Roman L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" was not easy to write and required enormous efforts from the creator. As L.N. Tolstoy, "painful and joyful perseverance and excitement" accompanied him all seven long years of writing the novel. During the years of work on the work, Tolstoy practically did not keep a diary, making only rare notes in notebooks, and was not distracted by other ideas - all his energy and strength went into writing the novel "War and Peace". Back in 1856, Lev Nikolayevich was thinking of writing a grandiose work about a Decembrist who was returning home from exile. In 1861 Tolstoy read to I.S. Turgenev the first chapters of this work.
However, the writer soon moves from a story about the fate of one hero to a story about a whole generation of people who lived during the period of historical events that influenced the worldview of the Decembrists. “In 1856, I began to write a story with a well-known direction, a hero who was supposed to be a Decembrist, returning with his family to Russia. Involuntarily, I moved from the present to 1825, the era of the errors and misfortunes of my hero, and left what I had begun. (...) But the third time I stopped what I started ... If the reason for our triumph was not accidental, but also lay in the essence of the character of the Russian people and troops, then this character should have been expressed even more clearly in the era of failures and defeats ... My task is to describe life and clashes of some persons in the period from 1805 to 1856. That is how L.N. Tolstoy comments on his creative searches, which, in the end, led him to create War and Peace. The official year of birth of the novel is considered to be 1863.
In 1867, the first chapters of L.N. Tolstoy. However, a year later, the author subjected them to severe editing. By that time, the novel did not yet have the title "War and Peace". Tolstoy refuses the first version of The Three Pores, since then the novel would open directly with the events of 1812. The second version of the title of the novel "Year 1805" did not correspond to the idea of the work. In 1866, the third version of “All is well that ends well” appears, but this name does not satisfy Tolstoy either, since it does not reflect the scale of the tragedy of the era depicted in the work. And only in 1867 Tolstoy stops at the title "War and Peace".
The last three years of intense creative and exhausting work on the work (1867-1869) led to the fact that "War and Peace" becomes a historical novel, a large-scale canvas "a picture of morals built on historical events", and the original idea about the history of the fate of generations is embodied in epic novel about the "history of the people". material from the site
The creative genius of Tolstoy was in constant search for the best, the most optimal. There is a legend that the wife of the writer S.A. Tolstaya rewrote War and Peace seven times. It is authentically known that Tolstoy created 15 variants of the beginning (beginnings) of the work, and the exact number of his editions is difficult to calculate. So, in the first completed edition, there is still no huge panorama of the Battle of Borodino, and the description of the battle takes only 7 pages. Later, Tolstoy adds to his novel both numerous philosophical digressions and a detailed story about the partisan war, introduces the image of Platon Karataev and other characters.
In December 1869, the last volume of the epic "War and Peace" was published. In fact, 13 long years have passed since Lev Nikolayevich realized his plan.
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1. History of the creation of the novel:
Created by the author for seven years (1863-1869);
the idea of the novel changed several times, as evidenced by the names of early editions: "Three Pores", "Everything is good, it ends well", "1805";
Initially, the plot was to be based on the life story of the protagonist (Decembrist), who in 1856, together with his family, returns from exile;
to explain the reason for the hero's stay in Siberia, the author is forced to turn to the history of 1825;
the youth of the hero falls on 1812, from where Tolstoy intends to start the novel in a new way;
in order to tell about the victories of the Russian army in the war of 1812, Tolstoy considers it necessary to tell about the tragic pages of history that date back to 1805. “I was ashamed to write about our triumph without describing our failures and our shame.”
Thus, the idea of the novel was changed by Tolstoy several times and acquired the final version: “So, having returned from 1856 to 1805, from now on I intend to lead not one, but many heroines and heroes through the historical events of 1805, 1807, 1812, 1825 , 1856". L. N. Tolstoy
Turning to the events of the Patriotic War between Russia and Napoleon in 1812, the writer, contrary to official data, showed the true hero and defender of the Motherland not the tsar and his predecessors, but the Russian people. "I tried to write the history of the people",- noted the author. It is no coincidence that Tolstoy considered Lermontov's poem Borodino, which glorifies the heroism of Russian soldiers, to be the "seed" of his novel.
On its theme "War and Peace" - a historical novel. It conveys the most "smell and sound" of a distant era. Without violating the historical truth, the author connects the past with the exciting issues of the present.
Four volumes cover the events of 1805-1814. The epilogue takes the reader to the 1920s, when secret societies of the future Decembrists were born in Russia.
In the novel more 500 actors. Many of them have been traced over the course of a decade, appearing in a military setting and a peaceful home circle.
First two volumes tell about the wars with Napoleon, which were fought outside of Russia on the Austrian lands. The central episodes here are the Shengraben and Austerlitz battles. (1805 - 1807)
In the third and fourth volumes talks about Napoleon's invasion of Moscow and the expulsion of the French from Russia. Of particular importance here is the famous Battle of Borodino (1812) - the “knot”, the culmination of the entire novel, according to Tolstoy, “The Russians fought for their land, this increased their strength tenfold and determined our moral victory.”
Having shown the decisive role of the people in historical events of national significance, Tolstoy created a special genre of the novel, a realistic epic, grandiose in terms of the scope of life and the scale of the narrative.
2. Features of the genre.
"This is not a novel, even less a historical chronicle" War and Peace "is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed."
L.N. Tolstoy.
In our time, historians and literary critics have called "War and Peace" as an epic novel.
The epic novel is a large, monumental form of epic literature, reflecting the process in its universality, "panoramic" depiction of events and human destinies.
Character traits:
a work of great volume;
multi-heroism;
an abundance of storylines.
3. The meaning of the title of the novel.
History of the creation of the novel.ppt
History of the creation of the novel.ppt
Man, according to Tolstoy, is the world itself. L.N. Tolstov in the novel is more interested in the inner world of the characters close to him. Describing their inner life, the author uses his favorite device "Dialectics of the Soul". The image of the inner world of a person is combined with the image of another world, of which his characters are a part. In the novel, we see a whole palette of worlds. This understanding of the world is associated with the image of the ball. The world - the ball appears as a closed sphere. It has its own laws, optional in other worlds. One world is often hostile to another.
The idea of the world is one of the main ones in the novel. From the world of an individual to universal unity with people, to unity with nature, with the Universe. And only such a person is truly happy
The history of the creation of the novel "War and Peace"
It was difficult for Tolstoy to approach "War and Peace" - however, there were no easy paths in his life.
Tolstoy brilliantly entered into literature with his first work - the initial part of the autobiographical trilogy "Childhood" (1852). "Sevastopol stories" (1855) strengthened the success. The young writer, yesterday's army officer, was joyfully greeted by St. Petersburg writers - especially from among the authors and employees of Sovremennik (Nekrasov was the first to read the manuscript "Childhood", highly appreciated it and published it in the magazine). However, the commonality of views and interests of Tolstoy and the capital's writers cannot be overestimated. Tolstoy very soon began to move away from his fellow writers, moreover, he emphasized in every possible way that the very spirit of literary salons was alien to him.
To Petersburg, where the "advanced literary community" opened its arms to him, Tolstoy arrived from Sevastopol. In the war, in the midst of blood, fear and pain, there was no time for entertainment, just as there was no time for intellectual conversations. In the capital, he is in a hurry to catch up - he divides his time between carousing with gypsies and conversations with Turgenev, Druzhinin, Botkin, Aksakovs. However, if the gypsies did not deceive expectations, then after two weeks "conversations with smart people" ceased to interest Tolstoy. In letters to his sister and brother, he angrily joked that he liked "smart conversation" with writers, but he "was too far behind them", in their society "I want to fall apart, take off my pants and blow my nose in my hand, but in a smart conversation I want to lie stupidity." And the point is not that one of the St. Petersburg writers was personally unpleasant to Tolstoy. He does not accept the very atmosphere of literary circles and parties, all this near-literary fuss. The craft of writing is a lonely business: one on one with a sheet of paper, with one's soul and conscience. No incoming circle interests should influence what is written, determine the position of the author. And in May 1856 Tolstoy "runs" to Yasnaya Polyana. From that moment on, he only left her for a short time, never striving to return to the light. From Yasnaya Polyana there was only one way - to even greater simplicity: to the asceticism of a wanderer.
Literary affairs are combined with simple and clear occupations: building a house, farming, peasant labors. At this moment, one of the most important features of Tolstoy appears: writing seems to him a kind of departure from the real thing, a substitution. It does not give the right to eat bread grown by peasants with a clear conscience. This torments, oppresses the writer, makes him spend more and more time away from the desk. And in July 1857, he finds an occupation that allows him to constantly work and see the real fruits of this work: Tolstoy opens a school for peasant children in Yasnaya Polyana. The efforts of Tolstoy the teacher are not directed towards elementary educational program. He seeks to awaken the creative forces in the children, to activate and develop their spiritual and intellectual potential.
Working at school, Tolstoy got used to the peasant world more and more deeply, comprehended its laws, psychological and moral foundations. He contrasted this world of simple and clear human relationships with the world of the nobility, the educated world, taken away by civilization from the age-old foundations. And this opposition was not in favor of the people of his circle.
The purity of thought, the freshness and accuracy of the perception of his barefoot students, their ability to assimilate knowledge and creativity forced Tolstoy to write a sharply polemical article on the nature of artistic creativity with a shocking title: “Who should learn to write from whom, peasant children from us or us from peasant children?”
The question of the nationality of literature has always been one of the most important for Tolstoy. And turning to pedagogy, he penetrated even deeper into the essence and laws of artistic creation, searched for and acquired strong "support points" of his writer's "independence".
Parting with St. Petersburg and the society of the capital's writers, the search for his own direction in creativity and a sharp refusal to participate in public life, as revolutionary democrats understood it, to study pedagogy - all these are features of the first crisis in Tolstoy's creative biography. The brilliant beginning is a thing of the past: everything written by Tolstoy in the second half of the 1950s (Lucerne, Albert) is not successful; in the novel "Family Happiness" the author himself is disappointed, he leaves the work unfinished. Experiencing this crisis, Tolstoy strives to completely rethink his worldview in order to live and write differently.
The beginning of a new period marks the revised and completed story "Cossacks" (1862). And so, in February 1863, Tolstoy began work on the novel, which would later become known as War and Peace.
"Thus began the book, on which seven years of incessant and exceptional labor will be spent under the best conditions of life." The book, which combined years of historical research ("a whole library of books") and family legends, the tragic experience of the Sevastopol bastions and the little things of Yasnaya Polyana life, the problems raised in "Childhood" and "Lucerne", "Sevastopol Tales" and "Cossacks" (Roman LN Tolstoy "War and Peace" in Russian Criticism: Collection of Articles - Leningrad, Publishing House of Leningrad University, 1989).
The begun novel becomes an alloy of the highest achievements of Tolstoy's early work: the psychological analysis of "Childhood", the truth-seeking and deromanticization of the war "Sevastopol Tales", the philosophical understanding of the world "Lucerne", the nationality "Cossacks". On this complex basis, the idea of a moral-psychological and historical-philosophical novel was formed, an epic novel in which the author sought to recreate a true historical picture of the three eras of Russian history and analyze their moral lessons, comprehend and proclaim the very laws of history.
The first ideas for a new novel came to Tolstoy at the end of the 50s: a novel about a Decembrist who returned with his family from Siberia in 1856: then the main characters were called Pierre and Natasha Lobazov. But this idea was abandoned - and in 1863 the writer returned to it. “As the idea moved, an intense search for the title of the novel went on. The original, “Three Pores,” soon ceased to correspond to the content, because from 1856 and 1825 Tolstoy went further and further into the past; the focus was only on one “time” - 1812. So a different date appeared, and the first chapters of the novel were published in the Russky Vestnik magazine under the title "1805". In 1866, a new version appeared, no longer specifically historical, but philosophical: "All is well that ends well." And, finally, in 1867 - another title, where the historical and philosophical formed a kind of balance - "War and Peace" ... (L.N. Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" in Russian criticism: Collection of articles. - L. : publishing house of Lehning University, 1989).
What is the essence of this consistently developing idea, why, starting from 1856, Tolstoy came to 1805? What is the essence of this time chain: 1856 - 1825 -1812 -1805?
1856 for 1863, when work on the novel began, is modernity, the beginning of a new era in the history of Russia. Nicholas I died in 1855. His successor on the throne, Alexander II, granted amnesty to the Decembrists and allowed them to return to central Russia. The new sovereign was preparing reforms that were supposed to radically transform the life of the country (the main one was the abolition of serfdom). So, a novel about modernity, about 1856, is being thought about. But this is modernity in a historical aspect, because Decembristism brings us back to 1825, to the uprising on Senate Square on the day of taking the oath to Nicholas I. More than 30 years have passed since that day - and now the aspirations of the Decembrists, although partially, are beginning to come true, their cause, during which they spent three decades in prisons, "convict holes" and in settlements, is alive. With what eyes will a Decembrist see the renewing Fatherland, having parted with it for more than thirty years, withdrawn from active social life, who knew the real life of Russia in Nikolaev only from a distance? What will the current reformers seem to him - sons? followers? strangers?
Any historical works - if this is not an elementary illustration and not the desire to fantasize with impunity on historical material - are written in order to better understand modernity, to find and realize the origins of today. That is why Tolstoy, pondering the essence of the changes taking place before his eyes, into the future, is looking for their sources, for he understands that these new times truly did not begin yesterday, but much earlier.
And so, from 1856 to 1825. But the uprising of December 14, 1825, did not begin either: it was only an outcome—and a tragic outcome! - Decembrist. As you know, the formation of the first organization of the Decembrists, the Union of Salvation, dates back to 1816. In order to create a secret society, its future members had to endure and formulate common "protests and hopes", see the goal and realize that it can be achieved only by uniting. Consequently, 1816 is not the source. And then everything is concentrated on 1812 - the beginning of the Patriotic War.
The generally accepted point of view on the origins of Decembrism is known: having defeated the "invincible Napoleon", having traveled half of Europe in the liberation campaign, having known the military brotherhood, which is higher than ranks and estate partitions, Russian society returned to the same deceitful, perverted state and social system that was before the war. And the best, most conscientious, could not come to terms with this. This view of the origins of Decembristism is also supported by the well-known statement of one of the Decembrists: "We were children of the twelfth year ..."
However, even this view of the Decembrist uprising of 1812 does not seem exhaustive to Tolstoy. This logic is too elementary, suspiciously simple for him: they defeated Napoleon - they realized their strength - they saw a free Europe - they returned to Russia and felt the need for change. Tolstoy is not looking for an explicit historical sequence of events, but for a philosophical understanding of history, knowledge of its laws. And then the beginning of the action of the novel is transferred to 1805 - in the era of the "ascension" of Napoleon and the penetration of the "Napoleonic idea" into the Russian minds. This becomes the starting point for the author, in which all the contradictions of the Decembrist idea are concentrated, which determined the course of Russian history for many decades.
Meaning of the novel's title
The final version of the title of the novel "War and Peace" not only combines the philosophical and historical. The name is much deeper and more meaningful than all the original ones. At first glance, "War and Peace" seems to illustrate the alternation and combination of military and peaceful episodes in the novel. But in Russian the word mir means not only "a state without war," but also a human community, originally a peasant community; and the world - like everything that surrounds us: the environment, the physical and spiritual atmosphere of habitation. And all these meanings "work" in the title of Tolstoy's novel. The more seriously it is read, the deeper it is understood, the more voluminous, multidimensional the meaning of this formula becomes: war and peace.
Tolstoy's novel is about the place and role of war in people's lives, about the unnaturalness of bloody strife in human relationships. About what is lost and what is gained in the heat of battle. About the fact that, in addition to wooden houses, the very world of pre-war Russia goes into oblivion; that with every person dying on the battlefield, his entire unique spiritual world perishes, thousands of threads are torn, dozens of destinies of his loved ones are crippled ... This is a novel that there is war in the life of the people and in the life of every person; what role does it play in world history; about the origins of the war and its outcome.
Bibliography
Dolinina N.G. Through the pages of War and Peace. Notes on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace". - St. Petersburg: "Lyceum", 1999.
Maymin K.A. Lev Tolstoy. The writer's path. - M.: Nauka, 1980.
Monakhova O.P., Malkhazova M.V. Russian literature of the 19th century. Part 1. - M.-1994.
Roman L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace" in Russian criticism: Sat. articles. - L .: Lehning publishing house. university, 1989
The novel "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy devoted seven years of intense and hard work. September 5, 1863 A.E. Bers, father of Sofya Andreevna, wife of L.N. Tolstoy, sent a letter from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana with the following remark: “Yesterday we talked a lot about 1812 on the occasion of your intention to write a novel relating to this era.” It is this letter that the researchers consider to be the “first accurate evidence” dating the beginning of the work of L.N. Tolstoy over "War and Peace". In October of the same year, Tolstoy wrote to his relative: “I have never felt my mental and even all my moral forces so free and so capable of work. And I have this job. This work is a novel from the time of 1810 and the 20s, which has completely occupied me since the autumn ... I am now a writer with all the strength of my soul, and I write and think, as I have never written and thought before.
The manuscripts of "War and Peace" testify to how one of the world's largest creations was created: over 5,200 finely written sheets have been preserved in the writer's archive. From them you can trace the entire history of the creation of the novel.
Initially, Tolstoy conceived a novel about a Decembrist who returned after a 30-year exile in Siberia. The action of the novel began in 1856, shortly before the abolition of serfdom. But then the writer revised his plan and moved on to 1825, the era of the Decembrist uprising. But soon the writer abandoned this beginning and decided to show the youth of his hero, which coincided with the formidable and glorious times of the Patriotic War of 1812. But Tolstoy did not stop there, and since the war of 1812 was inextricably linked with 1805, he began his entire work from that time. Having moved the beginning of the action of his novel half a century into the depths of history, Tolstoy decided to lead not one, but many heroes through the most important events for Russia.
Tolstoy called his idea - to capture in art form the half-century history of the country - "Three pores". The first time is the beginning of the century, its first decade and a half, the youth of the first Decembrists who went through the Patriotic War of 1812. The second time is the 20s with their main event - the uprising on December 14, 1825. The third time is the 50s, the end of the Crimean War, unsuccessful for the Russian army, the sudden death of Nicholas I, the amnesty of the Decembrists, their return from exile and the time of waiting for changes in the life of Russia. However, in the process of working on the work, the writer narrowed the scope of his original intention and concentrated attention to the first pore, touching only in the epilogue of the novel the beginning of the second pore. But even in this form, the idea of the work remained global in scope and demanded the exertion of all forces from the writer. At the beginning of his work, Tolstoy realized that the usual framework of the novel and historical story would not be able to accommodate all the richness of the content he had conceived, and he began to persistently look for a new artistic form, he wanted to create a literary work of a completely unusual type. And he succeeded. "War and Peace", according to L.N. Tolstoy is not a novel, not a poem, not a historical chronicle, this is an epic novel, a new genre of prose, which, after Tolstoy, became widespread in Russian and world literature.
During the first year of work, Tolstoy worked hard on the beginning of the novel. According to the author himself, many times he started and stopped writing his book, losing and gaining hope to express in it everything that he wanted to express. Fifteen variants of the beginning of the novel have been preserved in the writer's archive. The idea of the work was based on Tolstoy's deep interest in history, in philosophical and socio-political issues. The work was created in an atmosphere of boiling passions around the main issue of that era - about the role of the people in the history of the country, about its destinies. While working on the novel, Tolstoy sought to find the answer to these questions.
In order to truthfully describe the events of the Patriotic War of 1812, the writer studied a huge amount of materials: books, historical documents, memoirs, letters. “When I write history,” Tolstoy pointed out in the article “A few words about the book“ War and Peace ”, “I like to be true to reality to the smallest detail.” While working on the work, he collected a whole library of books about the events of 1812. In the books of Russian and foreign historians, he did not find a true description of events, nor a fair assessment of historical figures. Some of them unrestrainedly praised Alexander I, considering him the winner of Napoleon, others exalted Napoleon, considering him invincible.
Rejecting all the works of historians who portrayed the war of 1812 as a war of two emperors, Tolstoy set himself the goal of truthfully highlighting the events of the great era and showed the liberation war waged by the Russian people against foreign invaders. From the books of Russian and foreign historians, Tolstoy borrowed only authentic historical documents: orders, orders, dispositions, battle plans, letters, etc. He included letters from Alexander I and Napoleon, which the Russian and French emperors exchanged before the start of the 1812 war, into the text of the novel; the disposition of the battle of Austerlitz, developed by General Weyrother, as well as the disposition of the battle of Borodino, compiled by Napoleon. The chapters of the work also include letters from Kutuzov, which confirm the characterization given to the field marshal by the author. When creating the novel, Tolstoy used the memoirs of contemporaries and participants in the Patriotic War of 1812. So, from "Notes on 1812 by Sergei Glinka, the first warrior of the Moscow militia", the writer borrowed materials for scenes depicting Moscow during the war; in the “Works of Denis Vasilyevich Davydov” Tolstoy found the materials underlying the partisan scenes of “War and Peace”; in the "Notes of Alexei Petrovich Yermolov" the writer found a lot of important information about the actions of Russian troops during their foreign campaigns of 1805-1806. Tolstoy also discovered a lot of valuable information in the notes of V.A. Perovsky about his stay in captivity by the French, and in the diary of S. Zhikharev "Notes of a Contemporary from 1805 to 1819", on the basis of which the Moscow life of that time is described in the novel.
While working on the work, Tolstoy also used materials from newspapers and magazines from the era of the Patriotic War of 1812. He spent a lot of time in the manuscript department of the Rumyantsev Museum and in the archives of the palace department, where he carefully studied unpublished documents (orders and instructions, reports and reports, Masonic manuscripts and letters from historical figures). Here he got acquainted with the letters of the maid of honor of the imperial palace M.A. Volkova to V.A. Lanskoy, letters from General F.P. Uvarov and others. In letters that were not intended for publication, the writer found precious details depicting the life and characters of his contemporaries in 1812.
Tolstoy spent two days in Borodino. Having traveled around the battlefield, he wrote to his wife: “I am very pleased, very much, with my trip ... If only God would give health and tranquility, and I will write such a Battle of Borodino as has never happened before.” Between the manuscripts of "War and Peace" there is a sheet with notes made by Tolstoy at the time when he was on the Borodino field. “The distance is visible for 25 miles,” he wrote, sketching the horizon line and noting where the villages of Borodino, Gorki, Psarevo, Semenovskoye, Tatarinovo are located. On this sheet, he noted the movement of the sun during the battle. While working on the work, Tolstoy unfolded these brief notes into unique pictures of the Battle of Borodino, full of movement, colors and sounds.
Throughout the seven years of hard work that the writing of War and Peace required, Tolstoy did not leave his spiritual uplift and creative burning, and that is why the work has not lost its significance to this day. More than a century has passed since the first part of the novel appeared in print, and people of all ages, from young people to the elderly, invariably read War and Peace. During the years of work on the epic novel, Tolstoy stated that "the goal of the artist is not to undeniably resolve the issue, but to make you love life in countless, never exhausted all its manifestations." Then he admitted: “If I were told that what I am writing will be read by today's children in twenty years and will cry and laugh over it and love life, I would devote my whole life and all my strength to it.” Many such works were created by Tolstoy. "War and Peace", dedicated to one of the bloodiest wars of the 19th century, but affirming the idea of the triumph of life over death, occupies an honorable place among them.
Human, artistic and journalistic experience of Tolstoy in the 50s - early 60s. resulted in the path to the "big" genre. The rejection of current reality and the need to influence the course of its movement turned Tolstoy to the history of Russia, to the search for a socially significant manifestation of moral principles in the past. The past thus established itself as a theme and predetermined the future character of the "big" genre as a genre of history and at the same time of relevance.
The idea of the novel about people who went through Decembrism and exile (The Decembrists, 1863) leads Tolstoy to the era of 1812, which with unprecedented force exposed the power and vitality of the Russian character and the nation as a whole. But the task of identifying the internal sources of opposition to evil and the victory of a person (and a nation) over him turns the writer to the era of "failures and defeats", where the essence of character should have "expressed even brighter". The beginning of the action of "War and Peace" is postponed to 1805.
In the 60s. in connection with the peasant reform and the transformations of the country that followed it, questions about the patterns of development of history, about the very process of the historical movement of mankind, become the most important for Russia. Dostoevsky's The Idiot (1868), Goncharov's The Cliff (1869), and Saltykov-Shchedrin's History of a City (1870) were peculiar answers to them. Tolstoy's historical concept turned out to be in the mainstream of the search for Russian social and literary thought of this period.
Tolstoy himself perceived "War and Peace" as "a book about the past" that does not fit into any of the genre forms. “This is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle,” he wrote. “War and Peace is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed.”
However, the breadth of the philosophical and historical synthesis and the depth of the socio-psychological analysis of the diverse manifestations of history in man and man in history led to the assignment of the definition of "epic novel" to "War and Peace".
The infinity of the process of spiritual extractions when reading "War and Peace" is organically connected with Tolstoy's task of revealing the general patterns of social and personal life that subjugate the fate of individuals, peoples and humanity as a whole, and is in direct connection with Tolstoy's search for the path of people to each other, with the thought of a possible and proper human "unity".
War and peace - as a theme - is life in its universal scope. At the same time, war and peace are the most profound and tragic contradiction of life.10 Tolstoy's reflections on this problem resulted primarily in the study of the relationship between freedom and necessity, the essence of a person's volitional act and the objective result of its consequences at a particular moment.
Calling the era of the creation of "War and Peace" "a self-confident time" that forgot about the existence of this problem, Tolstoy refers to the philosophical, theological and natural science thought of the past, which struggled to solve the issue of the relationship between freedom and necessity (Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine of the Blessed, Hobbes, Spinoza , Kant, Hume, Schopenhauer, Buckle, Darwin, etc.), and nowhere - neither in philosophy, nor in theology, nor in natural science - does it find a final positive result in solving the problem.
In the quests of past centuries, Tolstoy discovers the constant return of new generations to the “Penelope work” of their predecessors: “Considering the philosophical history of the issue, we will see that this issue is not only not resolved, but has two solutions. From the point of view of reason, there is no and cannot be freedom; from the point of view of consciousness, there is no and cannot be a need.
Reflections on the patterns of development of human history lead Tolstoy to the separation of the concepts of mind and consciousness. The “revelations” of consciousness, according to the writer, presuppose complete freedom of the individual, while the requirements of the mind consider any manifestation of freedom (in other words, will) of a person in his complex connections with the surrounding reality according to the laws of time, space and causality, the organic connection of which constitutes a necessity.
In the draft versions of War and Peace, Tolstoy examines a number of the greatest moral "paradoxes" of history - from the time of the Crusades, Charles IX and the St. Bartholomew's Night to the French Revolution - which, according to the writer, have not been explained in any of the historical sources known to him. philosophical concepts, and sets himself the task of finding new laws of human history, which he defines as "the science of people's self-knowledge."
Tolstoy's concept is based on the idea of "continuous movement of personality in time". A large-scale comparison is carried out: “As in the question of astronomy, and in the question of humaniores of the present time, the whole difference of view is based on the recognition or non-recognition of an absolute fixed unit that serves as a measure of the change of phenomena.
In astronomy it was the immobility of the earth; in humaniores it was the immobility of the personality, the human soul.<...>But in astronomy, truth took its toll. So precisely in our time the truth of the mobility of personality must take its toll. The “mobility of the personality” at the same time correlates with the mobility of the soul, which has already been established since the story “Childhood” as an integral sign of a person “understanding”.
In relation to history, the question of freedom and necessity is decided by Tolstoy in favor of necessity. Necessity is defined by him as "the law of motion of the masses in time". At the same time, the writer emphasizes that in his personal life every person is free at the moment of committing one or another act. He calls this moment “an infinitesimal moment of freedom in the present”, during which the “soul” of a person “lives”.
However, each given moment of time inevitably becomes the past and turns into a fact of history. Its uniqueness and irreversibility predetermine, according to Tolstoy, the impossibility of recognizing free will in relation to the past and the past.
Hence - the denial of the leading role of arbitrary actions of the individual in history and at the same time the affirmation of the moral responsibility of man for any act at every infinitesimal moment of freedom in the present. This act can be an act of good, "connecting people", or an act of evil (arbitrariness), "separating people".
Repeatedly reminding that human freedom is "chained by time", Tolstoy at the same time speaks of an infinitely great sum of "moments of freedom", i.e., the life of a person as a whole. Since at each such moment there is a “soul in life”, the idea of “mobility of the personality” forms the basis of the law of the necessity of the movement of the masses in time.
The paramount importance of “every infinitely small moment”, both in the life of an individual and in the world movement of history, approved by the writer in “War and Peace”, predetermined the method of analyzing the historical and determined the nature of the “pairing” of the scale of the epic with the detailed psychological analysis that distinguishes “War and the world" from all forms of artistic and historical narration and remains unique to this day both in Russian and in world literature.
"War and Peace" is a book of searches. In Tolstoy's attempt to find the laws of motion of human history, the very process of searching and the system of evidence that deepen the insight of the reader's judgment are important. Some logical incompleteness and inconsistency of the general philosophical synthesis of these searches was felt by Tolstoy himself.
He foresaw accusations of fatalism. And therefore, developing the idea of historical necessity and the specific form of its expression - the law of the spontaneous movement of the masses towards an unknown goal - the writer persistently and repeatedly emphasized the moral responsibility of a person for any decision or action at any given moment.
The "will of providence" in Tolstoy's philosophical and artistic interpretation of the life process is by no means a paralyzing intervention of a "higher power" that eliminates the activity of evil. Both in the general and in the private life of people, evil is effective. "Indifferent force" is blind, cruel and effective. With the concept of "fatalism", used by Tolstoy himself to explain phenomena that are not subject to "reasonable knowledge", "knowledge of the heart" is connected in the artistic fabric of the novel.
The “path of thought” is contrasted with the “path of sensation”, the “dialectic of the mind” is opposed to the “dialectic of the soul”. “Knowledge of the heart” takes on the name of “faith” in Pierre’s mind. This knowledge is nothing but a moral feeling, embedded by nature in every person, which, according to Tolstoy, is “supra-historical” and carries in itself that energy of life that fatally resists the forces of arbitrariness. Tolstoy's skepticism encroaches on the "omnipotence" of reason. The heart is put forward as the source of spiritual self-creation.
The rough drafts for "War and Peace" reflect a seven-year process of search and doubt, culminating in the philosophical and historical synthesis of the 2nd part of the epilogue.
Description of a series of events in the movement of peoples from west to east and from east to west, the ultimate goal of which, according to Tolstoy, remained inaccessible to the human mind, begins with a study of the era of "failures and defeats" of the Russian people (the nation as a whole) and covers the period from 1805 to August 1812 is the eve of the Battle of Borodino, and June-August 1812 (Napoleon's invasion of Russia and his movement towards Moscow) and the seven and a half years preceding this time are qualitatively heterogeneous.
From the moment the French troops entered Russian territory, the “failures and defeats” of the Russian army were accompanied by an unusually rapid awakening of national self-consciousness, which predetermined the outcome of the Battle of Borodino and the subsequent catastrophe of Napoleon.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983
