Characteristics of heroes war and peace with quotes. Characteristics of the main characters of the novel

M. M. Blinkina

AGE OF HEROES IN THE NOVEL "WAR AND PEACE"

(Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. A series of literature and language. - T. 57. - No. 1. - M., 1998. - S. 18-27)

1. INTRODUCTION

The main goal of this work is mathematical modeling of some aspects of plot development and establishing relationships between real and novel time, or rather, between the real and novel ages of the characters (and, in this case, the relationship will be predictable and linear).

The very concept of "age" has, of course, several aspects. Firstly, the age of a literary character is determined by the novel time, which often does not coincide with the real time. Secondly, the numerals in the designation of age, in addition to their main (actually numerical) meaning, often have a number of additional ones, that is, they carry an independent semantic load. They can, for example, contain a positive or negative assessment of the hero, reflect his individual characteristics, or bring an ironic tinge to the narrative.

Sections 2-6 describe how Leo Tolstoy changes the age characteristics of the characters in War and Peace depending on their function in the novel, how young they are, what gender they are, and also on some other individual characteristics.

Section 7 proposes a mathematical model that reflects the features of the "aging" of Tolstoy's heroes.

2. AGE PARADOXES: TEXT ANALYSIS

Reading the novel by Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy "War and Peace", one cannot but pay attention to some strange inconsistencies in the age characteristics of his characters. Consider, for example, the Rostov family. August 1805 is outside - and we meet Natasha for the first time: ... ran into the room thirteen girl, wrapping something in a muslin skirt...

In the same August 1805, we met all the other children from this family, in particular, with the elder sister Vera: The eldest daughter of the countess was four years older than sister and acted like a big.

Thus, in August 1805 Vere seventeen years. Now fast forward to December 1806: faith was twenty years old beautiful girl ... Natasha half-lady, half-girl...

We see that over the past year and four months, Vera has managed to grow by three years. She was seventeen, and now she is neither eighteen nor nineteen; she's twenty. Natasha's age in this fragment is given metaphorically, and not by a number, which, as it turns out, is also not without reason.

Will pass yet exactly three years, and we will get last message on the age of these two sisters:

Natasha was sixteen years, and it was 1809, the same year until which four years ago she counted on her fingers with Boris, after she kissed him.

So, over these four years, Natasha has grown by three, as, however, was expected. Instead of seventeen or even eighteen, she is now sixteen. And there will be no more. This is the last mention of her age. And what happens to her unfortunate older sister in the meantime?

Faith was twenty four years, she traveled everywhere, and despite the fact that she was undoubtedly good and reasonable, so far no one has ever proposed to her.

As we can see, over the past three years, Vera has grown by four. If we count from the very beginning, that is, from August 1805, it turns out that in just over four years, Vera has grown by seven years. During this time period, the age difference between Natasha and Vera doubled. Vera is no longer four, but eight years older than her sister.

This was an example of how the ages of two characters change relative to each other. Now let's look at a hero who at some point in time has different ages for different characters. This hero is Boris Drubetskoy. His age is never directly stated, so let's try to calculate it indirectly. On the one hand, we know that Boris is the same age as Nikolai Rostov: Two young men, a student and an officer, friends since childhood, were one year old ...

Nicholas in January 1806 was nineteen or twenty years old:

How strange it was for the countess that her son, who was moving in her very tiny penises twenty years ago, now a courageous warrior ...

It follows that in August 1805 Boris was nineteen or twenty years old. Now let's estimate his age from Pierre's point of view. At the beginning of the novel, Pierre is twenty years old: Pierre from the age of ten was sent with the tutor-abbot abroad, where he stayed up to the age of twenty .

On the other hand, we know that Pierre left Boris fourteen year old boy and decidedly did not remember him.

Thus, Boris is four years older than Pierre and at the beginning of the novel he is twenty-four years old, that is, he is twenty-four years old for Pierre, while for Nikolai he is still only twenty.

And, finally, one more, already quite funny example: the age of Nikolenka Bolkonsky. In July 1805, his future mother appears before us: ... little princess Volkonskaya, who got married last winter and now did not go out into the world because of her pregnancy ... waddling, walked around the table with small quick steps ...

From universal human considerations, it is clear that Nikolenka should be born in the autumn of 1805: but, contrary to worldly logic, this does not happen, he is born March 19, 1806 It is clear that such a character will have problems with age until the end of his novel life. So in 1811 he will be six years old, and in 1820 - fifteen.

How can such inconsistencies be explained? Maybe the exact age of his characters is not important for Tolstoy? On the contrary, Tolstoy has a fondness for numbers and sets the ages of even the most insignificant heroes with amazing accuracy. So Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova exclaims: fifty eight years lived in the world ...: No, life is not over at thirty one, - says Prince Andrew.

Tolstoy has numbers everywhere, and the numbers are exact, fractional. Age in War and Peace is undoubtedly functional. No wonder Dolokhov, beating Nikolai in cards, decided to continue the game until this record increased to forty-three thousand. This number was chosen by him because forty-three was the sum of his years plus Sonya's. .

Thus, all the age discrepancies described above, and there are about thirty of them in the novel, are deliberate. What are they due to?

Before I begin to answer this question, I note that on average, over the course of the novel, Tolstoy makes each of his characters a year older than they should be (this is shown by calculations, which will be discussed later). Ordinarily, the hero of a classic novel will always be twenty-one years old instead of twenty-one years and eleven months, and on average, therefore, such a hero turns out to be half a year younger than his years.

However, even from the above examples it is already clear, firstly, that the author "ages" and "youngens" his characters differently, and secondly, that this does not happen randomly, but in a systemic, programmed way. How exactly?

From the very beginning, it becomes obvious that the positive and negative characters age differently, disproportionately. (“Positive and negative” is, of course, a conditional concept, however, in Tolstoy, the polarity of a character in most cases is determined almost unambiguously. The author of “War and Peace” is surprisingly frank in his likes and dislikes). As shown above, Natasha matures more slowly than expected, while Vera, on the contrary, grows faster. Boris, as a friend of Nikolai and a friend of the Rostov family, appears as a twenty-year-old; he, in the role of a secular acquaintance of Pierre and future husband of Julie Karagina, turns out to be much older at the same time. At the ages of the heroes, it is as if a certain non-strict order is set, or rather, an anti-order. There is a feeling that the heroes are "penalized" by an increase in age. Tolstoy, as it were, punishes his heroes with disproportionate aging.

There are, however, in the novel characters who grow older strictly in accordance with the years they have lived. Sonya, for example, being, in fact, neither a positive nor a negative heroine, but completely neutral and colorless, Sonya, who always studied well and remembered everything, matures exceptionally carefully. The whole mess of ages that takes place in the Rostov family does not affect her at all. In 1805 she fifteen year old girl , and in 1806 - sixteen year old girl in all the beauty of a freshly blossomed flower. It is her age that the prudent Dolokhov beats Rostov in cards, adding to his own. But Sonya is rather an exception.

In general, characters of "different polarity" grow up in different ways. Moreover, the extremely saturated space of age is divided between positive and negative characters. At the age of sixteen, Natasha and Sonya are mentioned. After the age of sixteen - Vera and Julie Karagina. No more than twenty happens to Pierre, Nikolai and Petya Rostov, Nikolenka Bolkonsky. Strictly more than twenty Boris, Dolokhov, "ambiguous" Prince Andrei.

The question is not how old the hero is, the question is exactly what age is fixed in the novel. Natasha is not supposed to be over sixteen; Marya is unacceptably old for a positive heroine, so not a word is said about her age; Helen, on the contrary, is defiantly young for a negative heroine, therefore, we do not know how old she is.

In the novel, a boundary is set, after which only negative characters already exist; the boundary, having stepped over which, a deliberately positive hero simply ceases to exist in the space of age. In a perfectly symmetrical way, the negative character walks through the novel without age until he passes this boundary. Natasha loses her age at the age of sixteen. Julie Karagina, on the contrary, is gaining age, being no longer her first youth:

Julie was twenty seven years old. After the death of her brothers, she became very rich. She was completely ugly now; but I thought that she was not only just as pretty, but even more attractive now than she was before ... A man who ten years ago would have been afraid to go every day to the house where she was seventeen year old lady, so as not to compromise her and not to tie himself up, now he boldly went to her every day and talked with her not as with a young lady-bride, but as with an acquaintance who had no sex.

The problem, however, is that Julie in this novel was never seventeen years old. In 1805, when this chubby lady guest appears in the Rostovs' house, nothing is said about her age, because if then Tolstoy honestly gave her her seventeen years, then now, in 1811, she would not be twenty-seven, but only twenty-three, which, of course, is also no longer an age for a positive heroine, but still it is not yet the time for the final transition into asexual beings. In general, negative heroes, as a rule, are not supposed to have childhood and adolescence. This leads to some funny misunderstandings:

Well, Lela? - Prince Vasily turned to his daughter with that careless tone of habitual tenderness, which is assimilated by parents who caress their children from childhood, but which was only guessed by Prince Violence by imitating other parents.

Or maybe Prince Vasily is not to blame? Maybe his purely negative children had no childhood at all. And it is not for nothing that Pierre, before proposing to Helen, convinces himself that he knew her as a child. Was she even a child?

If we move from lyrics to numbers, then it turns out that in the novel there are positive characters aged 5, 6, 7, 9, 13, 15, 16, 20, as well as 40, 45, 50, 58. Negative is 17, 20, 24, 25, 27. That is, goodies from early youth immediately fall into a respectable old age. Negative heroes also, of course, have senile age, but the fragmentation of their age in old age is less than that of positive ones. So, positive Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova says: fifty eight years lived in the world... The negative prince Vasily evaluates himself with less accuracy: To me sixth decade, My friend...

In general, accurate calculations show that the aging coefficient in the "positive-negative" space is equal to -2.247, i.e. other things being equal, the positive hero will be two years and three months younger than the negative one.

Let's talk now about two heroines who are emphatically ageless. These heroines are Helen and Princess Mary, which in itself is not accidental.

Helen symbolizes eternal beauty and youth in the novel. Her rightness, her strength in this inexhaustible youth. Time seems to have no power over her: Elena Vasilievna, so she at fifty beauty will be. Pierre, persuading himself to marry Helen, also cites her age as her main advantage. He remembers knowing her as a child. He says to himself: No, she's beautiful young woman! She is not stupid woman!

Helen is the eternal bride. With a living husband, she chooses with charming immediacy a new groom for herself, and one of the applicants is young, and the other is old. Ellen dies mysterious circumstances, preferring the old admirer to the young, that is: as if she herself chooses old age and death, renouncing her privilege of eternal youth, and dissolves into non-existence.

Princess Mary also has no age, and it is not possible to calculate it from the final version of the novel. Indeed, in 1811, she, old dry princess, envious of Natasha's beauty and youth. In the finale, in 1820, Marya is a happy young mother, she is waiting fourth child, and her life, one might say, is just beginning, although at that moment she is no less than thirty-five years old, an age not very suitable for a lyrical heroine; that is why she lives without age in this novel, soaked through with figures.

It is curious that in the first edition of "War and Peace", which differs from the final version in its extreme concreteness and "last directness", the uncertainty in the images of Helen and Marya is partly removed. There, in 1805, Marya was twenty years old: the old prince himself was engaged in the education of his daughter and, in order to develop in her both main virtues, up to twenty years gave her lessons in algebra and geometry and distributed her whole life in uninterrupted studies.

And Helen also dies there, not from an excess of youth ...

4. THE FIRST COMPLETED VERSION OF THE NOVEL

The first version of "War and Peace" helps solve many of the riddles given in the final version of the novel. What is very vaguely read in the final version appears in the early version with amazing clarity for a novel narrative. The space of age here is not yet saturated with the romantic understatement that the modern reader encounters. Deliberate accuracy borders on banality. Not surprisingly, in the final version of the novel, Tolstoy renounces such meticulousness. Mentions of age becomes one and a half times less. Behind the scenes is a lot of interesting details, which would not be superfluous to mention here.

Princess Mary, as already noted, at the beginning of the novel twenty years. Age Helen is not specified, however, it is obviously limited from above by the age of her older brother. And in 1811 Anatole was 28 years. He was in full splendor of his strength and beauty.

Thus, at the beginning of the novel, Anatole is twenty-two, his friend Dolokhov is twenty-five, and Pierre is twenty. Helen no more than twenty-one. Moreover, she probably no more than nineteen because, according to the unwritten laws of that time, she should not be older than Pierre. (The fact, for example, that Julie is older than Boris is emphasized.)

So, the scene in which the socialite Helen tries to lead young Natasha Rostova astray looks completely comical, given that Natasha is twenty years old at this moment, and Helen is twenty-four, that is, they, in fact, belong to the same age group. categories.

The early version also clarifies the age for us Boris: Hélène called him mon hage and treated him like a child ... Sometimes, in rare moments, Pierr "got the idea that this patronizing friendship for an imaginary child who was 23 years old had something unnatural.

These considerations refer to the autumn of 1809, that is, at the beginning of the novel Boris is nineteen years old and his future bride Julie - twenty one years old, if you count her age back from the moment of their wedding. Initially, Julie, apparently, was assigned the role of a prettier heroine in the novel: Tall, stout, proud-looking lady with pretty daughter, rustling dresses, entered the living room.

This pretty daughter is Julie Karagina, who at first was thought to be younger and more attractive. However, in 1811, Julie Akhrosimova (as she was originally called) will already be that "sexless" creature, as we know her from the final version.

Dolokhov in the first version of the novel beats Nikolai not forty-three, but only forty-two thousand.

The ages of Natasha and Sonya are given several times. So, at the beginning of 1806, Natasha says: To me fifteenth year, my grandmother got married in my time.

In the summer of 1807, Natasha's age is mentioned twice: Natasha passed away 15 years and she is very prettier this summer.

“And you sing,” said Prince Andrei. He said these simple words looking directly into the beautiful eyes of this 15 year old girls.

Such a number of age occurrences allows us to establish that Natasha was born in the autumn of 1791. Thus, at her first ball she shines at eighteen, and by no means at sixteen.

To make Natasha younger, Tolstoy also changes Sonya's age. Thus, at the end of 1810 Sonya was already twentieth year. She had already stopped getting prettier, she did not promise anything more than what was in her, but that was enough.

In fact, Natasha is in her twentieth year at this moment, and Sonya is at least a year and a half older.

Unlike many other characters, Prince Andrei does not have an exact age in the first version of the novel. Instead of the textbook thirty-one years, he about thirty years.

Of course, the accuracy and directness of the early version of the novel cannot serve as an "official clue" to age shifts, since we have no right to believe that Natasha and Pierre of the first edition are the same characters that Natasha and Pierre are in the final version of the novel. By changing the age characteristics of the hero, the author partly changes the hero himself. Nevertheless, the early version of the novel allows us to check the accuracy of the calculations made on the final text and to make sure that these calculations are correct.

5. AGE AS A FUNCTION OF AGE (AGE STEREOTYPES)

So little time left to live

I'm already sixteen years old!

Y. Ryashentsev

The tradition of aging older characters compared to younger ones has its roots in the depths of centuries. In this sense, Tolstoy did not invent anything new. Calculations show that the coefficient of "aging with age" in the novel is 0.097, which, translated into human language means a year of romantic aging for ten lived years, that is, a ten-year-old hero may turn out to be eleven years old, a twenty-year-old hero is twenty-two, and a fifty-year-old hero is fifty-five. The result is not surprising. It is much more interesting how Tolstoy gives the ages of his heroes, how he evaluates them on a scale of "young - old". Let's start from the very beginning.

5.1. Up to ten years

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was very fond of children.

Sometimes they would bring him a full chamber. step

there is nowhere to step, but he keeps shouting: More! More!

D. Kharms

Harms is certainly right. There are many infant characters in the novel. What they have in common is, perhaps, that they do not seem to be independent units endowed with their own problems and experiences. The age of up to ten years is, as it were, a signal that the hero will, in fact, be a small mouthpiece for the author. Children in the novel see the world surprisingly subtly and correctly, they are engaged in a systematic "estrangement" environment. They, not spoiled by the burden of civilization, solve them more successfully than adults. moral issues and at the same time, as it were, completely devoid of reason. Therefore, such young characters, whose number will grow to incredible limits by the end, look very artificial:

Five minutes later, little black-eyed three-year Natasha, her father's favorite, having learned from her brother that papa was sleeping in a small sofa room, unnoticed by her mother, ran to her father ... Nikolai turned around with a tender smile on his face.

- Natasha, Natasha! - I heard the frightened whisper of Countess Marya from the door, - papa wants to sleep.

- No, mother, he does not want to sleep, - little Natasha answered with persuasiveness, - he laughs.

So edifying little character. Here's the next one, a little older:

Only one granddaughter of Andrei, Malasha, six year old girl, to whom the most illustrious, after caressing her, gave a piece of sugar for tea, remained on the stove in a large hut ... Malasha ... otherwise understood the significance of this advice. It seemed to her that it was only a personal struggle between "grandfather" and "long-sleeved", as she called Beningsen.

Amazing insight!

The last character in age who shows signs of the same "childish-unconscious" behavior, like all the juvenile characters of Tolstoy, is the eternally sixteen-year-old Natasha Rostova:

In the middle of the stage were girls in red corsages and white skirts. They all sang something. When they finished their song, the girl in white went up to the prompter's booth, and a man in tight-fitting silk pantaloons on thick legs, with a feather and a dagger, came up to her and began to sing and shrug...

After the village, and in the serious mood in which Natasha was, all this was wild and surprising to her.

So, Natasha sees the world in the same childish, unreasonable way. Not by age, adult children look like young old people. Striving for globality, the author of "War and Peace" loses the little things, the individuality of babies, for example, the children of Lev Nikolayevich do not come individually, but in a set: At the table were the mother, the old woman Belova who lived with her, his wife, three children, governess, tutor, nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov, Natasha, her three children, their governess and old man Mikhail Ivanovich, the architect of the prince, who lived in Bald Mountains in retirement.

Individuality in this enumeration relies on everyone, even the old woman Belova, whom we meet for the first and last time. Even a tutor, and a governess, and even a tutor do not merge into the general concept of "tutors". And only children, sexless and faceless, go in a crowd. Kharms had something to parody.

Anatole Kuragin

He is the son of Prince Vasily, the brother of Helen and Hippolyte. Prince Vasily himself looks at his son as a "restless fool" who constantly needs to be rescued from various troubles. A. is very handsome, dandy, insolent. He is frankly stupid, not resourceful, but popular in society, because "he had both the ability of calmness, precious to the world, and unchanging confidence." A. friend of Dolokhov, constantly participating in his revelry, looks at life as a constant stream of pleasures and pleasures. He doesn't care about other people, he's selfish. A. treats women with contempt, feeling his superiority. He was used to being liked by everyone, without experiencing anything serious in return. A. became interested in Natasha Rostova and tried to take her away. After this incident, the hero was forced to flee from Moscow and hide from Prince Andrei, who wanted to challenge the seducer of his bride to a duel. The last time they see each other is in the infirmary, after the Battle of Borodino. A. was wounded, his leg was amputated.

Andrey Bolkonsky

This is one of the main characters of the novel, the son of Prince Bolkonsky, the brother of Princess Mary. At the beginning of the novel, we see B. as an intelligent, proud, but rather arrogant person. He despises people of high society, is unhappy in marriage and does not respect his pretty wife. B. is very restrained, well educated, he has a strong will. This hero is going through a big spiritual change. First we see that his idol is Napoleon, whom he considers a great man. B. goes to war, goes to the active army. There he fights on an equal footing with all the soldiers, shows great courage, composure, and prudence. Participates in the Battle of Shengraben. B. was seriously wounded in the battle of Austerlitz. This moment is extremely important, because it was then that the spiritual rebirth of the hero began. Lying motionless and seeing the calm and eternal sky of Austerlitz above him, B. understands all the pettiness and stupidity of everything that happens in the war. He realized that in fact there should be completely different values ​​​​in life than those that he had until now. All feats, glory do not matter. There is only this vast and eternal sky. In the same episode, B. sees Napoleon and understands all the insignificance of this man. B. returns home, where everyone thought he was dead. His wife dies in childbirth, but the child survives. The hero is shocked by the death of his wife and feels guilty before her. He decides not to serve anymore, settles in Bogucharovo, takes care of the household, raises his son, reads many books. During a trip to St. Petersburg, B. meets Natasha Rostova for the second time. A deep feeling awakens in him, the heroes decide to get married. B.'s father does not agree with the choice of his son, they postpone the wedding for a year, the hero goes abroad. After the betrayal of the bride, he returns to the army under the leadership of Kutuzov. During the Battle of Borodino, he was mortally wounded. By chance, he leaves Moscow in the Rostovs' train. Before his death, he forgives Natasha and understands the true meaning of love.

Anna Pavlovna Sherer

Maid of honor close to Empress Maria Feodorovna. Sh. is the mistress of a fashionable salon in St. Petersburg, the description of the evening in which the novel opens. A.P. 40 years old, she is artificial, like all high society. Her attitude to any person or event depends entirely on the latest political, court or secular considerations. She is friendly with Prince Vasily. Sh. "is full of revival and impulse", "to be an enthusiast has become her social position." In 1812, her salon displays false patriotism by eating cabbage soup and being fined for speaking French.

Bagration

This real historical person, one of the most famous Russian military leaders, the hero of the Patriotic War of 1812, bears the title of prince. Tolstoy says that B. is "short, with an oriental type of hard and motionless face, dry, not yet an old man." In the novel, we mainly see him as the commander of the Shengraben battle, whom Kutuzov blessed to save the army. Just the presence of B. on the battlefield already helps the fighters. Everyone loves and respects him for his determination and courage. During the most decisive moment of the battle, B. does not give visible orders, but dismounts and goes into battle in front of the entire army. During the Battle of Austerlitz B. also showed his heroism. He alone repulsed the enemy, who was clearly twice as strong, and then, during the retreat, withdrew his column from the battlefield undisturbed. Tolstoy notes that when a dinner was given in honor of B., in his face "honor was saluted to a fighting, simple, without connections and intrigues, Russian soldier ...".

German, first the groom, and then the husband of Vera Rostova. This is a "fresh, pink Guards officer, impeccably washed, buttoned and combed." At the beginning of the work, B. is a lieutenant, and at the end of the work he becomes a colonel, from which it can be seen that B. made a good career. He is precise, calm, courteous, but very selfish and stingy. He loves and can only talk about himself and his successes. Those around him laugh at him, he is a stranger in the Rostovs' house. They do not understand his prudence, stinginess. B. makes an offer to Vera and demands the promised dowry from the old count, despite the difficult financial position Rostov. This hero is clearly unpleasant and alien to Tolstoy himself.

Boris Drubetskoy

Son of Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya. From childhood he was brought up and lived for a long time in the house of the Rostovs, to whom he was a relative. B. and Natasha were in love with each other. Outwardly, this is "a tall, blond young man with regular, delicate features of a calm and handsome face." B. from his youth dreams of a military career, allows his mother to humiliate himself in front of his superiors, if this will help him. So, Prince Vasily finds him a place in the guard. B. is going to make a brilliant career, making many useful acquaintances. After a while, he becomes Helen's lover. B. manages to be in the right place at the right time, and his career and position are established especially firmly. In 1809, he meets Natasha again and is carried away by her, even thinking of marrying her. But it would hinder his career. Therefore, B. begins to look for a rich bride. He eventually marries Julie Karagina.

Vasily Kuragin

Prince, father of Helen, Anatole and Hippolyte. This is a very famous and quite influential person in society, he occupies an important court post. The attitude towards everyone around Prince V. is condescending and patronizing. The author shows his hero "in a courtly, embroidered uniform, in stockings, shoes, with stars, with a bright expression of a flat face," with a "perfumed and shining bald head." But when he smiled, there was "something unexpectedly rude and unpleasant" in his smile. Especially Prince V. does not wish harm to anyone. He simply uses people and circumstances to carry out his plans. V. always strives to get close to people who are richer and higher in position. The hero considers himself an exemplary father, he does everything possible to arrange the future of his children. He is trying to marry his son Anatole to the rich Princess Marya Bolkonskaya. After the death of the old prince Bezukhov and Pierre receiving a huge inheritance, V. notices a rich fiancé and by cunning gives his daughter Helen to him. Prince V. is a great intriguer who knows how to live in society and make acquaintances with the right people.

Count Rostov

Rostov Ilya Andreevy - Count, father of Natasha, Nikolai, Vera and Petya. Very kind, generous person loving life and not very able to calculate their funds. R. is best able to make a reception, a ball, he is a hospitable host and an exemplary family man. The count is used to living in a big way, and when the means no longer allow this, he gradually ruins his family, from which he suffers greatly. When leaving Moscow, it is R. who begins to give carts for the wounded. So he deals one of the last blows to the family budget. The death of Petit's son finally broke the count, he comes to life only when he is preparing a wedding for Natasha and Pierre. In the same year, R. dies and leaves a good memory behind.

Countess of Rostov

The wife of Count Rostov, "a woman with an oriental type of thin face, forty-five years old, apparently exhausted by children ... The slowness of her movements and speech, which came from the weakness of her strength, gave her a significant look that inspires respect." R. creates in his family an atmosphere of love and kindness, he cares very much about the fate of his children. The news of the death of the youngest and beloved son of Petya almost drives her crazy. She is accustomed to luxury and the fulfillment of the slightest whims, and demands this after the death of her husband.

The author describes Fyodor Dolokhov as follows: “Dolokhov was a man of medium height, curly-haired and with light, blue eyes. He was about twenty-five years old. He did not wear a mustache, like all infantry officers, and his mouth, the most striking feature of his face, was all The lines of this mouth were remarkably finely curved. In the middle, the upper lip fell energetically on the firm lower lip in a sharp wedge, and something like two smiles constantly formed in the corners, one on each side; and all together, and especially in combination with a hard , with an impudent, intelligent look, made such an impression that it was impossible not to notice this face. This hero is not rich, but he knows how to put himself in such a way that everyone around respects and fears him. He likes to have fun, and in a rather strange and sometimes cruel way. For one case of mockery of the quarter, D. was demoted to the soldiers. But during the hostilities, he regained his rank of officer. This is a smart, brave and cold-blooded person. He is not afraid of death, is reputed to be an evil person, hides his tender love for his mother. In fact, D. does not want to know anyone except those whom he really loves. He divides people into harmful and useful, sees mostly harmful people around him and is ready to get rid of them if they suddenly stand in his way. D. was Helen's lover, he provokes Pierre to a duel, dishonestly beats Nikolai Rostov at cards, and helps Anatole arrange an escape with Natasha.

Captain Tushin

This is the staff captain, the hero of the battle of Shengraben. T. - a man of small stature with a thin voice, there was something "non-military, somewhat comical, but extremely attractive" in him. This hero is shy in front of his superiors, feels guilty, small. On the eve of the battle, T. speaks of the fear of death and what awaits after it. But during the battle, the hero is transformed. He feels like "a huge, powerful man who throws cannonballs at the French with both hands." Battery T. was forgotten during the battle. During the battle, the staff captain is no longer afraid of death or injury, he becomes more and more cheerful, the soldiers obey him like children. Soldiers miraculously survive thanks to the heroism of T.

Princess Mary

Daughter of the old Prince Bolkonsky and sister of Andrei Bolkonsky. M. is ugly, sickly, but her whole face is transformed by beautiful eyes: "... the eyes of the princess, large, deep and radiant (as if rays of warm light sometimes came out of them in sheaves), were so good that very often, despite the ugliness of the whole face, these eyes became more attractive than beauty. Princess M. is very religious. She often hosts all kinds of pilgrims, wanderers. She has no close friends, she lives under the yoke of her father, whom she loves, but is incredibly afraid of. old prince Bolkonsky was distinguished by a bad character, M. was absolutely crammed with him and did not at all believe in her personal happiness. She gives all her love to her father, brother Andrei and his son, trying to replace little Nikolenka dead mother. M.'s life changes after meeting Nikolai Rostov. It was he who saw all the wealth and beauty of her soul. They marry, M. becomes a devoted wife, fully sharing all the views of her husband.

Kuragina Helen

Kuragina Helen is the daughter of Prince Vasily, and then the wife of Pierre Bezukhov. A brilliant St. Petersburg beauty with an "unchanging smile", white full shoulders, glossy hair and a beautiful figure. There was no noticeable coquetry in her, as if she was ashamed "for her undoubtedly and too strong and victorious acting beauty." E. is imperturbable, giving everyone the right to admire herself, which is why she feels, as it were, gloss from a multitude of other people's views. She knows how to be silently worthy in the world, giving the impression of a tactful and intelligent woman, which, combined with beauty, ensures her constant success. Having married Pierre Bezukhov, the heroine discovers in front of her husband not only a limited mind, coarseness of thought and vulgarity, but also cynical depravity. After breaking up with Pierre and receiving a large part of the fortune from him by proxy, she lives either in St. Petersburg or abroad, then returns to her husband. Despite the family break, the constant change of lovers, including Dolokhov and Drubetskoy, E. continues to be one of the most famous and favored by the St. Petersburg ladies. She is making very great progress in the world; living alone, she becomes the mistress of the diplomatic and political salon, gaining a reputation as an intelligent woman. Having decided to convert to Catholicism and considering the possibility of divorce and a new marriage, entangled between two very influential high-ranking lovers and patrons, E. dies in 1812.

A real historical person, the commander-in-chief of the Russian army. For Tolstoy, he is the ideal of a historical figure and the ideal of a person. “He will listen to everything, remember everything, put everything in its place, will not interfere with anything useful and will not allow anything harmful. He understands that there is something stronger and more significant than his will, this is an inevitable course of events, and he knows how to see them, knows how to understand their meaning and, in view of this meaning, knows how to renounce participation in these events, from his personal will directed to something else. K. knew that “the fate of the battle is not decided by the orders of the commander-in-chief, not by the place on which the troops stand, not by the number of guns and killed people, but by that elusive force called the spirit of the army, and he followed this force and led it as far as it was in his power." K. merges with the people, he is always modest and simple. His behavior is natural, the author constantly emphasizes his heaviness, senile weakness. K. - an exponent of folk wisdom in the novel. His strength lies in the fact that he understands and knows well what worries the people, and acts in accordance with this. K. dies when he has fulfilled his duty. The enemy has been driven out of the borders of Russia, this folk hero has nothing else to do.

Lisa Bolkonskaya

Prince Andrew's wife. She is the darling of the whole world, an attractive young woman whom everyone calls the "little princess". “Her pretty, with a slightly blackened mustache, her upper lip was short in the teeth, but the sweeter it opened and the sweeter it sometimes stretched out and fell on the bottom. her special, actually her beauty. Everyone was glad to look at this full of health and liveliness, a pretty future mother, who endured her position so easily. "L. was a universal favorite due to her constant liveliness and courtesy of a secular woman, she could not imagine her life without high society. But Prince Andrei did not love his wife and felt unhappy in marriage "L. does not understand her husband, his aspirations and ideals. After Andrei's departure for the war, L. lives in the Bald Hills with the old prince Bolkonsky, for whom he feels fear and hostility. L. anticipates his quick death and actually dies during childbirth.

Napoleon

This is a real historical person, the French emperor. Tolstoy decided to debunk the legend of Napoleon from the standpoint of real humanism. At the beginning of the novel, this man is the idol of Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov considers N. A great man. But gradually these best heroes of Tolstoy become disillusioned with their idol.

Description of work

Anatole Kuragin
He is the son of Prince Vasily, the brother of Helen and Hippolyte. Prince Vasily himself looks at his son as a "restless fool" who constantly needs to be rescued from various troubles. A. is very handsome, dandy, insolent. He is frankly stupid, not resourceful, but popular in society, because "he had both the ability of calmness, precious to the world, and unchanging confidence." A. friend of Dolokhov, constantly participating in his revelry, looks at life as a constant stream of pleasures and pleasures.

Like everything in the War and Peace epic, the character system is extremely complex and very simple at the same time.

It is complex because the composition of the book is multi-figured, dozens of storylines, intertwining, form its dense artistic fabric. Simply because all heterogeneous heroes belonging to incompatible class, cultural, property circles are clearly divided into several groups. And we find this division at all levels, in all parts of the epic.

What are these groups? And on what basis do we distinguish them? These are groups of heroes who are equally distant from the life of the people, from the spontaneous movement of history, from the truth, or equally close to them.

We have just said: Tolstoy's novel epic is permeated with the thought that the unknowable and objective historical process is directly controlled by God; what to choose Right way and in privacy, and in great history a person can do it not with the help of a proud mind, but with the help of a sensitive heart. The one who guessed right, felt the mysterious course of history and no less mysterious laws of everyday life, he is wise and great, even if he is small in his social position. He who boasts of his power over the nature of things, who egoistically imposes his personal interests on life, is petty, even if he is great in his social position.

In accordance with this rigid opposition, Tolstoy's heroes are "distributed" into several types, into several groups.

In order to understand exactly how these groups interact with each other, let's agree on the concepts that we will use when analyzing Tolstoy's multi-figured epic. These concepts are conditional, but they make it easier to understand the typology of characters (remember what the word "typology" means, if you forgot, look up its meaning in the dictionary).

Those who, from the point of view of the author, are the furthest from a correct understanding of the world order, we will agree to call life-burners. Those who, like Napoleon, think they are in control of history, we will call leaders. They are opposed by the sages, who comprehended the main secret of life, understood that a person must submit to the invisible will of Providence. Those who simply live, listening to the voice of their own hearts, but do not particularly strive for anything, we will call ordinary people. Those favorite Tolstoy heroes! - who painfully seeks the truth, we define as truth-seekers. And, finally, Natasha Rostova does not fit into any of these groups, and this is fundamental for Tolstoy, which we will also talk about.

So, who are they, the heroes of Tolstoy?

Life burners. They are busy only chatting, arranging their personal affairs, serving their petty whims, their egocentric desires. And at any cost, regardless of the fate of other people. This is the lowest of all ranks in the Tolstoyan hierarchy. The characters related to him are always of the same type; to characterize them, the narrator defiantly uses the same detail from time to time.

Anna Pavlovna Sherer, the head of the Moscow salon, appearing on the pages of War and Peace, every time with an unnatural smile, moves from one circle to another and treats the guests to an interesting visitor. She is sure that she forms public opinion and influences the course of things (although she herself changes her beliefs precisely in the wake of fashion).

The diplomat Bilibin is convinced that it is they, the diplomats, who manage the historical process (and in fact he is busy with idle talk); from one scene to another, Bilibin collects wrinkles on his forehead and utters a sharp word prepared in advance.

Drubetskoy's mother, Anna Mikhailovna, who stubbornly promotes her son, accompanies all her conversations with a mournful smile. In Boris Drubetsky himself, as soon as he appears on the pages of the epic, the narrator always highlights one feature: his indifferent calm of a smart and proud careerist.

As soon as the narrator starts talking about the predatory Helen Kuragina, he will certainly mention her luxurious shoulders and bust. And with any appearance of the young wife of Andrei Bolkonsky, the little princess, the narrator will pay attention to her parted lip with a mustache. This monotony narrative technique testifies not to the poverty of the artistic arsenal, but, on the contrary, to the deliberate goal that the author sets. The playboys themselves are monotonous and unchanging; only their views change, the being remains the same. They don't develop. And the immobility of their images, the resemblance to deathly masks, is precisely emphasized stylistically.

The only one of the epic characters belonging to this group who is endowed with a mobile, lively character is Fedor Dolokhov. “Semenovsky officer, famous player and breter”, he is distinguished by an extraordinary appearance - and this alone distinguishes him from the general series of playboys.

Moreover: Dolokhov is languishing, bored in that whirlpool of worldly life that sucks in the rest of the “burners”. That is why he indulges in all serious, falls into scandalous stories(the plot with a bear and a quarterman in the first part, for which Dolokhov was demoted to the rank and file). In battle scenes, we become witnesses of Dolokhov's fearlessness, then we see how tenderly he treats his mother ... But his fearlessness is aimless, Dolokhov's tenderness is an exception to his own rules. And the rule becomes hatred and contempt for people.

It is fully manifested in the episode with Pierre (becoming Helen's lover, Dolokhov provokes Bezukhov to a duel), and at the moment when Dolokhov helps Anatole Kuragin prepare the kidnapping of Natasha. And especially in the scene of the card game: Fedor cruelly and dishonestly beats Nikolai Rostov, vilely taking out on him his anger at Sonya, who refused Dolokhov.

Dolokhovsky's rebellion against the world (and this is also the "world"!) of life-burners turns into the fact that he himself burns his life, lets it into spray. And it is especially offensive to realize the narrator, who, by singling out Dolokhov from the general series, as if gives him a chance to break out of the terrible circle.

And in the center of this circle, this funnel that sucks human souls, - the Kuragin family.

The main "generic" quality of the whole family is cold selfishness. He is especially inherent in his father, Prince Vasily, with his courtly self-awareness. Not without reason, for the first time, the prince appears before the reader precisely “in a court, embroidered uniform, in stockings, in shoes, with stars, with a bright expression of a flat face.” Prince Vasily himself does not calculate anything, does not plan ahead, one can say that instinct acts for him: when he tries to marry his son Anatole to Princess Mary, and when he tries to deprive Pierre of his inheritance, and when, having suffered an involuntary defeat along the way, he imposes on Pierre his daughter Helen.

Helen, whose “unchanging smile” emphasizes the uniqueness, one-dimensionality of this heroine, seemed to have frozen for years in the same state: static, deathly-sculptural beauty. She, too, does not specifically plan anything, she also obeys an almost animal instinct: bringing her husband closer and removing him, making lovers and intending to convert to Catholicism, preparing the ground for divorce and starting two novels at once, one of which (any) should be crowned with marriage.

External beauty replaces Helen's internal content. This characteristic extends to her brother, Anatol Kuragin. A tall handsome man with "beautiful big eyes”, he is not gifted with intelligence (although not as stupid as his brother Hippolyte), but “on the other hand, he also had the ability of calmness, precious for light, and unchanging confidence.” This confidence is akin to the instinct of profit, which owns the souls of Prince Vasily and Helen. And although Anatole does not pursue personal gain, he hunts for pleasures with the same insatiable passion and with the same readiness to sacrifice any neighbor. So he does with Natasha Rostova, falling in love with her, preparing to take her away and not thinking about her fate, about the fate of Andrei Bolkonsky, whom Natasha is going to marry ...

Kuragins play the same role in the vain dimension of the world that Napoleon plays in the “military” dimension: they personify secular indifference to good and evil. At their whim, the Kuragins involve the surrounding life in a terrible whirlpool. This family is like a pool. Approaching him at a dangerous distance, it is easy to die - only a miracle saves both Pierre, and Natasha, and Andrei Bolkonsky (who would certainly have challenged Anatole to a duel, if not for the circumstances of the war).

Leaders. The lowest "category" of heroes - life-burners in Tolstoy's epic corresponds to the upper category of heroes - leaders. The way they are portrayed is the same: the narrator draws attention to a single trait of character, behavior or appearance of the character. And every time the reader encounters this hero, he stubbornly, almost intrusively, points to this feature.

The playboys belong to the "world" in the worst of its meanings, nothing in history depends on them, they revolve in the emptiness of the cabin. Leaders are inextricably linked with war (again, in the bad sense of the word); they stand at the head of historical collisions, separated from ordinary mortals by an impenetrable veil of their own greatness. But if the Kuragins really involve the surrounding life in the worldly whirlpool, then the leaders of the peoples only think that they are involving humanity in the historical whirlwind. In fact, they are only the toys of chance, miserable tools in the invisible hands of Providence.

And here let's stop for a second to agree on one thing. important rule. And once and for all. In fiction, you have already met and will come across images of real historical figures more than once. In the epic of Tolstoy, this is Emperor Alexander I, and Napoleon, and Barclay de Tolly, and Russian and French generals, and the Moscow Governor-General Rostopchin. But we must not, we have no right to confuse "real" historical figures with their conventional images that operate in novels, short stories, and poems. And the emperor, and Napoleon, and Rostopchin, and especially Barclay de Tolly, and other characters of Tolstoy, bred in War and Peace, are the same fictional characters as Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova or Anatole Kuragin.

The outer outline of their biographies can be reproduced in literary essay with scrupulous, scientific accuracy - but the inner content is "invested" in them by the writer, invented in accordance with the picture of life that he creates in his work. And therefore, they look like real historical figures not much more than Fedor Dolokhov looks like his prototype, reveler and daredevil R. I. Dolokhov, and Vasily Denisov looks like the partisan poet D. V. Davydov.

Only having mastered this iron and irrevocable rule, we will be able to move on.

So, discussing the lowest category of the heroes of War and Peace, we came to the conclusion that it has its own mass (Anna Pavlovna Sherer or, for example, Berg), its own center (Kuragins) and its own periphery (Dolokhov). According to the same principle, the highest rank is organized and arranged.

The chief of the leaders, and therefore the most dangerous, the most deceitful of them, is Napoleon.

There are two Napoleonic images in Tolstoy's epic. Odin lives in the legend of the great commander, which is told to each other by different characters and in which he appears either as a powerful genius, or as a powerful villain. In this legend different stages not only visitors to the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer believe their way, but also Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. At first we see Napoleon through their eyes, we imagine him in the light of their life ideal.

And another image is a character acting on the pages of the epic and shown through the eyes of the narrator and the heroes who suddenly encounter him on the battlefields. For the first time, Napoleon as a character in "War and Peace" appears in the chapters devoted to the battle of Austerlitz; first, the narrator describes him, then we see him from the point of view of Prince Andrei.

The wounded Bolkonsky, who quite recently idolized the leader of the peoples, notices on the face of Napoleon, bending over him, "a radiance of complacency and happiness." Having just experienced a spiritual upheaval, he looks into the eyes of his former idol and thinks "about the insignificance of greatness, about the insignificance of life, which no one could understand the meaning of." And “his hero himself seemed so petty to him, with this petty vanity and joy of victory, in comparison with that high, just and kind sky that he saw and understood.”

The narrator, in the Austerlitz chapters, in the Tilsit chapters, and in the Borodino chapters, invariably emphasizes the everydayness and comic insignificance of the appearance of a person who is idolized and hated by the whole world. A “fat, short” figure, “with broad, thick shoulders and an involuntarily protruding belly and chest, had that representative, portly appearance that people of forty years of age have in the hall.”

In the novel image of Napoleon there is not a trace of that power, which is contained in his legendary image. For Tolstoy, only one thing matters: Napoleon, who imagines himself to be the engine of history, is in fact pathetic and especially insignificant. Impersonal fate (or the unknowable will of Providence) made him an instrument of the historical process, and he imagined himself the creator of his victories. It is to Napoleon that the words from the historiosophical finale of the book refer: “For us, with the measure of good and bad given to us by Christ, there is nothing immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

A reduced and degraded copy of Napoleon, a parody of him - the Moscow mayor Rostopchin. He fusses, flickers, hangs up posters, quarrels with Kutuzov, thinking that the fate of Muscovites, the fate of Russia, depends on his decisions. But the narrator sternly and steadily explains to the reader that Moscow residents began to leave the capital, not because someone called them to do this, but because they obeyed the will of Providence that they guessed. And the fire broke out in Moscow not because Rostopchin wanted it that way (and even more so not contrary to his orders), but because it could not help but burn down: in the abandoned wooden houses where the invaders settled, fire inevitably breaks out sooner or later.

Rostopchin has the same relation to the departure of the Muscovites and the Moscow fires that Napoleon has to the victory at Austerlitz or to the flight of the valiant French army from Russia. The only thing that is truly in his power (as well as in the power of Napoleon) is to protect the lives of the townspeople and militias entrusted to him, or to scatter them out of whim or fear.

The key scene in which the narrator's attitude to the "leaders" in general and to the image of Rostopchin in particular is concentrated is the lynching of the merchant's son Vereshchagin (volume III, part three, chapters XXIV-XXV). In it, the ruler is revealed as a cruel and weak person who is mortally afraid of an angry crowd and, in horror before it, is ready to shed blood without trial or investigation.

The narrator seems extremely objective, he does not show his personal attitude to the actions of the mayor, he does not comment on them. But at the same time, he consistently contrasts the "metal-voiced" indifference of the "leader" - the uniqueness of a separate human life. Vereshchagin is described in great detail, with obvious compassion (“strumming with shackles ... pressing the collar of a sheepskin coat ... with a submissive gesture”). But after all, Rostopchin does not look at his future victim - the narrator specifically repeats several times, with pressure: "Rostopchin did not look at him."

Even the angry, gloomy crowd in the courtyard of the Rostopchinsky house does not want to rush at Vereshchagin, accused of treason. Rostopchin is forced to repeat several times, setting her against the merchant's son: “Beat him! .. Let the traitor die and not shame the name of the Russian! ...Cut! I order!". Ho, and after this direct call-order "the crowd groaned and advanced, but again stopped." She still sees a man in Vereshchagin and does not dare to rush at him: "A tall fellow, with a petrified expression on his face and with a raised hand stopped, stood next to Vereshchagin." Only after, in obedience to the officer’s order, the soldier “with a face distorted with malice hit Vereshchagin on the head with a blunt broadsword” and the merchant’s son in a fox sheepskin coat “shortly and in surprise” cried out, “a barrier of human feeling stretched to the highest degree, which still held the crowd broke instantly." Leaders treat people not as living beings, but as instruments of their power. And therefore they are worse than the crowd, more terrible than it.

The images of Napoleon and Rostopchin stand at opposite poles of this group of heroes in War and Peace. And the main "mass" of leaders here is formed by all sorts of generals, chiefs of all stripes. All of them, as one, do not understand the inscrutable laws of history, they think that the outcome of the battle depends only on them, on their military talents or political abilities. It does not matter which army they serve at the same time - French, Austrian or Russian. And in the epic Barclay de Tolly, a dry German in the Russian service, becomes the personification of this whole mass of generals. He does not understand anything in the spirit of the people and, together with other Germans, believes in the scheme of the correct disposition.

The real Russian commander Barclay de Tolly, unlike artistic image, created by Tolstoy, was not a German (he came from a Scottish, and a long time ago Russified family). And in his work he never relied on a scheme. But here lies the line between the historical figure and his image, which is created by literature. In Tolstoy's picture of the world, the Germans are not real representatives real people, but a symbol of foreignness and cold rationalism, which only interferes with understanding the natural course of things. Therefore, Barclay de Tolly, like a novel hero, turns into a dry "German", which he was not in reality.

And on the very edge of this group of heroes, on the border that separates the false leaders from the wise men (we’ll talk about them a little later), stands the image of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. He is so isolated from the general series that at first it even seems that his image is devoid of boring unambiguity, that it is complex and multifaceted. Moreover: the image of Alexander I is invariably served in a halo of admiration.

Ho let's ask ourselves the question: whose admiration is it, the narrator or the characters? And then everything will immediately fall into place.

Here we see Alexander for the first time during the review of the Austrian and Russian troops (Volume I, Part Three, Chapter VIII). At first, the narrator describes him neutrally: "The handsome, young Emperor Alexander ... attracted all the power of attention with his pleasant face and sonorous, quiet voice." Then we begin to look at the tsar through the eyes of Nikolai Rostov, who is in love with him: “Nicholas clearly, to all the details, examined the beautiful, young and happy face of the emperor, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and delight, the like of which he had never experienced. Everything - every feature, every movement - seemed charming to him in the sovereign. The narrator discovers the usual features in Alexander: beautiful, pleasant. And Nikolai Rostov discovers in them a completely different quality, a superlative degree: they seem to him beautiful, “charming”.

Ho here is chapter XV of the same part; here the narrator and Prince Andrei, who is by no means in love with the sovereign, alternately look at Alexander I. This time there is no such internal gap in emotional assessments. The sovereign meets with Kutuzov, whom he clearly does not like (and we still do not know how highly the narrator appreciates Kutuzov).

It would seem that the narrator is again objective and neutral:

“An unpleasant impression, only like the remnants of fog in a clear sky, ran across the young and happy face of the emperor and disappeared ... the same charming combination of majesty and meekness was in his beautiful gray eyes, and on thin lips the same possibility of various expressions and the prevailing expression good-natured, innocent youth.

Again the “young and happy face”, again the charming appearance... And yet, pay attention: the narrator lifts the veil over his own attitude to all these qualities of the king. He says bluntly: "on thin lips" there was "the possibility of various expressions." And the “expression of complacent, innocent youth” is only the predominant, but by no means the only one. That is, Alexander I always wears masks, behind which his real face is hidden.

What is this face? It is contradictory. It has both kindness, sincerity - and falseness, lies. But the fact of the matter is that Alexander opposes Napoleon; Tolstoy does not want to belittle his image, but cannot exalt it. Therefore, he resorts to the only possible way: he shows the king, first of all, through the eyes of heroes who are devoted to him and worship his genius. It is they who, blinded by their love and devotion, pay attention only to the best manifestations of the various faces of Alexander; it is they who recognize in him the real leader.

In Chapter XVIII (volume one, part three), Rostov again sees the tsar: “The sovereign was pale, his cheeks were sunken and his eyes were sunken; but the more charm, meekness was in his features. This is a typical Rostov look - the look of an honest but superficial officer in love with his sovereign. However, now Nikolai Rostov meets the tsar away from the nobles, from the thousands of eyes fixed on him; in front of him is a simple suffering mortal, grieving the defeat of the army: "Only something long and fervently spoke to the sovereign," and he, "apparently crying, closed his eyes with his hand and shook hands with Tolya." Then we will see the tsar through the eyes of the obligingly proud Drubetskoy (volume III, part one, chapter III), the enthusiastic Petya Rostov (volume III, part one, chapter XXI), Pierre Bezukhov at the moment when he is captured by the general enthusiasm during the Moscow meeting of the sovereign with deputations of the nobility and merchants (volume III, part one, chapter XXIII)...

The narrator, with his attitude, remains in the shadows for the time being. He only says through his teeth at the beginning of the third volume: “The Tsar is a slave of history,” but he refrains from direct assessments of the personality of Alexander I until the end of the fourth volume, when the Tsar directly confronts Kutuzov (chapters X and XI, part four). Only here, and then only for a short time, does the narrator show his restrained disapproval. After all, we are talking about the resignation of Kutuzov, who had just won a victory over Napoleon together with the entire Russian people!

And the result of the "Alexander" plot line will be summed up only in the Epilogue, where the narrator will try his best to maintain justice in relation to the king, bring his image closer to the image of Kutuzov: the latter was necessary for the movement of peoples from west to east, and the first - for the return movement peoples from east to west.

Ordinary people. Both the playboys and the leaders in the novel are opposed by “ordinary people”, led by the truth-seeker, the Moscow mistress Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova. In their world, she plays the same role that the St. Petersburg lady Anna Pavlovna Sherer plays in the little world of the Kuragins and Bilibins. Ordinary people have not risen above the general level of their time, their epoch, have not come to know the truth of people's life, but instinctively live in conditional agreement with it. Although sometimes they do wrong, and human weaknesses they belong to the full.

This discrepancy, this difference in potentials, the combination of different qualities in one personality, good and not so, favorably distinguishes ordinary people and from the playboys of life, and from the leaders. The heroes assigned to this category, as a rule, are shallow people, and yet their portraits are painted in different colors, obviously devoid of unambiguity, uniformity.

Such, on the whole, is the hospitable Moscow family of the Rostovs, a mirror image of the Petersburg clan of the Kuragins.

Old Count Ilya Andreevich, father of Natasha, Nikolai, Petya, Vera, is a weak man, allows the managers to rob him, suffers at the thought that he is ruining the children, but he cannot do anything about it. Departure to the village for two years, an attempt to move to St. Petersburg and get a place change little in general position of things.

The count is not too smart, but at the same time he is fully endowed from God with heart gifts - hospitality, cordiality, love for family and children. Two scenes characterize him from this side, and both are permeated with lyricism, ecstasy of delight: a description of a dinner in a Rostov house in honor of Bagration and a description of a dog hunt.

And one more scene is extraordinarily important for understanding the image of the old count: the departure from the burning Moscow. It was he who was the first to give the reckless (from the point of view of common sense) order to let the wounded into the carts. Having removed the acquired property from the cart for the sake of Russian officers and soldiers, the Rostovs deal the last irreparable blow to their own condition ... But not only save several lives, but also, unexpectedly for themselves, give Natasha a chance to reconcile with Andrei.

The wife of Ilya Andreevich, Countess Rostova, is also not distinguished by a special mind - that abstract scientific mind, to which the narrator treats with obvious distrust. She is hopelessly behind modern life; and when the family is finally ruined, the countess is not even able to understand why they should give up their own carriage and cannot send a carriage for one of her friends. Moreover, we see the injustice, sometimes the cruelty of the countess in relation to Sonya - completely innocent in the fact that she is a dowry.

And yet, she also has a special gift of humanity, which separates her from the crowd of playboys, brings her closer to the truth of life. It is a gift of love for one's own children; love instinctively wise, deep and selfless. The decisions she makes regarding her children are dictated not just by the desire for profit and saving the family from ruin (although for her too); they are aimed at arranging the life of the children themselves in the best possible way. And when the countess finds out about the death of her beloved youngest son in the war, her life, in essence, ends; barely avoiding insanity, she instantly grows old and loses active interest in what is happening around.

All the best Rostov qualities were passed on to the children, except for the dry, prudent and therefore unloved Vera. Having married Berg, she naturally moved from the category of "ordinary people" to the number of "life-burners" and "Germans". And also - except for the pupil of the Rostovs Sonya, who, despite all her kindness and sacrifice, turns out to be an "empty flower" and gradually, following Vera, slides from the rounded world of ordinary people into the plane of life-burners.

Especially touching is the youngest, Petya, who completely absorbed the atmosphere of the Rostov house. Like his father and mother, he is not too smart, but he is extremely sincere and sincere; this sincerity is expressed in a special way in his musicality. Petya instantly surrenders to the impulse of the heart; therefore, it is from his point of view that we look from the Moscow patriotic crowd at Tsar Alexander I and share his genuine youthful enthusiasm. Although we feel that the narrator's attitude to the emperor is not as unambiguous as the young character. Petya's death from an enemy bullet is one of the most piercing and most memorable episodes of Tolstoy's epic.

But just as the playboys, the leaders, have their own center, so do the ordinary people who populate the pages of War and Peace. This center is Nikolai Rostov and Marya Bolkonskaya, whose life lines, separated over the course of three volumes, eventually intersect anyway, obeying the unwritten law of affinity.

"A short curly young man with an open expression", he is distinguished by "swiftness and enthusiasm." Nikolai, as usual, is shallow (“he had that common sense of mediocrity, which told him what was supposed to be,” the narrator says bluntly). Ho, on the other hand, is very emotional, impulsive, cordial, and therefore musical, like all Rostovs.

One of the key episodes of the storyline of Nikolai Rostov is the crossing of the Enns, and then a wound in the hand during the battle of Shengraben. Here the hero first encounters an insoluble contradiction in his soul; he, who considered himself a fearless patriot, suddenly discovers that he is afraid of death and that the very thought of death is absurd - him, whom "everyone loves so much." This experience not only does not reduce the image of the hero, on the contrary: it is at that moment that his spiritual maturation takes place.

And yet, it’s not for nothing that Nikolai likes it so much in the army and so uncomfortable in ordinary life. The regiment is a special world (another world in the middle of the war), in which everything is arranged logically, simply, unambiguously. There are subordinates, there is a commander, and there is a commander of commanders - the sovereign emperor, whom it is so natural and so pleasant to adore. And the whole life of civilians consists of endless intricacies, of human sympathies and antipathies, the clash of private interests and the common goals of the class. Arriving home on vacation, Rostov either gets entangled in his relationship with Sonya, or completely loses to Dolokhov, which puts the family on the brink of a financial disaster, and actually flees from ordinary life to the regiment, like a monk to his monastery. (The fact that the same rules apply in the army, he does not seem to notice; when in the regiment he has to solve complex moral problems, for example, with officer Telyanin, who stole a wallet, Rostov is completely lost.)

Like any hero who claims an independent line in the novel space and an active participation in the development of the main intrigue, Nikolai is endowed with a love plot. He is a kind little fair man, and therefore, having given a youthful promise to marry the dowry Sonya, he considers himself bound for the rest of his life. And no mother's persuasion, no hints of relatives about the need to search for a rich bride can shake him. Moreover, his feeling for Sonya goes through different stages, either completely fading away, then returning again, then disappearing again.

Therefore, the most dramatic moment in the fate of Nikolai comes after the meeting in Bogucharov. Here, during the tragic events of the summer of 1812, he accidentally meets Princess Marya Bolkonskaya, one of the richest brides in Russia, whom they would dream of marrying him. Rostov selflessly helps the Bolkonskys get out of Bogucharov, and both of them, Nikolai and Marya, suddenly feel a mutual attraction. But what is considered the norm among “life-seekers” (and most “ordinary people” too) turns out to be an almost insurmountable obstacle for them: she is rich, he is poor.

Only Sonya's refusal of the word given to her by Rostov, and the strength of natural feeling, are able to overcome this barrier; Having married, Rostov and Princess Marya live soul to soul, as Kitty and Levin will live in Anna Karenina. However, the difference between honest mediocrity and an impulse to seek the truth lies in the fact that the former does not know development, does not recognize doubts. As we have already noted, in the first part of the Epilogue between Nikolai Rostov, on the one hand, Pierre Bezukhov and Nikolenka Bolkonsky, on the other, an invisible conflict is brewing, the line of which stretches into the distance, beyond the plot action.

Pierre, at the cost of new moral torments, new mistakes and new searches, is drawn into another turn. big story: he becomes a member of the early pre-Decembrist organizations. Nikolenka is completely on his side; it is easy to calculate that by the time of the uprising on Senate Square he will be a young man, most likely an officer, and with such a heightened moral sense, he will be on the side of the rebels. And the sincere, respectable, narrow-minded Nikolai, who once and for all stopped in development, knows in advance that in which case he will shoot at the opponents of the legitimate ruler, his beloved sovereign ...

Truth Seekers. This is the most important of the ranks; without heroes-truth-seekers, there would be no epic "War and Peace" at all. Only two characters, two close friends, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, have the right to claim this special title. They also cannot be called unconditionally positive; to create their images, the narrator uses the most different colors, but it is precisely because of the ambiguity that they seem especially voluminous and bright.

Both of them, Prince Andrei and Count Pierre, are rich (Bolkonsky - initially, illegitimate Bezukhov - after the sudden death of his father); smart, albeit in different ways. Bolkonsky's mind is cold and sharp; Bezukhov's mind is naive, but organic. Like many young people of the 1800s, they are in awe of Napoleon; the proud dream of a special role in world history, which means that the conviction that it is the individual who controls the course of things is equally inherent in both Bolkonsky and Bezukhov. From this common point, the narrator draws two very different storylines, which at first diverge very far, and then reconnect, intersecting in the space of truth.

But here it is just revealed that they become truth-seekers against their will. Neither one nor the other is going to seek the truth, they do not strive for moral perfection, and at first they are sure that the truth was revealed to them in the image of Napoleon. They are pushed to an intense search for truth by external circumstances, and perhaps by Providence itself. Just spiritual qualities Andrei and Pierre are such that each of them is able to respond to the challenge of fate, to respond to her silent question; that is the only reason why they ultimately rise above the general level.

Prince Andrew. Bolkonsky is unhappy at the beginning of the book; he does not love his sweet but empty wife; indifferent to the unborn child, and after his birth does not show special paternal feelings. The family "instinct" is as alien to him as the secular "instinct"; he cannot be included in the category of "ordinary" people for the same reasons that he cannot be in the category of "life-burners". But he not only could break into the number of elected "leaders", but he would very much like to. Napoleon, we repeat again and again, is a life example and a guide for him.

Having learned from Bilibin that the Russian army (it takes place in 1805) was in a hopeless situation, Prince Andrei is almost glad of the tragic news. “... It occurred to him that it was precisely for him that it was intended to lead the Russian army out of this situation, that here it was, that Toulon, which would lead him out of the ranks of unknown officers and open the first path to glory for him!” (volume I, part two, chapter XII).

How it ended, you already know, we analyzed the scene with the eternal sky of Austerlitz in detail. The truth is revealed to Prince Andrei herself, without any effort on his part; he does not gradually come to the conclusion about the insignificance of all narcissistic heroes in the face of eternity - this conclusion appears to him immediately and in its entirety.

It would seem that Bolkonsky's storyline has been exhausted already at the end of the first volume, and the author has no choice but to declare the hero dead. And here, contrary to ordinary logic, the most important thing begins - truth-seeking. Having accepted the truth immediately and in its entirety, Prince Andrei suddenly loses it and begins a painful, long search, returning by a side road to the feeling that once visited him on the field of Austerlitz.

Arriving home, where everyone considered him dead, Andrei learns about the birth of his son and - soon - about the death of his wife: the little princess with a short upper lip disappears from his life horizon at the very moment when he is ready to finally open his heart to her! This news shocks the hero and awakens in him a sense of guilt before his dead wife; leaving military service (along with a vain dream of personal greatness), Bolkonsky settles in Bogucharovo, does housework, reads, and brings up his son.

It would seem that he anticipates the path along which at the end of the fourth volumes will go Nikolai Rostov with Andrei's sister Princess Marya. Compare the descriptions of Bolkonsky's household chores in Bogucharov and Rostov in Lysy Gory on your own. You will be convinced of the non-random similarity, you will find another plot parallel. But that is the difference between the "ordinary" heroes of "War and Peace" and the truth-seekers, that the former stop where the latter continue their unstoppable movement.

Bolkonsky, who learned the truth of the eternal sky, thinks that it is enough to give up personal pride in order to find peace of mind. Ho, in fact, village life cannot accommodate his unspent energy. And the truth, received as if as a gift, not personally suffered, not found as a result of a long search, begins to elude him. Andrei is languishing in the village, his soul seems to be drying up. Pierre, who has arrived in Bogucharovo, is struck by the terrible change that has taken place in a friend. Only for a moment does the prince awaken a happy sense of belonging to the truth - when for the first time after being wounded he pays attention to the eternal sky. And then the veil of hopelessness again covers his life horizon.

What happened? Why does the author “doom” his hero to inexplicable torment? First of all, because the hero must independently “ripen” to the truth that was revealed to him by the will of Providence. Prince Andrei has a difficult job ahead of him, he will have to go through numerous trials before he regains a sense of unshakable truth. And from that moment on, the storyline of Prince Andrei is likened to a spiral: it goes on a new turn, repeating the previous stage of his fate at a more complex level. He is destined to fall in love again, again to indulge in ambitious thoughts, again to be disappointed both in love and in thoughts. And finally, come back to the truth.

The third part of the second volume opens with a symbolic description of Prince Andrei's trip to the Ryazan estates. Spring is coming; at the entrance to the forest, he notices an old oak at 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 broken branches, which can be seen for a long time, 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.

It is clear that Prince Andrei himself is personified in the image of this oak, whose soul does not respond to the eternal joy of renewing life, has become dead and extinguished. Ho, on the affairs of the Ryazan estates, Bolkonsky should meet with Ilya Andreevich Rostov - and, having spent the night in the Rostovs' house, the prince again notices a bright, almost starless spring sky. And then he accidentally hears an excited conversation between Sonya and Natasha (volume II, part three, chapter II).

A feeling of love latently awakens in Andrei's heart (although the hero himself does not understand this yet). Like a character in a folk tale, he seems to be sprinkled with living water - and on the way back, already in early June, the prince again sees the oak, personifying himself, and recalls the Austerlitz sky.

Returning to St. Petersburg, Bolkonsky is involved in social activities with renewed vigor; he believes that he is now driven not by personal vanity, not by pride, not by "Napoleonism", but by a disinterested desire to serve people, to serve the Fatherland. His new hero, idol is the young energetic reformer Speransky. Bolkonsky is ready to follow Speransky, who dreams of transforming Russia, just as he was ready to imitate Napoleon in everything, who wanted to throw the whole Universe at his feet.

Ho Tolstoy builds the plot in such a way that the reader from the very beginning feels something is not entirely right; Andrei sees a hero in Speransky, and the narrator sees another leader.

The judgment about the "insignificant seminarian" who holds the fate of Russia in his hands, of course, expresses the position of the fascinated Bolkonsky, who himself does not notice how he transfers the features of Napoleon to Speransky. A mocking clarification - "as Bolkonsky thought" - comes from the narrator. Speransky’s “contemptuous calmness” is noticed by Prince Andrei, and the “leader’s” arrogance (“from an immeasurable height ...”) is noticed by the narrator.

In other words, Prince Andrei, on a new round of his biography, repeats the mistake of his youth; he is again blinded by the false example of someone else's pride, in which his own pride finds its nourishment. But here in Bolkonsky's life a significant meeting takes place - he meets the very Natasha Rostova, whose voice moonlit night in the Ryazan estate brought him back to life. Falling in love is inevitable; marriage is a foregone conclusion. But since the stern father, the old man Bolkonsky, does not give consent to an early marriage, Andrei is forced to go abroad and stop working with Speransky, which could tempt him, entice him to his former path. And the dramatic break with the bride after her failed flight with Kuragin completely pushes Prince Andrei, as it seems to him, to the sidelines of the historical process, to the outskirts of the empire. He is again under the command of Kutuzov.

Ho, in fact, God continues to lead Bolkonsky in a special way, to Him alone. Having overcome the temptation by the example of Napoleon, having happily avoided the temptation by the example of Speransky, having once again lost hope for family happiness, Prince Andrei repeats the “drawing” of his fate for the third time. Because, having fallen under the command of Kutuzov, he is imperceptibly charged with the quiet energy of the wise old commander, as before he was charged with the stormy energy of Napoleon and the cold energy of Speransky.

It is no coincidence that Tolstoy uses the folklore principle of the hero's triple test: after all, unlike Napoleon and Speransky, Kutuzov is truly close to the people, is one with them. Until now, Bolkonsky was aware that he worshiped Napoleon, he guessed that he was secretly imitating Speransky. And the hero does not even suspect that he follows the example of Kutuzov in everything. The spiritual work of self-education proceeds in him latently, implicitly.

Moreover, Bolkonsky is sure that the decision to leave Kutuzov’s headquarters and go to the front, to rush into the thick of battles, comes to him spontaneously, by itself. In fact, he takes over from the great commander a wise view of the purely popular nature of the war, which is incompatible with court intrigues and the pride of the "leaders". If the heroic desire to pick up the regimental banner on the field of Austerlitz was the "Tulon" of Prince Andrei, then the sacrificial decision to participate in the battles of the Patriotic War is, if you like, his "Borodino", comparable on a small level of an individual human life with the great Battle of Borodino, morally won Kutuzov.

It is on the eve of the Battle of Borodino that Andrei meets Pierre; between them there is a third (again folklore number!) significant conversation. The first took place in St. Petersburg (volume I, part one, chapter VI) - during it, Andrei for the first time threw off the mask of a contemptuous secular person and frankly told a friend that he was imitating Napoleon. During the second (Volume II, Part Two, Chapter XI), held in Bogucharovo, Pierre saw before him a man who mournfully doubted the meaning of life, the existence of God, who had become internally dead and had lost the incentive to move. This meeting with a friend became for Prince Andrei "an epoch from which, although in appearance it is the same, but in the inner world, his new life began."

And here is the third conversation (Volume III, Part Two, Chapter XXV). Having overcome an involuntary alienation, on the eve of the day when, perhaps, both of them will die, the friends once again frankly discuss the most subtle, most important topics. They do not philosophize - there is neither time nor energy for philosophizing; but each of their words, even very unfair (like Andrey's opinion about the prisoners), is weighed on special scales. And the final passage of Bolkonsky sounds like a premonition of imminent death:

“Oh, my soul, lately it has become hard for me to live. I see that I began to understand too much. And it’s not good for a person to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ... Well, not for long! he added.

The injury on the field of Borodin repeats in composition the scene of the injury of Andrey on the field of Austerlitz; and there, and here the truth is suddenly revealed to the hero. This truth is love, compassion, faith in God. (Here's another plot parallel.) Ho in the first volume we had a character to whom the truth appeared against all odds; now we see Bolkonsky, who managed to prepare himself for the acceptance of the truth at the cost of mental anguish and throwing. Please note: the last person Andrei sees on the Austerlitz field is the insignificant Napoleon, who seemed great to him; and the last one he sees on the Borodino field is his enemy, Anatole Kuragin, also seriously wounded ... (This is another plot parallel that allows us to show how the hero has changed over the time that has passed between three meetings.)

Andrey has a new date with Natasha ahead; last date. Moreover, the folklore principle of triple repetition “works” here too. For the first time Andrey hears Natasha (without seeing her) in Otradnoe. Then he falls in love with her during Natasha's first ball (Volume II, Part Three, Chapter XVII), talks to her and makes an offer. And here is the wounded Bolkonsky in Moscow, near the Rostovs' house, at the very moment when Natasha orders the wagons to be handed over to the wounded. The meaning of this final meeting is forgiveness and reconciliation; having forgiven Natasha, reconciled with her, Andrey finally comprehended the meaning of love and is therefore ready to part with earthly life ... His death is depicted not as an irreparable tragedy, but as a solemnly sad result of the earthly career he has passed.

No wonder it is here that Tolstoy carefully introduces the theme of the Gospel into the fabric of his narrative.

We are already used to the fact that the heroes of Russian literature of the second half of XIX centuries often pick up this main book of Christianity, which tells about the earthly life, teaching and resurrection of Jesus Christ; remember at least Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. However, Dostoevsky wrote about his own time, while Tolstoy turned to the events of the beginning of the century, when educated people from high society turned to the gospel much less frequently. In Church Slavonic, for the most part, they read poorly, to french version resorted infrequently; only after World War II did work begin on translating the Gospel into living Russian. It was headed by the future Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret (Drozdov); The release of the Russian Gospel in 1819 influenced many writers, including Pushkin and Vyazemsky.

Prince Andrei is destined to die in 1812; Nevertheless, Tolstoy went on a decisive violation of chronology, and in Bolkonsky's dying thoughts he placed quotations from the Russian Gospel: "The birds of heaven do not sow, they do not reap, but your Father feeds them ..." Why? Yes, for the simple reason that Tolstoy wants to show: the gospel wisdom entered Andrei's soul, it became part of his own thoughts, he reads the Gospel as an explanation of his own life and his own death. If the writer "forced" the hero to quote the Gospel in French or even in Church Slavonic, this would immediately separate inner world Bolkonsky from the gospel world. (In general, in the novel, the characters speak French the more often, the farther they are from the national truth; Natasha Rostova generally speaks only one line in French over four volumes!) But Tolstoy’s goal is exactly the opposite: he seeks to forever link the image of Andrei, who found the truth , with the theme of the gospel.

Pierre Bezukhov. If the storyline of Prince Andrei is spiral, and each subsequent stage of his life repeats the previous stage on a new turn, then Pierre's storyline - up to the Epilogue - looks like a narrowing circle with the figure of the peasant Platon Karataev in the center.

This circle at the beginning of the epic is immeasurably wide, almost like Pierre himself - "a massive, fat young man with a cropped head, wearing glasses." Like Prince Andrei, Bezukhov does not feel like a truth seeker; he also considers Napoleon a great man and is content with the widespread idea that great people, heroes, rule history.

We get to know Pierre at the very moment when, from an excess of vitality, he takes part in carousing and almost robbery (the story of the quarter). Life force is his advantage over dead light (Andrey says that Pierre is the only "living person"). And this is his main trouble, since Bezukhov does not know where to apply his heroic strength, it is aimless, there is something Nozdrevskoe in it. Special spiritual and mental demands are inherent in Pierre from the very beginning (which is why he chooses Andrei as his friend), but they are scattered, not clothed in a clear and distinct form.

Pierre is distinguished by energy, sensuality, reaching passion, extreme ingenuity and myopia (literally and figuratively); all this dooms Pierre to rash steps. As soon as Bezukhov becomes the heir to a huge fortune, the "life burners" immediately entangle him with their nets, Prince Vasily marries Pierre to Helen. Of course, family life is not given; accept the rules by which the high-society "burners" live, Pierre cannot. And now, having parted ways with Helen, for the first time he consciously begins to look for an answer to questions that torment him about the meaning of life, about the destiny of man.

"What's wrong? What well? What should you love, what should you hate? Why live and what am I? What is life, what is death? What power controls everything? he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions, except for one, not a logical answer, not at all to these questions. This answer was: “If you die, everything will end. You will die and you will know everything, or you will stop asking.” But it was terrible to die” (Volume II, Part Two, Chapter I).

And then on his life path he meets an old freemason-mentor Osip Alekseevich. (Masons were members of religious and political organizations, “orders”, “lodges”, which set themselves the goal of moral self-improvement and intended to transform society and the state on this basis.) Metaphor life path the road along which Pierre travels serves in the epic; Osip Alekseevich himself approaches Bezukhov at the post station in Torzhok and starts a conversation with him about the mysterious destiny of man. From the genre shadow of the family novel, we immediately move into the space of the novel of upbringing; Tolstoy hardly noticeably stylizes "Masonic" chapters as novel prose of the late 18th - early 19th century. So, in the scene of Pierre's acquaintance with Osip Alekseevich, much makes us remember A. N. Radishchev's "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow".

In Masonic conversations, conversations, readings and reflections, Pierre reveals the same truth that appeared on the field of Austerlitz to Prince Andrei (who, perhaps, also went through the “Masonic trial” at some point; in a conversation with Pierre, Bolkonsky mockingly mentions gloves, which Masons receive before marriage for their chosen one). The meaning of life is not heroic deed, not in becoming a leader, like Napoleon, but in serving people, feeling involved in eternity ...

But the truth is revealed a little, it sounds muffled, like a distant echo. And gradually, more and more painfully, Bezukhov feels the deceitfulness of the majority of Freemasons, the discrepancy between their petty secular life and the proclaimed universal ideals. Yes, Osip Alekseevich forever remains a moral authority for him, but Freemasonry itself eventually ceases to meet Pierre's spiritual needs. Moreover, reconciliation with Helen, to which he went under Masonic influence, does not lead to anything good. And having taken a step in the social field in the direction set by the Masons, having started a reform in his estates, Pierre suffers an inevitable defeat: his impracticality, gullibility and unsystematic doom the land experiment to failure.

Disappointed Bezukhov at first turns into a good-natured shadow of his predatory wife; it seems that the whirlpool of "life-burners" is about to close over him. Then he again begins to drink, revel, returns to the bachelor habits of his youth, and eventually moves from St. Petersburg to Moscow. We have noted more than once that in Russian literature XIX Petersburg has been associated with the European center of the bureaucratic, political, cultural life of Russia; Moscow - with a rural, traditionally Russian habitat of retired nobles and lordly loafers. The transformation of Pierre from St. Petersburg into a Muscovite is tantamount to his rejection of any life aspirations.

And here the tragic and purifying events of the Patriotic War of 1812 are approaching. For Bezukhov, they have a very special, personal meaning. After all, he has long been in love with Natasha Rostov, hopes for an alliance with whom are twice crossed out by his marriage to Helen and Natasha's promise to Prince Andrei. Only after the story with Kuragin, in overcoming the consequences of which Pierre played a huge role, does he actually confess his love to Natasha (Volume II, Part Five, Chapter XXII).

It is no coincidence that immediately after the scene of the explanation with Natasha Tolstaya, Pierre’s eyes show the famous comet of 1811, which foreshadowed the beginning of the war: “It seemed to Pierre that this star fully corresponded to what was in his blossomed to a new life, softened and encouraged soul.” The theme of the national test and the theme of personal salvation merge together in this episode.

Step by step, the stubborn author leads his beloved hero to comprehend two inextricably linked "truths": the truth of sincere family life and the truth of nationwide unity. Out of curiosity, Pierre goes to the Borodino field just on the eve of the great battle; observing, communicating with the soldiers, he prepares his mind and his heart to perceive the thought that Bolkonsky will express to him during their last conversation at Borodino: the truth is where they are, ordinary soldiers, ordinary Russian people.

The views that Bezukhov professed at the beginning of War and Peace are being reversed; before he saw in Napoleon the source historical movement, now he sees in him the source of supra-historical evil, the incarnation of the Antichrist. And he is ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of mankind. The reader must understand: Pierre's spiritual path is only halfway through; the hero has not yet “grown up” to the point of view of the narrator, who is convinced (and convinces the reader) that the point is not Napoleon at all, that the French emperor is just a toy in the hands of Providence. Ho experiences that befell Bezukhov during French captivity, and most importantly, acquaintance with Platon Karataev will complete the work that has already begun in him.

During the execution of the prisoners (a scene that refutes Andrei's cruel arguments during the last Borodino conversation), Pierre himself recognizes himself as an instrument in the hands of others; his life and his death do not really depend on him. And communication with a simple peasant, a “rounded” soldier of the Apsheron regiment, Platon Karataev, finally reveals to him the prospect of a new philosophy of life. The purpose of a person is not to become a bright personality, separate from all other personalities, but to reflect in himself the people's life in its entirety, to become a part of the universe. Only then can one feel truly immortal:

“Ha, ha, ha! Pierre laughed. And he said aloud to himself: - Don't let the soldier let me in. Caught me, locked me up. I am being held captive. Who me? Me? Me - mine immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha! .. Ha, ha, ha! .. - he laughed with tears in his eyes ... Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the departing, playing stars. “And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!..” (Volume IV, Part Two, Chapter XIV).

It is not for nothing that these reflections of Pierre sound almost like folk verses, they emphasize, strengthen the internal, irregular rhythm:

The soldier did not let me in.
Caught me, locked me up.
I am being held captive.
Who me? Me?

The truth sounds like a folk song, and the sky, into which Pierre directs his gaze, makes the attentive reader remember the finale of the third volume, the view of the comet, and, most importantly, the sky of Austerlitz. But the difference between the Austerlitz scene and the experience that visited Pierre in captivity is fundamental. Andrei, as we already know, at the end of the first volume comes face to face with the truth, contrary to his own intentions. He just has a long, roundabout way to get there. And Pierre for the first time comprehends her as a result of painful searches.

But there is nothing definitive in Tolstoy's epic. Remember, we said that Pierre's storyline only seems to be circular, that if you look into the Epilogue, the picture changes somewhat? Now read the episode of Bezukhov's arrival from St. Petersburg and especially the scene of a conversation in the office with Nikolai Rostov, Denisov and Nikolenka Bolkonsky (chapters XIV-XVI of the first Epilogue). Pierre, the same Pierre Bezukhov, who has already comprehended the fullness of the public truth, who has renounced personal ambitions, again starts talking about the need to correct social ill-being, about the need to counteract the mistakes of the government. It is not difficult to guess that he became a member of the early Decembrist societies and that a new thunderstorm began to swell on the historical horizon of Russia.

Natasha, with her feminine instinct, guesses the question that the narrator himself would obviously like to ask Pierre:

“Do you know what I'm thinking about? - she said, - about Platon Karataev. How is he? Would he approve of you now?

No, I would not approve, - said Pierre, thinking. - What he would approve of is our family life. He so desired to see beauty, happiness, tranquility in everything, and I would proudly show him us.

What happens? Did the hero begin to shy away from the truth he had gained and suffered? And is the “average”, “ordinary” person Nikolai Rostov right, who speaks with disapproval of the plans of Pierre and his new comrades? So Nikolai is now closer to Platon Karataev than Pierre himself?

Yes and no. Yes, because Pierre undoubtedly deviates from the "round", family, nationwide peaceful ideal, he is ready to join the "war". Yes, because he had already gone through the temptation of striving for the public good in his Masonic period, and through the temptation of personal ambitions - at the moment when he “counted” the number of the beast in the name of Napoleon and convinced himself that it was he, Pierre, who was destined to save humanity from this villain. No, because the whole epic "War and Peace" is permeated with a thought that Rostov is not able to comprehend: we are not free in our desires, in our choice, to participate or not to participate in historical upheavals.

Pierre is much closer than Rostov to this nerve of history; among other things, Karataev taught him by his example to submit to circumstances, to accept them as they are. Entering a secret society, Pierre moves away from the ideal and into in a certain sense returns in his development a few steps back, but not because he wants to, but because he cannot deviate from the objective course of things. And, perhaps, having partially lost the truth, he will know it even more deeply at the end of his new path.

Therefore, the epic ends with a global historiosophical reasoning, the meaning of which is formulated in his last phrase: "it is necessary to abandon the conscious freedom and recognize the dependence that we do not feel."

Sages. We've talked about playboys, about leaders, about ordinary people, about truth-seekers. Ho there is in "War and Peace" another category of heroes, opposite to the leaders. These are the sages. That is, characters who comprehended the truth of public life and are an example for other heroes, seeking the truth. These are, first of all, staff captain Tushin, Platon Karataev and Kutuzov.

Staff Captain Tushin first appears in the scene of the Battle of Shengraben; we see him first through the eyes of Prince Andrei - and this is not accidental. If circumstances had turned out differently and Bolkonsky would have been internally ready for this meeting, she could have played the same role in his life as the meeting with Platon Karataev played in Pierre's life. However, alas, Andrei is still blinded by the dream of his own Toulon. Having defended Tushin (volume I, part two, chapter XXI), when he is guiltily silent in front of Bagration and does not want to betray his boss, Prince Andrei does not understand that behind this silence lies not servility, but an understanding of the hidden ethics of folk life. Bolkonsky is not yet ready to meet with "his own Karataev."

"A small round-shouldered man", the commander of an artillery battery, Tushin from the very beginning makes a very favorable impression on the reader; external awkwardness only sets off his undoubted natural mind. Not without reason, characterizing Tushin, Tolstoy resorts to his favorite technique, draws attention to the hero’s eyes, this is a mirror of the soul: “Silently and smiling, Tushin, shifting from bare foot to foot, looked inquiringly with large, intelligent and kind eyes ...” (volume I, part two, chapter XV).

But why does the author pay attention to such an insignificant figure, moreover, in the scene that immediately follows the chapter dedicated to Napoleon himself? The guess does not come to the reader immediately. Only when he reaches chapter XX does the image of the staff captain gradually begin to grow to symbolic proportions.

“Little Tushin with his pipe bitten to one side” along with his battery is forgotten and left without cover; he practically does not notice this, because he is completely absorbed in the common cause, he feels himself an integral part of the whole people. On the eve of the battle, this awkward little man spoke of the fear of death and the complete uncertainty about eternal life; Now he is transforming before our eyes.

The narrator shows this little man in close-up: “... His own fantastic world was established in his head, which was his pleasure at that moment. The enemy cannons in his imagination were not cannons, but pipes from which an invisible smoker emitted smoke in rare puffs. At this moment, it is not Russian and French army; confronting each other is little Napoleon, who imagines himself great, and little Tushin, who has risen to true greatness. The staff captain is not afraid of death, he is only afraid of his superiors, and immediately becomes shy when a staff colonel appears on the battery. Then (Glavka XXI) Tushin cordially helps all the wounded (including Nikolai Rostov).

In the second volume, we will once again meet with Staff Captain Tushin, who lost his arm in the war.

Both Tushin and another Tolstoyan sage, Platon Karataev, are endowed with the same physical properties: they are small in stature, they have similar characters: they are affectionate and good-natured. Ho Tushin feels himself an integral part of the common people's life only in the midst of the war, and in peaceful circumstances he is a simple, kind, timid and very ordinary person. And Plato is involved in this life always, in any circumstances. And in war, and especially in a state of peace. Because he carries the world in his soul.

Pierre meets Plato at a difficult moment in his life - in captivity, when his fate hangs in the balance and depends on many accidents. The first thing that catches his eye (and in a strange way calms him) is Karataev's roundness, the harmonious combination of external and internal appearance. In Plato, everything is round - both movements, and the life that he establishes around him, and even the homely smell. The narrator, with his characteristic persistence, repeats the words "round", "rounded" as often as in the scene on the Austerlitz field he repeated the word "sky".

Andrei Bolkonsky during the battle of Shengraben was not ready to meet with "his own Karataev", staff captain Tushin. And Pierre, by the time of the Moscow events, had matured to learn a lot from Plato. And above all, a true attitude to life. That is why Karataev "remained forever in Pierre's soul the strongest and dearest memory and personification of everything Russian, kind and round." After all, on the way back from Borodino to Moscow, Bezukhov had a dream during which he heard a voice:

“War is the most difficult subjection of human freedom to the laws of God,” said the voice. - Simplicity is obedience to God, you can't get away from Him. And they are simple. They don't talk, they do. The spoken word is silver, and the unspoken is golden. A person cannot own anything while he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of her, everything belongs to him ... To unite everything? Pierre said to himself. - No, do not connect. You can’t connect thoughts, but to connect all these thoughts - that’s what you need! Yes, you need to match, you need to match! (volume III, part three, chapter IX).

Platon Karataev is the embodiment of this dream; everything is connected in him, he is not afraid of death, he thinks in proverbs that summarize centuries-old folk wisdom - it’s not without reason that in a dream Pierre hears the proverb “The spoken word is silver, and the unsaid is golden.”

Can Platon Karataev be called a bright personality? No way. On the contrary: he is not a person at all, because he does not have his own special, separate from the people, spiritual needs, there are no aspirations and desires. For Tolstoy he is more than a personality; he is a part of the people's soul. Karataev does not remember his own words spoken a minute ago, because he does not think in the usual sense of this word. That is, he does not build his reasoning in a logical chain. Simply, as modern people would say, his mind is connected to the public consciousness, and Plato's judgments reproduce personal folk wisdom above.

Karataev does not have a “special” love for people - he treats all living beings equally lovingly. And to the master Pierre, and to the French soldier, who ordered Plato to sew a shirt, and to the rickety dog ​​that had nailed to him. Not being a person, he does not see personalities around him either, everyone he meets is the same particle of a single universe as he himself. Death or separation is therefore of no importance to him; Karataev is not upset when he learns that the person with whom he became close suddenly disappeared - after all, nothing changes from this! Immortal life people continues, and in every new one you meet, its unchanging presence will be revealed.

The main lesson that Bezukhov learns from communication with Karataev, the main quality that he seeks to learn from his "teacher" is voluntary dependence on the eternal life of the people. Only it gives a person a real sense of freedom. And when Karataev, having fallen ill, begins to lag behind the column of prisoners and is shot like a dog, Pierre is not too upset. Karataev's individual life is over, but the eternal, nationwide one, in which he is involved, continues, and there will be no end to it. That is why Tolstoy ends storyline Karataev's second dream of Pierre, who dreamed of the captive Bezukhov in the village of Shamshevo:

And suddenly Pierre introduced himself as a living, long-forgotten, meek old teacher who taught geography to Pierre in Switzerland ... he showed Pierre a globe. This globe was a living, oscillating ball, without dimensions. The entire surface of the sphere consisted of drops tightly compressed together. And these drops all moved, moved, and then merged from several into one, then from one they were divided into many. Each drop strove to spill out, to capture the greatest space, but others, striving for the same, squeezed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it.

That's life, - said the old teacher ...

God is in the middle, and each drop seeks to expand in order to reflect Him in the largest size ... Here he is, Karataev, here he spilled and disappeared ”(Volume IV, Part Three, Chapter XV).

In the metaphor of life as a "liquid oscillating ball" made up of individual drops, all the symbolic images of "War and Peace" that we spoke about above are combined: the spindle, the clock mechanism, and the anthill; a circular movement that connects everything with everything - this is Tolstoy's idea of ​​the people, of history, of the family. The meeting of Platon Karataev brings Pierre very close to comprehending this truth.

From the image of the staff captain Tushin, we climbed, as if on a step up, to the image of Platon Karataev. Ho and from Plato in the space of the epic one more step leads up. The image of the People's Field Marshal Kutuzov is placed here on an unattainable height. This old man, gray-haired, fat, walking heavily, with a face disfigured by a wound, towers over Captain Tushin, and even over Platon Karataev. The truth of nationality, perceived by them instinctively, he comprehended consciously and elevated it to the principle of his life and his military activity.

The main thing for Kutuzov (unlike all leaders headed by Napoleon) is to deviate from a personal proud decision, to guess the right course of events and not prevent them from developing according to God's will, in truth. We meet him for the first time in the first volume, in the scene of the review near Brenau. Before us is an absent-minded and cunning old man, an old campaigner, who is distinguished by an "affection of reverence." We immediately understand that the mask of an unreasoning campaigner, which Kutuzov puts on when approaching ruling persons, especially the tsar, is just one of the many ways of his self-defense. After all, he cannot, must not allow the real interference of these self-satisfied persons in the course of events, and therefore he is obliged to affectionately evade their will, without contradicting it in words. So he will evade the battle with Napoleon during the Patriotic War.

Kutuzov, as he appears in the battle scenes of the third and fourth volumes, is not a doer, but a contemplator, he is convinced that victory requires not the mind, not the scheme, but "something else, independent of the mind and knowledge." And above all - "you need patience and time." The old commander has both in abundance; he is endowed with the gift of "calm contemplation of the course of events" and sees his main purpose in not doing harm. That is, listen to all the reports, all the main considerations: support useful (that is, those that agree with the natural course of things), reject harmful ones.

And the main secret that Kutuzov comprehended, as he is depicted in War and Peace, is the secret of maintaining the national spirit, the main force in the fight against any enemy of the Fatherland.

That is why this old, feeble, voluptuary person personifies Tolstoy's idea of ​​the ideal politics that main wisdom: personality cannot affect the move historical events and must renounce the idea of ​​freedom in favor of the idea of ​​necessity. Tolstoy “instructs” Bolkonsky to express this thought: watching Kutuzov after he was appointed commander-in-chief, Prince Andrei reflects: “He will not have anything of his own ... He understands that there is something stronger and more significant than his will - this is the inevitable course of events ... And most importantly ... that he is Russian, despite the novel by Janlis and French sayings ”(Volume III, Part Two, Chapter XVI).

Without the figure of Kutuzov, Tolstoy would not have solved one of the main artistic tasks of his epic: to oppose the “deceitful form of a European hero who supposedly controls people that history has invented”, the “simple, modest and therefore truly majestic figure” of a folk hero who will never settle into this "deceitful form".

Natasha Rostov. If we translate the typology of the heroes of the epic into the traditional language literary terms, then the internal regularity will be revealed by itself. The world of everyday life and the world of lies are opposed by dramatic and epic characters. The dramatic characters of Pierre and Andrei are full of internal contradictions, they are always in motion and development; the epic characters of Karataev and Kutuzov amaze with their integrity. Ho is in the portrait gallery created by Tolstoy in War and Peace, a character that does not fit into any of the listed categories. This is the lyrical character of the main character of the epic, Natasha Rostova.

Does she belong to the "life burners"? It is impossible to think about this. With her sincerity, with her heightened sense of justice! Does she belong to "ordinary people", like her relatives, the Rostovs? In many ways, yes; and yet it is not for nothing that both Pierre and Andrey are looking for her love, are drawn to her, distinguished from the general ranks. At the same time, you can’t call her a truth seeker. No matter how much we reread the scenes in which Natasha acts, we will not find anywhere a hint of the search for a moral ideal, truth, truth. And in the Epilogue, after marriage, she even loses the brightness of her temperament, the spirituality of her appearance; baby diapers replace for her what Pierre and Andrei are given reflections on the truth and the purpose of life.

Like the rest of the Rostovs, Natasha is not endowed with sharp mind; when in chapter XVII of the fourth last volume, and then in the Epilogue, we see her next to the emphatically intelligent woman Marya Bolkonskaya-Rostova, this difference is especially striking. Natasha, as the narrator emphasizes, simply "did not deign to be smart." On the other hand, it is endowed with something else, which for Tolstoy is more important than an abstract mind, even more important than truth-seeking: the instinct to know life empirically. It is this inexplicable quality that brings the image of Natasha close to the "wise men", primarily to Kutuzov, despite the fact that in everything else she is closer to ordinary people. It is simply impossible to "attribute" it to any one category: it does not obey any classification, it breaks out beyond the limits of any definition.

Natasha, "black-eyed, with a big mouth, ugly, but alive", the most emotional of all the characters in the epic; therefore she is the most musical of all the Rostovs. The element of music lives not only in her singing, which everyone around recognizes as wonderful, but also in Natasha's voice itself. Remember, after all, Andrei's heart trembled for the first time when he heard Natasha's conversation with Sonya on a moonlit night, without seeing the girls talking. Natasha's singing heals brother Nikolai, who falls into despair after losing 43 thousand, which ruined the Rostov family.

From one emotional, sensitive, intuitive root, both her egoism, fully revealed in the story with Anatole Kuragin, and her selflessness, which manifests itself both in the scene with carts for the wounded in burning Moscow, and in the episodes where it is shown how she takes care of the dying Andrei, how he takes care of his mother, shocked by the news of Petya's death.

And the main gift that is given to her and which raises her above all the other heroes of the epic, even the best ones, is a special gift of happiness. All of them suffer, suffer, seek the truth or, like the impersonal Platon Karataev, affectionately possess it. Only Natasha unselfishly enjoys life, feels its feverish pulse and generously shares her happiness with everyone around her. Her happiness is in her naturalness; that is why the narrator contrasts so harshly the scene of Natasha Rostova's first ball with the episode of her acquaintance and falling in love with Anatole Kuragin. Please note: this acquaintance takes place in the theater (volume II, part five, chapter IX). That is, where the game reigns, pretense. This is not enough for Tolstoy; he makes the epic narrator "descend" down the steps of emotions, use sarcasm in the descriptions of what is happening, strongly emphasize the idea of ​​the unnatural atmosphere in which Natasha's feelings for Kuragin are born.

It is not for nothing that the most famous comparison of "War and Peace" is attributed to the lyrical heroine, Natasha. At the moment when Pierre, after a long separation, meets Rostova with Princess Marya, he does not recognize Natasha, and suddenly “a face with attentive eyes with difficulty, with effort, like a rusty door opens, smiled, and from this dissolved door suddenly it smelled and doused Pierre with forgotten happiness ... It smelled, engulfed and swallowed him all ”(Volume IV, Part Four, Chapter XV).

Ho Natasha's true vocation, as Tolstoy shows in the Epilogue (and unexpectedly for many readers), was revealed only in motherhood. Having gone into children, she realizes herself in them and through them; and this is not accidental: after all, the family for Tolstoy is the same cosmos, the same integral and saving world as Christian faith like folk life.

Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy in his epic novel "War and Peace" provided a wide system of images. His world is not limited to a few noble families: real historical characters are mixed with fictional, major and minor ones. This symbiosis is sometimes so intricate and unusual that it is extremely difficult to determine which heroes perform a more or less important function.

In the novel there are representatives of eight noble families, almost all of them occupy a central place in the narrative.

Rostov family

This family is represented by Count Ilya Andreevich, his wife Natalya, their four children together and their pupil Sonya.

The head of the family, Ilya Andreevich, is a sweet and good-natured person. He has always been provided for, therefore he does not know how to save, he is often deceived by acquaintances and relatives for selfish purposes. The count is not a mercenary person, he is ready to help everyone. Over time, his attitude, reinforced by addiction to card game became disastrous for his entire family. Because of the father's squandering, the family has been on the verge of poverty for a long time. The count dies at the end of the novel, after the wedding of Natalia and Pierre, of natural causes.

Countess Natalya is very similar to her husband. She, like him, is alien to the concept of self-interest and the pursuit of money. She is ready to help people who find themselves in a difficult situation, she is overwhelmed with feelings of patriotism. The countess had to endure many sorrows and troubles. This state of affairs is associated not only with unexpected poverty, but also with the death of their children. Of the thirteen born, only four survived; subsequently, the war took one more - the youngest.

The Count and Countess of Rostov, like most of the characters in the novel, have their prototypes. They were the grandfather and grandmother of the writer - Ilya Andreevich and Pelageya Nikolaevna.

The eldest child of the Rostovs is called Vera. This is an unusual girl, not like all the other members of the family. She is rude and callous at heart. This attitude applies not only strangers but also close relatives. The rest of the Rostov children subsequently make fun of her and even come up with a nickname for her. The prototype of Vera was Elizaveta Bers, daughter-in-law of L. Tolstoy.

The next oldest child is Nikolai. His image is drawn in the novel with love. Nicholas - noble man. He responsibly approaches any occupation. Tries to be guided by the principles of morality and honor. Nikolai is very similar to his parents - kind, sweet, purposeful. After the distress he had endured, he constantly took care not to find himself in a similar situation again. Nikolai takes part in military events, he is repeatedly awarded, but still he leaves military service after the war with Napoleon - his family needs him.

Nikolai marries Maria Bolkonskaya, they have three children - Andrei, Natasha, Mitya - and a fourth is expected.

The younger sister of Nikolai and Vera, Natalya, is the same in character and temperament as her parents. She is sincere and trusting, and this almost ruins her - Fedor Dolokhov fools the girl and persuades her to escape. These plans were not destined to come true, but Natalya's engagement with Andrei Bolkonsky was terminated, and Natalya fell into a deep depression. Subsequently, she became the wife of Pierre Bezukhov. The woman stopped watching her figure, others began to speak of her as an unpleasant woman. Tolstoy's wife, Sofya Andreevna, and her sister, Tatyana Andreevna, became the prototypes of Natalia.

The youngest child of the Rostovs was Petya. He was the same as all Rostovs: noble, honest and kind. All these qualities were enhanced by youthful maximalism. Petya was a sweet eccentric, to whom all pranks were forgiven. The fate of Petya was extremely unfavorable - he, like his brother, goes to the front and dies there very young and young.

We suggest that you familiarize yourself with the summary of the second part of the first volume of the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace".

Another child, Sonya, was brought up in the Rostov family. The girl was related to the Rostovs, after the death of her parents they took her in and treated her like own child. Sonya was in love with Nikolai Rostov for a long time, this fact did not allow her to get married on time.

Presumably she remained alone until the end of her days. Its prototype was Leo Tolstoy's aunt, Tatyana Alexandrovna, in whose house the writer was brought up after the death of his parents.

We get to know all the Rostovs at the very beginning of the novel - they are all active throughout the story. In the "Epilogue" we learn about the further continuation of their kind.

Bezukhov family

The Bezukhov family is not represented in such a numerous form as the Rostov family. The head of the family is Kirill Vladimirovich. The name of his wife is not known. We know that she belonged to the Kuragin family, but it is not clear who exactly she was to them. Count Bezukhov has no children born in marriage - all his children are illegitimate. The eldest of them - Pierre - was officially named by his father the heir to the estate.

After such a statement by the count, the image of Pierre Bezukhov begins to appear actively in public terms. Pierre himself does not impose his society on others, but he is a prominent groom - the heir to unthinkable wealth, so they want to see him always and everywhere. Nothing is known about Pierre's mother, but this does not become a reason for indignation and ridicule. Pierre received a decent education abroad and returned to his homeland full of utopian ideas, his vision of the world is too idealistic and divorced from reality, so all the time he faces unthinkable disappointments - in social activities, personal life, family harmony. His first wife was Elena Kuragina - a whore and a flirtatious. This marriage brought a lot of suffering to Pierre. The death of his wife saved him from the unbearable - he did not have the power to leave Elena or change her, but he could not come to terms with such an attitude towards his person. The second marriage - with Natasha Rostova - became more successful. They had four children - three girls and a boy.

Princes Kuragins

The Kuragin family is stubbornly associated with greed, debauchery and deceit. The reason for this was the children of Vasily Sergeevich and Alina - Anatole and Elena.

Prince Vasily was not a bad person, he possessed near positive qualities, but his desire for enrichment and gentleness of character in relation to his son reduced all the positive aspects to nothing.

Like any father, Prince Vasily wanted to ensure a prosperous future for his children, one of the options was a profitable marriage. This position not only had a bad effect on the reputation of the whole family, but also later played a tragic role in the lives of Elena and Anatole.

Little is known about Princess Alina. At the time of the story, she was a rather ugly woman. Her distinguishing feature was hostility to her daughter Elena on the basis of envy.

Vasily Sergeevich and Princess Alina had two sons and a daughter.

Anatole - became the cause of all the troubles of the family. He led a life of spenders and rake - debts, brawls were a natural occupation for him. Such behavior left an extremely negative imprint on the reputation of the family and its financial situation.

Anatole was seen in love with his sister Elena. Possibility of occurrence Serious relationships between brother and sister were stopped by Prince Vasily, but, apparently, they still took place after Elena's marriage.

The daughter of the Kuragins, Elena, had incredible beauty, like her brother Anatole. She skillfully flirted and after marriage had a love affair with many men, ignoring her husband Pierre Bezukhov.

Their brother Ippolit was completely unlike them in appearance - he was extremely unpleasant in appearance. In terms of the composition of his mind, he was not much different from his brother and sister. He was too stupid - this was noted not only by those around him, but also by his father. Nevertheless, Ippolit was not hopeless - he knew foreign languages ​​​​well and worked at the embassy.

Princes Bolkonsky

The Bolkonsky family occupies far from the last place in society - they are rich and influential.
The family includes Prince Nikolai Andreevich - a man of the old school and peculiar customs. He is rather rude in dealing with his relatives, but still not devoid of sensuality and tenderness - he is kind to his grandson and daughter, in a peculiar way, but still, he loves his son, but he does not really succeed in showing the sincerity of his feelings.

Nothing is known about the prince's wife, even her name is not mentioned in the text. In the marriage of the Bolkonskys, two children were born - son Andrei and daughter Marya.

Andrei Bolkonsky is partially similar in character to his father - he is quick-tempered, proud and a little rude. He has an attractive appearance and natural charm. At the beginning of the novel, Andrei is successfully married to Lisa Meinen - the couple has a son, Nikolenka, but his mother dies on the night after giving birth.

After some time, Andrei becomes the fiancé of Natalia Rostova, but he didn’t have to get married - Anatol Kuragin translated all the plans, which earned him personal dislike and exceptional hatred on the part of Andrei.

Prince Andrei takes part in the military events of 1812, is seriously wounded on the battlefield and dies in the hospital.

Maria Bolkonskaya - Andrey's sister - is deprived of such pride and stubbornness as her brother, which allows her, not without difficulty, but still to get along with her father, who is not distinguished by an accommodating character. Kind and meek, she understands that she is not indifferent to her father, therefore she does not hold a grudge against him for nit-picking and rudeness. The girl is raising her nephew. Outwardly, Marya does not look like her brother - she is very ugly, but this does not prevent her from marrying Nikolai Rostov and living happy life.

Liza Bolkonskaya (Meinen) was the wife of Prince Andrei. She was attractive woman. Her inner world was not inferior to her appearance - she was sweet and pleasant, she loved needlework. Unfortunately, her fate did not turn out in the best way - childbirth turned out to be too difficult for her - she dies, giving life to her son Nikolenka.

Nikolenka lost his mother early, but the boy's troubles did not stop there - at the age of 7, he also loses his father. Despite everything, he is characterized by the cheerfulness inherent in all children - he grows up as an intelligent and inquisitive boy. The image of his father becomes key for him - Nikolenka wants to live in such a way that his father can be proud of him.

Mademoiselle Bourienne also belongs to the Bolkonsky family. Despite the fact that she is only a friendly companion, her significance in the context of the family is quite significant. First of all, it consists in a pseudo friendship with Princess Mary. Often Mademoiselle acts meanly towards Mary, enjoys the favor of the girl in relation to her person.

The Karagin family

Tolstoy does not spread much about the Karagin family - the reader gets acquainted with only two representatives of this family - Marya Lvovna and her daughter Julie.

Marya Lvovna first appears before readers in the first volume of the novel, her own daughter also begins to act in the first volume of the first part of War and Peace. Julie has an extremely unpleasant appearance, she is in love with Nikolai Rostov, but the young man does not pay any attention to her. Does not save the situation and its huge wealth. Boris Drubetskoy actively draws attention to her material component, the girl understands that the young man is kind to her only because of the money, but does not show it - for her this is actually the only way not to remain an old maid.

Princes Drubetskoy

The Drubetsky family is not particularly active in the public sphere, so Tolstoy avoids a detailed description of the family members and focuses readers only on active characters - Anna Mikhailovna and her son Boris.

Princess Drubetskaya belongs to an old family, but now her family is going through hard times - poverty has become a constant companion of the Drubetskys. This state of affairs gave rise to a sense of prudence and self-interest in the representatives of this family. Anna Mikhailovna tries to get as much benefit as possible from her friendship with the Rostovs - she has been living with them for a long time.

Her son, Boris, was a friend of Nikolai Rostov for some time. As they grow older, their views on life values and the principles began to differ greatly, which led to a suspension in communication.

Boris more and more begins to show self-interest and the desire to get rich at any cost. He is ready to marry for money and does it successfully, taking advantage of the unenviable position of Julie Karagina

Dolokhov family

Representatives of the Dolokhov family are also not all active in society. Among all, Fedor stands out clearly. He is the son of Marya Ivanovna and the best friend of Anatole Kuragin. In his behavior, he also did not go far from his friend: revelry and an idle way of life are a common occurrence for him. In addition, he is famous for his love affair with the wife of Pierre Bezukhov - Elena. hallmark Dolokhov from Kuragin is his attachment to his mother and sister.

Historical figures in the novel "War and Peace"

Since Tolstoy's novel takes place against the backdrop of historical events related to the war against Napoleon in 1812, it is impossible to do without at least a partial mention of real characters.

Alexander I

The novel most actively describes the activities of Emperor Alexander I. This is not surprising, because the main events take place on the territory of the Russian Empire. In the beginning, we learn about the positive and liberal aspirations of the emperor, he is "an angel in the flesh." The peak of his popularity falls on the period of Napoleon's defeat in the war. It was at this time that the authority of Alexander reaches incredible heights. An emperor can easily make changes and improve the lives of his subjects, but he doesn't. As a result, such an attitude and inactivity become the reason for the emergence of the Decembrist movement.

Napoleon I Bonaparte

On the other side of the barricade in the events of 1812 is Napoleon. Since many Russian aristocrats were educated abroad, and the French language was everyday for them, the attitude of the nobles towards this character at the beginning of the novel was positive and bordered on admiration. Then disappointment occurs - their idol from the category of ideals becomes the main villain. With the image of Napoleon, such connotations as egocentrism, lies, pretense are actively used.

Mikhail Speransky

This character is important not only in Tolstoy's novel, but also during the real era of Emperor Alexander.

His family could not boast of antiquity and significance - he is the son of a priest, but still he managed to become the secretary of Alexander I. He is not a particularly pleasant person, but everyone notes his importance in the context of events in the country.

In addition, historical characters of lesser significance, in comparison with the emperors, act in the novel. These are the great commanders Barclay de Tolly, Mikhail Kutuzov and Pyotr Bagration. Their activity and the disclosure of the image takes place on the battlefields - Tolstoy tries to describe the military part of the narrative as realistic and captivating as possible, therefore these characters are described not only as great and unsurpassed, but also as ordinary people who are subject to doubts, mistakes and negative qualities of character.

Other characters

Among the other characters, the name of Anna Scherer should be highlighted. She is the "owner" secular salon- the elite of society meets here. Guests are rarely left to their own devices. Anna Mikhailovna always seeks to provide her visitors with interesting interlocutors, she often panders - this is of particular interest to her.

Characteristics of the heroes of the novel "War and Peace": images of characters

He not only wrote a wonderful work "War and Peace", but also showed Russian life for several decades. Researchers of Tolstoy's work have calculated that the writer depicted more than 600 characters on the pages of his novel. And each of these actors has a clear and accurate characterization of the writer. This allows the reader to draw a detailed portrait of each character.

Character system in the novel "War and Peace"

Of course, the main character of Tolstoy's work is the people. According to the author, this is the best thing in the Russian nation. According to the novel, the people include not only ordinary people who have nothing, but also nobles who live not for themselves, but for others. But the people in the novel are opposed by aristocrats:

1. Kuragins.
2. Salon visitors Anna Scherer.

It can be immediately determined from the description that all these characters are the negative characters of the novel. Their life is unspiritual and mechanical, they perform artificial and lifeless actions, they are incapable of compassion, they are selfish. These heroes cannot change even under the influence of life.

In a completely different way, Lev Nikolayevich portrays his positive characters. Their actions are guided by the heart. These positive actors include:

1. Kutuzov.
2. Natasha Rostov.
3. Platon Karataev.
4. Alpatych.
5. Officer Timokhin.
6. Officer Tushin.
7. Pierre Bezukhov.
8. Andrei Bolkonsky.

All these heroes able to empathize, develop and change. But it is the war of 1812, the trials that it brought, that makes it possible to understand to which camp the characters of Tolstoy's novel can be attributed.

Pyotr Rostov is the central character of the novel

Count Peter Rostov is the youngest child in the family, Natasha's brother. At the beginning of the novel, the reader sees him as a very young child. So, in 1805 he was only 9 years old. And if at this age the writer only notices that he is fat, then the characterization of Peter at the age of 13 is added to the fact that the teenager turns out to be handsome and cheerful.

At the age of 16, Peter goes to war, although he had to go to university, and soon becomes a real man, an officer. He is a patriot and worries about the fate of his Motherland. Petya spoke excellent French and could feel sorry for the captured French boy. Going to war, Petya dreams of doing something heroic.

And despite the fact that at first his parents did not want to let him go to the service, and then they found a place where it was safer, he still joins the army with a friend. As soon as he was appointed assistant general, he was immediately taken prisoner. Deciding to take part in the battle with the French, helping Dolokhov, Petya dies, having been wounded in the head.

Natasha Rostova will name her only son after him, who will never be able to forget her brother, with whom she was so close.

Minor male characters

There are many minor characters in the novel "War and Peace". Among them, the following characters stand out:

1. Drubetskoy Boris.
2. Dolokhov.

Tall and blond Boris Drubetsky was brought up in the Rostov family and was in love with Natasha. His mother, Princess Drubetskaya, was a distant relative of the Rostov family. He is proud and dreams of military career.

Having got into the guard thanks to the efforts of his mother, he also participates in the military campaign of 1805. The characterization of him by the writer is unflattering, since Boris tries to make only “useful” acquaintances. So, he is ready to spend all the money to pass for a rich man. He becomes the husband of Julie Kuragina, as she is rich.

Officer of the Guard Dolokhov - bright minor character novel. At the beginning of the novel, Fyodor Ivanovich is 25 years old. He was born a respectable lady Marya Ivanovna, belonging to a poor noble family. Women liked the officer of the Semyonovsky regiment, because he was handsome: medium height, with curly hair and blue eyes. A firm voice and a cold look were harmoniously combined in Dolokhov with his education and intelligence. Despite the fact that Dolokhov is a player and loves a revelry life, he is still respected in society.

Fathers of the Rostov and Bolkonsky families

General Bolkonsky has long been retired. He is rich and respected in society. He performed his service during the reign of Catherine II, so Kutuzov is his good friend. But the character of the father of the Bolkonsky family is difficult. Nikolai Andreevich happens not only strict, but also severe. He takes care of his health and appreciates order in everything.

Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov is a positive and bright hero novel. His wife is Anna Mikhailovna Shinshina. Ilya Andreevich is raising five children. He is rich and cheerful, kind and self-confident in character. The old prince is very trusting and easily deceived.

Ilya Andreevich is a sympathetic person, a patriot. He receives wounded soldiers in his house. But he did not follow the state of the family at all, therefore he becomes the culprit of ruin. The prince dies in 1813, trying to survive the tragedies of his children.

Minor female characters

In the work of Leo Tolstoy there are many minor characters that make it possible to understand the events that the author describes. In the work "War and Peace" female characters are represented by the following heroines:

1. Sonya Rostova.
2. Julie Kuragin.
3. Vera Rostova.

Sonya Rostova is the second cousin of Natasha Rostova, the protagonist of the novel War and Peace. Sofya Alexandrovna is an orphan and a dowry. For the first time, readers see her at the beginning of the novel. Then, in 1805, she was barely 15 years old. Sonya looked beautiful: her waist was thin and miniature, a large and thick black braid wrapped around her head twice. Even the look, soft and withdrawn, bewitched.

The older the girl got, the more beautiful she looked. And at 22, according to Tolstoy's description, she was somewhat like a cat: smooth, flexible and soft. She was in love with Nikolenka Rostov. She even refuses her love to the "brilliant" groom Dolokhov. Sonya knew how to read skillfully in front of different audiences. She usually read in a thin voice and very diligently.

But Nicholas chose to marry Marya Bolkonskaya. And the economic and patient Sonya, who managed the household so skillfully, remained to live in the house of the young Rostov family, helping them. At the end of the novel, the writer shows her at the age of 30, but she is also not married, but is busy with the Rostov children and caring for the sick princess.

Julie Kuragina is a minor heroine in the novel. It is known that after the death of her brothers in the war, left with her mother, the girl becomes a rich heiress. At the beginning of the novel, Julie is already 20 years old and the reader learns that she is from a decent noble family. Her virtuous parents raised her, and in general, Julie was familiar to the Rostov family from childhood.

Julie did not have any special external data. The girl was chubby and ugly. But she dressed fashionably and always tried to smile. Because of her red face, poorly covered with powder, and wet eyes, no one wanted to marry her. Julie is a bit naive and very stupid. She tries not to miss a single ball, nor theatrical production.

By the way, Countess Rostova dreamed of marrying Nikolai to Julie. But for the sake of money, Boris Drubetskoy marries her, who hates Julie and hopes to see her very rarely after the wedding.

Another minor female character in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" is Vera Rostova. This is the eldest and unloved daughter of Princess Rostova. After her marriage, she became Vera Berg. At the beginning of the novel, she was 20 years old, and the girl was four years older than her sister Natasha. Vera is a beautiful, intelligent and well-mannered and educated girl with a pleasant voice. Both Natasha and Nikolai believed that she was too correct and somehow insensitive, as if she had no heart at all.