True and false beauty (based on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace")
People are like window panes. They sparkle and shine when the sun shines, but when darkness reigns, they true beauty It opens only due to the light coming from within. (E. Kübler-Ross)
beauty thick romance
What is beauty really? This question cannot be answered unambiguously. After all, for each person it is one, special and unique. Probably people different eras argued about what is really beautiful. The ideal of beauty ancient egypt was a slender and graceful woman with full lips and huge almond-shaped eyes. IN Ancient China the ideal of beauty was small, fragile woman with tiny feet. The beauties of Japan thickly whitened their skin, and in Ancient Greece the woman's body was supposed to have soft and rounded shapes. But I have no doubt that at all times beauty was based on spiritual wealth and spiritual values remained unchanged.
The theme of beauty is also touched upon in Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace. The man who never wonders what is real beauty and believes that it is only an attractive face, a slim body and graceful manners, undoubtedly, Helen Kuragina will call the ideal of beauty. A snow-white body, magnificent breasts, a stunning wardrobe and a charming smile - all this, of course, will conquer a man at first sight. But why does beauty fade before our eyes if a person has no soul?
Which beauty is true and which is false? Throughout the novel, Leo Tolstoy tries to figure this out. These two concepts are closely intertwined.
Behind Helen's graceful manners and behind her smile are indifference to people, stupidity and emptiness of the soul. It can be compared with antique statue: she is just as beautiful, one might say, perfect, but cold, insensitive and heartless. You can admire her, you can paint pictures from her, but you can’t open your soul to her, you can’t look for support from her. But, as we can see, there are a lot of people who consider only appearance and money important in the novel. That is why Helen becomes the most smart woman Petersburg. And the most intelligent and intelligent people Russia. But this is a lie, and by reading the novel, we understand this.
The writer clearly considers inner beauty to be real beauty. And external splendor should be complemented by spiritual values. Leo Tolstoy considers Natasha Rostova such a person with whom everything is fine. Both appearance and soul, in his opinion, are good enough for really handsome man. But in my opinion, a real beauty, a girl whose inner beauty overshadows everything external flaws, is Maria Bolkonskaya.
I wonder how she can understand and pity any person, how she endures bad character father and can sympathize with him. Despite her ugly appearance, she is pleasant to people. So timid and obedient, she tries to love every person. He is evil, greedy, vulgar, she is still looking for positive features in his character. She stands up for the poor, is ready to give all the master's grain to the peasants, raises not her own child, remains to look after her sick father under the threat of death. And after that they say that Helen is the first beauty of St. Petersburg! After all, we remember that when Princess Mary's eyes shone, they became so beautiful that she became prettier before her eyes and became a real beauty. And this natural glow of the eyes can compete with the cold, but perfect body Helen.
I think it is quite clear where the true beauty is, where the false one is. Why do we sometimes, having spoken with a beautiful or handsome man, quickly lose interest in them? Because a pleasant appearance is lost if a person is internally poor. You should not strive only for external beauty, strive also for internal, and you will be irresistible!
- "War and Peace" as philosophical work.
- Internal and outer beauty,
- Positive and negative characters.
- True beauty is harmony with oneself and the world.
The epic novel by L. N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" is a complex philosophical work. The author in the work touches on the following main topics: the structure of the world and the place of man in it, the meaning of history and a single human life, the role of the individual in history, the relationship between freedom and necessity in the fate of a person, moral requirements for a person, true and false in a person's life. The theme is connected with the philosophical and moral problem of true and false inner beauty person. In the novel by L. N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" there are over five hundred heroes. Among them we see emperors and statesmen, commanders and ordinary soldiers, aristocrats and peasants. Some characters, as it is easy to see, are especially sympathetic to the author, while others, on the contrary, are alien and unpleasant. It is interesting that the author divides his heroes not into positive and negative, not into good and bad, but into changing and frozen ones. The former include those characters whose lives are spent in a constant search for the truth, in the pursuit of good, in the desire to benefit other people. It so happened that the most internally beautiful Tolstoy's heroes do not differ in their external beauty. This is hardly accidental: in this way, I think, spiritual beauty, not obscured by external, becomes even more noticeable.
External beauty is an attractive face, a slender figure and graceful manners. Inner beauty is the beauty of the soul, and this is, first of all, philanthropy, high morality, sincerity, sincerity, the desire to understand other people and help them. It often happens that in one person, external and internal beauty do not merge into a single whole. That is why people tend to make mistakes and take external beauty for internal. Understanding the nature of a person is very difficult. That is why there is true and false beauty. True beauty is inner beauty, and false beauty is outward appearance, which is so often deceptive. True and false are closely intertwined with each other in Tolstoy's novel.
True and false beauty are most fully revealed in the images of Helen Kuragina and Natasha Rostova. Helen is so beautiful that there is no person who would not admire this beauty: “Slightly rustling her white ball gown, trimmed with ivy and moss, and shining with the whiteness of her shoulders, the gloss of her hair and diamonds, she walked between the parting men and straight, without looking at any whom, but smiling at everyone and kindly granting everyone the right to admire the beauty of their figure, full of shoulders, very open, according to the then fashion, chest and back. The only thing that is alarming about Helen is her smile. In fact, behind this smile-mask lies indifference to people, an empty soul. Helene is a mature person, a statue that does not change and will be the same in 20 and 40 years. And Natasha is a child. She live girl with its own merits and demerits. Natasha lives rich life, rejoices and is upset, laughs and cries. And Helen does not live, but exists. Helen needs marriage for only one thing: she needs money for balls, theaters, guests and numerous lovers. Not once throughout the novel did Helen show normal feelings: she was not afraid, she was not happy for someone, she did not feel sorry for anyone.
Tolstoy also shows the spiritual beauty of a person using the example of Pierre, one of the main characters of the novel. Emotional, unable to restrain and hide his feelings, Pierre very soon wins over readers. At the beginning of the novel, the hero is still young, knows life poorly and hardly understands people. Yes, first serious test for Pierre, it becomes marriage to Helen. He turned out to be unarmed against the deceit and deceit of the Kuragins, who lured him into their networks. But morally, Pierre is much higher than these people: he completely takes the blame for what happened. And after the disappointment in Freemasonry, where the desire to be useful to society led him, after his failure in his intentions to alleviate the situation of the serfs, dissatisfaction with himself again came to Pierre, that driving force, which did not allow the spiritual fire to go out in him. This is how the hero appears before us on the eve Patriotic War 1812. It is far from accidental that Tolstoy brings Pierre Bezukhov to the Borodino field. It may seem that a purely civilian and somewhat clumsy Pierre does not belong here. However, the voice of conscience tells him that now he should be right here, because here the main event is taking place, which is decisive for the fate of the nation. This almost instinctive, often not fully realized sense of belonging to one's people is, perhaps, the main feature best heroes Tolstoy. There is no "outward beauty" in Pierre's actions, and sometimes they even seem illogical. He stays in burning Moscow to kill Napoleon, but instead saves a snotty girl and a beautiful Armenian woman. Intending to kill the main enemy of the Russian people, Pierre is trying to solve a problem that is beyond the power of one person. But to make, albeit not so spectacular, but so necessary good deed- this is quite on the shoulder of the hero. Tolstoy does not appreciate external bodily beauty, as if he does not trust it. He wants to convey to the reader his thoughts that physical attractiveness will disappear over the years, and inner beauty will remain in a person forever.
The true beauty of a person is the desire for peace, for harmony with oneself and the people around. Tolstoy is fascinated by the spiritual strength of man, his ability for self-sacrifice. Inner beauty is a gift, but everyone can develop this gift.
The novel "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy is an epic work. Against the backdrop of large historical events Tolstoy portrays privacy man, his search for the meaning and purpose of life, the search for happiness. Among the questions to which he is looking for answers, the following are also important: “What is the beauty of a person? What does it consist of?
The main characters of the novel: Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova, Marya Bolkonskaya - each in his own way creates the beauty of his soul. Each of them has its own destiny, its ups and downs, its delusions and searches. But most clearly and holistically, in my opinion, the inner beauty of a person is conveyed by Tolstoy in the image of Princess Marya.
It is well known that “family thought” was very important to Tolstoy. He loved her not only in Anna Karenina, but also in War and Peace. Where does inner beauty come from? Probably, she is the fruit of upbringing, the result of the whole way of life of the family in which a person grows up.
We meet Princess Mary for the first time in family estate Bolkonsky - Bald Mountains. Her life is not easy. She doesn't have a mother. The father, a majestic, proud old widower, has a bad temper, but he is still active: he writes memoirs, works on a lathe, does mathematics with his daughter. In his opinion, "there are only two sources of human vices: idleness and superstition, and there are only two virtues: activity and intelligence." The main condition for activity for him is the order that is brought in his house to the "last degree of accuracy." The old prince is now in disgrace, therefore he lives on the estate without a break. Together with him, his daughter is forced to live as a recluse, away from the world, in solitude, in prayer. The life of the princess, like the life of her father, goes according to a strict schedule.
Introducing the princess, the author immediately draws our attention to her “warm, meek look”, “big, radiant eyes”, which glow with a kind and timid light. "These eyes illuminated the whole sickly, thin face and made it beautiful." Her eyes are beautiful even when she cries, they go out only from shame. Tolstoy will return to these radiant, beautiful eyes throughout the novel. I guess because the eyes are a mirror human soul. Prince Andrei sometimes has the same radiant eyes. Apparently, this is a family trait. But Prince Andrei, spinning in the light that bored him, had learned to hide what was true in his soul. His gaze is much more often bored, arrogant, contemptuous, squeamish.
In the scene of the courtship of Anatole Kuragin to Princess Marya, we learn that the girl is ugly. Here, for the first time, Anatole will say: “No, no joke, father, is she very ugly?” It was at this moment that they try to embellish the princess, she is angry with others, she is ashamed: “ Perfect eyes her face was extinguished, her face was covered with spots. The old prince, in the presence of guests, will sharply say to his daughter: “It was you who cleaned up for the guests, huh?., henceforth, don’t you dare change clothes without my asking ... she has nothing to disfigure herself - and she’s so bad.” And Anatole will think about her: “Poor fellow! Damn stupid!"
However, the princess is ugly for Anatole, even for her own father, but not for the author. Why? The answer suggests itself. For Tolstoy, beauty is primarily a moral category; it is something that comes from inner world man, and he is beautiful in the princess.
The old father is often painfully cruel, tactless towards his daughter. She is afraid of him, but nonetheless she loves the old man dearly and does not even admit to her brother that it is not easy for her to obey the almost military discipline of her father's house. She knows no other life than patience and help " God's people". Her father does not want her "to look like our stupid ladies." He educates her, watches over her correspondence, so that she doesn't write a lot of nonsense, behind the circle of her reading, depriving her of any freedom. But she meekly bears all his eccentricities. The authority of her father is indisputable for her: "Everything done by her father aroused in her reverence, which was not subject to discussion."
She loves her brother just as tenderly and devotedly. When he leaves for the war, the only thing left for the sister is to pray for him and believe that the icon that their grandfather kept in all wars will save Andrey too.
Marya wants nothing for herself personally. More than anything, she wants to be "poorer than the poorest of the poor." The princess subtly feels human nature. She defends Lisa in front of Andrey: “Think about what it is like for her, poor thing, after the life to which she is accustomed, to part with her husband and remain alone in the village in her position. It's hard". And asks him not to judge his wife harshly.
Refusing Kuragin, the princess declares that her desire is never to part with her father, sincerely believing that happiness lies in self-sacrifice. And this is not just theoretical reasoning. Having become Nikolenka's godmother, she motherly takes care of him, does not sleep at night at the bedside of a sick boy. No less selflessly she goes after her sick father.
Tolstoy is always impartial to those heroes whom he loves. Talking about Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei and Marya Bolkonsky, he reveals their secret feelings, moods, thoughts, speaking about everything directly and honestly. But most critically, it seems to me, he refers to Princess Marya. Reading about her shameful thoughts when she is day and night at the bedside of her terminally ill father, you understand that she is alive, and not a saint, that natural human weaknesses are not alien to her. Looking into the face of her sick father, she thought: "It would not be better if the end were over, quite the end", "... she watched, often wanting to find signs of the end approaching." Moreover, all dormant, forgotten personal desires and hopes woke up in her. She wonders how to arrange her life after his death. Princess Marya is horrified by what is going on in her soul, she is tormented, ashamed, but cannot overcome herself despite the fact that she is so afraid of losing her father.
The death of the old prince liberates Marya, but at the same time, a firm and active paternal character awakens in her. Not in vain old prince raised her - his daughter became a strong and active woman. Self-sacrifice is life principle Marya before meeting with Nikolai Rostov and before the death of Andrei.
And what is the ugly-beautiful Princess Mary in post-war life? Having met and fell in love with Nikolai Rostov, she is so transformed that from that moment until the end of the novel, Tolstoy will never say that the princess is ugly. On the contrary, everything that Tolstoy now says about Princess Marya's appearance shows how beautiful she is: "The eyes lit up with a new, radiant light"; “With a movement full of dignity and grace, she ... extended her thin, tender hand to him”; when she prays, a “touching expression of sadness, prayer and hope” appears on her face. Left alone, Nikolai recalls the “pale, thin, sad face”, “radiant look”, “quiet, graceful movements” of Princess Marya. And we see that love transforms a person, makes him beautiful not only internally, but also externally.
The new post-war life in the Bald Mountains is "indestructibly correct." Princess Marya found family happiness by becoming Countess Rostova.
Her family is strong because it is based on the constant spiritual work of the Countess, whose goal is only "the moral good of children." This surprises and delights Nicholas. In the name of maintaining peace in the family, she does not argue or condemn her husband, even when she does not agree with him.
The novel "War and Peace" was written by the author in a crucial era for Russia in the 60s of the XIX century. In it, Tolstoy continues the discussion of that time about the role of a woman in society, about what she should be, / [thinks that Princess Mary for the author is an ideal morally beautiful woman. Probably, in order to emphasize again and again "an important thought for him - a person is beautiful with inner beauty, which he creates himself, with his spiritual work," Tolstoy created the image of an ugly princess.
Let's open the academic “Dictionary of the Russian Language”: “Beauty is a property according to the meaning of the adjective beautiful”, “beautiful is pleasant in appearance, distinguished by the correctness of outlines, harmony of colors, tones, lines, distinguished by the completeness and depth of the internal content, calculated on the effect, on the external impression ". Any of these definitions can be confirmed on the pages of L. N. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace", because here there is the beauty of the soul, and the catchy external beauty of the body, and the beautiful Russian nature, and the beauty of human relations, and the greatness of military labor.
I will try to prove that beauty is manifested in the image of Tolstoy's most beloved heroine - Natasha Rostova. Outwardly, she is far from being a beauty, in the novel there are women who literally sparkle with beauty. This, for example, Helen Kuragina. But her physical beauty can give nothing but physical satisfaction.
There is nothing catchy in Natasha’s appearance: “a black-eyed, with a big mouth, an ugly, but lively girl, with her childish open shoulders that jumped out of her corsage from fast running, with her black curls knocked back, thin bare arms and small legs” - such is the thirteen-year-old girl Natasha at the moment of our first meeting with her on the pages of the novel. In two years we will see her in Otradnoye: black-haired, black-eyed, very thin, in a cotton dress - there is nothing special about the girl's appearance.
Not bright on the outside, Natasha is gifted with the beauty and richness of her voice, reflecting the richness of her inner world. Yes, connoisseurs judged her voice that it had not yet been processed, but they talked about it only after she finished singing. In the meantime, this voice sounded - they forgot about its “rawness” and only enjoyed it. It is the sister's singing that brings Nikolai Rostov out of a severe depression after a card loss, revealing to him all the splendor and wealth of the world.
The giftedness of the heroine is also manifested in a deep sense of the beauty of nature, which made her forget about everything. Natasha - the embodiment of a radiant life - is in complete contrast to the deadly boredom of a secular living room. Appearing on a sunny day in the forest, or against the background of a flooded moonlight park, or among the autumn fields, it is in harmony with the inexhaustible life of nature with all its being. In Otradnoye, Prince Andrey hears her voice, speaking of the beauty of the night, of the impossibility of sleeping in the midst of the enchanting beauty of nature, and I think that it was at this moment that his feeling for a hitherto unfamiliar girl was born.
The beauty of Natasha's soul is also reflected in her sensitivity, in her unusually subtle and deep intuition. Thanks to this property, she guessed what was not said in words, and, despite the lack of life experience, she correctly understood people. In this regard, her early sympathies for Pierre, outwardly somewhat ridiculous, fat, are very indicative; comparison of Boris Drubetskoy with narrow long watches; her antipathy to Dolokhov, who so pleased all the Rostovs. The depth of Natasha's intuition is also evidenced by her words that Nikolai will never marry Sonya.
After the death of Prince Andrei, Natasha, who had a hard time surviving his death,. feels a sense of alienation from his family, and all people. But here is the news of Petya's death. Despair drives the mother almost to madness. Natasha sees her father sobbing, and "something terribly painfully hit her in the heart." All alienation disappears, she is the embodiment of consolation: she does not leave her mother day or night. Only a man with a big and beautiful heart is able to forget about his own grief for the sake of saving the most dear and close being.
And here is another episode of the novel, proving the beauty and breadth of the heroine's soul. During her departure from Moscow, she, having shown reasonable practicality, ingenuity and dexterity in packing things, learns about the refusal of her parents to give the wounded a place on the carts. Perhaps for the first time we see Natasha Rostova in anger: “This is disgusting! This is an abomination!” Her face is disfigured with anger, she screams at her mother, and her deed is bright and beautiful. And the parents agree with their daughter - they give carts to the wounded, and after all, her future dowry could be taken out on them.
In my opinion, Natasha's beauty blossomed in marriage and motherhood. Remember how, all inspired by joy, the heroine runs to meet Pierre, who has arrived after a long absence? The old Countess Rostov even thinks that her daughter takes her love to extremes, which is stupid, but this opinion, in my opinion, is the result of a cold secular upbringing.
So, answering the question “what is beauty?”, I would say: “Look at Natasha Rostova - naturalness, sensitivity, talent, “mind of the heart””.
The question of true beauty has always been one of the most exciting in literature and in life, so discussions on this topic are relevant to this day. It seems to me that at all times the philistine idea of beauty consisted of an assessment of its purely external manifestation in a person, but few people paid attention to its inner essence. The question is what is more important - appearance or personal qualities- became eternal. But is it really possible that in the near future philistine ideas about beauty will prevail over the human mind and people will stop appreciating inner attractiveness? I'm just sure that this will not happen as long as there are great works on Earth that have beneficial effect on a person, laying out in his mind highly moral thoughts, leading to undistorted ideas about true beauty.
One of these works was written by the greatest psychologist of the Russian soul, the writer Leo Tolstoy. In the novel "War and Peace" on the example of bright female images true human beauty. Revealing the character of Natasha Rostova and Marya Bolkonskaya, the writer notes in these heroines those personality traits that, in his opinion, make a person beautiful. Of course, he does not ignore the appearance of girls, but it is the soul that becomes the main indicator of their beauty, since they are by no means beauties compared, for example, with Helen Kuragina, to whose image we will return.
So, Natasha Rostova Tolstoy introduces us when she is still a frisky, naughty girl running around the house, openly expressing her emotions: “A black-eyed, with a big mouth, an ugly, but lively girl, with her childish open shoulders that jumped out of her corsage from a quick run , with her black curls strayed back.
Already here one can see the admiration of the writer with liveliness, the emancipation of Natasha, who is not spoiled by secular morality, unlike her sister Vera or Helen Kuragina. She is ugly by then generally accepted European standards, but her soul is beautiful.
Natasha carries in herself simple human kindness, sincerity and love, and this cannot leave anyone indifferent. Natasha is always on the move, her life is constant self-improvement, which is not always under the influence of good people or events. She, like all people, makes mistakes, suffers because of her mistakes, the most serious, perhaps, of which is an attempt to escape with Anatole Kuragin. But still, in the end, alive soul Natasha, in which everything is intertwined positive traits, leads her to real happiness, to the fact that she becomes a harmonious personality, ready to support any person, bestow her love, encourage him.
Not less than a prime example spiritual beauty is Princess Marya Bolkonskaya. Unlike Natasha Rostova, who, having matured, from the "ugly duckling" turns into " beautiful swan”, Princess Mary is not at all beautiful. Only her "radiant" eyes give the appearance of the heroine attractiveness. Eyes reflect her harmonious internal state which she acquired in faith. Life according to the commandments made Princess Marya a person who became an example greatest love to people and self-sacrifice.
In these two heroines, Tolstoy embodied the ideal of a woman. As for beauty, the writer considers Natasha Rostova to be her perfect model, since external beauty is combined in the "countess" with internal. Her image is the exact opposite of the image of Helen Kuragina, the most beautiful woman high society. Tolstoy emphasizes in it only outward manifestation beauty: favorable poses showing her physical perfection, an equally frozen smile for everyone, and so on. But the writer never shows her emotional experiences, she looks like a statue, beautiful, but cold and soulless.
When describing his favorite heroines, Tolstoy always pays great attention to their eyes as an expression of the inner beauty of a person. After all, the eyes are the mirror of the soul. In Helen, they are never described, because this woman has no soul or she is so insignificant that it is not worth the slightest attention.
So, based on the foregoing, it can be seen that external beauty for Tolstoy is only a manifestation of internal, spiritual beauty. And this is not the perfection of the statue that Helen personifies. This is the charm of a truly living, harmonious soul. That's what beauty is in the writer's mind. And I am deeply convinced that this is the solution eternal question about the essence of beauty, since true beauty comes from within. And as long as people hold this opinion, true beauty will never die.
