What does the title of the novel "War and Peace" mean?
The novel "War and Peace" was originally conceived by Tolstoy as a story about the Decembrists. The author wanted to talk about these wonderful people and their families.
But not just to talk about what happened in December 1825 in Russia, but to show how the participants in these events came to them, which prompted the Decembrists to revolt against the tsar. The result of Tolstoy's study of these historical events was the novel "War and Peace", which tells about the birth of the Decembrist movement against the backdrop of the War of 1812.
What is the meaning of Tolstoy's "War and Peace"? Is it only to convey to the reader the moods and aspirations of people for whom the fate of Russia after the war against Napoleon was important? Or is it to show once again that "war ... is an event that is contrary to human reason and all human nature"? Or maybe Tolstoy wanted to emphasize that our life consists of contrasts between war and peace, meanness and honor, evil and good.
About why the author called his work that way, what is the meaning of the name "War and Peace", now one can only guess. But, reading and re-reading the work, you are once again convinced that the whole narrative in it is built on the struggle of opposites.
The contrasts of the novel
In the work, the reader is constantly faced with the opposition of various concepts, characters, destinies.
What is war? And is it always accompanied by the death of hundreds and thousands of people? After all, there are wars that are bloodless, quiet, invisible to many, but no less significant for one particular person. Sometimes it even happens that this person does not even realize that military operations are taking place around him.
For example, while Pierre was trying to figure out how to behave properly with his dying father, in the same house there was a war between Prince Vasily and Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya. Anna Mikhailovna "fought" on the side of Pierre only because it was beneficial to herself, but still, thanks to her, Pierre became Count Peter Kirillovich Bezukhov.
In this “battle” for a portfolio with a will, it was decided whether Pierre would be an unknown, useless, bastard thrown overboard the ship of life, or become a rich heir, count and enviable groom. In fact, it was here that it was decided whether Pierre Bezukhov could eventually become what he became at the end of the novel? Perhaps if he had to live on bread and water, then his life priorities would have been completely different.
Reading these lines, you clearly feel how contemptuously Tolstoy treats the "military actions" of Prince Vasily and Anna Mikhailovna. And at the same time, a good-natured irony is felt in relation to Pierre, who is absolutely unadapted to life. What is this if not a contrast between the "war" of meanness and the "peace" of good-natured naivete?
What is the "world" in Tolstoy's novel? The world is the romantic universe of the young Natasha Rostova, the good nature of Pierre, the religiosity and kindness of Princess Mary. Even the old prince Bolkonsky, with his semi-military arrangement of life and nitpicking of his son and daughter, is on the side of the author's "peace".
After all, decency, honesty, dignity, naturalness reign in his “world” - all the qualities that Tolstoy endows his favorite heroes. These are the Bolkonskys and the Rostovs, and Pierre Bezukhov, and Marya Dmitrievna, and even Kutuzov and Bagration. Despite the fact that readers meet with Kutuzov only on the battlefields, he is clearly a representative of the "world" of kindness and mercy, wisdom and honor.
What do soldiers defend in war when they fight against invaders? Why do sometimes absolutely illogical situations occur when “one battalion is sometimes stronger than a division,” as Prince Andrei used to say? Because in defending their country, soldiers are protecting more than just "space". And Kutuzov, and Bolkonsky, and Dolokhov, and Denisov, and all the soldiers, militias, partisans, they all fight for the world in which their relatives and friends live, where their children grow up, where their wives and parents are left, for their country. This is what causes that "warmth of patriotism that was in all ... people ... and which explained ... why all these people were calmly and as if thoughtlessly preparing for death."
The contrast, emphasized by the meaning of the title of the novel "War and Peace", is manifested in everything. Wars: alien and unnecessary to the Russian people the war of 1805 and the Patriotic People's War of 1812.
There is a sharp confrontation between honest and decent people - the Rostovs, Bolkonskys, Pierre Bezukhov - and the "drones", as Tolstoy called them - the Drubetskys, Kuragins, Berg, Zherkov.
Even within each circle there are contrasts: the Rostovs are opposed to the Bolkonskys. The noble, friendly, albeit ruined Rostov family - to the rich, but at the same time lonely and homeless, Pierre.
A very striking contrast between Kutuzov, calm, wise, natural in his fatigue from life, an old warrior and a narcissistic, decoratively pompous Napoleon.
It is the contrasts on the basis of which the plot of the novel is built that capture and lead the reader throughout the story.
Conclusion
In my essay “The Meaning of the Title of the Novel “War and Peace,” I wanted to discuss these contrasting concepts. About Tolstoy's amazing understanding of human psychology, the ability to logically build the history of the development of many personalities throughout such a long narrative. Lev Nikolaevich tells the history of the Russian state not just as a historian-scientist, the reader seems to live life together with the characters. And gradually finds answers to eternal questions about love and truth.
Artwork test
This is an epic novel in the truest sense of the word. Stretching over several decades, it masterfully describes the history of Russia from the end of the 18th century to the first third of the 1800s. At over 1,600 pages, this is certainly one of the longest novels out there, but unlike many, much shorter books, it's length is well worth it. Although Tolstoy is very meticulous, his letter is easy to read, and the pages simply fly from turning over.
It is known that at first the author wanted to title the work with a phraseological unit: "All is well that ends well." This meant the positive outcome of the war, as well as the lives of the heroes after all the events, difficulties, ups and downs. But later this title seemed to the writer too superficial, not reflecting the whole depth of the novel. In addition, it limited the author in the development of the plot. The phrase suggests a perfectly good ending for everyone, and this could not be in principle.
There were also other options: "1805" and "Decembrist", but they turned out to be too narrow to display all the facets of a novel of this magnitude.
What is the meaning of the name?
L. N. Tolstoy gives his most fundamental work a dual title that creates a contrast. The name of the novel is deep and multifaceted. The war here is not only reminiscent of the hostilities that took place in the described historical period. This is the split of the society of the 19th century. This is the spiritual path of heroes, the search for harmony, internal confrontations, experiences, throwing. These are difficulties in human relationships, intra-family, love conflicts. This is the ambiguity, inconsistency of the images themselves. As well as a clash of views, opinions on important social issues, the correct answer to which even the author did not know.
Society at War
In turn, the world, as an opposite concept, is harmony, finding personal happiness, acceptance, understanding of oneself and others. And not just the absence of enmity. On the other hand, the events of 1805-1807 and 1812 changed the heroes, turned their worldview upside down, brought up new personal qualities, helped to know themselves, comrades, to realize the truths of life. In the novel, the words "peace" and "society" are synonymous. The work could have been renamed "Society and War". Much attention is paid to the person, the personality during the hostilities. Andrei Bolkonsky is greatly changed by the battle of Austerlitz. The author puts his hero on a fine line between life and death. Strong emotions, stress, existential experiences, a serious injury become a test of the truth of his beliefs, the morality of ideals, the strength of moral principles, but Andrei breaks this severe test, deprives him of inner harmony. And Pierre compares his experience in society with the events experienced in the war in order to form philosophical views, his new worldview, and nurture the inner core.
The world is life, therefore the word in the name also carries a vital meaning.
Epic novel themes
Film frame
The books deal with two main themes. One of them is the Russian-French wars of 1805 and 1812. Tolstoy describes the wars, in particular the battles of Austerlitz (1805) and Borodino (1812), in vivid detail, apparently very accurately from a historical point of view. The characters of Napoleon and Kutuzov (leader of the Russian army) take an active part in the narrative, with the lesser leaders (Bagration, de Tolly, Davout) also getting enough attention to build a full, interesting story. Specific events of the war are covered with the participation of the main characters of the book, such as Andrei Bolkonsky, Nikolai Rostov, Pierre Bezukhov.
The other is the high Russian society of that time. The book gives a very interesting, deep look at this unusual society, by today's standards, somewhat modeled, thus similar to other European societies (French, British, etc.). Tolstoy also presents little of life in rural Russia, the relationship between nobles and serfs, although he does not spend as much effort on this topic as in Anna Karenina.
The characters in the book are varied and represent different ideas that Lev Nikolayevich is trying to infuse into his story. All of them, without exception, are extremely believable, well-designed, alive. I can't think of other authors who know how to present and develop their characters like Tolstoy.
opposition
The novel is built on antithesis, which becomes here the main method of artistic expressiveness of the text. The dialogue of contrasts continues throughout the story. The name has a deep philosophical meaning. Much broader than it might seem to the person who first opened this book. Peace is not just peace, the opposite of battles, battles. This is life, people, society, views, ideals. As well as inner harmony, which the characters strive for throughout the entire plot, and receive through internal struggle, suffering. And the war - this is these confrontations. The name connects all events, individuals, whole families with invisible threads, creating a single outline of the story.
In Russian folklore, the truth sounds: "There is no evil without good." And L.N. Tolstoy: "There is no peace without war."
The meaning of the title of the novel "War and Peace"
At first glance, it may seem that the novel “War and Peace” is named precisely because it reflects two eras in the life of Russian society at the beginning of the 19th century: the period of the wars against Napoleon in 1805-1814 and the peaceful period before and after wartime. However, the data of literary and linguistic analysis allow us to make some significant clarifications.
The fact is that, unlike the modern Russian language, in which the word “peace” is a homonymous pair and denotes, firstly, the state of society opposite to war, and, secondly, human society in general, in the Russian language of the 19th century there were two spellings of the word "peace": "peace" - the state of the absence of war and "peace" - human society, community. The title of the novel in the old spelling included precisely the form “world”. From this one could conclude that the novel is devoted primarily to the problem, which is formulated as follows: "War and Russian society." However, as it was established by researchers of Tolstoy's work, the title of the novel did not come into print from a text written by Tolstoy himself. However, the fact that Tolstoy did not correct the spelling that was not agreed with him suggests that both versions of the writer's name suited him.
Indeed, if we reduce the explanation of the title to the fact that the novel alternates parts devoted to the war with parts devoted to the depiction of peaceful life, then many additional questions arise. For example, can the image of life behind enemy lines be considered a direct image of the state of the world? Or would it not be correct to call war the endless strife that accompanies the course of life of a noble society?
However, this explanation cannot be ignored. Tolstoy really associates the title of the novel with the word "peace" in the sense of "the absence of war, strife and enmity between people." Evidence of this are the episodes in which the theme of the condemnation of the war sounds, the dream of a peaceful life of people is expressed, such as, for example, the scene of the murder of Petya Rostov.
On the other hand, the word “world” in the work obviously means “society”. On the example of several families, the novel shows the life of all of Russia in that difficult period for her. In addition, Tolstoy describes in detail the life of the most diverse strata of Russian society: peasants, soldiers, the patriarchal nobility (the Rostov family), well-born Russian aristocrats (the Bolkonsky family), and many others.
The scope of the novel's problems is very wide. It reveals the reasons for the failures of the Russian army in the campaigns of 1805-1807; on the example of Kutuzov and Napoleon, the role of individuals in military events and in the historical process in general is shown; the great role of the Russian people, who decided the outcome of the Patriotic War of 1812, is revealed, etc. This, of course, also allows us to talk about the “public” meaning of the novel’s title.
Do not forget that the word "peace" in the 19th century was also used to refer to a patriarchal-peasant society. Probably Tolstoy took this meaning into account as well.
And finally, the world for Tolstoy is a synonym for the word “universe”, and it is no coincidence that the novel contains a large number of general philosophical arguments.
Thus, the concepts of “world” and “world” merge into one in the novel. This is why the word "world" takes on an almost symbolic meaning in the novel.
L. N. Tolstoy once said that he would be happy to write such a novel, which “today’s children will read in twenty years and will cry and laugh at him, and will love life.” Since then, many years have passed, much more than twenty, and more than one generation has discovered and is discovering the immortal creation of human genius - the epic novel "War and Peace". It is impossible to fully and meaningfully answer the question: what is this book about? Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" is a book about battles and battles, about families and the spiritual search for people, about love and hatred, about honor and dishonor, about aristocracy and peasants ... This is a book about life in all its diversity and unpredictability.
At the time of the creation of the novel by the author, Russia was on the rise, and many people tried to solve eternal questions for themselves: what is a person and what is a people? What is their role in history? What determines their fate, happiness? L. N. Tolstoy was also worried about these questions, and for a long time he was looking for those obvious and significant events in the fate of the people that would be commensurate with the depth of the questions asked. Having opted for the Patriotic War of 1812, the writer conceived a novel that was to become much wider and deeper than a simple description of military operations, since his task was to reflect the life of an entire era in all its contradictions, problems, discoveries, to show the diversity and a variety of life phenomena, the complexity of human destinies.
The title of the book "War and Peace" is as comprehensive as its content. It has a huge variety of meanings, and this fully contributes to the disclosure of the author's intention.
What is "war"? After all, these are not only military actions between states, but also contradictions between classes and estates, between state power and the people, between groups of people and within one person.
The concept of “peace” is also infinitely broad, since it means not only the opposite of war, the peaceful life of the people, but also the people themselves (“to pile on with the whole world”), and the inner world of each individual person, hero.
"War" and "peace" in the novel are extremely closely intertwined, they are interpenetrating, since misunderstanding and enmity between people ("war") are possible in peacetime, and the unification of the entire Russian people ("peace") against the French tsuz invaders, in order to protect their homeland, forces the "war" to retreat - an army that was previously invincible. And internal searches and contradictions in a person, dissatisfaction with oneself or others (“war-on”) are possible and natural both in peacetime and in wartime. material from the site
Therefore, we see that the title of the novel, on which L. N. Tolstoy stopped, is as large-scale and multi-valued as the work itself, as the whole life looking at us from the pages of the novel, in which more than five hundred characters are closely intertwined. Despite such a huge number of characters, the subject of research in the novel was not the private fate of certain characters, but their relationships, on which the course of historical events ultimately depended. It is remarkable that Tolstoy's heroes achieve the highest happiness, find answers to their questions precisely in unity with the family, the people, the universe-world.
I am sure that more than one generation will “cry and laugh” over this great work, reflecting on a bright, complex, all-encompassing epic novel, a book about life.
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Krinitsyn A.B.
So, now we have come closer to understanding the general philosophical meaning of the 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 the development of human history.
War in the novel is not only fighting between two powers, but also any conflict, any hostile confrontation, even between individuals, not necessarily leading to death. War blows sometimes from peaceful at first glance, the scenes of the novel. Let us recall 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 wants to run away with Anatole from her relatives or when her mother forces Sonya to abandon marriage with Nicholas. Taking a closer look at the participants in these clashes, we will notice that the Kuragins are the most frequent participants or perpetrators of them. Where they are - there is always a war, generated by vanity, pride and low selfish interests. Dolokhov also belongs to the world of war, who clearly takes pleasure in torturing and killing (sometimes "as if bored with everyday life", he "felt the need to get out of it by some strange, mostly cruel act", as in the case of the quarterly, whom for fun, he tied his back to a bear, with Pierre or with Rostov). Dolokhov feels himself in his element and 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 military elements in the novel is Napoleon, who at the same time embodies the personal principle. Napoleon illuminated the entire nineteenth century with the brilliance of his glory and the charm of his personality (remember that Dostoevsky made him the idol of Raskolnikov, a representative of the younger generation already in the 60s), while during his lifetime Napoleon was a thunderstorm, a fiend or an object of servile worship throughout Europe. His figure turned out to be a landmark for all European romanticism with its cult of a strong and free personality. Already Pushkin saw in "Napoleonism" a whole social phenomenon, remarking as if in passing in "Eugene Onegin": "We all look at Napoleons, millions of two-legged creatures are one tool for us." Thus, Pushkin was the first in Russian literature to begin a rethinking of the image of Napoleon, pointing out the terrible trait underlying the personality of the dictator - monstrous egoism and unscrupulousness, thanks to which Napoleon achieved exaltation without disdaining any means (“We honor everyone as zeros, but ourselves as units” ). It is known that one of his decisive steps on the way to power was the suppression of the anti-republican uprising in Paris, when he shot the rebellious crowd with cannons and drowned it in blood, the first in history to use buckshot on the streets of the city.
Tolstoy uses all kinds of arguments and artistic means to debunk Napoleon. The novelist faced a very difficult task: to portray the illustrious hero as an insignificant vulgar, a man of the sharpest mind as stupid (there were legends about the speed of thought, efficiency and phenomenal memory of Napoleon, who remembered almost every officer in his army by sight), and finally, to show the example of the greatest commander of all times and peoples, which won countless victories and conquered all of Europe - the impossibility for the individual to influence the course of history and, moreover, the ghostly conventionality of military leadership as such. He calls Napoleon “smug and limited” and describes him in such a way as to reduce his image, to arouse our physical disgust for him: , which are in the hall living forty-year-old people. In another place, Tolstoy shows the emperor at the morning toilet, describing in detail how he, “snorting and grunting, turned either with a thick back, or with a fat chest overgrown with a brush, with which the valet rubbed his body.” Napoleon is surrounded by helpful servants and flattering courtiers. Feeling himself the main character of the story, he assumes false poses, showing off in front of others, and lives an exclusively invented, “external” life, without noticing it himself. According to Tolstoy, a person who is able to sacrifice 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, he could understand neither good nor beauty, neither truth, nor the meaning of their actions, which were too opposite to goodness and truth, too far from everything human, in order to understand their meaning. Napoleon is fenced off from the world, for he is only occupied with himself: “It was evident 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 just with this 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 as he saw fit. In fact, according to the author, he himself is a plaything in the hands of history, called to power precisely by those historical events that, in his opinion, occur according to his free will. According to the author, who inexorably “takes off the masks” from his heroes, Napoleon has long, unknown to himself, been engaged in self-deception: heavy, inhuman role that was assigned to 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 assumed the full responsibility of the event, and his clouded mind saw the justification in the fact that among the hundreds of thousands of dead people there were fewer French than Hessians and Bavarians.
Tolstoy's attitude to war is determined by his all-conquering pacifism. For him, war is an absolute evil, contrary to God and human nature, the murder of one's own kind. Tolstoy is trying in every possible way to destroy the historical and bookish, heroic perception of wars: seeing them as wars of kings and generals fighting for great ideas and accomplishing glorious deeds. Tolstoy consciously avoids any glorification of the war and the depiction of heroic deeds 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, not willingly being exposed to mortal danger? What does he experience, killing his own kind, taking away from him the most precious thing - life? Tolstoy draws these feelings with exceptional truthfulness and psychological certainty, convincingly proving that all beautiful descriptions of exploits and heroic feelings are composed later, in hindsight, since everyone sees that his feelings in battle were not at all heroic and differed sharply from those that usually sound in 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 injury, imagined himself a hero, although in reality he was a very pitiful picture in his first battle), and thus a general lie about the war arises, embellishing it and tying to it the interest of ever newer generations.
In fact, everyone in the war feels, first of all, an insane, animal fear for his life, for his body, natural to every living being, and it takes a long time until a person gets used to the constant danger to life so that this protective instinct of self-preservation is dulled. Then he looks brave from the outside (like Captain Tushin in the battle of Shengraben, who managed to completely renounce 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 has already managed to get close suddenly changes to cold and cruel. He is aware of the sudden presence of a mysterious, mute and terrible force, whose name is war, but stops, unable to understand its source.
From the philosophy of war as a whole follows the depiction of the wars of 1805 and 1812. The first is seen by Tolstoy as a "political" war, a "power game" of diplomatic offices, waged in the interests of the ruling circles. The defeat of Russia 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 their mood was depressed. Under Austerlitz, the Russians, according to Andrei Bolkonsky, had a loss almost equal to that of the French, but we told ourselves very early that we had lost the battle - and lost. In vain did Napoleon attribute 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 on which 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 the victory of Russia in the war of liberation, when the soldiers fought for their land. On the eve of the Battle of Borodino, Prince Andrei confidently says that “tomorrow, no matter what,<...>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, did not drink vodka: not such a day, they say. This example speaks more eloquently than any high-sounding words about the seriousness of the fighting spirit and about that patriotism that is not expressed in beautiful speeches. On the contrary, those who speak well of patriotism and selfless service are always lying and embellishing 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 is quite consistent with his ideas that the course of the war does not depend on the will of rulers and generals. The illustrious 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, outwardly was 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. Nevertheless, Tolstoy joins Kutuzov, considering the Battle of Borodino won, because there for the first time the French were repulsed by a strong-minded enemy who inflicted a mortal wound on them, from which they could not recover.
The role of Kutuzov as commander-in-chief was only to understand the historical pattern of the war and not interfere with its natural course. It was not his orders that were important, but his authority and the confidence in him of all the soldiers, inspired by his one Russian name, for at a moment dangerous for the fatherland, a Russian commander-in-chief was needed, just as a son would better take care of a father during a deadly illness than the most 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 predicted. 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 tried not to waste his troops in senseless battles, wisely waiting.
Andrei Bolkonsky makes important observations on the field marshal: “The more he saw the absence of everything personal in this old man, in whom there seemed to be only the habits of passions and instead of the mind<...>one ability to calmly contemplate the course of events, all 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, he 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 significance and, in view of this significance, 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, with his attitude to the war of 1812. Kutuzov’s appearance 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 the place of a lost look, as well as the fact that he only watches and listens to people for one second in order to understand them and understand the situation), as well as kindness and even strange for a field marshal sentimental sincerity (softness of hands, penetrating notes in the voice, tearfulness, reading French romance novels). He is a complete antipode to Napoleon, he does not have a drop of self-confidence, vanity, conceit, blindness by his own strength.
Moreover, a popular, guerrilla war unfolded against the French invaders - spontaneous, without any rules and measures. According to Tolstoy, the Russian people (like any patriarchal people not spoiled by civilization) are mild-mannered, peaceful, and consider war to be an unworthy and dirty business. But if they attack him, threatening his life, then he will be forced to defend himself, without analyzing the means. The most effective means, as always, turned out to be guerrilla warfare, which is opposed to regular warfare (for the absence of a visible enemy and organized resistance). Tolstoy extols it for its spontaneity, which testifies to its necessity and justification. “The cudgel of the people’s war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength and, without asking anyone’s tastes and rules, with stupid simplicity, but with expediency, without analyzing anything, it rose, fell and nailed the French until the whole invasion died. And good for those people<...>who, in a moment of trial, without asking how others acted according to the rules in similar cases, with simplicity and ease picks up the first club that comes across and nails it until the feeling of insult and revenge in his soul is replaced by contempt and pity.
The instinct of self-preservation turned out to be so strong among the Russian people that all the efforts of the French were shattered against it, as if against an invisible wall. “The battle won did not bring the usual results, because the peasants Karp and Vlas, who, after the performance of the French, came to Moscow with carts to rob the city and did not personally show heroic feelings at all, and all the countless number of such peasants did not carry hay to Moscow for good money, which they were offered it, but they burned it.”
The most complete expression of the folk idea in the novel is the image of Platon Karataev with his dove-like gentleness and endless sympathy for all living things. For Tolstoy, he becomes the embodiment of the deepest features of the Russian soul and the age-old wisdom of the people. Let us remember that he is friendly and loving even to the French guarding him. We simply cannot imagine that Plato could fight and kill someone. Plato responds to Pierre's story about the execution of prisoners of war with contrition and horror: “Sin! It's a sin!"
To depict the guerrilla war, Tolstoy needed a completely different hero from the people's environment - Tikhon Shcherbaty, who kills the French with cheerful dexterity and the excitement 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 with 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 laughter, a peak and an ax, which he owned, like a wolf owns teeth , equally easily picking out fleas from wool and biting thick bones"). Admiring the partisan war, Tolstoy is unlikely to sympathize with Tikhon, the most needed person in the detachment, who killed the French more than anyone else.
Thus, Tolstoy's two views on the war of 1812 come into conflict: on the one hand, he admires it as a people's, liberation, just war that united the entire nation with an unheard of upsurge 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 by 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 a complete picture of the image of the Russian people. But the main, essential features of the people are nevertheless embodied in the image of Karataev, since a peaceful state is the most natural for the people.
Let us recall the scene when the French, who have fallen behind their own, exhausted from fatigue, are hungry, the officer Rambal and his batman Morel come out of the forest to the Russian bivouac, and the soldiers feel sorry for them, friendly let them warm themselves by the fire, and the hungry Morel is fed to the full with porridge. And it is amazing how quickly Morel, who does not know Russian at all, wins over the soldiers, laughs with them, drinks the offered vodka and eats more and more bowls of porridge on both cheeks. Folk French songs, which 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 just a person in trouble for them, and moreover, thanks to his humble origin, his brother, a peasant. It also means a lot that the soldiers saw him up close - thus, he immediately became for them the same as they are, a concrete and living person, and not an abstract “Frenchman”. (remember the scene of the armistice 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). The fact that Morel finds a common language with Russian soldiers should clearly show the reader that the common people, regardless of the division into nationalities, have a common psychology and are always kindly disposed towards their brother.
The area 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 various sizes: this is a separate family with its unique spiritual and psychological atmosphere, and a village peasant community, a conciliar unity of those praying in the temple (“Let us pray to the Lord in peace!” - the priest proclaims at the litany in churches, when Natasha prays for the victory of the Russian troops), the warring army (“They want to pile on all the people,” says Timokhin before the Battle of Borodino), and finally, all of humanity (for example, in the mutual greeting of Rostov and the Austrian peasant: “Long live the Austrians! Yes Long live the Russians!—and long live the whole world!”); 3) the world as a space inhabited by someone, the universe, the 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 (to passions and temptations, complex problems), everyday space. From this meaning, the adjective “worldly” and a special form of the prepositional case “in the world’” (i.e., not in the monastery) were formed, different from the later form “in the mi’ra” (i.e., without war).
In pre-revolutionary orthography, 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 "peace" through the Latin "i". All the meanings of the modern word "world" would have to be conveyed in five or six English or French words, so the entire lexical completeness of the word will inevitably be lost in 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 universal unity of all people living on earth in love and the world. It must be built, 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 also impossible;
2) peace in the family, shaping personality and fostering love for one's neighbor;
3) peace, uniting the whole 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) a world that gathers the nation into a single whole, just as it is shown in the novel on the example of Russia during the war of 1812;
5) the world of mankind, which has yet to take shape and to the creation of which, as the highest goal of mankind, Tolstoy tirelessly calls on the readers of his novel. When it is created, then there will no longer be a 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 is not war”). This is how a moral-religious utopia developed - one of the most artistically striking in Russian literature.
Nothing needs to be done, guided by cold considerations; let the feeling, the immediate feeling of joy and love, break through without hindrance and unite all people into one family. When a person does everything according to calculation, thinking over his every step in advance, he breaks out of the swarm life and is alienated from the general, because calculation is selfish in its essence, and intuitive feeling draws people together, draws them to each other.
Happiness lies in living a true life and not a false life – in loving union with the whole world. This is the main idea of Tolstoy's novel.
The oracle of Apollo at Delphi was the most famous and authoritative in the era of antiquity: divinations were given there, in the truth of which all the countries of the ancient Mediterranean believed.
In opera, the leitmotif is the musical theme of the hero, which precedes his phrases.
This term was introduced into scientific use by Viktor Shklovsky.
Woe. The topic of the essay is very difficult; rather, it is suitable for graduates of the institute of the Faculty of Philology or graduate students who are engaged in research into Tolstoy's work. I did not fully reflect in my essay all the philosophical problems of the 4-volume novel "War and Peace", and this is understandable: it is impossible to fit all the thoughts of Tolstoy on two sheets, he is a genius, but I nevertheless 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. Over the years it has been researched...