuable asset of world literature. It has been studied for many years...
