What Tolstoy wrote about war and peace. Interesting facts about the novel war and peace

With today's rhythm of life, when everyone is constantly in a hurry, when there is less and less free time, it is hard to allocate at least a few hours a day for reading. But it's so nice to relax with an interesting book in your hands! Perhaps that is why more and more people prefer abridged versions of the works of a wide variety of writers. Indeed, there are many books, especially among the classics, that cannot be read in one day. For example, The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina. In such cases, the summary now being published will be of great help. "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy is a unique book consisting of four volumes, which is familiar to almost every patriot. A large number of people admire this truly brilliant creation. It must be present in school curriculum for reading. But still, it is quite difficult for children to learn it during their studies. Why does it come out like this? Possibly due to modern system learning, when there is a lot of material at school, but there is less time for children to relax. It is in such situations that "War and Peace" in summary is extremely convenient and useful.

The great novel of the Russian writer

This unique masterpiece is known in different countries world, they are read from the moment of its appearance. In the novel, the author displayed all the social classes of that time. The description of the life of the simple Russian people is striking in its authenticity. The mood of the noble society and ordinary people during the war with Napoleon is very realistically conveyed. When describing battles, Leo Tolstoy tried not to miss main idea, which consisted in the fact that the Russians would defend their native land until death.

So, the summary is "War and Peace"

The main characters of the novel are Count Pierre Bezukhov, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, his sister Maria, the Rostov and Kuragin families. It all starts in 1805. In St. Petersburg, at a dinner party, there is a heated discussion of the situation that has developed in the empire. Russian aristocrats make loud phrases that Napoleon is a "Corsican monster" who wants to take over the whole world. Only two guests try to justify the actions of the French emperor - this is Pierre, the future Count Bezukhov, and his friend, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. Then the author takes us to the possession of the family of Count Rostov. There, a holiday is in full swing, they celebrate the name day of his wife and youngest daughter Natasha. The Rostov family is very happy. Parents with children: Vera, Nikolai, Natasha and Petya live in complete harmony, and their niece Sonya also lives with them. Nikolai Rostov for the first time shows his desire to become a soldier. Over time, all the main characters of the book get to know each other. The war with Napoleon begins. The Russian people were swept by a wave of patriotism. Both nobles and ordinary peasants are all willing to take part in the defense of their country from invaders. At this time, many events take place in the life of Prince Andrei: during childbirth, his wife dies, he loses the meaning of life. And only a meeting with the charming Natasha Rostova helps him become a happy person. They decide to get married after a while.

And Pierre became a count and married the first beauty Helen Kuragina. He is unhappy in his marriage and also goes to war. The actions of Commander-in-Chief Kutuzov are often criticized due to the fact that he orders to retreat before the French. However, over time, everyone understands that he is right, the French troops begin to weaken. The reason is the cold Russian winters and the dedication of the Russian people. There is a gap between Natasha and the prince. She suffers terribly, Pierre comes to calm her down. And after a while he realizes that he fell in love with Natalia Rostova with all his heart. But he is married. Nikolai Rostov saves a young noblewoman from the rebellious peasants and finds out that this is the sister of Prince Bolkonsky, Maria. Prince Andrei is mortally wounded in the war. By a strange coincidence, Natasha takes care of him. They talk a lot, he forgives her and dies. The Rostovs also have grief - Petya died in the war. Natasha finds a common language with the prince's sister, the girls support each other and become friends. After some time, news comes that the war is over, the French have suffered a complete defeat. Helen Bezukhova has died. Pierre meets Natasha again and later invites her to become his wife. The girl agrees - she realized that she also loves him. Maria Bolkonskaya also finds family happiness. Her chosen one was Nikolai Rostov, who later proved to be a caring husband and father. They are all happy, but they never forget what they had to go through and appreciate every moment of their lives.

Conclusion

If you read at least a summary, "War and Peace" will become as close a book to you as many other examples of literary classics. From such a cursory presentation, you can quickly get to know the main characters, find out how events unfolded in that distant war. The love story of cheerful Natasha and Prince Andrei will always delight with tenderness. Charming Pierre strikes with kindness and courage. The great Kutuzov surprises with foresight and right decisions.

What are the films based on the book of a brilliant writer

Based on the masterpiece of L. Tolstoy, several versions of films were shot. Many will agree that it is extremely exciting to watch the tape after the book and compare the characters to what extent they correspond to the book description. However, it should be noted that when creating a film, a summary of "War and Peace" is obtained, since it is simply unrealistic to shoot everything exactly the same as in the novel. But that doesn't make the films any less exciting. By the way, a very interesting fact: it has been noticed that almost all people who have ever read “Summary: “War and Peace”” will definitely get acquainted with the full version of this magnificent masterpiece of world literature in the future.

Tolstoy himself presents this concept as follows: “Millions of people committed against each other such an innumerable number of atrocities ... that for whole centuries the annals of all the courts of the world will not collect and which, during this period of time, the people who committed them did not look at as crimes” . Through the description of the war in the novel War and Peace, Tolstoy makes it clear to us that he himself hates war for its cruelty, murder, betrayal, and senselessness. He puts judgments about war into the mouths of his heroes. So Andrei Bolkonsky says to Bezukhov: “War is not a courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and one must understand this and not play war.” We see that there is no pleasure, pleasure, satisfaction of one's desires from bloody actions against another people. It is definitely clear in the novel that war in Tolstoy's portrayal is "against the human mind and all human nature event".

Major battle of the War of 1812

Even in the I and II volumes of the novel, Tolstoy tells about the military campaigns of 1805-1807. Shengraben, Austerlitz battles pass through the prism of the writer's reflections and conclusions. But in the war of 1812, the writer puts the Battle of Borodino at the forefront. Although he immediately asks himself and his readers the question: “Why was the Battle of Borodino given? Neither for the French nor for the Russians it made the slightest sense.”

But it was the battle of Borodino that became the starting point until the victory of the Russian army. L. N. Tolstoy gives a detailed idea of ​​the course of the war in War and Peace. He describes every action of the Russian army, physical and state of mind soldier. According to the writer's own assessment, neither Napoleon, nor Kutuzov, and even more so Alexander I did not expect such an outcome of this war. For everyone, the Battle of Borodino was unplanned and unforeseen. What is the concept of the war of 1812, the heroes of the novel do not understand, just as Tolstoy does not understand, just as the reader does not understand.

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1. Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" shows the reader the life of the Russian state in a fifteen-year period of historical time from 1805 to 1820...
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creative history"War and Peace". The main stages of the evolution of the idea. Decembrist theme in the novel. Meaning of the title of the novel.

War and Peace is one of greatest novels Russian and world literature.

In his work on the new work, Tolstoy started from the events of 1856, when an amnesty was declared for the participants in the uprising on December 14, 1825. The surviving Decembrists returned to central Russia, they were representatives of the generation to which the writer's parents belonged. Due to early orphanhood, he could not know them well, but he always sought to understand, to penetrate into the essence of their characters. Interest in the people of this generation, including the Decembrists, among whom were many acquaintances and relatives of Tolstoy (S. Volkonsky and S. Trubetskoy - his mother's cousins), was dictated not only by their participation in the uprising of December 14, 1825. Many of these people were participants in the Patriotic War of 1812. Great impression the writer was made acquainted with some of them.

The work "War and Peace" was created by L.N. Tolstoy for 7 years, from 1863 to 1869. The book required a lot of effort from the writer. In 1869, in the drafts of the Epilogue. Tolstoy remembered that "painful and joyful perseverance and excitement", which he experienced in the course of work.

In fact, the idea of ​​the novel arose much earlier. The creative history of the novel is connected with Tolstoy's intention to write a story about the former Decembrist Pyotr Labazov, who returned in 1856 after hard labor and exile, through whose eyes the writer wanted to show modern society. Carried away by the idea, the author gradually decided to move on to the time of his hero’s “mistakes and delusions” (1825), to show the era of the formation of his views and beliefs (1805), to show the current state of Russia (the unsuccessful end of the Crimean War, sudden death Nicholas I, public sentiments on the eve of the reform of serfdom, the moral losses of society), compare your hero, who has not lost moral integrity and physical strength, with his peers. However, as Tolstoy testified, from a feeling similar to awkwardness, it seemed to him inconvenient to write about the victories of Russian weapons without telling about the time of their defeat. For Tolstoy, the reliability of the psychological characteristics of the characters in his works has always been important. The author himself explained the logic of the development of the creative idea in the following way: “In 1856 I began to write a story with famous destination, a hero who was supposed to be a Decembrist, returning with his family to Russia. Involuntarily, I moved from the present to 1825, the era of my hero's delusions and misfortunes, and left what I had begun. But even in 1825 my hero was already a mature, family man. To understand him, I had to go back to his youth, and his youth coincided with the glorious for Russia era of 1812 ... But for the third time I left what I started ... If the reason for our triumph was not accidental, but also lay in the essence of the character of the Russian people and troops , then this character should have been expressed even more clearly in the era of failures and defeats ... My task is to describe the life and clashes of some people in the period from 1805 to 1856. Thus, the beginning of the novel moved from 1856 to 1805. In connection with the proposed chronology, the novel was to be divided into three volumes, corresponding to the three main periods in the life of the protagonist. Thus, proceeding from the creative idea of ​​the writer, “War and Peace”, for all its majesty, is only part of the grandiose author’s plan, a plan covering the most important eras of Russian life, a plan that L.N. Tolstoy.

Interestingly, the original version of the manuscript of the new novel “From 1805 to 1814. The novel of Count L.N. Tolstoy. 1805 year. Part I" opened with the words: “For those who knew Prince Peter Kirillovich B. at the beginning of the reign of AlexanderII, in the 1850s, when Peter Kirillich was returned from Siberia as an old white as a harrier, it was hard to imagine him as a carefree, stupid and extravagant young man, as he was at the beginning of Alexander's reignI, shortly after his arrival from abroad, where, at the request of his father, he completed his education. So the author established a connection between the hero of the previously conceived novel "The Decembrists" and the future work "War and Peace".

At different stages of the work, the author presented his work as a wide epic canvas. Creating his semi-fictional and fictional heroes, Tolstoy, as he himself said, wrote the history of the people, looking for ways to artistically comprehend the character of the Russian people.

Contrary to the writer's hopes for the imminent birth of his literary offspring, the first chapters of the novel began to appear in print only from 1867. And for the next two years, work on it continued. They were not yet entitled "War and Peace", moreover, they were subsequently subjected to severe editing by the author ...

From the first version of the title - "Three Pores" - Tolstoy refused, because in this case the story had to begin with the events of 1812. The next version - "One thousand eight hundred and fifth year" - also did not meet the final plan. In 1866, the title appeared: “I bury everything that ends well”, stating the happy ending of the work. Obviously, this version of the name did not reflect the scale of the action and was also rejected by Tolstoy. And only at the end of 1867 did the name "War and Peace" finally appear. Peace (“peace” in the old spelling, from the verb “to reconcile”) is the absence of enmity, war, disagreement, quarrel, but this is only one, narrow meaning of this word. In the manuscript, the word "peace" was written with the letter "i". If you refer to " explanatory dictionary of the Great Russian language" by V. I. Dahl, it can be seen that the word "mir" had a broader interpretation: "Mir - the universe; one of the lands of the universe; our land, Earth, light; all people, all the world, the human race; community, society of peasants; gathering" [i]. Undoubtedly, it was precisely this comprehensive understanding of this word that the writer had in mind when he included it in the title. In contrasting the war, as an unnatural event in the life of all people and the whole world, lies the main conflict of this work.

Only in December 1869 was the last volume of "War and Peace" published. Thirteen years have passed since the conception of the work about the Decembrist.

The second edition came out almost simultaneously with the first, in 1868-1869, so the author's revision was insignificant. But in the third edition in 1873, Tolstoy made significant changes. Part of what he called "military, historical and philosophical discourses" was taken out of the novel and included in the Articles on the Campaign of 1812. In the same edition, the French text was translated by Tolstoy into Russian, although he said that "the destruction of the French sometimes I felt sorry". This was due to the responses to the novel, where bewilderment was expressed in the abundance of French speech. In the next edition, the six volumes of the novel were reduced to four. And finally, in 1886, the last, fifth lifetime edition of Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" was published, which to this day is the standard. In it, the author restored the text according to the edition of 1868-1869. Historical and philosophical reasoning and the French text were returned, but the volume of the novel remained in four volumes. The work of the writer on his creation was completed.

Elements of family chronicle, socio-psychological and historical novels. Genre controversy.

“What is War and Peace? This is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and peace is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed. Such a statement about the author's disregard for the conventional forms of a prose work of art might seem arrogant if it had no examples. The history of Russian literature since Pushkin not only presents many examples of such a departure from the European form, but does not even give a single example of the contrary. Starting from " dead souls» Gogol and before « dead house"Dostoevsky, in the new period of Russian literature there is not a single artistic prose work that is a little out of mediocrity, which would fit perfectly into the form of a novel, poem or short story," as Tolstoy writes in the article "A few words about the book" War and Peace ". In the same place, he responds to reproaches for insufficient depiction of the “character of time”: “In those days, they also loved, envied, searched for truth, virtue, were carried away by passions; the same was a complex mental and moral life, sometimes even more refined than now, in the upper class. And in the epilogue, talking about Natasha's family life, Tolstoy remarks that “talking and reasoning about the rights of women, about the relationship of spouses, about their freedom and rights, although they were not yet called questions, as they are now, were then exactly the same as now.” So, the approach to "War and Peace" as a historical novel, even an epic novel, is not entirely legitimate. Tolstoy's second conclusion is this: the "mental-moral life", the spiritual life of the people of the past is not so much different from the present. Apparently, for Tolstoy, in his “not entirely historical” work, it is not so much political issues, historical events, even signs of the era that are important, but the inner life of a person. Tolstoy turns to history, because the era of 1812 made it possible to explore the psychology of a person and the whole people in a crisis situation, to simulate such a moment in life individual people and the people, when the main thing, that which constitutes the core of spiritual life, that which does not depend on the orders of generals and decrees of emperors, comes to the fore. Tolstoy is interested in such moments in the life of a person and the whole country, when spiritual resources, the spiritual potential of the individual and the country are manifested.

“The unresolved, hanging question of life or death, not only over Bolkonsky, but over Russia, overshadowed all other assumptions,” says Tolstoy. This phrase can be considered as a key one for the whole work, because the author focuses on life and death, peace and war, their struggle in the history of one person and in world history. Moreover, Tolstoy, as it were, debunks important moments from the point of view of official, generally accepted history, emphasizing their psychological content. The Treaty of Tilsit and the subsequent negotiations between the “two rulers of the world”, to which the attention of Europe was riveted, are an insignificant episode for Tolstoy, because the “two rulers of the world” are only occupied with questions of their own prestige and by no means are examples of generosity and nobility. The changes that "were produced at this time in all parts of the state administration" and seemed so important to politicians, diplomats and the government (Speransky's reforms), according to Tolstoy, are slipping on the surface folk life. Tolstoy gives an aphoristically polished formulation of what real life is, and not the appearance of it, which is what they are dealing with. official historians: "Life in the meantime real life people with their own essential interests of health, illness, work, recreation, with their own interests of thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, passions, went on, as always, independently and outside of political proximity or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte, and outside all possible transformations.

And, as if putting aside all the fuss of political news, Tolstoy, after the phrases that "Emperor Alexander traveled to Erfurt", slowly begins the story about the main thing: "Prince Andrey lived without a break for two years in the village"...

Some time later, having gone through the passion for the activities of Speransky, the hero of Tolstoy again returns to the real path: “What do we care what the sovereign was pleased to say in the Senate? Can all this make me happier and better?

You can, of course, object to Tolstoy, but let's remember what his wise hero called happiness. “I know only two real misfortunes in life: remorse and illness. And happiness is only the absence of these two evils. Our moral perfection, let us add, really does not depend on any kind of reforms, policies and meetings of emperors and presidents.

Tolstoy called his work a "book", thereby emphasizing not only the freedom of form, but also the genetic connection between "War and Peace" and the epic experience of Russian and world literature.

Tolstoy's book teaches us to search within ourselves for spiritual resources, the forces of goodness and peace. Even in the most terrible trials, in the face of death, we can be happy and inwardly free, as Tolstoy tells us.

The author of "War and Peace", who conceived "lead many ... heroines and heroes through historical events", in 1865 in one of his letters he says this about his goal: “If I were told that I could write a novel by which I would undeniably establish what seems to me the right view of all social questions, I would not devote even two hours of work to such a novel, but if I were told that what I write, If today's children will read in 20 years and will cry and laugh over him and love life, I would devote all my life and all my strength to him.

Features of the plot-compositional construction of the work. The breadth of the image of Russian national life. Ideological and compositional significance of the opposition of two wars. Description of the Battle of Borodino as the climax of the novel.

The novel has 4 volumes and an epilogue:

Volume 1 - 1805,

Volume 2 - 1806 - 1811,

Volume 3 - 1812,

Volume 4 - 1812 - 1813.

Epilogue - 1820.

In the center of Tolstoy's attention is the indisputably valuable and poetic that the Russian nation is fraught with: both folk life with its centuries-old traditions, and the life of a relatively narrow layer of educated nobles, formed in the post-Petrine century.

Consciousness and behavior best heroes"War and Peace" is deeply determined by national psychology and the fate of Russian culture. And their path to maturity marks an ever greater involvement in the life of their country. The central characters of the novel belong at the same time to that personal culture that was consolidated in Russia during the 18th-19th centuries. under Western European influence, and traditional folk life. The writer insistently emphasizes that the distance poeticized by him, being a universal value, is at the same time truly national. Natasha Rostova, from the very Russian air that she breathed, "sucked into herself" something that allowed her to understand and express "everything that was ... in every Russian person." The Russian feeling of Pierre Bezukhov and especially Kutuzov is repeatedly discussed.

The ability and inclination of a Russian person to an organically free unity, in which class and national barriers are easily overcome, the writer shows, was able to most fully and widely appear in that social stratum, privileged and attached to the culture of the Western European type, to which they belong. central characters novel. It was in Russia a kind of oasis of moral freedom. The customary violence against the individual in the country was leveled here and even reduced to nothing, and thereby opened up space for free communication of everyone with everyone, the personal culture that was being formed in the countries of Western Europe acted in Russia as a “catalyst” of the primordially Russian national content, which it was hitherto an implicitly existing tradition of moral uniting of people on non-hierarchical principles. We see all this in War and Peace, Tolstoy's position on the national question, which is not identical to either Westernism or Slavophilism, clearly showed.

Respect for Western European culture and the idea of ​​its importance for Russia are unequivocally expressed by the image of Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, a representative of the Petrine state, one of the prominent figures of the Catherine era.

A staunch opponent of Napoleonic individualism and the aggressive French statehood of the early 19th century, Tolstoy, instead, consciously inherited the idea of ​​the original harmony of man and his moral freedom, grown in France itself. Acceptance of the cultural impact of the West on Russia is associated with Tolstoy's careful attitude to the Russian national tradition, with close and loving attention to the psychological appearance of the peasant and soldier.

The breadth of the image of Russian national life is manifested in the work when describing life, hunting, Christmas time, Natasha's dance after the hunt.

Russian existence is characterized by Tolstoy as markedly different from Western European life.

Tolstoy focuses only on two military episodes - Shengraben and Austerlitz battles - reflecting two opposite moral states of Russian soldiers and officers. In the first case, Bagration's detachment covers the retreat of Kutuzov's army, the soldiers save their brothers, so that the reader is dealing, as it were, with a hotbed of truth and justice in a war that is essentially alien to the interests of the people; in the second - the soldiers are fighting for no one knows what. These events are shown in the same detail, although there were only 6 thousand Russian troops near Shengraben (Tolstoy had either 4 or 5 thousand), and up to 86 thousand Allied troops participated near Austerlitz. From the small (but morally logical) victory of Shengraben to the great defeat of Austerlitz - such is the semantic scheme of Tolstoy's comprehension of the events of 1805. At the same time, the Shengraben episode emerges as a threshold and analogue people's war 1812

Taken on the initiative of Kutuzov, the Shengraben battle gave the Russian army the opportunity to join forces with its units. In addition, this battle Tolstoy showed the heroism, feat and military duty of the soldiers. In this battle, Timokhin's company "one stayed in order and attacked the French", Timokhin's feat consists in courage and discipline, the quiet Timokhin rescued the rest.

Tushin's battery was during the battle in the hottest area without cover. Captain Tushin acted on his own initiative. In Tushino, Tolstoy discovers a wonderful person. Modesty and selflessness, on the one hand, determination and courage, on the other, based on a sense of duty. This is the norm of human behavior in battle, which determines true heroism.

Dolokhov also shows courage, courage, determination, but, unlike others, he alone boasted of his merits.

In the Battle of Austerlitz, our troops are defeated. During the presentation of the Weyrother plan, Kutuzov is sleeping, which already suggests the future failures of the Russian troops. Tolstoy does not believe that even a well-designed disposition can take into account all circumstances, all accidents, change the course of the battle. Disposition does not determine the course of the battle. The fate of the battle is decided by the spirit of the army, which is made up of the mood of individual participants in the battle. During this battle, a mood of misunderstanding reigns around, turning into panic. The general flight determined the tragic outcome of the battle. According to Tolstoy, Austerlitz is the true end of the war of 1805-1807. This is the era of "our failures and our shame." Austerlitz was an era of shame and disappointment for individual heroes as well. For example, in the soul of Prince Andrei, a revolution takes place, disappointment, and he no longer aspires to his Toulon.

Tolstoy devoted twenty-one chapters of the third volume of "War and Peace" to the description of the Battle of Borodino. The story of Borodino is undoubtedly the central, apex part of the entire epic novel. On the Borodino field - following Kutuzov, Bolkonsky, Timokhin and other soldiers - Pierre Bezukhov understood the whole meaning and all the significance of this war as a sacred, liberation war that the Russian people waged for their land and homeland.

For Tolstoy there was not the slightest doubt that the Russian army had won greatest victory over his opponents, which had huge consequences, " Borodino - best fame Russian troops" he says in the latest volume of War and Peace. He praises Kutuzov, the first to firmly declare: "The battle of Borodino is a victory." Elsewhere Tolstoy says that the battle of Borodino is “an extraordinary, unrepeatable and unexampled Phenomenon”, that it “is one of the most instructive phenomena of history”.

The Russian soldiers who participated in the battle of Borodino did not have a question about what its outcome would be. For each of them it could be only one: victory at any cost! Everyone understood that the fate of the motherland depended on this battle.

The mood of the Russian soldiers before the Battle of Borodino was expressed by Andrei Bolkonsky in a conversation with his friend Pierre Bezukhov: “I think that tomorrow will really depend on us ... From the feeling that is in me, in him,” he pointed to Timokhin, “in every soldier.”

And Captain Timokhin confirms this confidence of his regimental commander. He says: “... Why feel sorry for yourself now! The soldiers in my battalion, believe me, did not drink vodka: not such a day, they say ". And, as if summing up his reflections on the course of the war, relying on his combat experience, Prince Andrei says to Pierre, who is attentively listening to him: “The battle is won by the one who firmly decided to win it ... no matter what happens, no matter what is confused up there, we will win the battle tomorrow. Tomorrow, whatever it is, we will win the battle!”

Soldiers, combat commanders, and Kutuzov were imbued with the same firm confidence.

Prince Andrei persistently and confidently says that for him and for all Russian patriotic soldiers, the war imposed by Napoleon is not a game of chess, but a very serious matter, on the outcome of which the future of every Russian person depends. “Timokhin and the whole army think the same way”, - he again emphasizes, characterizing the unanimity of the Russian soldiers who rose to their death on the Borodino field.

In the unity of the combat mood of the army, Tolstoy saw main nerve war, the decisive condition for victory. This mood was born from the “warmth of patriotism”, which warmed the heart of every Russian soldier, "from the feeling that lay in the soul of the commander in chief, as well as in the soul of every Russian person."

Both the Russian army and Napoleon's army suffered terrible losses on the Borodino field. But if Kutuzov and his associates were sure that Borodino was the victory of Russian weapons, which would radically change the entire further course of the war, then Napoleon and his marshals, although they wrote in reports about the victory, experienced panic fear of a formidable enemy and foresaw near collapse.

Concluding the description of the Battle of Borodino, Tolstoy compares the French invasion with an angry beast and says that "it was supposed to die, bleeding from a fatal wound inflicted at Borodino", for "The blow was fatal."

A direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was Napoleon's unreasonable flight from Moscow, the return along the old Smolensk road, the death of the five hundred thousandth invasion and the death of Napoleonic France, which for the first time near Borodino was laid down by the strongest enemy in spirit. Napoleon and his soldiers in this battle lost their "moral consciousness of superiority."

"Family nests" in the novel

In the epic novel "War and Peace" the family thought is very clearly expressed. Tolstoy makes the reader think about the questions: what is the meaning of life? What is happiness? He believes that Russia is one big family with its own sources and channels. With the help of four volumes and an epilogue, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy wants to lead the reader to the idea that the Russian family is characterized by genuinely lively communication between people who are dear and close to each other, respect for parents and care for children. The family world throughout the novel is opposed as a kind of active force to extra-family discord and alienation. This is both the harsh harmony of the orderly way of the Lysogorsky house, and the poetry of warmth that reigns in the Rostov house with its everyday life and holidays. Tolstoy shows the life of the Rostovs, Bolkonskys, in order to reveal the concept of "family", and the Kuragins, as it were, in opposition.

The world in which the Rostovs live is full of calmness, joy and simplicity. The reader gets to know them at the name day of Natasha and her mother. Despite the fact that they talked about the same things that they talked about in other societies, their reception was distinguished by simplicity. The guests were mostly relatives, most of whom were young people.

“Meanwhile, all this young generation: Boris, Nikolai, Sonya, Petrusha - all settled in the living room and, apparently, tried to keep within the boundaries of decency the animation and gaiety that their every feature still breathed. From time to time they glanced at each other and could hardly keep from laughing.. This proves that the atmosphere that reigned in this family was full of fun and joy.

All people in the Rostov family are open. They never hide secrets from each other and understand each other. This manifests itself at least when Nikolai lost a lot of money. “Natasha, with her sensitivity, also instantly noticed the state of her brother.” Then Nikolai realized that having such a family is happiness. “Oh, how this third trembled and how something better that was in the soul of Rostov was touched. And this “something” was independent of everything in the world and above everything in the world. What losses here, and the Dolokhovs, and honestly! .. All nonsense! You can kill, steal and still be happy ... "

The Rostov family are patriots. Russia is not an empty phrase for them. This is clear from the fact that Petya wants to fight, Nikolai lives only for one service, Natasha gives carts for the wounded.

In the epilogue, Natasha replaces her mother, becomes the guardian of family foundations, a real mistress. “The subject that Natasha completely immersed herself in was the family, that is, the husband, who had to be kept so that he belonged inseparably to her, the house, and the children who had to be carried, given birth, fed, educated”. Nikolai Rostov even calls his daughter Natasha, which means that such families have a future.

Very similar to the Rostov family, the Bolkonsky family is represented in the novel. It is also hospitable open people, patriots of their land. For the old Prince Bolkonsky, the homeland and children are the highest value. He tries to bring up in them the qualities inherent in him, and to take care of the happiness of his children. “Remember one thing: the happiness of your life depends on your decision,”- so he said to his daughter. The old prince succeeds in instilling strength, intelligence and pride in children, which is manifested in the subsequent actions of children. Prince Andrei continues his father's activities in the war. “He closed his eyes, but at the same moment a cannonade crackled in his ears, firing, the sound of wheels, bullets whistle merrily around him, and he experiences that feeling of a tenfold joy of life, which he has not experienced since childhood.”

Like Natasha in the Rostov family, so Marya in the Bolkonsky family is a wise wife. Family is the most important thing for her. "We can risk ourselves, but not our children."

Using the example of the Kuragins, Tolstoy shows the reader a completely different family. For Prince Vasily, the main thing is to “attach your children profitably.” No one in the novel calls them a family, but they say - the house of the Kuragins. All here are vile people, they have no continuation: Helen "died of a terrible fit", Anatole's leg was taken away.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, having shown the Rostov and Bolkonsky families, showed us the ideals of families. Despite the fact that all four volumes are accompanied by war, Tolstoy shows the peaceful life of these families, because, according to Tolstoy, the family is the highest value in a person's life.

Spiritual and moral quest of Andrei Bolkonskyand Pierre Bezukhov

In the center of Tolstoy's attention, as in all his other major works, are intellectual heroes with an analytical mindset. These are Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov (Pyotr Labazov according to the original plan), who carry the main semantic and philosophical load in the novel. In these heroes, traits typical of young people of the 10-20s are guessed. and at the same time for the generation of the 60s. 19th century Contemporaries even reproached Tolstoy for the fact that his heroes are more like the generation of the 60s in the nature of their quests, in the depth and drama of the life questions they face.

We can assume that the life of Prince Andrei consists of two main directions: to an outside observer, he appears as a brilliant secular young man, a representative of a rich and glorious princely family, whose official and secular careers are quite successful. Behind this appearance lies an intelligent, courageous, impeccably honest and decent person, well-educated and proud. His pride is due not only to his origin and upbringing, this is the main "generic" trait of the Bolkonskys and a distinctive feature of the hero's own way of thinking. His sister, Princess Marya, anxiously notes in her brother some kind of “pride of thought”, and Pierre Bezukhov sees in his friend “the ability of dreamy philosophizing”. The main thing that fills the life of Andrei Bolkonsky is intense intellectual and spiritual quests that make up the evolution of his rich inner world.

At the beginning of the novel, Bolkonsky is one of the most prominent in secular society young people. He is married, seems happy, although he does not show himself as such, since all his thoughts are occupied not by his family and unborn child, but by the desire to become famous, to find an opportunity to discover his true abilities and serve the common good. It seems to him that for this, like Napoleon, who is much talked about in Europe, you just need to find a convenient opportunity, "your Toulon." This case soon presents itself to Prince Andrei: the campaign of 1805 that has begun prompts him to join the active army. Having become Kutuzov's adjutant, Bolkonsky manifests himself as a brave and determined officer, as a man of honor, able to separate personal interests from serving the common cause. During a confrontation with staff officers over Mack, he reveals himself to be a man whose feelings dignity and responsibility for the handed case go beyond the limits of conventional wisdom. During the first campaign, Bolkonsky participates in the battles of Shengraben and Austerlitz. On the field of Austerlitz, he performs a feat, rushing forward with a banner and trying to stop the fleeing soldiers. The case helped him find "his Toulon", imitating Napoleon. However, being seriously wounded and looking into the bottomless sky above him, he understands the futility of his former desires and is disappointed in his idol Napoleon, who clearly admires the view of the battlefield and the dead. Admiration for Napoleon distinguished many young people from the beginning of the 19th century and the generation of the 60s. (Hermann from " Queen of Spades” A. S. Pushkin, Raskolnikov from “Crime and Punishment” by F. M. Dostoevsky), but Russian literature consistently opposed the idea of ​​​​Napoleonism, which was deeply individualistic in its essence. In this regard, in the history of Russian and world literature, the image of Andrei Bolkonsky, like the image of Pierre Bezukhov, carries the greatest semantic load.

The experience of disappointment in the idol and the desire for fame, the shock of the death of his wife, before which Prince Andrei feels guilty, close the life of the hero within the family. He thinks that from now on his existence should be limited only by his own interests, but it is during this period that he lives for the first time not for himself, but for his loved ones. This time turns out to be extremely important for the inner state of the hero, since during the two years of his village life he changed his mind a lot, read a lot. Bolkonsky is generally distinguished by a rationalistic way of comprehending life, he is used to trusting only his own mind. The meeting with Natasha Rostova awakens emotionally alive feelings in the hero, makes him return to an active life.

Participating in the war of 1812, Prince Andrei, earlier than many others, begins to understand true essence events, it is he who tells Pierre before the Battle of Borodino about his observations on the spirit of the troops, about his decisive role in the war. The wound received, the influence of the experienced military events, reconciliation with Natasha produce a decisive upheaval in the inner world of Prince Andrei. He begins to understand people, forgive their weaknesses, understands that the true meaning of life is love for others. However, these discoveries produce a moral breakdown in the hero. Stepping over his pride, Prince Andrei gradually fades away, not even in a dream overcoming the approaching death. The truth of “living human life” revealed to him is greater and immeasurably higher than what his proud soul can contain.

The most complex and complete comprehension of life (based on the fusion of intuitive, emotional and rational principles) marked the image of Pierre Bezukhov. From the moment of his first appearance in the novel, Pierre is distinguished by naturalness. He is a gentle and enthusiastic person, good-natured and open, trusting, but passionate, and sometimes prone to outbursts of anger.

The hero's first serious life test is the inheritance of his father's fortune and title, which leads to an unsuccessful marriage and a whole series of troubles that follow this step. Pierre's penchant for philosophical reasoning and unhappiness in his personal life bring him closer to the Freemasons, but the ideals and participants in this movement soon disappoint him. Under the influence of new ideas, Pierre tries to improve the life of his peasants, but his impracticality leads to failure and disappointment in the very idea of ​​​​rebuilding peasant life.

Most difficult period Pierre's life - 1812. Through the eyes of Pierre, readers of the novel see the famous comet of 1812, which, by common belief, foreshadowed extraordinary and terrible events; for the hero, this time is further complicated by the fact that he realizes his deep love for Natasha Rostova.

The events of the war make Pierre completely disappointed in his former idol Napoleon. Having gone to observe the battle of Borodino, Pierre becomes a witness to the unity of the defenders of Moscow, he himself participates in the battle. On the Borodino field, Pierre’s last meeting with his friend Andrei Bolkonsky takes place, expressing the idea that he deeply suffered that the real understanding of life is where “they”, i.e., ordinary Russian soldiers. Having experienced a sense of unity with others and involvement in a common cause during the battle, Pierre remains in a deserted Moscow to kill Napoleon, his worst enemy and all of humanity, but as an "arsonist" he is captured.

In captivity, a new meaning of existence opens up for Pierre, at first he realizes the impossibility of capturing not the body, but the living, immortal soul of a person. There he meets Platon Karataev, in communication with whom the meaning of life, the people's worldview is revealed for him.

The image of Platon Karataev is of paramount importance for understanding the philosophical meaning of the novel. The appearance of the hero is made up of symbolic features: something round, smelling of bread, calm and affectionate. Not only in appearance, but also in the behavior of Karataev, true wisdom, a folk philosophy of life, is unconsciously expressed, over the comprehension of which the main characters of the epic novel are tormented. Plato does not reason, but lives as his inner worldview dictates: he knows how to "settle down" in any conditions, he is always calm, good-natured and affectionate. In his stories and conversations, there is an idea that one must humble oneself and love life, even when one suffers innocently. After the death of Plato, Pierre sees a symbolic dream in which the “world” appears before him in the form of a living ball covered with drops of water. The essence of this dream is the life truth of Karataev: a person is a drop in the human sea, and his life has meaning and purpose only as a part and at the same time a reflection of this whole. In captivity, for the first time in his life, Pierre finds himself placed in a common position with all the people. Under the influence of acquaintance with Karataev, the hero, who had not seen “eternal and infinite in anything” before, learned to “see the eternal and infinite in everything. And that eternal and infinite was God,

Pierre Bezukhov has many autobiographical features of the writer himself, whose inner evolution took place in the struggle between the spiritual and intellectual principles and the sensual and passionate. The image of Pierre is one of the most important in Tolstoy's work, as it embodies not only the laws of historical reality, but also the basic principles of life, as the author understands them, reflects the main direction of the spiritual development of the writer himself, ideologically correlates with the characters of Russian literature of the 19th century.

After leading the hero through life's trials, in the epilogue Tolstoy shows Pierre as a happy man, married to Natasha Rostova.

Historical and philosophical views of Tolstoy and the official historiography of his time. Interpretation of the images of Kutuzov and Napoleon

For a long time, there was an opinion in literary criticism that Tolstoy originally planned to write a family chronicle, the action of which was to unfold against the backdrop of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812, and only in the process of work did the writer gradually develop a historical novel with a certain historical and philosophical concept. This point of view seems to be largely fair, especially if we take into account that the writer chose mainly his closest relatives as prototypes for the main characters of the work. So, the prototype of the old Prince Bolkonsky was the writer's maternal grandfather, Prince N. S. Volkonsky, in Princess Marya, many traits of the character and appearance of the writer's mother are guessed. Grandfather and grandmother Tolstoy became the prototypes of the Rostovs, Nikolai Rostov resembles the writer's father in some facts of the biography, and one of the distant relatives who were brought up in the house of the Counts Tolstoy, T. Ergolskaya, is the prototype of Sonya. All these people actually lived in the era described by Tolstoy. However, from the very beginning of the implementation of the plan, as the manuscripts of "War and Peace" testify, the writer worked on a historical work. This is confirmed not only by Tolstoy's early and enduring interest in history, but also by his serious approach to portraying historical events. Almost in parallel with the beginning of his literary activity, he read many historical books, including, for example, "Russian History" by N. G. Ustryalov and "History of the Russian State" by N. M. Karamzin. In the year of reading these historical works (1853), Tolstoy wrote significant words in his diary: “I would write the epigraph to the History: “I will not hide anything.” From his youth, in history, he was more attracted to the fates and movements of entire peoples, and not to the specific facts of the biographies of famous historical figures. And at the same time, large-scale historical events were not conceived by Tolstoy out of connection with human life. It is not for nothing that in the early diary entries there is this one: "Every historical fact must be explained humanly."

The writer himself claimed that during the period of work on the novel he had compiled a whole library of books about the era of 1805 - 1812. and wherever it is about real events and real historical figures, he relies on documentary sources, and not on his own fiction. Among the sources used by Tolstoy are the works of Russian and French historians, for example, A. Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky and A. Thiers, notes of participants in the events of those years: F. Glinka, S. Glinka, I. Lazhechnikov, D. Davydov, I. Radozhitsky and others, works fiction- works by V. Zhukovsky, I. Krylov, M. Zagoskin. The writer also used graphic images of the main battlefields, oral accounts of eyewitnesses of the events, private correspondence of that time and his own impressions of the trip to the Borodino field.

A serious study of historical sources, a comprehensive study of the era allowed Tolstoy to develop his own view of the events depicted, about which he wrote to MP Pogodin in March 1868: “My view of history is not a random paradox that occupied me for a moment. These thoughts are the fruit of all the mental work of my life and constitute an inseparable part of that world outlook, which God alone knows, by what labors and sufferings, developed in me and gave me perfect peace and happiness. It was the thoughts about history that became the basis of this novel, based on the historical and philosophical concept thought out and nurtured by the author.

Kutuzov goes through the whole book, almost unchanged in appearance: an old man with a gray head "on a huge thick body", with clean washed scar folds there, "where the Ishmael bullet pierced his head." He "slowly and listlessly" walks in front of the shelves at the review in Braunau; dozing at a military council in front of Austerlitz and heavily kneeling before the icon on the eve of Borodin. He almost does not change internally throughout the entire novel: at the beginning of the war of 1805, we have the same calm, wise, all-understanding Kutuzov as at the end of the Patriotic War of 1812.

He is a man, and nothing human is alien to him: the old commander-in-chief gets tired, sits on a horse with difficulty, gets out of the carriage with difficulty; before our eyes, he slowly, with effort, chews fried chicken, enthusiastically reads easy french novel, mourns the death of an old friend, is angry with Bennigsen, obeys the tsar, says to Pierre in a secular tone: “I have the honor to be an admirer of your wife, is she healthy? My halt is at your service ... ". And with all this, in our minds he stands apart, apart from all people; we guess about his inner life, which has not changed in seven years, and bow before this life, because it is filled with responsibility for his country, and he does not share this responsibility with anyone, he bears it himself.

Even during the Battle of Borodino, Tolstoy emphasized that Kutuzov "did not make any orders, but only agreed or disagreed with what was offered to him." But he "I gave orders when it was required by subordinates", and shouted at Wolzogen, who brought him the news that the Russians were fleeing.

Contrasting Kutuzov with Napoleon, Tolstoy seeks to show how calmly Kutuzov will surrender to the will of events, how little, in essence, he leads the troops, knowing that "fate of battles" decides "an elusive force called the spirit of the army."

But, when necessary, he leads armies and gives orders that no one else would dare. The Battle of Shengraben would have been Austerlitz without Kutuzov's decision to send Bagration's detachment forward through the Bohemian Mountains. Leaving Moscow, he not only wanted to save the Russian army, he understood that the Napoleonic troops would disperse throughout the huge city, and this would lead to the decomposition of the army - without losses, without battles, the death of the French army would begin.

The war of 1812 was won by the people led by Kutuzov. He did not outwit Napoleon: he turned out to be wiser than this brilliant commander, because he better understood the nature of the war, which was not like any of the previous wars.

Not only Napoleon, but also the Russian Tsar had a poor understanding of the nature of the war, and this hindered Kutuzov. "The Russian army was ruled by Kutuzov with his headquarters and the sovereign from St. Petersburg." In St. Petersburg, plans for the war were drawn up, Kutuzov had to be guided by these plans.

Kutuzov considered it right to wait until the French army, which had decomposed in Moscow, left the city itself. But pressure was exerted on him from all sides, and he was forced to give the order for battle. , "which he did not approve of".

It is sad to read about the Battle of Tarutino. For the first time, Tolstoy calls Kutuzov not old, but decrepit - this month of the French stay in Moscow was not in vain for the old man. But his own, Russian generals are forcing him to lose his last strength. They stopped obeying Kutuzov unquestioningly - on the day, involuntarily appointed by him for the battle, the order was not transmitted to the troops - and the battle did not take place.

For the first time we see Kutuzov lost his temper: “shaking, panting, the old man, having come into that state of rage, in which he was able to come when he was lying on the ground from anger”, attacked the first officer he came across, "Screaming and swearing in vulgar words...

- What kind of canal is this? Shoot the bastards! he shouted hoarsely, waving his arms and staggering.

Why do we forgive Kutuzov and rage, and abuse, and threats to shoot him? Because we know: he is right in his unwillingness to fight; he doesn't want extra losses. His opponents think about awards and crosses, others proudly dream of a feat; but the correctness of Kutuzov is above all: he does not care about himself, but about the army, about the country. Therefore, we pity the old man so much, sympathize with his cry, and hate those who brought him to a state of rage.

The battle nevertheless took place the next day - and a victory was won, but Kutuzov was not very happy about it, because people who could live were killed.

After the victory, he and the soldiers remain themselves - a fair and kind old man, whose feat is accomplished, and the people standing around love him, believe him.

But as soon as he gets into the environment of the king, he begins to feel that he is not loved, but deceived, they do not believe him, and they laugh at him behind his back. Therefore, in the presence of the tsar and his retinue, Kutuzov’s face is set "the same submissive and senseless expression with which, seven years ago, he listened to the orders of the sovereign on the field of Austerlitz."

But then there was a defeat - although not through his fault, but through the royal one. Now - a victory won by the people who chose him as their leader. The king has to understand this.

“Kutuzov raised his head and for a long time looked into the eyes of Count Tolstoy, who, with some small thing on a silver platter, stood in front of him. Kutuzov did not seem to understand what they wanted from him.

Suddenly, he seemed to remember: a barely perceptible smile flickered on his plump face, and he, bending low, respectfully, took the object lying on the dish. It was George of the 1st degree. Tolstoy calls the highest order of the state, first a "little thing", and then an "object". Why is that? Because no awards can measure what Kutuzov did for his country.

He fulfilled his duty to the end. Completed without thinking about rewards - he knows too much about life to desire rewards. The author of War and Peace poses the question: “But how could this old man, alone, contrary to the opinion of everyone, guess so correctly the meaning of the popular meaning of events that he never betrayed him in all his activity?” He was able to do this, Tolstoy replies, because the "people's feeling" lived in him, making him related to all the true defenders of the motherland. In all the deeds of Kutuzov lay the people's and therefore truly great and invincible principle.

“There was nothing left for the representative of the people's war but death. And he died." Thus ends Tolstoy's last chapter on the war.

Napoleon doubles in our eyes: it is impossible to forget a short man with thick legs, smelling of cologne - this is how Napoleon appears at the beginning of the third volume of War and Peace. But it is impossible to forget another Napoleon: Pushkin's, Lermontov's - powerful, tragically majestic.

According to Tolstoy's theory, Napoleon was powerless in the Russian war: he “was like a child who, holding on to the ribbons tied inside the carriage, imagines that he rules.”

Tolstoy was not objective in relation to Napoleon: this man of genius determined a lot in the history of Europe and the whole world, and in the war with Russia he was not powerless, but turned out to be weaker than his opponent - "strongest in spirit" as Tolstoy himself said.

Napoleon is individualism at its extreme. But the structure of Bonapartism inevitably includes acting, i.e. life on the stage, under the gaze of the audience. Napoleon is inseparable from phrase and gesture, he plays with what he imagines his army sees. "In what light shall I present myself to them!" is his constant refrain. On the contrary, Kutuzov always behaves in such a way “as if there weren’t those 2000 people who were looking at him without breathing.”

On the very first pages of "War and Peace" there is a sharp dispute about Napoleon, it is started by the guests of the salon noble lady Anna Pavlovna Sherer. This dispute ends only in the epilogue of the novel.

For the author of the novel, not only was there nothing attractive in Napoleon, but, on the contrary, Tolstoy always considered him a man who had "the mind and conscience were darkened" and therefore all his actions "were too opposed to truth and goodness ...". Not a statesman who can read in the minds and souls of people, but a spoiled, capricious and narcissistic poseur - this is how the emperor of France appears in many scenes of the novel. Let us recall, for example, the scene of the reception by Napoleon of the Russian ambassador Balashev, who arrived with a letter from Emperor Alexander. “Despite Balashev’s habit of court solemnity,” writes Tolstoy, “the luxury and splendor of Napoleon’s court struck him.” Taking Balashev, Napoleon calculated everything in order to make an irresistible impression on the Russian ambassador of strength and grandeur, power and nobility. He received Balashev in "The best time is in the morning." He was dressed up in “The most, in his opinion, his majestic costume is an open uniform with a ribbonlegion d" honneur on a white pique waistcoat and over the knee boots that he used for riding. On his instructions, various preparations were made for the reception of the Russian ambassador. “The collection of the Honoring retinue at the entrance was also calculated.” Describing how the conversation between Napoleon and the Russian ambassador went, Tolstoy notes a vivid detail. As soon as Napoleon became irritated, “His face trembled, the left calf of the leg began to tremble measuredly.”

Deciding that the Russian ambassador had completely gone over to his side and "should rejoice at the humiliation of his former master," Napoleon wanted to "caress" Balashov. He "raised his hand to the face of the forty-year-old Russian general, and, .past in his ear, slightly pulled ...". It turns out that this humiliating human dignity gesture was considered "the greatest honor and favor at the French court."

Among other details characterizing Napoleon, in the same scene, his manner of “looking past” the interlocutor is noted.

Having met the Russian ambassador, he looked into Balashov's face with his big eyes and immediately began to look past him. Tolstoy lingers on this detail and finds it necessary to accompany it with the author's commentary. "Obviously it was says the writer, that he was not at all interested in Balashov's personality. It was evident that only what was going on 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.

In the episode with the Polish lancers who rushed into the Viliya River to please the emperor. They were sinking, and Napoleon did not even look at them.

Driving through the Austerlitz battlefield, Napoleon showed complete indifference to the dead, wounded and dying.

Tolstoy considered the most characteristic feature of the French emperor "bright mental faculties obscured by the madness of self-adoration."

The imaginary greatness of Napoleon is denounced with particular force in the scene depicting him on Poklonnaya Hill, from where he admired the wondrous panorama of Moscow. “Here it is the capital; she lies at my feet, waiting for her fate... One word of mine, one movement of my hand, and this ancient capital perished...”.

Showing the inevitability of the collapse of Napoleon's claims to create a world empire under his supreme power, Tolstoy debunked the cult strong personality, the cult of the "superman". The sharp satirical denunciation of the cult of Napoleon in the pages of War and Peace, as we see, retains its significance to this day.

For Tolstoy, the main thing is always best quality what he values ​​in people is humanity. Napoleon is inhuman, sending hundreds of people to death with a wave of his hand. Kutuzov is always humane, striving to save people's lives even in the cruelty of war.

This same natural - according to Tolstoy - feeling of humanity lives now, when the enemy has been expelled, in the souls of ordinary soldiers; it contains the highest nobility that the victor can show.

"People's Thought" and the main ways of its implementation in the work. Tolstoy on the role of the people in history

Such striking features as immaturity, dreaminess, softness and complacency, which in their development lead to forgiveness, to non-resistance to evil by violence, Tolstoy gave in the image of Platon Karataev.

The type of Platon Karataev reveals only one side of the image of the people in the war of 1812, one of the manifestations of the character and mood of the Russian serfs. Other aspects of it, such as a sense of patriotism, courage and activity, enmity and distrust of the landowner, and finally, direct rebellious moods, found their no less vivid and truthful reflection in the images of Tikhon Shcherbaty, Danila of Rostov, Bogucharov peasants. It is a mistake to consider the image of Platon Karataev outside the whole system of images of the novel, embodying the image of the people. Nor should one exaggerate the strength of the reactionary tendency in Tolstoy's worldview in the 1960s. Tolstoy treats Tikhon Shcherbaty with no less sympathy as an exponent of the active principle in the national character. Finally, it is necessary to approach the very image of Karataev more thoughtfully and impartially.

The same attitude towards people, regardless of their position in life, love for people, especially those in trouble, the desire to pity, console and caress a person experiencing grief or misfortune, curiosity and participation in the life of every person, love for nature, for all living things - these are moral and psychological features of Karataev. Tolstoy also notes in it the artel beginning; Karataev's admiration for those who managed to sacrifice themselves for the common joy and satisfaction. Unlike worldly drones, Karataev does not know what idleness is: even in captivity, he is always busy with some kind of work. Tolstoy emphasizes the labor basis of Karataev's personality. Like any other industrious peasant, he knows how to do everything that is necessary in peasant life, about which he speaks with great respect. Even a long and difficult soldier's service did not destroy the working peasant in Karataev. All these features historically correctly convey some features of the moral and psychological image of the Russian patriarchal peasantry with its labor psychology, curiosity, noted by Turgenev in the “Notes of a Hunter”, with the community life of the artel brought up in him, with his inherent benevolent, humane and good-natured attitude to people in trouble, which centuries of their own suffering have worked out in the Russian peasantry. The spirit of simplicity and truth inherent in Karataev, which breathed on Pierre, expressed the trait of truth-seeking, characteristic of the Russian folk type of serfdom. Not without the influence of the age-old people's dream about the truth, the Bogucharovites also moved to the mythical, but so real for them "warm rivers". A certain part of the peasantry was undoubtedly characterized by that humility and humility before the blows of life, which determine Karataev's attitude towards it.

It is indisputable that Karataev's humility and obedience are idealized by Tolstoy. Karataevism in the sense that a person is doomed to his fate was associated with the philosophy of fatalism that pervades Tolstoy's publicistic reasoning in the novel. Karataev is a convinced fatalist. In his opinion, it is impossible for a person to condemn others, to protest against injustice: everything that is done is for the better, “God's judgment”, the will of providence, is manifested everywhere. “Back in the early 1960s, when thinking about a story from peasant life, Tolstoy wrote about its hero: “He does not live, but God leads.” He realized this idea in Karataev"- notes S.P. Bychkov. And although Tolstoy shows that the position of non-resistance to evil led Karataev to a useless death from an enemy bullet somewhere in a ditch, he, in the image of Platon Karataev, idealized the features of the naive patriarchal peasantry, its backwardness and downtroddenness, its political bad manners, fruitless daydreaming, its gentleness and forgiveness . Nevertheless, Karataev is not an "artificially constructed" holy fool. His image embodies the very real, but inflated, idealized by the writer side of the moral and psychological image of the Russian patriarchal peasantry.

TO people's Russia such characters of the novel as simple army officers Tushin and Timokhin belong both in their origin, in their temperament, and in their worldview. Coming from the people's environment, people who had nothing to do with "baptized property", they look at things like a soldier, because they themselves were soldiers. Inconspicuous, but genuine heroism was a natural manifestation of their moral nature, like the everyday ordinary heroism of soldiers and partisans. In the image of Tolstoy, they are the same embodiment of the national element, like Kutuzov, with whom Timokhin went through a harsh military path starting from Ishmael. They express the very essence of the Russian army. In the system of images of the novel, he is followed by Vaska Denisov, with whom we are already entering the privileged world. In the military types of the novel, Tolstoy recreates all the stages and transitions in the Russian army of that time from the nameless soldier who felt Moscow behind him to Field Marshal Kutuzov. But military types are also located along two lines: one is associated with military labors and exploits, with simplicity and humanity of views and attitudes, with honest fulfillment of duty; the other - with a world of privileges, brilliant careers, "roubles, ranks, crosses" and at the same time cowardice and indifference to business and duty. This is exactly what happened in the real historical Russian army of that time.

People's Russia is embodied in the novel and in the image of Natasha Rostova. Drawing the types of a Russian girl, Tolstoy connects her unusualness with the moral influence of the people's environment and folk customs on her. Natasha is a noblewoman by origin, according to the world around her, but there is nothing landowner-serf in this girl. It is noteworthy that servants and serfs treat Natasha with love, always willingly, with a joyful smile, fulfilling her orders. She has an extremely inherent sense of closeness to everything Russian, to everything folk - and to native nature, and to ordinary Russian people, and to Moscow, and to Russian song and dance. She “she knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, and in Anisya’s father, and in her aunt, and in the manner of her mother, and in every Russian person”. The Russian folk principle in the life of the uncle delighted and excited the sensitive Natasha, in whose soul this principle is always the main and determining one. Nikolai, her brother, is simply having fun, experiencing pleasure, while Natasha is immersed in the world that is dear to her soul, experiencing the joy of direct communication with him. This is felt by the uncle's courtyard people, who, in turn, are delighted with the simplicity and spiritual closeness of this young lady-countess to them. Natasha experiences in this episode the same feelings that Andrei Bolkonsky experienced in communication with his regiment and Pierre Bezukhov in closeness with Karataev. The moral and patriotic feeling brought Natasha closer to the people's environment, just as their spiritual development brought Pierre and Prince Andrei closer to this environment. Organically connected with Russian folk culture, Natasha Tolstoy clearly contrasts the superficial hypocritical false "culture" of the sentimental Julie Karagina. At the same time, Natasha is also different from Marya Bolkonskaya with her religious and moral world.

The feeling of connection with the motherland and the purity of the direct moral feeling, which Tolstoy especially highly valued in people, led to the fact that Natasha also naturally and simply performed her patriotic act when leaving Moscow, just as Tikhon Shcherbaty naturally and simply performed his exploits or Kutuzov did his great deed .

She belonged to those Russian women whose features Nekrasov glorified shortly after War and Peace. She is not distinguished from the progressive girl of the 60s. moral qualities, not the inability to feat and self-sacrifice - Natasha is ready for them, but only the time-conditioned features of her spiritual development. Tolstoy valued his wife and mother above all in a woman, but his admiration for Natasha's maternal and family feelings did not contradict the moral ideal of the Russian people.

In addition, it was the people's strength that determined the victory of the Russians in the war. Tolstoy believes that it was not the orders of the command, not the plans and dispositions that determined our victory, but the many simple, natural actions of individual people: what “the men Karp and Vlas ... and all the countless number of such men did not bring hay to Moscow for the good money that they were offered, but burned it”; what "partisans destroyed the Great Army in parts", that partisan detachments “There were hundreds of different sizes and characters ... There was a deacon, the head of the party, who took several hundred prisoners a month. There was an elder, Vasilisa, who beat hundreds of Frenchmen.

Tolstoy quite accurately understood the meaning of the feeling that created the guerrilla war, forced people to set fire to their houses. Growing out of this feeling "The club of the people's war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength, and ... without understanding anything, it rose, fell and nailed the French until the entire invasion died."

Mastery psychological analysis Tolstoy

A distinctive feature of Tolstoy's work is the study of the moral aspects of human existence. As a realist writer, the problems of society interested and worried him, first of all, from the point of view of morality. The writer saw the source of evil in the spiritual imperfection of the personality, and therefore important place assigned to the moral self-consciousness of man.

Heroes of Tolstoy pass hard way search for goodness and justice, leading to the comprehension of the universal problems of being. The author endows his characters with a rich and contradictory inner world, which is revealed to the reader gradually, throughout the entire work. This principle of creating an image lies, first of all, at the heart of the characters of Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova.

One of the important psychological tricks, which Tolstoy uses, is an image of the inner world of the hero in his development. Analyzing the early works of the writer, N. G. Chernyshevsky came to the conclusion that the "dialectic of the soul" is one of the striking features of the writer's creative method.

Tolstoy reveals to readers the complex process of the formation of the personality of heroes, the core of which is a person's self-assessment of his thoughts and actions. For example, Pierre Bezukhov constantly questions, analyzes his actions. He looks for the causes of his mistakes and always finds them in himself. Tolstoy sees this as a guarantee of the formation of a morally whole person. The writer managed to show how a person creates himself through self-improvement. Before the eyes of the reader, Pierre - quick-tempered, not keeping his word, leading an aimless lifestyle, although generous, kind, open - becomes "an important and necessary person in society", dreaming of creating a union "of all honest people for the "common good and common security".

The path of Tolstoy's heroes to sincere feelings and aspirations that are not subject to the false laws of society is not easy. Such is the "road of honor" of Andrei Bolkonsky. It doesn't take long for him to discover true love to Natasha, hidden behind a mask of false ideas about self-esteem; it is difficult for him to forgive Kuragin, "love for this man," which will nevertheless fill "his happy heart." Before his death, Andrei will find “the love that God preached on earth,” but he is no longer destined to live on this earth. Long was the path of Bolkonsky from the search for glory, the satisfaction of his ambition for compassion and love for his neighbors, he went this path and gave a dear price for it - his life.

Tolstoy conveys in detail and accurately the nuances of the psychological state of the characters, which guides them in the commission of this or that act. The author deliberately poses seemingly insoluble problems for his characters, deliberately "forces" them to commit unseemly acts in order to show the complexity of human characters, their ambiguity, and the way to overcome, purify the human soul. No matter how bitter was the cup of shame and self-abasement that Natasha drank when she met Kuragin, she endured this test with dignity. She was tormented not by her own grief, but by the evil that she had done to Prince Andrei, and she saw only her own guilt, and not Anatole's.

The inner monologues that Tolstoy uses in the fictional narrative contribute to the disclosure of the spiritual state of the characters. Experiences that are invisible from the side sometimes characterize the hero more clearly than his actions. In the battle of Shengraben, Nikolai Rostov faced death for the first time: “What kind of people are these?.. Are they running towards me? And for what? Kill me? Me, whom everyone loves so much? . And the author's comment complements the psychological state of a person in a war, during an attack, where it is impossible to establish boundaries between courage and cowardice: “He remembered the love for him of his mother, family, friends, and the intention of the enemies to kill him seemed impossible” . Nikolai will experience a similar state more than once before he overcomes the feeling of fear in himself.

The writer often uses such a means of psychological characterization of characters as a dream. This helps to reveal the secrets of the human psyche, processes that are not controlled by the mind. In a dream, Petya Rostov hears music that fills him with vitality and a desire to do great things. And his death is perceived by the reader as a broken musical motive.

The psychological portrait of the hero is complemented by his impressions of the surrounding world. Moreover, in Tolstoy, this is conveyed by a neutral narrator through the feelings and experiences of the hero himself. So, the reader sees the episode of the Battle of Borodino through the eyes of Pierre, and Kutuzov at the military council in Fili is transmitted through the perception of the peasant girl Malasha.

The principle of contrast, opposition, antithesis - which determines the artistic structure of "War and Peace" - is also expressed in the psychological characteristics of the characters. How differently the soldiers call Prince Andrei - "our prince", and Pierre - "our master"; how differently the characters feel themselves in the people's environment. The perception of people as "cannon fodder" occurs more than once in Bolkonsky as opposed to the unity, merger of Bezukhov with the soldiers on the Borodino field and in captivity.

Against the backdrop of a large-scale, epic narrative, Tolstoy manages to penetrate into the depths of the human soul, to show the reader the development of the inner world of heroes, the path of their moral improvement or the process of moral devastation, as in the case of the Kuragin family. All this allows the writer to reveal his ethical principles, to lead the reader along the path of his own self-improvement. As L.N. Tolstoy, a real work of art does that in the mind of the perceiver the division between him and the artist is destroyed, and not only between him and the artist, but also between him and all people.

Chronicle traditions in the novel. Symbolic images in the work

Tolstoy's historical reasoning is rather a superstructure on his artistic vision of history than its basis. And this superstructure, in turn, has an important artistic function, from which it should not be torn away. Historical reasoning reinforces the artistic monumentalism of "War and Peace" and is similar to the digressions of ancient Russian chroniclers from what is being told. To the same extent as those of the chroniclers, these historical arguments in War and Peace diverge from the actual side of the matter and are, to a certain extent, internally contradictory. They are reminiscent of the moral instructions spontaneously arising from the chronicler to readers. These digressions of the chronicler arise in relation to this or that case, but are not a holistic understanding of the entire course of history.

B. M. Eikhenbaum was the first to compare Tolstoy with a chronicler, but he noticed the similarity in a peculiar inconsistency of presentation, which he, following I. P. Eremin, considered inherent in chronicle writing.

The Old Russian chronicler, however, in his own way consistently described what was happening. True, in some cases - where the facts came into contact with his religious worldview, - there was, as it were, a flash of his preaching pathos and he embarked on arguments about the "executions of God", subjecting to this his ideological interpretation only an insignificant part of what he was talking about.

Tolstoy as an artist, like a chronicler-narrator, is much broader than a historical moralist. But Tolstoy's discourses on history have, however, an important artistic function, emphasizing the significance of what is artistically presented, giving the novel the chronicle meditativeness it needs.

The work on "War and Peace" was preceded not only by Tolstoy's passion for history, attention to the life of a peasant, but also by intensive and serious pedagogy, resulting in the creation of special, professionally written educational literature and books for children's reading. And it was during the period of studies in pedagogy that Tolstoy's passion for ancient Russian literature and folklore came to him. In "War and Peace" three elements, three streams seem to have merged: this is Tolstoy's interest in history, especially European and Russian, which appeared in the writer almost simultaneously with the beginning of his literary activity, this is the constant desire, accompanying Tolstoy from a young age, to understand the people, to help him and, finally, to merge with him, this is the whole store of spiritual wealth and knowledge perceived and received by the writer through literature. And one of the strongest literary impressions of the time preceding the work on the novel was what Tolstoy called “folk literature.

Since 1871, the writer began direct work on the "ABC", which, as you know, included extracts from the "Nestor Chronicle" and adaptations of the lives. He began to collect material for the ABC in 1868, while work on War and Peace was abandoned only in 1869. The very idea of ​​the ABC appeared as early as 1859. Taking into account the fact that Tolstoy began to actually write your works only after at least the basic outlines of the idea took shape, after the material necessary for the work was collected and comprehended, we can confidently say that the years of the creation of War and Peace are the years lived by the writer and under the impression of periodic reference to the monuments of ancient literature . In addition, studying Karamzin's "History of the Russian State" as a source, Tolstoy comprehended the annals.

Description of the sky

During the Austrellitsky battle Andrei Bolkonsky was wounded. When he fell and saw the sky above him, he realized that his desire for Toulon was meaningless and empty. "What is this? I'm falling? I have legs buckle," he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the fight between the French and the artillerymen ended, and wishing to know whether the red-haired artilleryman had been killed or not, whether the guns had been taken or saved. But he didn't take anything. Above him there was nothing now but the sky—a high sky, not clear, but still immeasurably high, with gray clouds quietly creeping across it. “How quiet, calm and solemn, not at all like I was running,” thought Prince Andrei, “not like we were running, shouting and fighting; not at all like the Frenchman dragging each other’s bannik with angry and frightened faces and artilleryman, "the clouds crawl across that lofty, endless sky in no way. How could I not have seen that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have recognized it at last. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a lie, except this endless sky. Nothing, nothing no, except for him. But there’s not even that, there’s nothing but silence, calmness. And thank God! ..”

Description of oak

The description of the oak in the work is very symbolic. The first description is given when Andrei Bolkonsky travels to Otradnoye in the spring. “There was an oak tree on the edge of the road. Probably ten times older than the birches that made up the forest, it was ten times thicker and twice as tall as each birch. It was a huge, two-girth oak, with boughs broken off long ago, apparently, and with broken bark, overgrown with old sores. With his huge clumsy, asymmetrically spread out clumsy hands and fingers, he stood between smiling birches like an old, angry and contemptuous freak. Only he alone did not want to submit to the charm of spring and did not want to see either spring or the sun.

“Spring, and love, and happiness!” This oak seemed to be saying. happiness. Look, the crushed dead fir trees are sitting, always the same, and there I spread my broken, peeled fingers, wherever they grew - from the back, from the sides. As they grew - I stand, and I do not believe your hopes and deceptions " . Seeing the oak, Prince Andrei understands that he must live out his life without doing evil, without worrying, and without wanting anything.

The second description of the oak is given when Bolkonsky returns from Otradnoye at the beginning of June. " The old oak, all transformed, spread out like a tent of juicy, dark greenery, was thrilled, slightly swaying in the rays of the evening sun. No clumsy fingers, no sores, no old grief and mistrust - nothing was visible. Juicy, young leaves broke through the hundred-year-old hard bark without knots, so that it was impossible to believe that it was the old man who produced them. “Yes, this is the same oak tree,” thought Prince Andrei, and an unreasonable spring feeling of joy and renewal suddenly came over him. All the best moments of his life were suddenly remembered to him at the same time. And Austerlitz with a high sky, and the dead reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and a girl excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon - and all this was suddenly remembered to him.

He now concludes that “No, life is not over at thirty-one ... Not only do I know everything that is in me, it is necessary that I all know this: both Pierre and this girl who wanted to fly into the sky, it is necessary that everyone they knew me, so that my life would not go on for me alone, so that they would not live like this girl, regardless of my life, so that it would be reflected in everyone and so that they all lived with me together!

Bald Mountains

The name "Bald Mountains", like the name of the Rostovs' estate "Otradnoye", is indeed deeply non-random and symbolic, but its meaning is at least ambiguous. The phrase "Bald Mountains" is associated with barrenness (bald) and with elevation in pride (mountains, high place). Both the old prince and Prince Andrei are distinguished by the rationality of consciousness (according to Tolstoy, spiritually unfruitful, in contrast to the natural simplicity of Pierre and the truth of intuition, characteristic of Natasha Rostova), and pride. In addition, Bald Mountains - apparently, a kind of transformation of the name of the Tolstoy estate Yasnaya Polyana: Bald (open, unshaded) - Clear; Mountains - Polyana (and in contrast "high place - lowland"). As you know, the description of life in the Bald Mountains (and in Otradnoye) is inspired by the impressions of Yasnaya Polyana family life.

Titus, mushrooms, beekeeper, Natasha

On the eve of the Battle of Austerlitz in the courtyard of Kutuzov, the voices of orderly packing were heard; one voice, probably a coachman, teasing the old Kutuzov cook, whom Prince Andrei knew and whose name was Titus, said:

- "Tit, and Tit?

"Well," replied the old man.

“Titus, go thresh,” said the joker.

"And yet I love and cherish only the triumph over all of them, I cherish this mysterious power and glory, which here rushes over me in this fog!"

The teasing, "automatically" repeated remark of the coachman, a question that does not require an answer, expresses and emphasizes the absurdity and uselessness of the war. Groundless and "vague" (the mention of fog is very significant) dreams of Prince Andrei contrast with it. This remark is repeated a little lower, in chapter XVIII, which describes the retreat of the Russian army after the Austerlitz rout:

"-Tit, and Tit!" - said the bereytor.

-What? the old man replied absentmindedly.

-Tit! Start threshing.

-Eh, fool, ugh! - angrily spitting, said the old man. Several minutes of silent movement passed, and the same joke was repeated again.

The name "Titus" is symbolic: Saint Titus, whose feast falls on August 25, old style, in folk performances associated with threshing (threshing was in full swing at this time) and with mushrooms. Threshing in folk poetry and in "The Tale of Igor's Campaign" - a metaphor for war; mushrooms in mythological representations are associated with death, with war and with the god of war, Perun.

The annoyingly repeated mention of the name Titus, associated with the nonsense of the unnecessary and incomprehensible war of 1805, contrasts with the heroic, sublime sound of the same name in the verses glorifying Alexander I.

The name of Titus does not appear again in "War and Peace", but once it is given in the subtext of the work. Before the battle of Borodino, Andrei Bolkonsky recalls how "Natasha, with a lively, excited face, told him how she got lost in a large forest last summer, going for mushrooms". In the forest she met an old beekeeper.

The memory of Prince Andrei about Natasha, who got lost in the forest, on the night before the Battle of Borodino, on the eve of possible death, of course, not by accident. Mushrooms are associated with the day of St. Titus, namely, the feast of St. Titus, August 25, old style, was the eve of the Battle of Borodino - one of the bloodiest wars with Napoleon in history. The mushroom harvest is associated with the huge losses of both armies in the Battle of Borodino and with the mortal wounding of Prince Andrei at Borodino.

The very day of the battle of Borodino - August 26, old style - was the day of the feast of St. Natalia. Mushrooms as a sign of death are implicitly opposed to Natasha as an image of a triumphant life (the Latin name Natalia means "giving birth"). The old beekeeper that Natasha meets in the forest also obviously represents the beginning of life, contrasting with the mushrooms and the darkness of the forest. In War and Peace, the "swarm" life of bees is a symbol of natural human life. It is significant that beekeeping is considered one of those that require moral purity and a righteous life before God.

The mushroom - but in a metaphorical sense - is found in the text of "War and Peace" a little later, and, again, in the episode depicting Prince Andrei and Natasha. Natasha for the first time enters the room where the wounded Bolkonsky lies. “It was dark in this hut. In the back corner, by the bed, on which something was lying, on a bench stood a tallow candle burnt with a large mushroom.. The shape of the mushroom, the mention of the mushroom is also symbolic here; the mushroom is associated with death, with world of the dead; soot in the form of a mushroom does not allow the light to spread: “It was dark in this hut.” Darkness is endowed with signs of non-existence, graves. something, that is, Prince Andrei is described in the perception of Natasha, who still does not distinguish objects in the dark, as a body, as if a dead person. But everything changes: when “the burnt mushroom of the candle fell off, and she clearly saw the lying ... Prince Andrei, the way she always saw him,” alive. This means that phonetic, sound associations between the words "mushroom" and "coffin", and the similarity of the "mushroom" hat to the lid of the coffin, are obvious.

Saint Nicholas of Myra, Nicholas Andreevich, Nicholas and Nikolenka

Several temples mentioned in "War and Peace" are dedicated to St. Nicholas (Nikolas) of Myra. Pierre, on the way to the Borodino field, descends along the road leading “past the cathedral standing on the mountain to the right, in which there was a service and the gospel". Tolstoy's mention of the Mozhaisk Nikolsky Cathedral is not accidental. Mozhaisk and its gate temple were perceived as a symbolic gate of Moscow, Moscow land, and St. Nicholas - as the patron not only of Mozhaisk, but of the entire Russian land. Symbolically, the name of the saint, derived from the Greek word - "victory"; the name "Nicholas" means "victor of peoples", the Napoleonic army consisted of soldiers of different peoples - "twelve languages" (twenty peoples). 12 versts short of Mozhaisk, on the Borodino field, at the gates of Moscow, the Russians win a spiritual victory over Napoleon's army. Nicholas (Nikola) Mirlikisky was especially revered in Rus'; V common people he could even be considered the fourth God besides the Trinity, the "Russian God"

When the French avant-garde entered Moscow, "near the middle of the Arbat, near Nikola Yavlenny, Murat stopped, waiting for news from the advance detachment about the position of the city fortress" le Kremlin "" . The Church of St. Nicholas the Appeared here acts as a kind of symbolic replacement for the holy Kremlin, a milestone on the outskirts of it.

Napoleonic troops and Russian prisoners leaving Moscow pass "past a church" desecrated by the French: "a human corpse ... smeared with soot in the face" was put upright near the fence. The unnamed church is the surviving church of St. The image of the Church of St. Nicholas in Khamovniki is another example of an indication of the symbolic meaning of St. Nicholas (Nicholas) and the name "Nicholas" in "War and Peace": St. Nicholas seems to be escorting the French out of Moscow, who defiled his temple.

The action of the epilogue falls on "The eve of the winter Nicholas day, December 5, 1820". The patronal feast in the Bald Mountains, where Tolstoy's favorite heroes gather, is the feast of St. Nicholas. By the winter Nikolin day, all the surviving representatives of the Rostov and Bolkonsky families and Pierre Bezukhov gather together; together are the heads, the fathers of the families of the Rostovs - Bolkonsky (Nikolai) and Bezukhov - Rostovs (Pierre). From the older generation - the Countess of Rostov.

The name “Nikolai”, obviously, for Tolstoy is not only a “paternal” name (his father Nikolai Ilyich) and the name of his beloved brother Nikolenka, who died early, but also “victorious” - Nikolai was the name of Bolkonsky Sr., general-in-chief, who was still appreciated by Catherine’s commanders and the empress herself; Nikolenkaya is the name of the youngest of the Bolkonskys, who in the Epilogue dreams of a feat, of imitating the heroes of Plutarch. Nikolai Rostov became an honest and brave military man. The name "Nikolai" is, as it were, "the most Russian name”: it is no coincidence that all the survivors from the Rostovs and Bolkonskys and Pierre, as well as Nikolai Rostov’s friend Denisov, in the Epilogue gather in the Lysogorsky house for the holiday of St. Nicholas in winter.

Secrets of Prince Andrei

In the visions of Prince Andrei, there is a very deep meaning, which is precisely why it is poorly conveyed by a rational word.

"And piti-piti-piti" - one can assume: this otherworldly, unearthly rustle, heard by the dying, resembles the repeated word "drink" (in the form of the infinitive "piti", characteristic of both the high syllable, the Church Slavonic language, and the simple syllable, but for Tolstoy it is no less sublime - for common speech). This is a reminder of God, of the source of life, of "living water", this is her thirst.

“At the same time, to the sound of this whispering music, Prince Andrei felt that some strange airy building of thin needles or splintered splinters was erected above his face, above the very middle.” - It is also an image of ascent, a weightless ladder leading to God.

"It was white at the door, it was a statue of a sphinx ..." - Sphinx, a winged animal with a lion's body and a woman's head, from ancient Greek myth asked riddles to Oedipus, who was threatened with death. The white shirt that Prince Andrei sees in this way is a mystery, and for him it is, as it were, an image of death. The way of life for him is Natasha, who enters a little later.

"War and Peace" as an epic novel

The appearance of "Warriors and Peace" was a truly majestic event in the development of world literature. Since the time of Balzac's "Human Comedy" there have not appeared works of such a huge epic scope, with such a scale in the depiction of historical events, with such a deep insight into the fate of people, their moral and psychological life. The epic of Tolstoy showed that the features of the national-historical development of the Russian people, their historical past give brilliant writer the possibility of creating gigantic epic compositions like Homer's Iliad. "War and Peace" also testified to the high level and depth of realistic skill achieved by Russian literature in just some thirty years after Pushkin. It is impossible not to quote the enthusiastic words of N. N. Strakhov about the mighty creation of L. N. Tolstoy. “What bulk and what harmony! There is nothing like this in any literature. Thousands of faces, thousands of scenes, all kinds of spheres of public and private life, history, war, all the horrors that exist on earth, all passions, all moments of human life, from the cry of a newborn child to the last flash of feeling of a dying old man, all the joys and sorrows available to a person, all kinds of spiritual moods, from the feeling of a thief who has stolen gold coins from his comrade, to the highest movements of heroism and thoughts of inner enlightenment - everything is in this picture. And meanwhile, not a single figure obscures another, not a single scene, not a single impression interferes with other scenes and impressions, everything is in place, everything is clear, everything is separate and everything is in harmony with each other and with the whole. Such a miracle in art, moreover, a miracle achieved by the simplest means, has not yet been in the world.[v].

The new synthetic genre optimally corresponds to Tolstoy's ideas about reality. Tolstoy rejected all traditional genre definitions, called his work simply a "book", but at the same time drew a parallel between it and the Iliad. In Soviet science, the view of it as an epic novel was established. Sometimes other names are offered: “a new, hitherto unknown kind of novel” (A. Saburov), “novel-flow” (N.K. Gay), “novel-history” (E, N. Kupre-yanova), “social epic "(P, I. Ivipsky) ... Apparently, the term "historical epic novel" is most acceptable. Here, organically, although sometimes contradictory, the properties of the epic, the family chronicle and the novel merge: historical, social, psychological.

Obvious signs of an epic beginning in "War and Peace" are its volume and thematic encyclopedia. Tolstoy intended in his book to "capture everything". But it's not just about appearances.

The ancient epic is a story about the past, the "epic past", different from the present both in the way of life and in the characters of people. The world of the epic is the "age of heroes", a time that is in some way exemplary for the reader's time. The subject of the epic is the events that are not just significant, but important for the entire folk collective. A.F. Losev calls the primacy of the general over the individual the main feature of any epic. The individual hero in it exists only as an exponent (or antagonist) of the common life.

The world of the archaic epic is closed in itself, absolute, self-sufficient, divorced from other epochs, "rounded". For Tolstoy, “the embodiment of everything round” is Platon Karataev. “The folk-epic, fabulous-epic trend, clearly defined to the cost of the novel, led to the appearance of the figure of Platon Karataev. This was important and necessary to improve the genre - to bring it from a historical novel to a folk-heroic epic ... - wrote B. M. Eikhenbaum. - On the other hand, the story about Kutuzov was brought to the end of the book to a hagiographic style, which was also necessary at a certain turn from the novel to the epic" . Internally related to the picture of the world in the epic is the image-symbol of the water ball that Pierre dreamed of. No wonder Fet called "War and Peace" a "round" novel.

However, it is natural to consider the image of the ball as a symbol not so much of the reality as of the desired, ideally achievable reality. (It is not for nothing that this dream turns out to be the result of the most intense spiritual throwing of the hero, and not their starting point, and Pierre dreams after his conversation with the soldiers expressing the “eternal” folk wisdom life.) IT. K. Gay notes that it is impossible to reduce the whole world of Tolstoy's work to a ball: this world is a stream, the world of the novel, and the ball is the epic world closed in itself. . "True, the water ball is special, ever-renewing. It has the form solid body, but at the same time does not have sharp corners and is distinguished by the inescapable variability of the liquid (merging and again separating drops). The meaning of the epilogue in the interpretation of S. G. Bocharov is indicative: “His new activity (Bezukhov.- S.K.) Karataev would not approve, but he would approve family life Pierre; thus, in the end, the small world, the domestic circle, where the acquired goodness is preserved, and the big world, where again the circle opens into a line, the path, the “world of thought” and “infinite striving” are renewed. The world of the epic novel is fluid and, at the same time, definite in its outlines, although there is a certain limitation in this definiteness, "isolation". The true picture of the world in Tolstoy's work is indeed a linear flow. But it is also a hymn to the epic state of the world. State, not process.

Actually, the romantic elements are radically updated by Tolstoy. dominant in the 19th century. the scheme of the historical novel, dating back to the experience of Walter Scott, assumed direct authorial explanations of the differences between eras, the dominance of a fictional (often love) intrigue; historical heroes and events played the role of background. The novel usually began with a journalistic preface, where the author explained in advance the principles of his approach to the past. This was followed by a lengthy exposition, in which, again, the author himself revealed the situation to the reader, characterized the characters, their relationship with each other, and sometimes gave background. Portraits, descriptions of clothes, furnishings, etc., were given in detail and at once in their entirety - by no means according to the "leitmotif" principle of not completely repeating details, as was the case with Tolstoy. In War and Peace, things are different. Tolstoy more than once took up the preface to it, but did not finish a single version. Some options represent a traditional exposition. In its final form, the novel begins with a conversation - a piece of life, as if taken by surprise. The journalistic arguments are transferred from the beginning (in the preface they were traditionally considered quite natural) to the main text, where they, expressing the ideas of the predominance of the general over the particular, “adjoin mainly the epic series” [x] in their content, but in form ( monologue of the author) sharply distinguish "War and Peace" from the impersonal, "impassionate" epics of antiquity and contribute to its genre uniqueness.

Not in Tolstoy's novel and traditional interchange. The writer could not be satisfied with the usual ending - the death or happy marriage of heroes and even heroines, historically deprived social activity that the men were capable of. “When all the life problems of a woman were resolved by her marriage,” one of the theoretical works says, “the novel

ended with a wedding, and when the moral and economic problems in life itself become more complex, more complex problems arise in literature and the solutions already lie on a different plane. Neither of these traditional endings is typical for Tolstoy. His characters die or get married (get married) long before the end of the novel. By this, the writer, as it were, emphasizes the fundamental openness of the novel structure, which is developing in the latest literature.

The climax in War and Peace, as in most historical novels, coincides with the most significant historical event. But its peculiarity is in its dismemberment and multi-stage nature, corresponding to the epic beginning in the book. Ancient epics do not always have clearly defined elements of composition, such as in concentric plots novels of modern times. The reason for this is content. The characters of the heroes of the epic do not consistently develop, the essence of the epic hero lies in the constant readiness for a feat, the realization of which is a derivative moment. Therefore, the hero or his antagonist can suddenly disappear from the action and just as unexpectedly reappear - the sequence of their path is as unimportant as their possible spiritual evolution. We see something similar in War and Peace. Hence the “blurring” of the climax; the patriotic potential of the people can be developed at any time, when it is necessary.

In fact, the climax is not only Borodino, so far only the army is participating in the general battle. "Cudgel of the People's War" is the same top compositional episode for Tolstoy. As well as the abandonment of Moscow by residents who are convinced: “It was impossible to be under the control of the French ...” Each storyline associated with one or another group of heroes has its own “peak” moment, while the general culmination of “War and Peace” coincides with the patriotic the rise of all the forces of the Russian people and extends to most of the last two volumes.

Genre specificity also affects the way of combining individual episodes and links. The division into short chapters, the same for all the great works of L. Tolstoy, facilitates perception, the reader gets the opportunity to "take a breath." This is not a purely technical division, the divided episode is perceived not as coinciding with the boundaries of the chapter: the episode-chapter seems to be more integral. But in general, the action is distributed not by chapters, but by episodes. Outwardly, they are connected without a definite sequence, as if chaotically. Plot lines interrupt one another, what has been begun is reduced in detail to a dotted line (for example, the development of the figure of Dolokhov), entire lines disappear altogether, etc. This method of connecting episodes is characteristic of ancient heroic epics. In them, each episode is independently significant precisely because the heroic content, the potentialities of the characters are known in advance. Therefore, individual episodes (individual epics, individual songs and legends about the heroes of the Mahabharata or the Iliad) can exist independently of each other, receive independent literary processing. Something similar is characteristic of Tolstoy's War and Peace. Although Tolstoy's characters are immeasurably more mobile, complex and diverse than in ancient epics, the evaluative polarization of forces in War and Peace is no less. Already when reading the first parts, it is clear which of the characters will then turn out to be a true hero. This feature belongs precisely to the epic novel. The initial clarity of positive and negative characters makes possible the relative independence of the episodes of "War and Peace". Tolstoy wanted each part of the work to have an independent interest .

The independence of episodes is expressed even in such a typical property of epics as the presence of plot contradictions. In different episodes of the ancient epic, the characters of the heroes could combine (to a large extent mechanistically) unrelated and even opposite features that had an “independent interest” and, in accordance with the content of the passage, easily allowed for mutual substitution. For example, Achilles in some songs of the Iliad is the embodiment of nobility, in others he is a bloodthirsty villain; almost everywhere - a fearless hero, but sometimes a cowardly fugitive. The moral image of Alyosha Popovich is very dissimilar in different epics. This is not a romantic fluidity of character, in which one and the same person naturally changes, it is, as it were, a combination in one person of the traits of different people. There is something similar in War and Peace.

With all the most thorough alterations, correspondence and reprints of the epic novel, Tolstoy still had inconsistencies. So, in the scene of a bet with an Englishman, Dolokhov does not speak French well, and in 1812 he goes on reconnaissance under the guise of a Frenchman. Vasily Denisov, first Dmitrich, and then Fedorovich. Nikolai Rostov was pushed forward after the Ostrovno case, they gave him a battalion of hussars, but after that, in Bogucharovo, he was again the squadron commander. Denisov, who was promoted to major back in 1805, in 1807 was called a captain by an infantry officer. Readers always pay attention to the fact that in the epilogue, Natasha, who was so poetic before, changes very sharply, as if even unprepared. But no less, if not more dramatic changes occurred with her brother. The previously frivolous youngster, who loses 43 thousand in one evening, and on the estate can only shout to no avail at the manager, suddenly becomes a skilled owner. In 1812, near Ostrovnaya, he, an experienced squadron commander who had gone through two campaigns, was completely lost, wounding and capturing a Frenchman, and after a few peaceful years threatens, without hesitation, to cut his own on the orders of Arakcheev.

Finally, as in the old epics, compositional repetitions are possible in Tolstoy. Often, the same or almost the same thing happens to one epic character as to another (stylistic and plot clichés most characteristic of folklore). In "War and Peace" the parallelism of two wounds of Bolkonsky with subsequent spiritual enlightenment, his two deaths - imaginary and real, is clearly traced. Andrei and Pierre (both unexpectedly) have unloved wives dying - largely because the author needs to bring them to the same Natasha.

In ancient epics, contradictions and cliches were largely determined by the oral nature of their distribution, but not only by this, as Tolstoy's purely literary example proves. There is a certain commonality of the epic worldview, a kind of "heroic" concept of the reality that has gone into the past, which dictates compositional freedom, and at the same time plot predictability.

There is also a romantic connection between the episodes of War and Peace. But this is not necessarily a sequential flow of one event into another, as in traditional novels. The artistic necessity of precisely this and not another arrangement of many episodes (which is sometimes completely unimportant for an epic) is determined by their “conjugation” in a larger unity, sometimes on the scale of the entire work, according to the principles of analogy or contrast. So, Scherer's description of the evening (the essence of life in this circle is characterized by Kuragin with children) is interrupted by a conversation between friends, Andrei and Pierre, who oppose the lack of spirituality of the world; further, through the same Pierre, the action reveals the flip side of high-society stiffness - the revelry of officers in Anatole's apartment. Thus, in the first three episodes of the novel, spirituality appears surrounded by various kinds of lack of spirituality.

Sometimes the episodes "link" through very large gaps in the text, ultimately constituting its flexible unity. The principles of romantic interconnection are expressed even in the most typical epic elements, such as repetitions. Repetitions in Tolstoy are never mere clichés. They are always incomplete, always "leitmotivally" reveal the changes that have taken place, and sometimes - the life experience of the characters, the impact on them of new events or other people. Kutuzov twice - in Tsarevo-Zaimishche and in Fili - says that he will force the French to eat horse meat. This clearly confirms Tolstoy's thesis about the consistency and unchanging confidence of the wise commander, but at the same time, two of his opposite spiritual states are contrasted: truly epic calmness when he just accepts the post of commander-in-chief, and internal shock before the inevitable surrender of Moscow. In the ancient epic, such a "cohesion" of characters and motives is completely excluded. Individual images of people, as well as individual episodes, are free from mutual influence.

Considering the “linkage” of the entire novel, one can also explain the metamorphoses of the Rostovs in the epilogue. Natasha is the embodiment of __love for people, for her the form means nothing (as opposed to the people of the Kuragin circle); therefore Tolstoy admires her when she becomes a mother, no less than when she was an enthusiastic girl, and willingly excuses her outward slovenliness. Nikolai, after a cowardly flight in the first battle, becomes a good officer, in the epilogue he is shown to be a good master. Nikolay clearly threatens to cut down his own in the heat of the moment, besides, Rostov has long been weaned from any extraordinary thoughts - this side of his appearance is revealed in detail in the Tilsit episode. Thus, from the first half of the book, connecting threads are thrown to the epilogue, and the sudden, at first glance, "break" in the character turns out to be largely motivated. In the same way, contradictions with the ranks and positions of Rostov and Denisov can be explained not only by the epic independence of different episodes, but also by that partly dismissive attitude towards the external side of the war, which is characteristic of the author's historical concept. Thus, in the same episodes and details, both epic and more flexible, dialectical novel beginnings are simultaneously manifested.

Literature

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2. Gay N.K.- On the poetics of the novel ("War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection" by Leo Tolstoy), p. 126.
3. Grabak I. An epic is needed. - In the book: Literature and time. Literary and artistic criticism in Czechoslovakia. M., 1977, p. 197.
4. Gusev I. N. Life of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. L. N. Tolstoy in the heyday of artistic genius (1862-1877), p. 81.
5. Dolinina N.G. Through the pages of War and Peace. Notes on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" / format. Y. Daletskaya. – Ed. 5th. St. Petersburg: DETGIZ-Lyceum, 2004. - 256 p.
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“I don’t know anyone who would write about the war better than Tolstoy”

Ernest Hemingway

Many writers use real historical events for the plots of their works. One of the most frequently described events is war - civil, domestic, world. The Patriotic War of 1812 deserves special attention: the Battle of Borodino, the burning of Moscow, the exile of the French Emperor Napoleon. In Russian literature, a detailed depiction of the war is presented in the novel "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy. The writer describes specific military battles, allows the reader to see real historical figures, gives his own assessment of the events that took place.

Causes of war in the novel "War and Peace"

L.N. Tolstoy in the epilogue tells us about “this man”, “without convictions, without habits, without traditions, without a name, not even a Frenchman ...”, who is Napoleon Bonaparte, who wanted to conquer the whole world. The main enemy on his way was Russia - huge, strong. By various deceitful ways, cruel battles, seizures of territories, Napoleon moved slowly from his goal. Neither the Peace of Tilsit, nor Russia's allies, nor Kutuzov could stop him. Although Tolstoy says that “the more we try to reasonably explain these phenomena in nature, the more unreasonable, incomprehensible they become for us,” nevertheless, in the novel War and Peace, the cause of the war is Napoleon. Standing in power in France, subjugating part of Europe, he lacked the great Russia. But Napoleon was mistaken, he did not calculate the strength and lost this war.

War in the novel "War and Peace"

Tolstoy himself presents this concept as follows: “Millions of people committed against each other such an innumerable number of atrocities ... that for whole centuries the chronicle of all the courts of the world will not collect and which, during this period of time, the people who committed them did not look like crimes” . Through the description of the war in the novel War and Peace, Tolstoy makes us understand that he himself hates war for its cruelty, murder, betrayal, and senselessness. He puts judgments about war into the mouths of his heroes. So Andrei Bolkonsky says to Bezukhov: "War is not a courtesy, but the most disgusting thing in life, and you need to understand this and not play war." We see that there is no pleasure, pleasure, satisfaction of one's desires from bloody actions against another people. In the novel, it is definitely clear that the war in Tolstoy's image is "an event that is contrary to the human mind and all human nature."

Major battle of the War of 1812

Even in the I and II volumes of the novel, Tolstoy tells about the military campaigns of 1805-1807. Shengraben, Austerlitz battles pass through the prism of the writer's reflections and conclusions. But in the war of 1812, the writer puts the Battle of Borodino at the forefront. Although he immediately asks himself and his readers the question: “Why was the Battle of Borodino given? Neither for the French nor for the Russians it made the slightest sense.

But it was the battle of Borodino that became the starting point until the victory of the Russian army. LN Tolstoy gives a detailed idea of ​​the course of the war in War and Peace. He describes every action of the Russian army, the physical and mental state of the soldiers. According to the writer's own assessment, neither Napoleon, nor Kutuzov, and even more so Alexander I did not expect such an outcome of this war. For everyone, the Battle of Borodino was unplanned and unforeseen. What is the concept of the war of 1812, the heroes of the novel do not understand, just as Tolstoy does not understand, just as the reader does not understand.

Heroes of the novel "War and Peace"

Tolstoy gives the reader the opportunity to look at his characters from the outside, to see them in action in certain circumstances. Shows us Napoleon before leaving for Moscow, who was aware of all the disastrous situation of the army, but went forward to his goal. He comments on his ideas, thoughts, actions.

We can observe Kutuzov, the main executor of the people's will, who preferred "patience and time" to the offensive.

Before us is Bolkonsky, reborn, morally grown and loving his people. Pierre Bezukhov in a new understanding of all the "causes of human troubles", who arrived in Moscow with the aim of killing Napoleon.

Militia men "with crosses on their hats and in white shirts, who, with a loud voice and laughter, are lively and sweaty," ready at any moment to die for their homeland.

Before us is Emperor Alexander I, who finally gave the "reins of control of the war" into the hands of the "all-knowing" Kutuzov, but still does not fully understand the true position of Russia in this war.

Natasha Rostova, who abandoned all family property and gave wagons to the wounded soldiers so that they could leave the destroyed city. She takes care of the wounded Bolkonsky, giving him all her time and affection.

Petya Rostov, who died so absurdly without a real participation in the war, without a feat, without a battle, who secretly "signed up for the hussars" from everyone. And many more heroes who we meet in several episodes, but deserve respect and recognition in true patriotism.

Reasons for winning the War of 1812

In the novel, L.N. Tolstoy expresses thoughts about the reasons for Russia’s victory in the Patriotic War: “No one will argue that the reason for the death of Napoleon’s French troops was, on the one hand, their entry at a later time without preparing for a winter campaign deep into Russia, and on the other hand, on the other hand, the character that the war assumed from the burning of Russian cities and the incitement of hatred for the enemy in the Russian people. For the Russian people, the victory in the Patriotic War was the victory of the Russian spirit, Russian strength, Russian faith in any circumstances. The consequences of the war of 1812 were severe for French side namely for Napoleon. It was the collapse of his empire, the collapse of his hopes, the collapse of his greatness. Napoleon not only did not take possession of the whole world, he could not stay in Moscow, but fled ahead of his army, retreating in disgrace and the failure of the entire military campaign.

My essay on the topic “The depiction of war in the novel War and Peace” tells very briefly about the war in Tolstoy’s novel. Only after a careful reading of the entire novel, you can appreciate all the skill of the writer and discover interesting pages military history Russia.

Artwork test

In the center of the novel L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace"
there is an image of the Patriotic War of 1812, which stirred up the entire Russian people, showed the whole world
his power and strength, which brought forward ordinary Russian heroes and the great commander - Kutuzov. At the same time, great
historical upheavals revealed the true essence of each individual person, showed his attitude to
Fatherland. Tolstoy portrays the war as a realist writer: in hard work, blood, suffering, death. Also
L. N. Tolstoy sought in his work to reveal folk meaning war that united the whole society, all
Russian people in a common impulse to show that the fate of the campaign was decided not in headquarters and headquarters, but in the hearts
ordinary people: Platon Karataev and Tikhon Shcherbaty, Petya Rostov and Denisov... Can you name them all? Others
in words, the author-battle painter draws a large-scale image of the Russian people, who raised the "club" of the liberation
war against the invaders. It is interesting to know what is Tolstoy's attitude to the war? According to Lev Nikolaevich,
“War is the amusement of idle and frivolous people”, and the novel “War and Peace” itself is an anti-war
a work that once again emphasizes the senselessness of the cruelty of war, bringing death and human
suffering. The writer reveals his point of view in the novel in various ways, for example, through the thoughts of loved ones.
heroes. The same Prince Andrei, who, lying under the sky of Austerlitz, is disappointed in his former dreams of
glory, power, about “his Toulon” (even Napoleon, his idol, seems to Prince Bolkonsky now small and
insignificant). An important role in understanding the author's position regarding the war is played by comparisons of light
forest nature and the madness of people killing each other. Involuntarily, a panorama appears before our eyes
Borodino field: “oblique rays of the bright sun ... threw at her in the clear morning air piercing pink and
golden hue to its dark, long shadows. Further on, forests complete the panorama, as if carved from some
precious yellow-green stone, were visible with their curved line of peaks on the horizon ... Closer they shone
golden fields and copses. But now this most wonderful picture of nature is replaced by a terrible view of the battle, and that’s it.
the fields are covered with "dim dampness and smoke", the smell of "strange saltpeter acid and blood". In the fight scene
French and Russian soldiers because of the bannik, in the pictures of military hospitals, in drawing up dispositions for
battles, we are once again convinced of negative attitude L.N. Tolstoy to war. In his novel, the writer gives
images of two wars: abroad in 1805-1807 and in Russia in 1812. The first, unnecessary and incomprehensible
Russian people, the war that was fought on the wrong side. Therefore, in this war, everyone is far from patriotism:
officers think about awards and glory, and soldiers dream of returning home as soon as possible. The second wears completely
a different character: this is a people's war, just. In it, patriotic feelings swept various layers of the Russian
society: the merchant Ferapontov also felt hatred for the enemy, burning his shop when he was occupied by the French
Smolensk, so that the enemy does not get anything, and the peasants Karn and Vlas, who refuse to sell "for good
the money that they were offered, hay, ”and the Rostovs, who gave carts for the wounded in Moscow, thus completing their
ruin. The popular character of the war of 1812 was especially widely reflected in the spontaneous growth of partisan detachments,
which began to form after the enemy entered Smolensk; they are, according to Tolstoy,
"destroyed the great army in parts." How the author speaks of outstanding heroes both about the partisan Denisov and about
peasant Tikhon Shcherbat, "the most useful and brave man" in the detachment of Vasily Dmitrievich, and about the brave, but
ruthless Dolokhov. A special place in understanding the "hidden warmth" of Russian patriotism is occupied by Borodino
a battle in which the Russian army won a moral victory over a numerically superior enemy.
Russian soldiers understood that Moscow was behind them, they knew that the future of the Motherland depended on the upcoming battle. Not
by chance, the French generals informed Napoleon that “the Russians are holding their positions and are producing an infernal
the fire that melts French army”, “our fire pulls them out in rows, and they stand.” Fighting for
Moscow, the symbolic city of Russia, Russian wars were ready to hold their positions to the end - just to win
victory. And this is most clearly shown by the author on the example of the Raevsky battery, from which “they walked, crawled and
Crowds of the wounded, their faces disfigured by suffering, rushed on stretchers. The French understood that they themselves were
morally exhausted, devastated, and it was precisely this that determined their complete defeat in the future. Having rolled up to
Moscow, the French army inevitably had to die from a mortal wound received by it at Borodino.
while Russian soldiers, not by word, but by deed, contributed to the overall victory in the war, the regulars
Petersburg and Moscow salons were only capable of false patriotic appeals and speeches, thereby
showing no interest in the fate of the Motherland. It was not given to them to "recognize the danger" and the difficult situation in which
was the Russian people. Tolstoy sharply condemns such "patriotism", shows the emptiness and worthlessness of these
of people. Undoubtedly, the Patriotic War of 1812 played a significant role in the life of Prince Andrei and Pierre.
Patriots of their homeland, just like decent people, they took on a part of those trials and difficulties,
of the grief that befell the Russian people. And in many ways a turning point in the life of Prince Bolkonsky and
Count Bezukhov was, of course, the battle of Borodino. As an experienced fighting man, Andrei was in this battle on
its place and could still bring many benefits. But fate, stubborn in its desire to destroy Bolkonsky,
finally reached it. A senseless death by a stray grenade ended such a promising life. big
The Battle of Borodino was also a test for Pierre. Wishing to share the fate of the people, Russia, Count Bezukhov, did not
being a soldier, he took part in this battle. Before the eyes of Pierre, people suffered and died, but not only herself
death struck him, but also the fact that the soldiers no longer saw any savagery in the destruction of people by people. In a day
battle, Count Bezukhov was given a lot by the last conversation with Prince Andrei, who realized that the true outcome of the battle
depends not on staff officers, but on the feeling that now lived in the heart of every Russian soldier.
According to Tolstoy, not only the bright heroism and patriotism of the Russian people made a significant contribution to the victory, but also,
undoubtedly the commander-in-chief of the Russian army Kutuzov, who was a favorite of soldiers and military officers. Outwardly it
was a decrepit, weak old man, but strong and handsome inwardly: the commander alone received brave, sober and
right decisions, did not think about himself, about honors and glory, setting himself only one task, which was his
aspiration and desire: victory over a hated enemy. In the novel "War and Peace" Tolstoy, on the one hand,
shows the senselessness of war, shows how much grief and misfortune war brings to people, destroys the lives of thousands
and thousands of people, on the other hand, shows the high patriotic spirit of the Russian people who participated in
liberation war against the French invaders, and won.