The image of Pierre Bezukhov in the novel "War and Peace". Composition based on the novel by Tolstoy - War and Peace. Pierre Bezukhov, by his nature, by his disposition, is predominantly an emotional person. Its characteristic features are a mind prone to "dreamy philosophizing", free-thinking, absent-mindedness, weakness of will, lack of initiative. This does not mean that Prince Andrew is incapable of experiencing a deep feeling, and Pierre is a weak thinker; one and the other are complex natures. The terms "intellectual" and "emotional" in this case mean the predominant traits of the spiritual forces of these extraordinary personalities. Pierre stands out sharply from among the people in the Scherer salon, where we first get to know him. This is "a massive, fat young man with a cropped head, glasses, in light pantaloons in the fashion of the time, with a high frill and in a brown dress coat." His look is "smart and at the same time timid, observant and natural." Its main feature is the search for "tranquility, harmony with oneself." Pierre's entire life path is an incessant search for the meaning of life, a search for a life that would be in harmony with the needs of his heart and would bring him moral satisfaction. In this he is similar to Andrei Bolkonsky.

The way of Pierre, like the way of Prince Andrew, this is the way to the people. Even during the period of passion for Freemasonry, he decides to devote his energies to the improvement of the peasants. He considers it necessary to release his serfs to freedom, thinks about establishing hospitals, shelters and schools in his villages. True, the cunning manager deceives Pierre and creates only the appearance of the reforms carried out. But Pierre is sincerely convinced that his peasants are now living well. His real rapprochement with the common people begins in captivity, when he meets the soldiers and Karataev. Pierre arises a desire to simplify himself, to merge completely with the people. The lordly life, secular salons, the luxury of tomyagi do not satisfy Pierre, He painfully feels his isolation from

Images of Natasha and Princess Marie in the novel "War and Peace". But Natasha and Princess Marya have common features.... They are both patriots. Natasha did not hesitate to donate the riches of the Moscow house of the Rostovs for the sake of saving the wounded. And Princess Marya abandons the estate to the mercy of fate when the French approach. When the homeland is in danger, family traits awaken in it - pride, courage, firmness. So it was in Bogucharovo, when a French companion invited her to stay on the estate and trust the mercy of the French general, the mercy of the enemies of Russia, her homeland. And “although it was all the same for Princess Marya wherever she stayed and whatever happened to her, she felt at the same time a representative of her late father and Prince Andrey. She involuntarily thought them with thoughts and felt them with feelings. " And one more feature makes Natasha and Princess Marya related. Princess Marya is getting married to Nikolai Rostov, and Tolstoy, drawing their family life, speaks of the happiness that she, like Natasha, found in the family. This is how Tolstoy decides the question of the appointment of a woman, limiting her interests to the framework of family life.

Let's remember another episode of the meeting of Nikolai Rostov with Sonya, when he, having arrived on vacation, does not know how to behave with his girlfriend. "He kissed her hand and called her you - Sonya, But their eyes, meeting, said" you "to each other and kissed tenderly."

Favorite heroes of Tolstoy are people with a complex mental world... In revealing such characters, Tolstoy resorts to different methods: to direct characterization from the author, to auto-characterization of the hero, to internal dialogues and reflections, etc. Internal monologues and internal dialogues allow the author to discover such intimate thoughts and moods of the heroes, which can be conveyed in a different way ( for example, using direct author's characteristics) would be difficult without violating the laws of artistic realism. Tolstoy resorts to such monologues and dialogues very often. The reflections of the wounded Prince Andrey in chapter XXXII of the third volume of the novel can serve as an example of an "internal monologue" with elements of dialogue. Here is another example of an "internal monologue" - the reflections of Natasha, childishly directly talking about herself: "What a lovely Natasha!" - she said to herself again in the words of some third collective male face. - She is good, her voice is young, and she does not bother anyone, leave only her alone ”(Chapter XXIII of the second volume).

The image of Andrei Bolkonsky. The external world with its things and phenomena is also skillfully used by Tolstoy to characterize heroes. So, describing Natasha's mood after the unexpected departure of Andrei Bolkonsky (before the matchmaking), Tolstoy reports that Natasha completely calmed down and “put on that old dress that was especially known to her for the joy she brought in the morning.” Tolstoy is a brilliant landscape painter. He will notice young “green sticky leaves” of birch, and shrubs greening somewhere, and “juicy, dark green oak”, and moonlight bursting into the room, and the freshness of a spring night. Let us recall the wonderfully described hunting in Otradnoye. Both people, animals, and nature act here as indicators of the powerful force of life, its full blood. The landscape performs various functions in the novel. The most common feature of Tolstoy's landscape is the correspondence of this landscape to the mood of the hero. The disappointment, the gloomy mood of Prince Andrey after the break with Natasha colors the surrounding landscape in gloomy tones. “He looked at the strip of birches, with their motionless yellowness, greenery and white bark, shining in the sun. "To die ... to be killed, tomorrow, so that I would not be ... so that all this would be, but I would not be ..." He is tormented by terrible forebodings and painful thoughts of death. And these birches with their light and shadow, and these curly clouds, and this smoke of bonfires - all this around was transformed for him and seemed to be something terrible and threatening. And the poetry of Natasha's nature, on the contrary, is revealed against the background of a moonlit spring night in Otradnoye. In other cases, the landscape directly affects the person, enlightening and wisdom him. Prince Andrew, wounded at Austerlitz, looks at the sky and thinks: “Yes! Everything is empty, everything is deception, except for this endless sky. " The oak, which Prince Andrey meets twice on his way, reveals to him the "meaning of life" in completely different ways: in one case it seems to Prince Andrey the personification of hopelessness, in the other - a symbol of joyful faith in happiness.

Finally, Tolstoy uses the landscape as a means of characterizing the real situation. Let us recall, for example, the heavy fog that spread like a continuous milky-white sea over the outskirts of Austerlitz. Thanks to this fog, which covered the positions of the French, the Russian and Austrian troops were put in a worse position, since they did not see the enemy and unexpectedly faced him face to face. Napoleon, standing at a height where it was completely light, could unmistakably lead the troops.

The image of Napoleon in the novel "War and Peace". Napoleon confronts in the novel Napoleon... Tolstoy debunks this commander and an outstanding historical figure. Drawing the appearance of Napoleon, the author of the novel says that he was a "little man" with an "unpleasantly feigned smile" on his face, with "fat breasts", "round belly" and "fat spoons of short legs." Tolstoy shows Napoleon as a narcissistic and arrogant ruler of France, intoxicated with success, blinded by glory, attributing to his personality a driving role in the course of historical events. Even in small scenes, in the slightest gestures, one can feel, according to Tolstoy, Napoleon's insane pride, his acting, the conceit of a man who is accustomed to believing that every movement of his hand scatters happiness or sows grief among thousands of people. The servility of those around him lifted him to such a height that he really believed in his ability to change the course of history and influence the fate of peoples.

In contrast to Kutuzov who does not attach decisive importance to his personal will, Napoleon puts himself above all, his personality, considers himself a superman. “Only what was happening in his soul was of interest to him. Everything that was outside of him did not matter to him, because everything in the world, as it seemed to him, depended only on his will. " The word "I" is Napoleon's favorite word. In Napoleon, selfishness, individualism and rationality are emphasized - features that are absent in Kutuzov, the people's commander who thinks not about his own glory, but about the glory and freedom of the fatherland. Revealing the ideological content of the novel, we already Tolstoy "" noted the originality in Tolstoy's interpretation of certain themes of the novel. Thus, we have already said that Tolstoy, going against the revolutionary peasant democracy, obscures in his novel the acuteness of the class contradictions between the peasantry and the landowners; revealing, for example, Pierre Bezukhov's restless thoughts about the plight of serfs, he at the same time paints pictures of idyllic relationships between landowners and peasants in the estate and house of the Rostovs. We also noted the features of idealization in the image of Karataev, the originality of the interpretation of the role of personality in history, etc.

How can these features of the novel be explained? Their source must be sought in Tolstoy's worldview, which reflected the contradictions of his time. Tolstoy was a great artist. His novel "War and Peace" is one of the greatest masterpieces of world art, a brilliant work in which the breadth of an epic scope was combined with an amazing depth of penetration into the mental life of people. But Tolstoy lived in Russia in a transitional era, in an era of breaking the social and economic foundations of life, when the country was moving from a feudal-serf system to capitalist forms of life, violently protesting, in Lenin's words, “against any class domination,” Tolstoy, a landowner and an aristocrat , found a way out for himself in the transition to the position of the patriarchal peasantry. Belinsky, in his articles about Tolstoy, revealed with remarkable depth all the contradictions that were reflected in the worldview and work of Tolstoy in connection with his transition to the position of the patriarchal peasantry. These contradictions could not but be reflected in the artistic structure of the novel "War and Peace". Tolstoy, the great realist and Protestant, ultimately defeated Tolstoy, the religious philosopher, and created a work unparalleled in world literature. But while reading the novel, we still cannot help but feel the contradictions in the worldview of its author.

The image of Kutuzov in the novel "War and Peace". In the novel, Tolstoy ridicules the cult of "great personalities" created by bourgeois historians. He correctly believes that the masses of the people decide the course of history. But his assessment of the role of the masses takes on a religious connotation. He comes to the recognition of fatalism, arguing that all historical events are predetermined from above. The expression of his views in the novel Tolstoy makes the commander Kutuzov. The basis of his view is the consciousness that the creator of history, historical events is the people, and not individuals (heroes) and that all rationalistically constructed theories, no matter how good they seem, are nothing in front of the force, which is the mood, the spirit of the masses.

"Long-term military experience, - writes Tolstoy about Kutuzov, - he knew and with his senile mind understood that it was impossible for one person to lead hundreds of thousands of people fighting death, and he knew that the fate of the battle was not decided by the orders of the commander-in-chief, not the place where the troops were stationed, not the number guns and killed people, and that elusive force, called the spirit of the army, and he followed this force and directed it, as far as it was in his power. " Tolstoy also attributed to Kutuzov his erroneous fatalistic view of history, according to which the outcome of historical events was predetermined in advance. Andrei Bolkonsky says about Kutuzov: “He will not invent anything, will not undertake anything, but he will listen to everything, remember everything, put everything in its place, will not interfere with anything useful and will not allow anything harmful. He understands that there is something stronger and more significant than his will - this is the inevitable course of events - and he knows how to see them, knows how to understand their meaning and, in view of this meaning, knows how to renounce participation in these events, from his personal will aimed at other ... "

Denying the role of personality in history, Tolstoy strove to make Kutuzov only a wise observer of historical events, only a passive contemplator of them. This, of course, was Tolstoy's mistake. It inevitably had to lead to a contradictory assessment of Kutuzov. And so it happened. In the novel, a commander appears who extremely accurately evaluates the course of military events and unmistakably directs them. With the help of a well-thought-out counter-offensive plan, Kutuzov is destroying Napoleon and his army. Consequently, in a number of essential features Kutuzov is shown historically correctly in the novel: he possesses great strategic skill, thinks through the campaign plan for long nights, acts as an active figure, hiding tremendous volitional tension behind the external calmness. So the realist artist overcame the philosophy of fatalism. The bearer of the people's spirit and the people's will, Kutuzov deeply and correctly understood the course of things, in the midst of events he gave them a correct assessment, which was subsequently confirmed. So, he correctly assessed the significance of the Battle of Borodino, saying that it was a victory. As a commander, Kutuzov is superior to Napoleon. To wage a people's war, like the war of 1812, Tolstoy says, such a commander was needed. With the expulsion of the French, Kutuzov's mission was completed. The transfer of the war to Europe required a different commander-in-chief. “The representative of the Russian people, after the enemy was destroyed, Russia was liberated and placed on the highest level of its glory, the Russian person, as a Russian, had nothing more to do. The representative of the people's war had no choice but death. And he died. "

Portraying Kutuzov as the people's commander, as the embodiment of people's thoughts, will and feelings. Tolstoy never falls into schematism. Kutuzov is a living person. This impression is created with us primarily because Tolstoy clearly, vividly draws us a portrait of Kutuzov - his figure, gait and gestures, facial expressions, his eyes, now glowing with a pleasant affectionate smile, now taking on a mocking expression. Tolstoy gives it to us either in the perception of persons different in character and social position, or draws from himself, delving into the psychological analysis of his hero. Kutuzov's scenes and episodes depicting the commander in conversations and conversations with people close and pleasant to him, like Bolkonsky, Denisov, Bagration, his behavior on military councils, in the battles of Austerlitz and Borodino, make Kutuzov deeply human and alive. Kutuzov's speech is diverse in its lexical composition and syntactic structure. He is fluent in high society speech when he speaks or writes to the king, generals and other representatives of the aristocratic society. “I say only one thing, General,” says Kutuzov with a pleasant grace of expression and intonation that made you listen attentively to every leisurely spoken word. “I only say one thing, General, that if the matter depended on my personal desire, then the will of His Majesty Emperor Franz would have been fulfilled long ago. " But he is also fluent in simple folk language. “And that's what, brothers. I know it's difficult for us, but what can we do! Be patient: it's not long left ... Let's see the guests out, we'll rest then, ”he said to the soldiers, meeting them on the way from Krasnoye to Dobry. And in a letter to old man Bolkonsky, he discovers archaic features of the clerical style of this era: “I flatter myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, because otherwise, among the officers found on the battlefield, about whom the list was submitted to me through parliamentarians, and he would was named ".

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, with his pure Russian pen, gave life to a whole world of characters in the novel War and Peace. His fictional characters, which are intertwined in whole noble families or family ties between families, present the modern reader with a real reflection of those people who lived in the times described by the author. One of the greatest books of world significance "War and Peace" with the confidence of a professional historian, but at the same time, as in a mirror, presents to the whole world that Russian spirit, those characters of secular society, those historical events that were invariably present at the end of the XVIII and early 19th century.
And against the background of these events, the greatness of the Russian soul is shown, in all its power and diversity.

Leo Tolstoy and the heroes of the novel "War and Peace" are going through the events of the last nineteenth century, but Lev Nikolaevich begins to describe the events of 1805. The impending war with the French, the decisively approaching world and the growing greatness of Napoleon, the confusion in Moscow secular circles and the clear calm in the St. Petersburg secular society - all this can be called a kind of background on which, like a brilliant artist, the author painted his characters. There are quite a lot of heroes - about 550 or 600. There are both main and central figures, and there are others or simply mentioned ones. In total, the heroes of "War and Peace" can be divided into three groups: central, secondary and mentioned characters. Among all of them, there are both fictional characters, as prototypes of the people who surrounded the writer at that time, and real-life historical figures. Consider the main characters in the novel.

Quotes from the novel "War and Peace"

“… I often think about how the happiness of life is sometimes unfairly distributed.

A person cannot own anything while he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of her, he owns everything.

Until now, thank God, I have been a friend of my children and enjoy their full confidence, ”said the countess, repeating the delusion of many parents who believe that their children have no secrets from them.

Everything, from napkins to silver, earthenware and crystal, bore that special imprint of novelty that occurs in the household of young spouses.

If everyone fought only for their own convictions, there would be no war.

To be an enthusiast became her social position, and sometimes, when she did not even want to, in order not to deceive the expectations of people who knew her, she became an enthusiast.

To love everyone, to always sacrifice oneself for love, meant not to love anyone, meant not living this earthly life.

Never, never marry, my friend; Here is my advice to you: do not marry until you tell yourself that you have done everything you could, and until you stop loving the woman you have chosen, until you see her clearly; otherwise you will be mistaken cruelly and irreparably. Marry an old man, worthless ...

Central figures of the novel "War and Peace"

Rostovs - Counts and Countesses

Rostov Ilya Andreevich

Count, father of four children: Natasha, Vera, Nikolai and Petit. A very kind and generous person who loved life very much. His overwhelming generosity ultimately led him to extravagance. A loving husband and father. A very good organizer of various balls and receptions. However, his life on a grand scale, and disinterested assistance to the wounded during the war with the French and the departure of the Russians from Moscow, inflicted fatal blows on his condition. His conscience tormented him constantly because of the impending poverty of his family, but he could not help himself. After the death of the youngest son Petya, the count was broken, but, however, revived during preparations for the wedding of Natasha and Pierre Bezukhov. Just a few months after the wedding of the Bezukhovs, Count Rostov dies.

Rostova Natalia (wife of Ilya Andreevich Rostov)

Wife of Count Rostov and mother of four children, this woman at the age of forty-five had oriental features. The focus of slowness and gravity in her was regarded by those around her as the solidity and high significance of her personality for the family. But the real reason for her manners, perhaps, lies in the emaciated and weak physical condition due to the birth and upbringing of four children. She loves her family and children very much, so the news of the death of her youngest son Petya almost drove her crazy. Just like Ilya Andreevich, Countess Rostova was very fond of luxury and the execution of any of her orders.

Leo Tolstoy and the heroes of the novel "War and Peace" in Countess Rostova helped to reveal the prototype of the author's grandmother, Pelageya Nikolaevna Tolstoy.

Rostov Nikolay

The son of Count Rostov Ilya Andreevich. A loving brother and son who reveres his family, at the same time loves to serve in the Russian army, which is very significant and important for his dignity. Even in his fellow soldiers, he often saw his second family. Although he was in love with his cousin Sonya for a long time, he nevertheless marries Princess Marya Bolkonskaya at the end of the novel. A very energetic young man, with curly hair and an "open expression." His patriotism and love for the emperor of Russia never dried up. Having gone through many hardships of the war, he becomes a brave and brave hussar. After the death of Father Ilya Andreevich, Nikolai retires in order to improve the financial affairs of the family, pay debts and, finally, become a good husband for Marya Bolkonskaya.

It appears to Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy as a prototype of his father.

Rostova Natasha

Daughter of Count and Countess Rostov. A very energetic and emotional girl, who was considered ugly, but lively and attractive, she is not very smart, but intuitive, because she knew how to perfectly “guess people”, their mood and some character traits. She is very impulsive to nobility and self-sacrifice. She sings and dances very beautifully, which at that time was an important characteristic quality for a girl from a secular society. The most important quality of Natasha, which Leo Tolstoy, like his characters, repeatedly emphasizes in the novel "War and Peace" - is closeness to the common Russian people. And she herself has completely absorbed the Russianness of culture and the strength of the nation's spirit. Nevertheless, this girl lives in her illusion of goodness, happiness and love, which, after some time, brings Natasha into reality. It is these blows of fate and her heartfelt experiences that make Natasha Rostova an adult and end up giving her mature true love for Pierre Bezukhov. The story of the rebirth of her soul, how Natasha began to attend church after succumbing to the temptation of a lying seducer, deserves special respect. If you are interested in the works of Tolstoy in which the Christian heritage of our people is considered more deeply, then you need to read a book about Father Sergius and how he fought temptation.

A collective prototype of the writer's daughter-in-law Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya, as well as her sister - the wife of Lev Nikolaevich - Sofia Andreevna.

Rostova Vera

Daughter of Count and Countess Rostov. She was famous for her strict disposition and inappropriate, albeit fair, remarks in society. It is not known why, but her mother did not really love her and Vera felt this acutely, apparently, therefore, she often went against everyone around her. Later she became the wife of Boris Drubetskoy.

It is the prototype of Tolstoy's sister Sophia - the wife of Lev Nikolaevich, whose name was Elizabeth Bers.

Rostov Peter

Still a boy, the son of the Count and Countess Rostovs. Growing up, Petya, as a young man, was eager to go to war, and in such a way that his parents absolutely could not hold him back. Having escaped all the same from parental care and decided to join Denisov's hussar regiment. Petya dies in the very first battle, without having had time to fight. His death severely crippled his family.

Sonya

The diminutive, glorious girl Sonya was the native niece of Count Rostov and spent her whole life under his roof. Her long-term love for Nikolai Rostov became fatal for her, because she never managed to unite with him in marriage. In addition, the old county Natalya Rostova was very against their marriage, because they were cousins. Sonya acts nobly, refusing Dolokhov and agreeing to love only Nicholas for the rest of her life, while freeing him from his promise to marry her. The rest of her life she lives with the old countess in the care of Nikolai Rostov.

The prototype of this seemingly insignificant character was Lev Nikolaevich's second aunt, Tatiana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya.

Bolkonsky - princes and princesses

Bolkonsky Nikolay Andreevich

Father of the protagonist, Prince Andrei Bolkonsky. In the past, the acting general-in-chief, in the present prince, who has earned himself the nickname "King of Prussia" in Russian secular society. Socially active, strict as a father, tough, pedantic, but wise owner of his estate. Outwardly, it was a thin old man in a powdered white wig, thick eyebrows hanging over shrewd and intelligent eyes. She does not like to show feelings even for her beloved son and daughter. Constantly harassing his daughter Marya with nagging, sharp words. Sitting on his estate, Prince Nicholas is constantly on the alert for the events taking place in Russia, and only before his death he loses a full understanding of the scale of the tragedy of the Russian war with Napoleon.

The prototype of Prince Nikolai Andreevich was the writer's grandfather Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky.

Bolkonsky Andrey

Prince, son of Nikolai Andreevich. Ambitious, like his father, he is restrained in the manifestation of sensual impulses, but he loves his father and sister very much. He is married to the "little princess" Liza. Made a good military career. He philosophizes a lot about life, the meaning and state of his spirit. From which it is clear that he is in some kind of constant search. After the death of his wife in Natasha Rostova saw hope for himself, a real girl, and not a fake one as in a secular society and a certain light of future happiness, so he was in love with her. Having made an offer to Natasha, he was forced to go abroad for treatment, which served both as a real test of their feelings. As a result, their wedding fell through. Prince Andrew went to war with Napoleon and was seriously wounded, after which he did not survive and died of a serious wound. Natasha devotedly looked after him until the end of his death.

Bolkonskaya Marya

Daughter of Prince Nicholas and sister of Andrei Bolkonskikh. A very meek girl, not beautiful, but kind in soul and very rich, like a bride. Her inspiration and devotion to religion serve as an example of kindness and meekness to many. She unforgettably loves her father, who often mocked her with his ridicule, reproaches and injections. He also loves his brother, Prince Andrew. She did not immediately accept Natasha Rostova as a future daughter-in-law, because she seemed to her too frivolous for her brother Andrei. After all the hardships she experienced, she marries Nikolai Rostov.

The prototype of Marya is the mother of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy - Volkonskaya Maria Nikolaevna.

Bezukhovs - Counts and Countesses

Pierre Bezukhov (Peter Kirillovich)

One of the main characters who deserves close attention and the most positive assessment. This character has gone through a lot of mental trauma and pain, possessing in itself a kind and highly noble disposition. Tolstoy and the heroes of the novel "War and Peace" very often express their love and acceptance of Pierre Bezukhov as a man of very high morals, complacent and a man of a philosophical mind. Lev Nikolaevich is very fond of his hero, Pierre. As a friend of Andrei Bolkonsky, young Count Pierre Bezukhov is very loyal and sympathetic. Despite the various intrigues weaving under his nose, Pierre did not become embittered and did not lose his good-naturedness towards people. And by marrying Natalya Rostova, he finally found that grace and happiness that he so lacked in his first wife, Helen. At the end of the novel, one can trace his desire to change the political foundations in Russia and from afar one can even guess his Decembrist sentiments.

Character prototypes
Most of the heroes are so complex in their structure of the novel, they always reflect some people who, in one way or another, met along the path of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

The writer successfully created a whole panorama of the epic history of the events of that time and the private life of secular people. In addition, the author managed to very brightly color the psychological traits and characters of his characters so that a modern person can learn worldly wisdom from them.

A.E. Bersom in 1863 wrote to his friend, Count Tolstoy, a letter in which he reported on a fascinating conversation between young people about the events of 1812. Then Lev Nikolaevich decided to write a grandiose work about that heroic time. Already in October 1863, in one of his letters to a relative, the writer wrote that he had never felt such creative powers in himself, the new work, according to him, would not be similar to any that he had done before.

Initially, the main character of the work should be the Decembrist, returning from exile in 1856. Then Tolstoy postponed the beginning of the novel to the day of the uprising in 1825, but then the artistic time shifted to 1812. Apparently, the count was afraid that the novel would not be missed for political reasons, because even Nicholas the First tightened the censorship, fearing a repetition of the riot. Since the Patriotic War directly depends on the events of 1805, it was this period in the final version that became the foundation for the beginning of the book.

"Three pores" - this is how Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy called his work. It was planned that in the first part or the time will be told about the young Decembrists, participants in the war; in the second - a direct description of the Decembrist uprising; in the third - the second half of the 19th century, the sudden death of Nicholas 1, the defeat of the Russian army in the Crimean War, the amnesty of the members of the opposition movement, who, returning from exile, expect changes.

It should be noted that the writer rejected all the works of historians, basing many episodes of "War and Peace" on the memoirs of participants and witnesses of the war. Materials from newspapers and magazines also served as excellent informants. In the Rumyantsev Museum, the author read unpublished documents, letters from maids of honor and generals. Tolstoy spent several days in Borodino, and in his letters to his wife he enthusiastically wrote that if God gave him health, he would describe the Battle of Borodino in a way that no one had described before.

The author devoted 7 years of his life to the creation of War and Peace. There are 15 variations of the beginning of the novel, the writer has repeatedly abandoned and re-started his book. Tolstoy foresaw the global scope of his descriptions, wanted to create something innovative and created an epic novel worthy of representing the literature of our country on the world stage.

Themes "War and Peace"

1. Family theme. It is the family that determines the upbringing, psychology, views and moral foundations of a person, therefore it naturally occupies one of the central places in the novel. The forge of morals forms the characters of the heroes, influences the dialectics of their souls throughout the entire story. The description of the Bolkonskys, Bezukhovs, Rostovs and Kuragin families reveals the author's thoughts about domesticism and the importance that he attaches to family values.
2. The theme of the people. The glory for a won war always belongs to the commander or the emperor, and the people, without whom this glory would not have appeared, remains in the shadows. It is this problem that the author raises, showing the vanity of the vanity of military officials and elevating ordinary soldiers. became the theme of one of our compositions.
3. War theme. Descriptions of hostilities exist relatively separate from the novel, on their own. It is here that phenomenal Russian patriotism is revealed, which became the guarantee of victory, the boundless courage and fortitude of a soldier who goes to great lengths to save the motherland. The author introduces us to war scenes through the eyes of this or that hero, plunging the reader into the depths of the bloodshed taking place. Large-scale battles echo the spiritual torment of the heroes. Being at the crossroads of life and death reveals the truth to them.
4. The theme of life and death. Tolstoy's characters are divided into "living" and "dead". The former include Pierre, Andrei, Natasha, Marya, Nikolai, and the latter include old Bezukhov, Helen, Prince Vasily Kuragin and his son Anatole. The "living" are constantly in motion, and not so much physical as internal, dialectical (their souls come to harmony through a series of trials), and the "dead" hide behind masks and come to tragedy and internal split. Death in "War and Peace" is presented in 3 forms: bodily or physical death, moral and awakening through death. Life is comparable to the burning of a candle, someone's little flame, with flashes of bright light (Pierre), someone's tirelessly burns (Natasha Rostova), the vibrating light of Masha. There are also 2 hypostases: physical life, like that of “dead” characters, whose immorality deprives the world within the necessary harmony, and the life of the “soul” is about the heroes of the first type, they will be remembered even after death.

main characters

• Andrey Bolkonsky- a nobleman disenchanted with the world and seeking glory. The hero is handsome, has dry features, short, but athletic build. Andrei dreams of being famous like Napoleon, so he goes to war. He is bored with high society, even a pregnant wife does not give consolation. Bolkonsky changes his outlook when, wounded at the battle in Austerlitz, he collided with Napoleon, who seemed to him to be a fly, along with all his glory. Further, the love that flared up for Natasha Rostova also changes the views of Andrei, who finds the strength to re-live a full and happy life after the death of his wife. He meets death on the Borodino field, because he does not find in his heart the strength to forgive people and not fight them. The author shows the struggle in his soul, hinting that the prince is a man of war, he cannot get along in an atmosphere of peace. So, he forgives Natasha for treason only on his deathbed, and dies in harmony with himself. But the acquisition of this harmony was possible only in this way - for the last time. We wrote more about his character in the essay "".
• Natasha Rostova- a cheerful, sincere, eccentric girl. Knows how to love. He has a wonderful voice, captivating the most picky music critics. In the work, we first see her as a 12-year-old girl, on her name day. Throughout the entire work, we observe the growing up of a young girl: first love, first ball, Anatole's betrayal, guilt before Prince Andrei, the search for his “I”, including in religion, the death of her lover (Andrei Bolkonsky). We analyzed her character in the composition "". In the epilogue, from a cocky lover of "Russian dances", Pierre Bezukhov's wife, his shadow, appears in front of us.
• Pierre Bezukhov- a plump young man who was unexpectedly bequeathed a title and a large fortune. Pierre reveals himself through what is happening around him, from each event he brings out morality and a life lesson. Confidence is given to him by a wedding with Helen, after disappointment in her, he finds interest in Freemasonry, and in the finale he gains warm feelings for Natasha Rostova. The battle of Borodino and the capture of the French taught him not to philosophize onion and find happiness in helping others. These conclusions led to an acquaintance with Platon Karataev, a poor man who, while awaiting death in a cell without normal food and clothes, took care of the "little man" Bezukhov and found the strength to support him. we have already considered.
• Graph Ilya Andreevich Rostov- a loving family man, luxury was his weakness, which led to financial problems in the family. The softness and weakness of his disposition, his inability to live, make him helpless and pitiful.
• Countess Natalia Rostova- the wife of the Count, has an oriental flavor, knows how to present herself correctly in society, loves her own children excessively. A calculating woman: striving to upset the wedding of Nikolai and Sonya, since she was not rich. It was her cohabitation with a weak husband that made her so strong and firm.
• Nickolay Rostov- the eldest son is kind, open-minded, with curly hair. Wasteful and weak in spirit, like a father. Flips the family's fortune into cards. He longed for glory, but after participating in a number of battles, he realizes how useless and cruel war is. He finds family well-being and spiritual harmony in marriage with Marya Bolkonskaya.
• Sonya Rostova- the count's niece - small, thin, with a black braid. She had a reasonable character and a kind disposition. All her life she was devoted to one man, but lets go of her beloved Nikolai, having learned about his love for Marya. Tolstoy elevates and values ​​her humility.
• Nikolay Andreevich Bolkonsky- a prince, has an analytical mindset, but a heavy, categorical and unfriendly character. Too strict, therefore he does not know how to show love, although he has warm feelings for children. Dies from the second blow to Bogucharovo.
• Marya Bolkonskaya- modest, loving relatives, ready to sacrifice herself for the sake of loved ones. L.N. Tolstoy especially emphasizes the beauty of her eyes and the ugliness of her face. In her image, the author shows that the beauty of forms does not replace spiritual wealth. are detailed in the essay.
• Helen Kuragina- Pierre's ex-wife is a beautiful woman, a socialite. She loves male society and knows how to get what she wants, although she is vicious and stupid.
• Anatol Kuragin- brother Helen - good-looking and well-suited to high society. Immoral, lacking moral principles, he wanted to secretly marry Natasha Rostova, although he already had a wife. Life punishes him with martyrdom on the battlefield.
• Fedor Dolokhov- an officer and leader of the partisans, not tall, has bright eyes. It successfully combines selfishness and care for loved ones. Vicious, passionate, but attached to the family.

Favorite hero of Tolstoy

In the novel, the author's sympathy and antipathy for the heroes is clearly felt. As for female images, the writer gives his love to Natasha Rostova and Marya Bolkonskaya. Tolstoy appreciated the real feminine principle in girls - devotion to a lover, the ability to remain always blooming in the eyes of her husband, knowledge of happy motherhood and caring. His heroines are ready for self-denial for the good of others.

The writer is fascinated by Natasha, the heroine finds the strength to live even after Andrei's death, she directs love to her mother after the death of her brother Petit, seeing how hard it is for her. The heroine is reborn, realizing that life is not over as long as she has a bright feeling for her neighbor. Rostova shows patriotism, without a doubt helping the wounded.

Marya also finds happiness in helping others, in feeling herself needed by someone. Bolkonskaya becomes a mother for Nikolushka's nephew, taking him under her "wing". She worries about ordinary men who have nothing to eat, passing the problem through herself, does not understand how the rich can not help the poor. In the final chapters of the book, Tolstoy is mesmerized by his heroines, who have matured and found female happiness.

Pierre and Andrei Bolkonsky became the favorite male characters of the writer. For the first time, Bezukhov appears before the reader as a clumsy, plump, short youth who appears in Anna Scherer's drawing room. Despite his ridiculous, ridiculous appearance, Pierre is smart, but the only person who accepts him for who he is is Bolkonsky. The prince is brave and stern, his courage and honor come in handy on the battlefield. Both men risk their lives to save their homeland. Both are rushing about in search of themselves.

Of course, L.N. Tolstoy brings his favorite heroes together, only in the case of Andrei and Natasha, happiness is short-lived, Bolkonsky dies young, and Natasha and Pierre find family happiness. Marya and Nikolai also found harmony in each other's society.

Genre of the work

"War and Peace" opens the genre of the epic novel in Russia. The features of any novels are successfully combined here: from family and everyday life to memoirs. The prefix "epic" means that the events described in the novel cover a significant historical phenomenon and reveal its essence in all its diversity. Usually in a work of this genre there are a lot of storylines and characters, since the scale of the work is very large.

The epic character of Tolstoy's work is that he not only invented a plot about a famous historical accomplishment, but also enriched it with details fished out of eyewitness memories. The author did a lot to ensure that the book was based on documentary sources.

The relationship between the Bolkonsky and Rostovs was also not invented by the author: he painted the history of his family, the merger of the Volkonsky and Tolstoy clans.

Main problems

1. The problem of finding real life... Let's take Andrei Bolkonsky as an example. He dreamed of recognition and glory, and the surest way to earn authority and adoration was military exploits. Andrei made plans to save the army with his own hand. Bolkonsky constantly saw pictures of battles and victories, but he was wounded and went home. Here, in front of Andrei's eyes, his wife dies, completely shaking the prince's inner world, then he realizes that there is no joy in the murders and suffering of the people. A career not worth it. The search for oneself continues, because the original meaning of life has been lost. The problem is, it's hard to get it.
2. The problem of happiness. Take Pierre, who is being torn away from the empty society by Helene and the war. In a vicious woman, he soon becomes disillusioned, illusory happiness deceived him. Bezukhov, like his friend Bolkonsky, tries to find a vocation in the struggle and, like Andrei, abandons this search. Pierre was not born for the battlefield. As you can see, any attempts to find bliss and harmony turn into a collapse of hopes. As a result, the hero returns to his old life and finds himself in a quiet family haven, but only making his way through the thorns, he found his star.
3. The problem of the people and the great man... The epic novel clearly expresses the idea of ​​commanders-in-chief, inseparable from the people. A great man must share the opinion of his soldiers, live by the same principles and ideals. Not a single general or tsar would have received his glory if this glory had not been presented to him on a "silver platter" by the soldiers, in whom the main strength lies. But many rulers do not take care of it, but despise it, and this should not be, because injustice hurts people painfully, even more painful than bullets. The people's war in the events of 1812 is shown on the side of the Russians. Kutuzov takes care of the soldiers, sacrifices Moscow for them. They feel this, mobilize the peasants and unleash a partisan struggle, which exterminates the enemy and finally drives him out.
4. The problem of true and false patriotism. Of course, patriotism is revealed through the images of Russian soldiers, the description of the heroism of the people in the main battles. The false patriotism in the novel is represented by Count Rostopchin. He distributes ridiculous pieces of paper throughout Moscow, and then escapes the anger of people by sending his son Vereshchagin to certain death. On this topic we have written an article called "".

What is the meaning of the book?

The writer himself speaks of the true meaning of the epic novel in his lines about greatness. Tolstoy believes that there is no greatness where there is no simplicity of the soul, good intentions and a sense of justice.

L.N. Tolstoy expressed greatness through the people. In the images of battle paintings, an ordinary soldier shows unprecedented courage, which causes pride. Even the most fearful awakened in themselves a sense of patriotism, which, like an unknown and violent force, brought victory to the Russian army. The writer protested against false greatness. When put on the scales (here you can find their comparative characteristics), the latter remains flying up: its fame is lightweight, since it has very flimsy bases. The image of Kutuzov is "popular", none of the commanders has ever been so close to the common people. Napoleon, on the other hand, is only reaping the fruits of fame, it is not for nothing that when the wounded Bolkonsky lies on the field of Austerlitz, the author shows Bonaparte with his eyes like a fly in this vast world. Lev Nikolaevich sets a new trend of a heroic character. It becomes the "people's choice".

An open soul, patriotism and a sense of justice won not only in the war of 1812, but also in life: heroes who were guided by moral postulates and the voice of their hearts became happy.

Family Thought

L.N. Tolstoy was very sensitive to the topic of the family. So, in his novel "War and Peace" the writer shows that the state, as a family, transmits values ​​and traditions from generation to generation, and good human qualities are also sprouts from roots that go back to the forefathers.

A brief description of families in the novel "War and Peace":

1. Of course, the beloved family of L.N. Tolstoy were the Rostovs. Their family was famous for its cordiality and hospitality. It is in this family that the author's values ​​of true home comfort and happiness are reflected. The writer believed that the purpose of a woman is motherhood, maintaining comfort in the house, devotion and the ability to sacrifice. This is how all the women of the Rostov family are depicted. There are 6 people in the family: Natasha, Sonya, Vera, Nikolai and parents.
2. Another family is the Bolkonskys. Restraint of feelings reigns here, the severity of Father Nikolai Andreevich, canonicity. Women here are more like "shadows" of husbands. Andrei Bolkonsky will inherit the best qualities, becoming a worthy son of his father, and Marya will learn patience and humility.
3. The Kuragin family is the best personification of the proverb "oranges will not be born from an aspen." Helene, Anatole, Hippolyte are cynical, looking for benefits in people, stupid and not a bit sincere in what they do and say. "The show of masks" is their lifestyle, and with this they completely went into their father - Prince Vasily. There are no friendly and warm relations in the family, which is reflected in all its members. L.N. Tolstoy especially dislikes Helene, who was incredibly beautiful on the outside, but completely empty on the inside.

The thought of the people

She is the central line of the novel. As we remember from the above, L.N. Tolstoy rejected the generally accepted historical sources, basing his "War and Peace" on memoirs, notes, letters to ladies-in-waiting and generals. The writer was not interested in the course of the war as a whole. Individuals taken separately, fragments - that's what the author needed. Each person had his place and meaning in this book, like pieces of a puzzle, which, when assembled correctly, will reveal a wonderful picture - the power of national unity.

The Patriotic War changed something inside each of the characters in the novel, each made his own small contribution to the victory. Prince Andrey believes in the Russian army and fights with dignity, Pierre wants to destroy the French ranks from their very hearts - by killing Napoleon, Natasha Rostova immediately gives carts to crippled soldiers, Petya bravely fights in partisan detachments.

The people's will to win is clearly felt in the scenes of the Battle of Borodino, the battle for Smolensk, and a partisan battle with the French. The latter is especially memorable for the novel, because volunteers from the ordinary peasant class fought in the partisan movements - the detachments of Denisov and Dolokhov personify the movement of the entire nation when "young and old" stood up to defend their homeland. Later they would be called "the cudgel of the people's war."

War of 1812 in Tolstoy's novel

The war of 1812, as a turning point in the lives of all the heroes of the novel "War and Peace", has been said more than once above. It was also said that it was won by the people. Let's look at the issue from the point of view of history. L.N. Tolstoy paints 2 images: Kutuzov and Napoleon. Of course, both images are drawn through the eyes of a native of the people. It is known that the character of Bonaparte was thoroughly described in the novel only after the writer was convinced of the just victory of the Russian army. The author did not understand the beauty of war, he was its enemy, and through the lips of his heroes Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, he speaks of the senselessness of its very idea.

The Patriotic War was a national liberation war. She took a special place on pages 3 and 4 of volumes.

Interesting? Keep it on your wall!

Alexander
ARKHANGELSK

Heroes of War and Peace

We continue to publish chapters from the new textbook on Russian literature for the 10th grade

Character system

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

It is difficult - because the composition of the book is multifaceted, dozens of plot lines, intertwining, form its dense artistic fabric. It is simple - 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. These are groups of heroes, equally distant from the life of the people, from the spontaneous movement of history, from the truth - or equally close to them.

Tolstoy's novel epic is permeated by the pervasive idea that the unknowable and objective historical process is controlled directly by God; that a person can choose the right path both in private life and in great history not with the help of a proud mind, but with the help of a sensitive heart. The one who guessed it, 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. The one who boasts of his power over the nature of things, who selfishly imposes his personal interests on life, is small, even if he is great in his social position. Under this tough opposition Tolstoy's heroes are "distributed" into several types, into several groups.

Burners of life

Oh days - let's call them life-burners - are busy only with 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 Tolstoy hierarchy. The heroes related to him are always of the same type; to characterize them, the narrator demonstratively uses the same detail.

The head of the capital's salon, Anna Pavlovna Sherer, appearing on the pages of War and Peace, each time with an unnatural smile moves from one circle to another and treats 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 control the historical process (but in fact he is busy with idle talk: from one scene to another he collects the folds on his forehead and utters a pre-prepared sharp word).

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 calmness of an intelligent and proud careerist.

As soon as the narrator starts talking about the predatory Helen, he will certainly mention her luxurious shoulders and bust. And with any appearance of the young wife of Andrei Bolkonsky, a little princess, the narrator will pay attention to her raised lip with a mustache.

This monotony of the narrative technique does not testify to the poverty of the artistic arsenal, but, on the contrary, to the deliberate goal that the author sets for the narrator. Burners of life 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 character in the epic who belongs to this “lower” group and for all that is endowed with a mobile, lively character is Fyodor Dolokhov. “Semyonovsky officer, famous player and brute”, he is endowed with an extraordinary appearance - and this alone makes him stand out from the crowd life-burners: “The lines ... of the mouth were remarkably finely curved. In the middle, the upper lip energetically descended on the strong lower lip in a sharp wedge, and in the corners something like two smiles formed, one on each side; and all together, and especially in combination with a firm, arrogant, intelligent gaze, made the impression that it was impossible not to notice this face ”.

Moreover, Dolokhov languishes, misses in that pool worldly life that sucks in the rest burners... That is why he goes all out, gets into scandalous stories (like, for example, the plot with the bear and the quarter 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 hatred and contempt for people become the rules.

This is fully manifested in the episode with Pierre (after becoming Helene's lover, Dolokhov provokes Bezukhov to a duel), and at the moment when Dolokhov helps Anatol Kuragin prepare for the abduction of Natasha. And especially - in the scene of the card game: Fyodor brutally and dishonestly beats Nikolai Rostov, in a vile way taking out his anger at Sonya, who refused Dolokhov.

Dolokhov's revolt against the world (and this is also “peace”!) life-burners in the end turns into the fact that he himself wastes his life, lets it into a spray. And it is especially offensive to realize the narrator, who distinguishes Dolokhov from the general row, as if giving him a chance to break out of the terrible circle.

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

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

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

External beauty replaces Helen's internal content. This characteristic also applies 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 Hippolytus), but “on the other hand, he also had the ability of calmness, precious for the light, and unchangeable confidence.” This confidence is akin to the instinct of profit that possesses the souls of Prince Vasily and Helen. And although Anatole does not pursue personal gain, he hunts for pleasures with the same unquenchable passion - and with the same readiness to sacrifice any neighbor. This is what he does to Natasha Rostova, making her fall in love with him, preparing to take her away - and not thinking about her fate, about the fate of Andrei Bolkonsky, whom Natasha is going to marry ...

In fact, the Kuragins play in the vain, “mundane” dimension of the “world” the very role that Napoleon plays in the “military” dimension: they personify secular indifference to good and evil. On a whim the Kuragin draws the surrounding life into a terrible whirlpool. This family looks like a whirlpool. Having approached him at a dangerous distance, it is easy to die - only a miracle saves Pierre, Natasha, and Andrei Bolkonsky (who would certainly have challenged Anatole to a duel if not for the circumstances of the war).

Leaders

The first, the lowest category of heroes - life-burners- in Tolstoy's epic, the last, upper category of heroes corresponds - chiefs ... 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 meets this hero, he stubbornly, almost annoyingly points out this trait.

Burners of life belong to the “world” in the worst of its meanings, nothing in history depends on them, they revolve in the emptiness of the salon. Leaders inextricably linked with war (again in the bad sense of the word); they are at the head of historical collisions, separated from mere mortals by an impenetrable veil of their own greatness. But if the Kuragin really draw the surrounding life into the mundane maelstrom, then leaders of the nations only think that draw humanity into a historical whirlwind. In fact, they are only toys of chance, tools in the invisible hands of Providence.

And here, let's stop for a second to agree on one important rule. And once and for all. In fiction, you have already met and will more than once come across images of real historical figures. In the epic of Tolstoy, these are 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 act in novels, stories, poems. And the sovereign emperor, and Napoleon, and Rostopchin, and especially Barclay de Tolly, and other characters of Tolstoy, displayed in War and Peace, are the same fictional heroes like Pierre Bezukhov, like Natasha Rostova or Anatol Kuragin.

They look like real historical figures a little more than Fedor Dolokhov - on his prototype, a reveler and a daredevil R.I. Dolokhov, and Vasily Denisov - against the partisan poet Denis Vasilyevich Davydov. The outer outline of their biographies can be reproduced in a literary composition with scrupulous, scientific accuracy, but the inner content is put into them by the writer, invented in accordance with the picture of life that he creates in his work.

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 center (Kuraginy) and its periphery (Dolokhov). The highest category is organized, arranged according to the same principle.

Chief of chiefs, which means that the most dangerous, most deceitful of them is Napoleon.

In Tolstoy's epic there is two Napoleonic images. One lives in legend about a great commander, which different characters tell each other and in which he appears either as a powerful genius, or as an equally powerful villain. Not only the visitors of Anna Pavlovna Sherer's salon, but also Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, believe in this legend at different stages of their journey. At first, we see Napoleon through their eyes, imagine him in the light of their ideal of life.

And another image is a character acting on the pages of an epic and shown through the eyes of a narrator and heroes who suddenly collide with him on the battlefields. For the first time, Napoleon as a character in War and Peace appears in the chapters on the Battle of Austerlitz; first it is described by the narrator, then we see it from the point of view of Prince Andrew.

The wounded Bolkonsky, who recently idolized the leader of the nations, notices on the face of Napoleon, bending over him, "a radiance of self-satisfaction and happiness." Having just gone through 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." And "the hero himself seemed so petty to him, with this petty vanity and joy of victory, in comparison with that high, fair and kind heaven that he saw and understood."

And the narrator - both in Austerlitz chapters, and in Tilsit, and in Borodino - invariably emphasizes the ordinariness and comic insignificance of the appearance of a person who is worshiped and hated by the whole world. "Plump, short" figure, "with wide, thick shoulders and involuntarily thrust forward belly and chest, had that representative, dignified appearance that forty-year-old people living in the hall have."

V novel the image of Napoleon does not have a trace of the power that lies in legendary his image. For Tolstoy, only one thing matters: Napoleon, who imagined himself to be the engine of history, is actually pitiful and especially worthless. 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. This refers to Napoleon the words from the historiosophical finale of the book: “For us, with the measure of good and bad given to us by Christ, there is no immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. "

A reduced and worsened copy of Napoleon, a parody of him - this is the Moscow mayor Rostopchin. He fusses, fidgets, hangs 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 had guessed. And the fire broke out in Moscow, not because Rostopchin so wanted (and even more so not in spite of his orders), but because she could not help but burn: in the abandoned wooden houses where the invaders have settled, fire inevitably breaks out, sooner or later.

Rostopchin has the same attitude to the departure of Muscovites and the Moscow fires, which Napoleon has to the victory at the Austerlitz field 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, whether on a whim or out of fear.

A key scene in which the narrator's attitude towards the leaders in general and to the image of Rostopchin in particular - the lynching execution of the merchant's son Vereshchagin (volume III, chapters XXIV – XXV). In it, the ruler is revealed as a cruel and weak person, mortally afraid of an angry crowd and, out of horror in front of her, ready to shed blood without trial or investigation. Vereshchagin is described in great detail, with obvious compassion ("jingling with shackles ... pressing the collar of his sheepskin coat ... with a submissive gesture"). But after all Rostopchin on his future sacrifice do not look- the narrator specifically several times, with pressure, repeats: "Rostopchin did not look at him." 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.

No wonder even the angry, gloomy crowd in the courtyard of the Rostopchin house does not want to rush to Vereshchagin, accused of treason. Rostopchin is forced to repeat several times, inciting her against the merchant's son: “Beat him! .. Let the traitor die and don’t shame the name of the Russian! .. Ruby! I order!" But even 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 stopped raised hand, stood in front of Vereshchagin." Only after, obeying the order of the officer, the soldier “with a distorted malice on the head hit Vereshchagin with a blunt sword” 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 kept the crowd , broke through instantly. "

The images of Napoleon and Rostopchin stand at opposite poles of this group of heroes in War and Peace. And the bulk chiefs Generals of all kinds, chiefs of all stripes form here. 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 doesn't matter which army they serve at the same time - French, Austrian or Russian. And the personification of all this mass of generals becomes in the epic Barclay de Tolly, a dry “German” in Russian service. He does not understand anything in the spirit of the people and, together with other “Germans”, believes in the scheme of the correct disposition “Die erste Colonne marschiert, die zweite Colonne marschiert” (“The first column comes out, the second column comes out”).

The real Russian commander Barclay de Tolly, in contrast to the 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 the scheme. But this is where the line lies between the historical figure and his way which literature creates. In Tolstoy's picture of the world, “Germans” are not real representatives of a real people, but a symbol alienness and cold rationalism, which only interferes with understanding the natural course of things. Therefore, Barclay de Tolly as novel hero turns into a dry “German”, which he was not in reality.

And at the very edge of this group of heroes, on the border that separates the false chiefs from wise men(we'll talk about them a little below), there is the image of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. He is so isolated from the general row that at first it even seems that his image is devoid of boring unambiguity, that it is complex and multi-component. Moreover, the image of Alexander I is invariably presented in an aura of admiration.

But let's ask ourselves a question: whose is this admiration - of the narrator or of the heroes? And then everything will immediately fall into place.

Here we see Alexander for the first time during a review of the Austrian and Russian troops (volume I, part three, chapter VIII). First it neutral the narrator describes: "The handsome, young emperor Alexander ... with his pleasant face and sonorous, quiet voice attracted all the power of attention." And then we start looking at the king with our eyes in love into it of Nikolai Rostov: “Nikolai clearly, down to all the details, examined the beautiful, young and happy face of the emperor, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and delight, the likes of which he had never experienced. Everything - every feature, every movement - seemed charming to him in the sovereign. " The narrator discovers in Alexandra ordinary features: beautiful, pleasant. And Nikolai Rostov discovers a completely different quality in them, excellent degree: they seem to him beautiful, "lovely".

But here is Chapter XV of the same part, here the narrator and Prince Andrew, who is not in love with the sovereign, look alternately at Alexander I. This time, there is no such internal gap in emotional assessments. The sovereign meets with Kutuzov, whom he clearly dislikes (and we do not yet know how highly the narrator appreciates Kutuzov).

It would seem that the narrator is again objective and neutral: “An unpleasant impression, just like the remnants of fog in a clear sky, ran over the young and happy face of the emperor and disappeared ... the same charming combination of majesty and meekness was in his beautiful gray eyes, lips the same possibility of various expressions and the predominant expression of a complacent, innocent youth ”. Again “a young and happy face”, again a charming appearance ... And yet, pay attention: the narrator lifts the veil over his own attitude to all these qualities of the king. He directly says: "on thin lips" there was "the possibility of a variety of expressions." That is, Alexander I always wears masks behind which his real face is hidden.

What is this face? It is contradictory. It contains both kindness, sincerity - and falsity, lies. But the fact of the matter is that Alexander is opposed to Napoleon; Tolstoy does not want to belittle his image, but he cannot exalt him. Therefore, he resorts to the only possible way: shows the king primarily through the eyes of heroes, as a rule, devoted to him and worshiping his genius. It is they, blinded by their love and devotion, who pay attention only to the best manifestations. miscellaneous Alexander's faces; that they recognize the real in him the leader.

In the chapter XVIII Rostov sees the tsar again: “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 typically Rostov gaze - the gaze of an honest but superficial officer in love with his sovereign. However, now Nikolai Rostov meets the tsar far from the nobles, from the thousands of eyes fixed on him; before him - a simple suffering mortal, grievingly experiencing the defeat of the army: “Tol said something long and with ardor to the sovereign”, and he “apparently wept, closed his eyes with his hand and shook Tol’s hand” ... Then we will see the tsar through the eyes of an obligingly proud Drubetskoy (volume III, part one, chapter III), enthusiastic Petya Rostov (chapter XX, the same part and volume), Pierre - at the moment when he was captured by general enthusiasm during the Moscow meeting of the sovereign with the deputations of the nobility and merchants (chapter XXIII ) ...

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

And the result of the “Aleksandrovskaya” plot line will be summed up only in the epilogue, where the narrator will do 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 burners and the leaders in the novel are opposed ordinary people led by the lover of truth, the Moscow lady Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova. In their the world she plays the same role as in the world The Kuragin and Bilibins are played by the Petersburg lady Anna Pavlovna Sherer. They did not rise above the general level of their time, their era, did not know the truth of the life of the people, but instinctively live in conditional agreement with it. Although they sometimes act incorrectly, human weaknesses are inherent in them to the full.

This discrepancy, this potential difference, the combination of different qualities in one person, good and not so, favorably distinguishes ordinary people and from life-burners, and from chiefs... Heroes classified in this category, as a rule, are shallow people, and yet their portraits are painted in different colors, deliberately devoid of uniqueness, uniformity.

Such is - as a whole - the hospitable Moscow family of Rostovs.

The old Count Ilya Andreevich, the father of Natasha, Nikolai, Petit, Vera, is a weak-willed person, allows managers to rob him, suffers at the thought that he is ruining children, but he cannot do anything about it. Departure for a village for two years, an attempt to move to St. Petersburg and get a job change little in the general state of affairs.

The count is not very smart, but at the same time he is fully endowed by God with heart gifts - hospitality, cordiality, love for family and children. Two scenes characterize him from this side - and both are permeated with lyricism, the rapture of delight: a description of a dinner in a Rostov house in honor of Bagration and a description of a hunting dog. (Analyze both of these scenes on your own, show with what artistic means the narrator expresses his attitude to what is happening.) And one more scene is extremely important for understanding the image of the old count: the departure from burning Moscow. It was he who was the first to issue a reckless (from the point of view of common sense) order to let the wounded on the carts; Having removed the acquired property from the carts for the sake of Russian officers and soldiers, the Rostovs inflict the last, irreparable blow to their own condition ... But not only they save several lives, but unexpectedly for themselves give Natasha a chance to make peace with Andrey.

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

And yet, she also has a special gift of humanity, which separates her from the crowd of life-makers, brings her closer to the truth of life. It is the gift of love for one's own children; love instinctively wise, deep and selfless. The decisions that she makes in relation to children are dictated not simply by the desire to benefit and save the family from ruin (although this too); they are aimed at making the life of the children themselves in the best possible way. And when the countess learns about the death of her beloved younger 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 - to everyone, except for the dry, calculating and therefore unloved Vera. (After leaving Berg, she naturally moved from the category ordinary people in number life-burners.) And also - except for the Rostovs' pupil Sonya, who, despite all her kindness and sacrifice, turns out to be a "barren flower" and gradually, following Vera, slides out of the round world ordinary people flat life-burners.

Particularly touching is the younger, Petya, who has completely absorbed the atmosphere of the Rostov house. Like his father and mother, he is not very smart, but he is extremely sincere and sincere; this soulfulness is expressed in a special way in his musicality. Petya instantly surrenders to a heartfelt impulse; therefore, it is from his point of view that we look from the Moscow patriotic crowd at Tsar Alexander I - and share a genuine youthful delight. (Although we feel: the narrator does not treat the emperor as unambiguously as the young character.) Petya's death from an enemy bullet is one of the most poignant and memorable episodes of the Tolstoy epic.

But how does it have a center life-burners, at chiefs, so it has ordinary people inhabiting the pages of War and Peace. This center is Nikolai Rostov and Marya Bolkonskaya, whose life lines, divided over three volumes, in the end still intersect, obeying the unwritten law of affinity.

"A short, curly-haired 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 due,” the narrator says bluntly). But on the other hand, he is very emotional, impetuous, cordial, and therefore musical, like all Rostovs.

His life path is traced in the epic in almost as much detail as the paths of the main characters - Pierre, Andrey, Natasha. At the beginning of War and Peace, we see Nikolai as a young university student who is dropping out of his studies for military service. Then before us is a young officer of the Pavlograd hussar regiment, who is eager to fight and envies the seasoned warrior Vaska Denisov.

One of the key episodes of Nikolai Rostov's storyline is crossing the Ens, and then being wounded in the arm 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 idea 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 peace in the midst of wars), 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 civilian life all consists of endless intricacies, of human sympathies and antipathies, the clash of private interests and common goals of the estate. Coming home on vacation, Rostov either gets entangled in his relationship with Sonya, then he plays into Dolokhov, which puts his family on the brink of a monetary catastrophe, and in fact flees from worldly life to the regiment, like a monk to his monastery. (The fact that the same "worldly" order is in effect 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 to be an independent line in the novel space and actively participate in the development of the main intrigue, Nikolai is “burdened” with a love story. He is a good fellow, an honest 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 persuasion of the mother, no hints of relatives about the need to find a rich bride can shake him. Despite the fact that 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 Bogucharovo. 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; Rostov disinterestedly helps the Bolkonskys to get out of Bogucharov - and both of them, Nikolai and Marya, suddenly feel a mutual attraction. But what's in the environment life-burners(and most ordinary people too) is considered the norm, for them it turns out to be an obstacle, almost insurmountable: she is rich, he is poor.

Only the power of natural feeling is able to overcome this obstacle; having married, Rostov and Princess Marya live in perfect harmony, as Kitty and Levin will then live in Anna Karenina. However, this is the difference between honest mediocrity and an outburst of truth-seeking, that the former does not know development, does not admit 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 torment, new mistakes and new searches, is drawn into another turn of the big history: 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 sincere, respectable, close-minded Nicholas, once and for all stopped in development, knows in advance that if something happens he will shoot at the opponents of the legitimate ruler, his beloved sovereign ...

Truth-seekers

This is the most important of the categories; no heroes truth seekers no epic "War and Peace" would have existed at all. Only two characters, two close friends - Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov have the right to claim this special “title”. They cannot be called unconditionally positive; to create their images, the narrator uses a variety of colors - but thanks to ambiguities they seem especially voluminous and bright.

Both of them, Prince Andrey and Count Pierre, are rich (Bolkonsky - initially, the 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 in the 1800s, they are crazy about Napoleon; a proud dream of a special role in world history, which means the conviction that it is personality controls the course of things, is equally inherent in both Bolkonsky and Bezukhov. From this common point, the narrator draws two very different plot lines, which at first diverge very far, and then reconnect, intersecting in the space of truth.

But it is here that it turns out that truth seekers they become 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 prompted to an intense search for truth by external circumstances, and perhaps by Providence itself. It's just that the spiritual qualities of Andrei and Pierre are such that each of them is able to respond to the challenge of fate, to respond to her dumb question; only because 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; is indifferent to the unborn child, and in the future does not show special paternal feelings. The family "instinct" is as alien to him as the secular "instinct"; he can't get into the category ordinary people for the same reasons that it cannot be in the row life-burners... Neither the cold emptiness of the great light, nor the warmth of the family and clan nest attracts him. But break into the number of the chosen ones chiefs he not only could, but would very much like to. Napoleon, we will repeat it again and again, is a life example and a reference point for him.

Having learned from Bilibin that the Russian army (this is happening in 1805) was in a hopeless situation, Prince Andrey 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 he was, that Toulon, who would lead him out of the ranks of unknown officers and would open the first path to glory for him” (volume I, part two, chapter XII ). How it ends, you already know, we analyzed the scene with the eternal sky of Austerlitz in detail. The truth is revealed to Prince Andrew itself, without any effort on his part; he does not come to the conclusion that all narcissistic “heroes” are insignificant in the face of eternity - this conclusion is an to him at once and in its entirety.

It would seem that Bolkonsky's storyline is 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 everyday logic, the most important thing begins - truth-seeking... Having accepted the truth immediately and in its entirety, Prince Andrey suddenly loses it - and begins a painful, long search, returning a side road to the feeling that once visited him on the Austerlitz field.

Returning home, where everyone considered him dead, Andrei learns about the birth of his son and 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 feeling of guilt before his deceased wife; leaving military service (along with a vain dream of personal greatness), Bolkonsky settled in Bogucharovo, was engaged in housekeeping, reading, and raising a son.

It would seem that he anticipates the path that Nikolai Rostov will follow at the end of the fourth volume - together with Andrei's sister, Princess Marya. (Compare on your own the descriptions of Bolkonsky's economic concerns in Bogucharov and Rostov in Bald Hills - and you will be convinced of the non-coincidental similarity, you will find another plot parallel.) But that's the difference between ordinary heroes of "War and Peace" and truth seekers that the former stop where the latter continue their unstoppable movement.

Bolkonsky, who has learned the truth of the eternal heaven, thinks that it is enough to give up personal pride in order to find peace of mind. But in reality, village life cannot accommodate his unspent energy. And the truth, received as a gift, not personally suffered, not acquired as a result of a long search, begins to elude him. Andrei withers in the village, his soul seems to be drying out. Pierre, who arrived in Bogucharovo, was struck by the terrible change that had taken place in his friend: “The words were gentle, the smile was on the lips and face of Prince Andrei, but his gaze was extinct, dead, which, despite his apparent desire, Prince Andrei could not give joyful and cheerful shine ”. Only for a moment a happy feeling of belonging to the truth awakens in the prince - when, for the first time after being wounded, he pays attention to the eternal sky. And then the veil of hopelessness again obscures his life horizon.

What happened? Why does the author “doom” his hero to inexplicable torment? First of all, because the hero must independently "mature" to the truth that was revealed to him by the will of Providence. The soul of Prince Andrey has a difficult job to do, 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 to a new round, at a more complex level repeating the previous stage of his fate. 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 Andrey's trip to Ryazan estates. Spring is coming; when entering the forest, Andrei notices an old oak tree 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 the height of each birch. It was a huge oak, in two girths, with branches that had been broken off for a long time, and with broken bark, overgrown with old sores. With his huge clumsy, asymmetrically spread out gnarled hands and fingers, he stood between the smiling birches as an old, angry and contemptuous freak. Only he 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 in the image of this oak personified Prince Andrew himself, who does not respond to the eternal joy of a renewing life, is dead. But on the affairs of Ryazan estates, Bolkonsky will have to meet with Ilya Andreich Rostov - and, after spending the night in the Rostovs' house, the prince again notices the bright, almost starless spring sky. And then he accidentally hears an excited conversation between Sonya and Natasha.

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

“The old oak tree, all transformed, spread out in a tent of luscious, dark greenery, melted slightly, swaying slightly in the rays of the evening sun ... Through the tough hundred-year-old bark, juicy, young leaves made their way without knots ... All the best moments of his life were suddenly at one and the same time was recalled to him. And Austerlitz with a high sky, and the dead reproachful face of his wife, and Pierre on the ferry, and a girl excited by the beauty of the night, and this night, and the moon ... "

Returning to St. Petersburg, Bolkonsky with renewed vigor becomes involved in social activities; he believes that he is now motivated not by personal vanity, not pride, not "Napoleonism", but a disinterested desire to serve people, to serve the Fatherland. His new hero, leader, idol is the young energetic reformer Speransky. For Speransky, who wants to transform Russia, Bolkonsky ready to follow in the same way as before he was ready to imitate Napoleon in everything, who wanted to throw the whole universe at his feet.

But Tolstoy constructs the plot in such a way that the reader feels something not quite right from the very beginning; Andrey sees a hero in Speransky, and the narrator sees another the leader... This is how Bolkonsky's acquaintance with Speransky is described in chapter V of part three of the second volume:

“Prince Andrei ... watched all the movements of Speransky, this man, an insignificant seminarian and now in his own hands - those plump white hands - who had the fate of Russia, as Bolkonsky thought. Prince Andrey was struck by the extraordinary, contemptuous calmness with which Speransky answered the old man. He seemed to be addressing him with his condescending word from an immeasurable height ”.

What in this quote reflects the character's point of view, and what is the narrator's point of view?

The judgment about the "insignificant seminarian" who holds the fate of Russia in his hands, of course, expresses the position of the enchanted Bolkonsky, who himself does not notice how he transfers Napoleon's features to Speransky. And the mocking clarification - "as Bolkonsky thought" - comes from the narrator. "Contemptuous calm" of Speransky is noticed by Prince Andrey, and arrogance the leader("From an immeasurable height ...") - the storyteller.

In other words, Prince Andrew repeats the mistake of his youth at a new stage in his biography; he is again blinded by a false example of someone else's pride, in which his own pride finds food. But here in the life of Bolkonsky, a significant meeting takes place: he meets the very same Natasha Rostova, whose voice on a moonlit night in the Ryazan estate brought him back to life. Falling in love is inevitable; matchmaking is a foregone conclusion. But since the stern father, old man Bolkonsky, does not agree to a quick marriage, Andrei is forced to go abroad and stop cooperation with Speransky, which could seduce him, lead him to his old path. the leader... And the dramatic break with the bride after her failed flight with Kuragin completely pushes Prince Andrey, 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.

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

Tolstoy does not accidentally use the folklore principle triple test of the hero: after all, unlike Napoleon and Speransky, Kutuzov is truly close to the people, makes one whole with them. More details about the artistic image of Kutuzov in "War and Peace" will be discussed later; for now, let's pay attention to this. Until now, Bolkonsky was aware that he was worshiping Napoleon, guessed that he was secretly imitating Speransky. And the hero does not even suspect that he is following Kutuzov's example, adopting the “nationality” of the great commander. The spiritual work of self-education on the example of Kutuzov proceeds in him hidden, latent.

Moreover, Bolkonsky is sure that the decision to leave Kutuzov's headquarters and go to the front, to rush into the thick of the battles comes to him spontaneously, by itself. In fact, he takes from Mikhail Illarionovich a wise look at a purely folk the nature of the war, which is incompatible with court intrigue and pride chiefs... If the heroic desire to take up the regimental banner on the field of Austerlitz was Prince Andrey's "Toulon", then the sacrificial decision to participate in the battles of the Patriotic War is, if you will, his "Borodino", comparable at a small level of individual human life with the great battle of Borodino, morally won Kutuzov.

It was on the eve of the Battle of Borodino that Andrei met his friend Pierre; between them there is third(again a folklore number!) a meaningful conversation. The first took place in Petersburg (volume I, part one, chapter VI), during which Andrei for the first time threw off the mask of a contemptuous secular man and frankly told a friend that he was imitating Napoleon. During the second (volume II, part two, chapter XI), held in Bogucharov, Pierre saw in front of him a man mournfully doubting the meaning of life, the existence of God, internally dead, having lost the incentive to move. This meeting with Pierre became for Prince Andrey "an era from which, although in appearance and 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 involuntary alienation, on the eve of the day when, perhaps, both of them will die, friends again openly discuss the most delicate, most important topics. They do not philosophize - there is neither time nor energy for philosophizing; but their every word, even very unfair (like Andrey's opinion about the prisoners), is weighed on special scales. And Bolkonsky's final passage sounds like a premonition of imminent death: “Oh, my soul, lately it has become hard for me to live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it is not good for a person to partake of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ... Well, but not for long! he added. "

The wound on the field of Borodin compositionally repeats the scene of the injury of Andrey on the field of Austerlitz; and there, and here the hero suddenly reveals the truth. This truth is love, compassion, faith in God. (Here is another plot parallel.) But the fact of the matter is that in the first volume before us there was a character to whom the truth appeared in spite of everything; now we see Bolkonsky, who managed to prepare himself to accept the truth - at the cost of mental anguish and rushing. Pay attention: the last one 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, Anatol Kuragin, also seriously wounded ...

Andrei has a new meeting with Natasha ahead; last meeting. And here, too, the folklore principle of threefold repetition is at work. For the first time, Andrei hears Natasha (without seeing her) in Otradnoye. Then he falls in love with her during the first Natasha's ball (volume II, part three, chapter XVII), explains to her and makes an offer. And now - the wounded Bolkonsky in Moscow, near the Rostovs' house, at the very moment when Natasha orders to give the carts to the wounded. The meaning of this wrap-up meeting is forgiveness and reconciliation; having forgiven Natasha, reconciled with her, Andrey finally grasped the meaning love and therefore is ready to part with earthly life ... His death is depicted not as an irreparable tragedy, but as a solemnly sad the outcome traversed earthly field.

It is not for nothing that Tolstoy carefully introduces the theme of the Gospel into the fabric of his narrative.

We are already accustomed to the fact that the heroes of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century often pick up this main book of Christianity, which tells about the earthly life, teachings and resurrection of Jesus Christ; just remember Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. However, Dostoevsky wrote about his modernity, while Tolstoy turned to the events of the beginning of the century, when educated people from high society turned to the Gospel much less often. For the most part, they read poorly in Church Slavonic; they rarely resorted to the French Bible; it was only after the Patriotic War that work began on translating the Gospel into living Russian. This work 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 Andrew is destined to die in 1812; nevertheless, Lev Nikolaevich went for a decisive violation of the chronology, and quotations from the Russian Gospel emerge in Bolkonsky's dying reflections: the birds of the air “neither sow nor 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 reflections, 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 his inner world from the Gospel world. (In general, in the novel, the heroes speak French the more often, the further they are from the public truth; Natasha Rostova generally utters only one remark in French over the course of four volumes!) truth, with the theme of the gospel.

Pierre Bezukhov

If the storyline of Prince Andrew is spiral and each subsequent stage of his life on a new round repeats the previous stage, then Pierre's storyline is 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 bobbed head and glasses." Like Prince Andrey, Bezukhov does not feel himself truth seeker; he, too, considers Napoleon a great man - and is content with the widespread notion that history is ruled by great people, "heroes."

We get to know Pierre at the very moment when, out of an excess of vitality, he takes part in revelry and almost robberies (the story of the quarter). Vitality is his advantage over the deathly light (Andrei says that Pierre is the only “living person.”) And this is his main trouble, since Bezukhov does not know what to apply his heroic strength to, she is aimless, there is something in her. Pierre had special emotional and mental needs from the very beginning (that is why he chooses Andrey as his friend), but they are diffused, not clothed in a clear and precise form.

Pierre is distinguished by energy, sensuality, reaching the level of passion, extreme ingenuity and short-sightedness (literally and figuratively); all this dooms Pierre to rash steps. As soon as Bezukhov becomes the heir to a huge fortune, life-burners immediately entwine him with their nets, Prince Vasily marries Pierre to Helene. Of course, family life is not set; accept the rules by which high society live burners, Pierre can't. And now, having parted with Helen, he for the first time consciously begins to look for an answer to his tormenting questions about the meaning of life, about the purpose of man.

“What's wrong? What well? What should I love, what should I hate? Why live and what am I? What is life, what is death? What is the power that 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. If you die, you will find out everything, or you will stop asking. " But it was also scary to die ”(volume II, part two, chapter I.).

And here on his life path he meets an old Mason-mentor, Joseph Alekseevich. (Masons were called 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.) The metaphor of the life path in the epic is the road along which Pierre travels; Joseph 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 education; Tolstoy slightly noticeably stylizes the “Masonic” chapters to look like novel prose of the late 18th - early 19th centuries.

In these conversations, conversations, reading and reflections, Pierre reveals the same truth that appeared in the field of Austerlitz to Prince Andrew (who, perhaps, also went through the "Masonic ordeal"; in a conversation with Pierre Bolkonsky, he mockingly mentions the gloves that Freemasons receive before marriage for his chosen one). The meaning of life is not in a heroic deed, not in becoming a leader, like Napoleon, but in serving people, feeling part of eternity ...

But the truth is opens slightly, it sounds hollow, like a distant echo. And the further, the more painfully Bezukhov feels the deceit of the majority of Freemasons, the discrepancy between their petty secular life and the proclaimed universal human ideals. Yes, Joseph Alekseevich will forever remain a moral authority for him, but Freemasonry itself eventually ceases to meet Pierre's spiritual needs. Moreover, the reconciliation with Helene, which he went to under the Masonic influence, does not lead to anything good. And having made a step in the social field in the direction set by the Freemasons, starting a reform in his estates, Pierre suffers an inevitable defeat - his impracticality, credulity and lack of system doom the land experiment to failure.

Disappointed Bezukhov first turns into the good-natured shadow of his predatory wife; it seems like a maelstrom life-burners is about to close over him. Then he again starts drinking, carousing, returns to the idle habits of youth - and in the end he moves from St. Petersburg to Moscow. You and I have repeatedly noted that in Russian literature of the 19th century St. Petersburg was associated with the European center of the bureaucratic, political, and cultural life of Russia; Moscow - with a rustic, traditionally Russian habitat of retired nobles and lordly loafers. The transformation of a Petersburg resident Pierre into a Muscovite is tantamount to his rejection of any life aspirations.

And here the tragic and cleansing 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 Rostova, hopes for an alliance with whom have been crossed out twice - 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, Bezukhov half-explains to Natasha in love: “Is everything lost? he repeated. “If I were not me, but the most beautiful, smartest and best man in the world, and were free, I would be on my knees this minute for your hand and your love” (volume II, part five, chapter XXII).

It is no coincidence that immediately after the scene of explanation with Natasha Tolstaya through the eyes of Pierre, he shows 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 soul blossoming into a new life, softened and encouraged”. The theme of the nationwide test and the theme of personal salvation merge in this episode.

Step by step, the stubborn author leads his beloved hero to the comprehension of two inextricably linked truths: the truth of a sincere family life and the truth of national unity. Out of curiosity, Pierre went to the Borodino field just before the great battle; observing, communicating with the soldiers, he prepares his mind and his heart for the perception of the thought that Bolkonsky will express to him during their last Borodino conversation: the truth is where “they” are, ordinary soldiers, ordinary Russian people.

The views that Bezukhov professed at the beginning of War and Peace are reversed, before he saw in Napoleon the source of historical movement, now he sees in him the source of historical evil, the Antichrist. And I am ready to sacrifice myself for the salvation of mankind. The reader should understand: Pierre's spiritual path has been traversed only to the middle; the hero has not yet come to an agreement with the narrator, who is convinced (and convinces the reader) that it is not Napoleon at all, that the French emperor is just a toy in the hands of Providence. But the experiences that befell Bezukhov in French captivity, and most importantly, the acquaintance with Platon Karataev, will complete the work that has already begun in him.

During the execution of the prisoners (a scene refuting Andrey'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 “roundish” soldier of the Absheron regiment, Platon Karataev, finally reveals to Pierre the perspective of a new life philosophy. The purpose of a person is not to become a bright personality, separate from all other personalities, but to reflect in oneself the life of the people in its entirety, to become a part of the universe. Only then can one feel truly immortal: “Ha, ha, ha! - Pierre laughed. And he spoke aloud to himself: - The soldier did not let me in. Caught me, locked me up They are holding me captive. Who me? Me? Me - my immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha! .. Ha, ha, ha! .. - he laughed with tears appearing 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 Pierre's reflections sound almost like folk poems, they emphasize, strengthen the internal, irregular rhythm:

The soldier did not let me in.
Caught me, locked me up
They are holding me captive.
Who me? Me?

The truth sounds like a folk song - and the sky, into which Pierre directs his gaze, makes the attentive reader recall the finale of the third volume, the sight of a 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 have already said, at the end of the first volume comes face to face with the truth in spite of their own intentions. He only has a long roundabout way to her. And Pierre comprehends it for the first time eventually painful searches.

But nothing is final in Tolstoy's epic. Remember we said that Pierre's storyline was only seems circular, what if you look at the epilogue, the picture will change somewhat? Now read the episode of Bezukhov's arrival from St. Petersburg and especially the scene of the conversation in the office - with Nikolai Rostov, Denisov and Nikolenka Bolkonsky (chapters XIV-XVI of the first part of the epilogue). Pierre, the same Pierre Bezukhov, who has already grasped the fullness of the truth of the whole people, who 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 hard 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? - she said, - about Platon Karataev. How is he? Would he approve of you now? "

So what happens? The hero began to shy away from the truth he had acquired and suffered through suffering? And the middle one is right, usual Human Nikolai Rostov, who disapproves of the plans of Pierre and his new comrades? Does this mean that Nikolai is now closer to Platon Karataev than Pierre himself?

Yes and no. Yes- because Pierre undoubtedly deviates from the “round”, familial, nationwide peaceful ideal, is ready to join the “war”. Yes- because he had already passed in his Masonic period through the temptation of striving for the public good, 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 rid mankind of this villain. Not- 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 submit circumstances, accept them as they are. Entering a secret society, Pierre moves away from the ideal and, in a sense, returns in his development a few steps back, but not because he wants this, but because he can not to evade the objective course of things. And, perhaps, having partially lost the truth, he cognizes it even deeper 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 non-existent freedom and recognize the dependence we cannot perceive."

Wise men

We told you about life-savers, O leaders, about ordinary people, O truth seekers... But there is one more category of heroes in "War and Peace", the mirror opposite the leaders... This - wise men. That is, characters who have comprehended the truth of public life and are an example for other heroes looking for the truth. These are, first of all, captain Tushin, Platon Karataev and Kutuzov.

Head-captain Tushin appears in the scene of the Shengraben battle; we see him at first through the eyes of Prince Andrew - and this is no coincidence. If circumstances had turned out differently and Bolkonsky would have been internally ready for this meeting, she could have played in his life the same role that a meeting with Platon Karataev would play in Pierre's life. However, alas, Andrei is still blinded by the dream of his own “Toulon”. Having defended Tushin in chapter XXI (volume I, part two), when he guiltily keeps silent before Bagration and does not want give out chief, - Prince Andrey does not understand that behind Tushino's silence lies not servility, but an understanding of the hidden ethics of folk life. Bolkonsky is not yet ready to meet with his Karataev.

“A small stooped man,” the commander of an artillery battery, Tushin from the very beginning makes an extremely favorable impression on the reader; external awkwardness only sets off his undoubted natural intelligence. No wonder, characterizing Tushin, Tolstoy resorts to his favorite technique, draws attention to the eyes of the hero, this is the mirror of one's heart: “Silently and smiling, Tushin, stepping from bare feet to foot, looked inquiringly with large, intelligent and kind eyes ...” (Volume I, Part Two, Chapter XV).

But why is such attention paid to such an insignificant figure, moreover, in the scene that immediately follows the chapter dedicated to Napoleon himself? Conjecture does not come to the reader immediately. But then he comes to chapter XX, and the image of the staff captain gradually begins to grow to symbolic proportions.

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

The narrator shows this small human large plan: “a fantastic world was established in his head, which was his pleasure at that moment. In his imagination, the hostile cannons were not cannons, but pipes, from which an invisible smoker blew smoke in rare puffs ”. At this moment, it is not the Russian and French armies that are opposing each other - little Napoleon, who imagines himself to be great, and little Tushin, who has risen to true greatness, are opposed to each other. He is not afraid of death, he is only afraid of his superiors, and immediately becomes shy when a staff colonel appears at the battery. Then (Chapter XXI) Tushin cordially helps all the wounded (including Nikolai Rostov).

In the second volume, we will once again meet with Captain Tushin, who lost his hand in the war. (independently analyze Chapter XVIII of Part Two (Rostov arrives at the hospital), pay special attention to how - and why exactly this way - Tushin refers to Vasily Denisov's intention to file a complaint against his superiors).

And Tushin, and another Tolstoy sage- Platon Karataev, endowed with the same "physical" properties: they are small, they have similar characters: they are affectionate and good-natured. But Tushin feels himself an integral part of the common people's life only in the midst of wars and in peaceful circumstances he is a simple, kind, timid and very ordinary person. And Plato is always involved in this life, in any circumstances. And on war and especially able the world... Because he wears peace in my 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 strangely soothes) is roundness Karataeva, a harmonious combination of the appearance of the external and the appearance of the internal. In Plato, everything is round - both the movements, and the way of life that he builds around him, and even the homely “smell”. The narrator, with his usual persistence, repeats the words “round” and “round” as often as in the scene on the Austerlitz field he repeated the word “sky”.

Andrei Bolkonsky during the Shengraben battle was not ready to meet with his Karatayev, captain Tushin. By the time of the events in Moscow, Pierre had matured to learn a lot from Plato. And above all - a true attitude towards life. That is why Karataev "remained forever in Pierre's soul the most powerful and dear memory and the personification of everything Russian, kind and round." Indeed, even on the way back from Borodino to Moscow, Bezukhov had a dream during which Pierre heard a voice. “War is the most difficult submission of human freedom to the laws of God,” said the voice. - Simplicity is obedience to God, you can't get away from it. AND they simple. They do not say, but do. The spoken word is silver, and the unspeakable is golden. A person cannot possess anything while he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of her, he owns everything. ... Connect everything? - Pierre said to himself. - No, don't connect. You can't connect thoughts, but mate all these thoughts are what you need! Yes, must be matched, must be matched!”

Platon Karataev is the embodiment of this dream; everything is exactly in it conjugated, he is not afraid of death, he thinks in proverbs, which generalize the age-old folk wisdom, it is not for nothing that in his sleep Pierre hears the proverb “The spoken word is silver, and the unspeakable is golden”.

Can Platon Karataev be called a bright personality? No way. On the contrary: he is generally not personality because he does not have his own special, separate from the people of spiritual needs, no aspirations and desires. For Tolstoy, he is more than a person, he is a part of the people's soul. Karataev does not remember his own words spoken a minute ago, since he does not think in the usual sense of the word, that is, he does not line up his reasoning in a logical chain. Simply, as modern people would say, his mind is “connected” to the national consciousness, and Plato's judgments reproduce transpersonal wisdom.

Karataev does not have a "special" love for people - he treats everyone equally lovingly... And to the master Pierre, and to the French soldier, who ordered Plato to sew a shirt, and to the bent-legged dog that became attached to him. Not being personality, he does not see personalities and around him, everyone he meets is the same particle of a single universe, like Plato himself. Death or separation is therefore irrelevant to him; Karataev is not upset when he learns that the person with whom he became close has suddenly disappeared - after all, nothing changes from this! The eternal life of the people continues, and in every new encounter its unchanging presence will be revealed.

The main lesson that Bezukhov draws 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 she gives a person a real feeling 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. The individual life of Karataev is over, but the eternal, national life, in which he is involved, continues, and there will be no end to it. That is why Tolstoy ends the storyline of Karataev with the second dream of Pierre, who saw the captive Bezukhov in the village of Shamsheve. ““ Life is everything. Life is God. Everything moves and moves, and this movement is God ... "

"Karataev!" - Pierre remembered.

And suddenly Pierre introduced himself as a living, long forgotten, meek old teacher who taught Pierre geography in Switzerland ... he showed Pierre a globe. This globe was a living, vibrating 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 tried to spill out, to capture the largest space, but others, striving for the same, squeezed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it.

Here is life, - said the old teacher ...

There is God in the middle, and each drop seeks to expand in order to reflect Him in the greatest size ... Here he, Karataev, has spilled over and disappeared. "

In the metaphor of life as a “liquid vibrating ball” made up of separate drops, all the symbolic images of “War and Peace” that we spoke about above are combined: the spindle, the clockwork, and the anthill; a circular movement connecting 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 captain Tushin, we went up, as if a step, to the image of Platon Karataev. But even from Plato in the space of the epic one more step leads upward. The image of the people's field marshal Kutuzov is raised here to an unattainable height. This old man, gray-haired, fat, treading heavily, with a plump face disfigured by a wound, towers over Captain Tushin, and even over Platon Karataev: truth nationalities, perceived by them instinctively, he consciously comprehended and elevated it to the principle of his life and his military leadership.

The main thing for Kutuzov (unlike all leaders headed by Napoleon) is to deviate from personal proud decision, guess the right course of events and do not interfere them to develop according to God's will, in truth. Having met him for the first time in the first volume, in the scene of the review near Brenau, we see in front of us an absent-minded and cunning old man, an old campaigner, who is distinguished by an "affectation of piety." And we do not immediately understand that mask the unreasoning campaigner, which Kutuzov puts on when approaching the 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-righteous persons in the course of events, and therefore must kindly evade their will, without contradicting it in words. So it will be dodge and from the battle with Napoleon during World War II.

Kutuzov, as he appears in the battle scenes of the third and fourth volumes, is not an activist, but beholder, he is convinced that victory requires not a mind, not a scheme, but "something else, independent of the mind and knowledge." And above all - “patience and time are needed”. 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 do no harm... That is, to listen to all the reports, all the main considerations, useful (that is, agreeing with the natural course of things) to support, to reject harmful ones.

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

That is why this old, weak, voluptuous person personifies Tolstoy's idea of ​​an ideal politics, which has comprehended the main wisdom: a person cannot influence the course of historical events and must renounce the idea of ​​freedom in favor of the idea of ​​necessity. Tolstoy "instructs" Bolkonsky to express this idea: watching Kutuzov after the appointment of him as 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 an inevitable course of events ... And most importantly ... that he is Russian, despite the Zhanlis novel and French sayings ... ”(volume III, part second, 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 the European hero who supposedly controls people, which history has invented” - the “simple, modest and therefore truly majestic figure” of the folk hero, who will never settle into this "Deceitful form".

Natasha Rostova

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

Does she belong to the life-burners? It is impossible to even think about it. With her sincerity, with her heightened sense of justice! Does she refer to ordinary people, like their relatives, the Rostovs? In many ways, yes; and yet it is not for nothing that both Pierre and Andrei are looking for her love, reaching out to her, singling out from the general row. Wherein truth seeker it - unlike them - can not be called in any way. No matter how much we re-read the scenes in which Natasha acts, nowhere will we find a hint of search moral ideal, truth, truth. And in the epilogue, after marriage, she even loses the brightness of temperament, the spirituality of her appearance; baby diapers replaces the fact that Pierre and Andrei are given reflections on the truth and on the purpose of life.

Like the rest of the Rostovs, Natasha is not endowed with a sharp mind; when in chapter XVII of part four of the 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." But she is endowed with something else, which for Tolstoy is more important than the abstract mind, more important even than the search for truth: the instinct of knowing life empirically. It is this inexplicable quality that brings Natasha's image very close to wise men, first of all to Kutuzov - despite the fact that in all other respects she is closer to ordinary people... It simply cannot be “attributed” to any one category: it does not obey any classification, it breaks out of any definition.

Natasha, “black-eyed, with a big mouth, ugly, but alive,” the most emotional of all the characters in the epic; that is why she is the most musical of all Rostovs. The element of music lives not only in her singing, which everyone around recognizes as wonderful, but also in voice Natasha. Remember, Andrei's heart trembled for the first time when he heard Natasha's conversation with Sonya on a moonlit night, not seeing the girls talking. Natasha's singing heals brother Nikolai, who comes to despair after the loss of forty-three thousand, who ruined the Rostov family.

From one emotional, sensitive, intuitive root, her egoism, which was fully revealed in the story with Anatol Kuragin, and her selflessness, which is manifested both in the scene with carts for the wounded in the Moscow fire department, and in episodes showing how she is shown caring for the dying grows Andrey, how he takes care of his mother, shocked by the news of Petya's death.

And the main gift that was 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... They all suffer, torment, seek the truth - or, like the impersonal Platon Karataev, tenderly possess it; only Natasha unselfishly enjoys life, feels its feverish pulse - and generously shares her happiness with everyone around her. Her happiness lies in her naturalness; That is why the narrator so harshly opposes the scene of Natasha Rostova's first ball to the episode of her acquaintance and falling in love with Anatoly Kuragin. Please note: this acquaintance occurs in theater(volume II, part five, chapter IX). That is, where it reigns the game, pretense... This is not enough for Tolstoy; he makes the epic narrator go down the steps of emotion, use in descriptions of what is happening sarcasm, strongly emphasize the idea of unnatural the atmosphere in which Natasha's feeling for Kuragin arises.

No wonder it was to lyrical the heroine, Natasha, is credited with the most famous comparison of "War and Peace". At that moment, when Pierre, after a long separation, meets Rostova with Princess Marya and does not recognize her, and suddenly “the face, with attentive eyes with difficulty, with effort, as a rusted door opens, smiled, and suddenly there was a smell of and doused Pierre with forgotten happiness ... It smelled, engulfed and swallowed him all ”(Chapter XV of the fourth part of the last volume).

But 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, like the Christian faith, like the life of the people.

Introduction

Leo Tolstoy in his epic portrayed more than 500 characters typical for Russian society. In War and Peace, the heroes of the novel are representatives of the upper class of Moscow and St. Petersburg, key statesmen and military leaders, soldiers, people from the common people, and peasants. The depiction of all strata of Russian society allowed Tolstoy to recreate an integral picture of Russian life at one of the turning points in Russian history - the era of the wars with Napoleon in 1805-1812.

In "War and Peace" the characters are conventionally divided into main characters - whose fates are woven by the author into the plot narration of all four volumes and the epilogue, and minor ones - heroes who appear sporadically in the novel. Among the main characters of the novel, one can single out the central characters - Andrei Bolkonsky, Natasha Rostova and Pierre Bezukhov, around whose destinies the events of the novel unfold.

Characteristics of the main characters of the novel

Andrey Bolkonsky- "a very handsome young man with definite and dry features", "small stature." The author acquaints the reader with Bolkonsky at the beginning of the novel - the hero was one of the guests at Anna Scherer's evening (which was also attended by many of the main characters of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace).

According to the plot of the work, Andrei was tired of high society, he dreamed of glory, no less glory than Napoleon, and therefore goes to war. The episode that turned Bolkonsky's worldview was a meeting with Bonaparte - Andrei, wounded on the field of Austerlitz, realized how insignificant Bonaparte and all his glory really were. The second turning point in Bolkonsky's life is his love for Natasha Rostova. The new feeling helped the hero return to a full life, to believe that after the death of his wife and everything he had endured, he can continue to live fully. However, their happiness with Natasha was not destined to come true - Andrei was mortally wounded during the Battle of Borodino and died soon after.

Natasha Rostova- a cheerful, kind, very emotional and loving girl: “black-eyed, with a big mouth, ugly, but alive”. An important feature of the image of the central heroine of "War and Peace" is her musical talent - a wonderful voice, which fascinated even people who were inexperienced in music. The reader meets Natasha on the girl's birthday, when she turns 12 years old. Tolstoy depicts the heroine's moral maturation: love experiences, going out, Natasha's betrayal of Prince Andrei and her experiences because of this, her search for herself in religion and the turning point in the heroine's life - the death of Bolkonsky. In the epilogue of the novel, Natasha appears before the reader completely different - we are more likely to see the shadow of her husband, Pierre Bezukhov, and not the bright, active Rostova, who a few years ago danced Russian dances and "won" carts for the wounded from her mother.

Pierre Bezukhov- "a massive, fat young man with a bobbed head, glasses." "Pierre was somewhat larger than the other men in the room," he had "an intelligent and at the same time timid, observant and natural look, which distinguished him from everyone in this living room." Pierre is a hero who is in constant search of himself through knowledge of the world around him. Each situation in his life, each life stage became a special life lesson for the hero. Marriage to Helene, passion for Freemasonry, love for Natasha Rostova, the presence on the battlefield of Borodino (which the hero sees through Pierre's eyes), French captivity and acquaintance with Karataev completely change Pierre's personality - a purposeful and self-confident man with own views and goals.

Other important characters

In War and Peace, Tolstoy conventionally identifies several blocks of characters - the Rostov, Bolkonsky, Kuragin families, as well as characters who are part of the social circle of one of these families. The Rostovs and Bolkonskys, as positive heroes, carriers of a truly Russian mentality, ideas and spirituality, are contrasted with the negative characters of the Kuragin, who had little interest in the spiritual aspect of life, preferring to shine in society, weave intrigues and choose friends according to their status and wealth. A brief description of the heroes of "War and Peace" will help to better understand the essence of each main character.

Graph Ilya Andreevich Rostov- a kind and generous man, for whom the most important thing in his life was family. The count sincerely loved his wife and four children (Natasha, Vera, Nikolai and Petya), helped his wife in raising children and did his best to maintain a warm atmosphere in the Rostovs' house. Ilya Andreevich cannot live without luxury, he liked to arrange magnificent balls, receptions and evenings, but his wastefulness and inability to manage economic affairs ultimately led to the critical financial situation of the Rostovs.
Countess Natalya Rostova is a 45-year-old woman with oriental features, who knows how to make an impression in high society, the wife of Count Rostov, and the mother of four children. The Countess, like her husband, loved her family very much, trying to support the children and bring up the best qualities in them. Due to excessive love for children, after the death of Petya, the woman almost goes crazy. In the countess, kindness to those close to her was combined with prudence: wishing to improve the financial situation of the family, the woman was trying with all her might to upset Nikolai's marriage to the “unprofitable bride” Sonya.

Nikolay Rostov- "a short, curly-haired young man with an open expression." This is an innocent, open, honest and benevolent young man, brother of Natasha, the eldest son of the Rostovs. At the beginning of the novel, Nikolai appears as an admired young man who wants military glory and recognition, but after participating first in the Battle of Shengrabesk, and then in the Battle of Austerlitz and the Patriotic War, Nikolai's illusions are dispelled and the hero realizes how absurd and wrong the very idea of ​​war is. Nikolai finds personal happiness in marriage with Marya Bolkonskaya, in which he felt a close-minded person even at the first meeting.

Sonya Rostova- “a thin, petite brunette with a soft, shaded by long eyelashes, a thick black braid, twice wrapped around her head, and a yellowish tint of skin on her face,” the niece of Count Rostov. According to the plot of the novel, this is a quiet, reasonable, kind girl, who knows how to love and is prone to self-sacrifice. Sonya refuses Dolokhov, since she wants to be faithful only to Nikolai, whom she sincerely loves. When the girl finds out that Nikolai is in love with Marya, she resignedly lets him go, not wanting to hinder the happiness of her beloved.

Nikolay Andreevich Bolkonsky- prince, retired general-ashef. This is a proud, intelligent, stern man of short stature towards himself and others "with small dry hands and gray drooping eyebrows, sometimes, as he frowned, overshadowed the brilliance of intelligent and like young shiny eyes." Deep down, Bolkonsky loves his children very much, but does not dare to show it (only before his death he was able to show his love to his daughter). Nikolai Andreevich died from a second blow while in Bogucharovo.

Marya Bolkonskaya- a quiet, kind, meek girl, inclined to self-sacrifice and sincerely loving her family. Tolstoy describes her as a heroine with “an ugly weak body and a thin face,” but “the princess’s eyes, 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 everything faces, these eyes became more attractive than beauty. " The beauty of Marya's eyes afterwards struck Nikolai Rostov. The girl was very devout, devoted all of herself to caring for her father and nephew, then redirecting her love to her own family and husband.

Helen Kuragina- a bright, brilliantly beautiful woman with a "unchanging smile" and full white shoulders, who liked male company, Pierre's first wife. Helene was not distinguished by a special mind, however, thanks to her charm, ability to keep herself in society and establish the necessary connections, she set up her own salon in St. Petersburg, was personally acquainted with Napoleon. The woman died of severe sore throat (although there were rumors in society that Helen had committed suicide).

Anatol Kuragin- Helen's brother, as handsome in appearance and noticeable in high society as his sister. Anatole lived the way he wanted, discarding all moral principles and foundations, arranged drunkenness and fights. Kuragin wanted to steal Natasha Rostova and marry her, although he was already married.

Fedor Dolokhov- "a man of average height, curly and with bright eyes", an officer of the Semenovsky regiment, one of the leaders of the partisan movement. Fyodor's personality surprisingly combined selfishness, cynicism and adventurism with the ability to love and care for his loved ones. (Nikolai Rostov is very surprised that at home, with his mother and sister, Dolokhov is completely different - a loving and gentle son and brother).

Conclusion

Even a brief description of the heroes of Tolstoy's War and Peace allows one to see the close and inextricable interconnection of the characters' destinies. Like all events in the novel, the characters' meetings and farewells take place according to the irrational law of historical mutual influences, elusive to the mind. It is these incomprehensible mutual influences that create the fate of the heroes and shape their views of the world.

Product test