The novel is dedicated to war and peace. As Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy called the novel: "War and Peace" or "War and Peace"

War, peace ... and some details. On the eve of the beginning of the online readings of the great novel by Leo Tolstoy, we decided to recall some details

Text: Mikhail Vizel / GodLiterature.RF
Collage: watercolor by N. N. Karazin; portrait of L. N. Tolstoy. 1873, I. N. Kramskoy (State Tretyakov Gallery)

1. The volume of the novel "War and Peace" is 1300 pages of the usual book format. This is not the most great romance in world literature, but one of the largest included in the canon of European Literature XIX century. Initially, in the first two publications, it was not divided into four parts, as we are used to, but into six. It was only in 1873, when the novel was being prepared for publication for the third time as part of The Works of Leo Tolstoy, that the author changed the distribution of the text into volumes and assigned him exactly half of the 8-volume collection.

2. We confidently call "War and Peace" a "novel", but the author himself categorically objected to this genre definition... In an article timed to coincide with the first separate edition, he wrote: “ This is not a novel, even less poem, even less historical chronicle. "War and Peace" is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed. ... History from time to time not only provides many examples of such a deviation from the European form, but does not even give a single example of the opposite. Starting from "Dead Souls" by Gogol and up to "The Dead House" by Dostoevsky, in the new period of Russian literature there is not a single artistic prose, a little out of mediocrity, which would fit well into the form of a novel, poem or story". Nevertheless, now "War and Peace" is undoubtedly considered one of the pinnacles of world novelism.

3.
Initially, in 1856, Tolstoy was going to write a novel not about the Napoleonic wars, but about the old one, which finally, thirty years later, was allowed to return from Siberia. But he quickly realized that he would not be able to reveal the motives of the hero's participation in December uprising, if he does not describe his youthful participation in the Napoleonic wars. In addition, he could not help but take into account that when describing the events of December 14, 1825, he would have problems with the censorship. In the 1890s, Tolstoy would not have paid any attention to this, but in the 1860s, for the author, who had not yet reached his fortieth birthday, it mattered. So the idea of ​​the "story about the Decembrist" was transformed into "an epic novel about the Napoleonic wars in Russia."

4.
For censorship reasons, as well as at the insistent request of his wife, Tolstoy cut out rather frank descriptions of Pierre and Helene's wedding night. Sofya Andreevna managed to convince her husband that the church censorship department would not let them through. The most scandalous plot twist is connected with Helen Bezukhova, who obviously acted for Tolstoy as the bearer of the "dark sexual principle". Helene, a blooming young woman, dies suddenly in 1812, unleashing Pierre's hands to marry Natasha Rostova. Russian schoolchildren, studying the novel at the age of 15, perceive this unexpected death as a convention necessary for the development of the plot. And only those of them who re-read the novel as adults understand, to their embarrassment, at the dull hints of Tolstoy, that Helen is dying ... from the consequences of an unsuccessful pharmacological abortion, which she went for, entangled between two prospective husbands, a Russian nobleman and a foreign prince - for one of them she intended to marry, having received a divorce from Pierre.

5. Russian word"Peace" means "no war" and "society". Until the reform of the Russian spelling in 1918, this difference was also fixed graphically: "the absence of war" was written "mir", and "society" - "mir". Tolstoy, of course, had this ambiguity in mind when he gave the title to the novel, but, contrary to the common misconception, he named the novel “War and Peace” - which can be clearly seen on the covers of all lifetime editions. But Mayakovsky called his 1916 poem just "War and Peace", in opposition to Lev Nikolaevich, and this difference has now become invisible.

6. The novel was written in 1863–69. Tolstoy himself admitted that this

« an essay on which I have been entrusted with five years of incessant and exceptional labor, under the best living conditions».

A year before the start of this work, 34-year-old Tolstoy got married, and his wife, 18-year-old Sonia Bers, took over, in particular, the duties of a secretary. In the course of work on the novel, Sofya Andreevna rewrote the text completely from beginning to end at least eight times. Some episodes were rewritten up to 26 times. During this time, she gave birth to the first four children (out of thirteen).

7. In the same article, Tolstoy insisted that the names actors-, Drubetskoy, Kuragin - remind real Russian aristocratic surnames - Volkonsky, Trubetskoy, Kurakin - only because it was more convenient for him to write his characters into historical context and "allow" them to talk with the real Rostopchin and Kutuzov. In reality, this is not entirely true: when describing the Rostov and Bolkonsky families, Tolstoy described his own ancestors rather closely. In particular, Nikolai Rostov is to a large extent his own father, Nikolai Tolstoy (1794–1837), the hero of the war of 1812 and lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd (!) Regiment, and Marya Bolkonskaya is his mother, Marya Nikolaevna, nee Princess Volkonskaya (1790– 1830). The circumstances of their wedding are also described quite closely, and Bald Mountains are similar to Yasnaya Polyana. Immediately after the release of the novel, in the absence of the Internet and "secular chronicles" in the modern sense, this, of course, could only be guessed by people close to Tolstoy. But everyone recognized the three characters at once: Vaska Denisova, Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova and Ivan Dolokhov. Under these transparent pseudonyms famous then people are designated: the poet and hussar Denis Vasilyevich Davydov, the eccentric Moscow lady Nastasya Dmitrievna Ofrosimova. As for Dolokhov, it turned out more difficult with him: it seems that General Ivan Dorokhov (1762-1815), the hero of the Napoleonic wars, is meant, but in fact Tolstoy described his son quite accurately with strange name Rufin (1801–1852), a hussar and bruiser, who was repeatedly demoted into soldiers for his riot and again, with his courage, sought out officer's epaulettes. Tolstoy will meet Rufin Dorokhov in his youth in the Caucasus.

8.
The protagonist of War and Peace has no exact prototype. At the same time, it is easy to point to the prototype of his father, Catherine's grandee, who recognized the illegitimate son only before his death - this is one of the richest and most influential people Russia XVIII century, Chancellor Alexander Bezborodko. But Pierre's character combines the youthful traits of Tolstoy himself and the collective "thinking youth" of the nobility early XIX century - in particular, Prince Peter Vyazemsky, the future poet and closest friend

9.
The largest modern French Slavic scholar Georges Nivat, fluent in Russian, confirms that the French language of War and Peace is not a conventional “international French” like modern “international English”, but a real aristocratic French language of the 19th century. True, it is still closer to the middle of the century, when the novel was written, and not the beginning, when the action takes place. Tolstoy himself compares the French blotches with "shadows in the picture", giving sharpness and bulge to faces. It's easier to put it this way: exquisite French allows you to convey the flavor of an era when all of Europe spoke French. It is better to read these phrases out loud, even if you do not quite understand their meaning, and not read the translation. The narrative is structured so that in its key points all heroes, even the French, switch to Russian.

10. On currently"War and Peace" served as the basis for ten cinematographic and television, including the grandiose four-part epic by Sergei Bondarchuk (1965), for the filming of which in Soviet army a special cavalry regiment was created. However, by the end of the year, the 11th project will be added to this list - the 8-episode TV series BBC one. And, probably, it will not spoil the reputation of the "historical British series", which has now become a global brand.

For many of us, "War and Peace" is an overwhelming school reading, but for the readers of the 19th century, who received the novel in parts and waited for a sequel, it was something like a topical series that told about the most acute problems modernity. Tatyana Trofimova talks about what questions of contemporaries the novel by Leo Tolstoy helped to resolve.

The study of the novel "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy resembles the feeling of an elephant - the subject is immense, and the result is mosaic. It was much easier in this sense for the writer's contemporaries: reading the novel for them was like watching a series with all the consequences that follow from this format. For the first two years, they heatedly discussed each episode, then for another two years they re-read their favorite fragments and eagerly greeted the continuation. In other words, they lived for four years against the background of existential meetings between Prince Andrey and an oak tree, Natasha's girlish dreams at the window, the high sky above Austerlitz and the "swarm" life of Platon Karataev.

The series carried away in earnest. During the breaks, they argued endlessly about how justified the use of French about blackened high society and the nature of patriotism. Leo Tolstoy clearly touched pain points contemporaries, although it is not so easy to understand which ones: reading habits, and revolutionary upheavals, and Tolstoy's personal searches also affected. But at their intersection, you can catch something familiar - an attempt in an era of instability to turn around and build your identity with the help of the past.

The context of the first half of the 1860s, when Tolstoy began writing the novel, leaves no question about the scale of his plan. The long-awaited abolition of serfdom - and disappointment. The reform that was so believed in at the development stage did not change the world overnight. Radical youth went on the offensive, a wave of fires swept across St. Petersburg - times were so alarming that few blamed the hot and dry weather for it. Chernyshevsky, who was arrested, nevertheless managed to issue instructions in the form of the novel What Is to Be Done ?, where he lucidly described how to move towards building a different, more just society. Finally, on the wave of difficult reforms, the Polish uprising took place, but Russian authorities showed that the reforms will still be carried out according to the original plan, and Russia is not ready to part with imperial ambitions and territories. The mutiny was brutally suppressed Russian society frustrated, and Herzen, observing the excesses from different directions from London, could not resist emotional assessment: "Very dangerous !!!"

Usually, the idea of ​​the novel is retold simply: first there was a story about the return of the exiled Decembrist in 1856, then it acquired a background in the form of the uprising of 1825 itself, and gradually Tolstoy came to the idea of ​​describing the war of 1812. Based on this, the fact that only the third part was written seems almost accidental, although it was this topic that occupied Tolstoy for much longer. Already in 1853, he reads and thinks about the military campaign of 1805, and this is understandable - Tolstoy himself went to the Crimean War. Three years later, the war, like the campaign of 1805, will end in defeat, and Tolstoy will go to inspect the tomb of Napoleon. “The deification of a villain is terrible,” he says with almost contempt, but by the early 1860s he admits in sketches that everything is interconnected: in 1812 “we spanked Napoleon I”, and in 1856 “we were spanked by Napoleon III” ...

Just at the time when Tolstoy was pondering the plot, there was also the 50th anniversary of the victory over Napoleon. This date has not been marked either Triumphal arch, nor the Alexander Column on Palace Square, like the previous ones, but it was not so easy to forget about her. National identity in an unstable situation, it is often formed by referring to the glorious past, and Tolstoy, like the authors of modern patriotic series about the war, got to the very heart of the problem.

By the time the novel was published, readers had already firmly established the habit of reading in portions: long pieces are published in series in thick journals, most often once a month. At first, during 1865-1866, Tolstoy's novel entitled "Year 1805" was published in Mikhail Katkov's magazine. The same heroes, the same canvases of peaceful life and war, the same historiosophical reflections. Publishing policy was also used. Despite the fact that Tolstoy passed the entire first part before publication - about peaceful life- and even asked to release it at once, Katkov had his own plans: he wanted to get the most out of the novel and guide the reader in reading it. At the same time, Tolstoy continued to write; the publication schedule was intermittent, the second part - about the war - did not go into work in any way, the reader did not know what to expect from the next issue, the intrigue intensified.

Duel of Pierre with Dolokhov. Fragment of illustrations for the novel "War and Peace". 1950-1991 Artist: Shmarinov Dementy Alekseevich. Paper, charcoal

So the first year of War and Peace passed, and then everything became much more interesting: from January 1866, literally back to back with Tolstoy's novel, the publication of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky began. A coincidence, but not so accidental, considering that both novels are connected by the figure of Napoleon. Tolstoy asks whether a single person is capable of turning the course of history, and what did that same Napoleon do, since he managed to rise so high. And if Napoleon did not have either Toulon or Egypt, how he would have acted in an ordinary life, not conducive to exploits, Dostoevsky continues the thought. On April 4, 1866, a shot sounds - a former student Dmitry Karakozov shoots at Alexander II at the fence Summer garden Petersburg in order to give society the opportunity to rebuild on a different basis. The assassination attempt failed: the Kostroma workman Osip Komissarov pushed Karakozov by the arm, and he missed.

Radical youth still tried to turn the course of history personal feat... In response, the troubled Sovremennik and Russkoye Slovo magazines were closed down - the authorities decided that their revolutionary incitement was to blame. The conservative Katkov shuddered and paused. By the time two parts of Tolstoy's novel were published, Dostoevsky's novel was suspended. But literature has already merged with reality: Katkov published the first part of "1805" as a separate edition - for those who missed everything, and continued to publish Dostoevsky. And when Tolstoy brought the novel to seven hundred pages and decided that it was completed, he immediately proposed to continue publication in parts in the magazine. Nikolai Nekrasov desperately tried to resume the issue of Sovremennik, failed and rented the magazine Otechestvennye Zapiski, whose circulation skyrocketed to unprecedented heights... It is impossible to tear yourself away from serial reading on the topic of the day.

Tolstoy's answer to the question about the role of personality in history is well known - a person, even the greatest, cannot do anything by himself. To make a turn, he needs to get into the tectonic movement of the masses, feel it and, having caught the wave, be able to use it, and in this sense one should not exaggerate even the heroic role of Kutuzov in the victory over Napoleon. Dostoevsky's answer is also clear - an ordinary person is not able to cope with an idea, punishment overtakes him even before the crime, everything drowns in fever. With his answer, Tolstoy hit a crucial point. Daily writers " Patriotic notes"Have already plunged into the study of the people: some go to the village, others storm taverns, and everyone writes about what the same simple and such wise people... And Tolstoy himself works either as a world mediator or as a teacher in his own Yasnaya Polyana school. A little more - and “going to the people” will begin: either to learn from him, or to teach.

In 1868, Tolstoy began publishing a revised version of the novel with a sequel, now called War and Peace. It is approximately in this form that we are used to reading it, and researchers - to study it. Contemporaries, not yet knowing what it would be great romance, saw it as a reason to think about what worries them. Through this impromptu window, you can now see how they went through a difficult time in search of the Napoleon who would change everything at once, and how fiction and reality made them change their search vector. “I can stop writing now. You can stop reading now, ”says Tolstoy in the introduction to the revised version of the novel. But this free choice is woven into a stream of events, the key to which lies not in a single heroic action against the backdrop. Opposing war, as Tolstoy wrote, “peace” is not the absence of war, but the awareness of community and the acceptance of identity.

The novel "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy devoted six years of hard and hard work. September 5, 1863 A.E. Bers, the father of Sofya Andreevna, Tolstoy's wife, sent a letter from Moscow to Yasnaya Polyana with the following remark: "Yesterday we talked a lot about 1812 on the occasion of your intention to write a novel relating to this era." It is this letter that researchers consider "the first accurate evidence" dating the beginning of Tolstoy's work on War and Peace. In October of the same year, Tolstoy wrote to his relative: “I have never felt my mental and even all my moral powers so free and so capable of work. And I have this job. This work is a novel from the time of the 1810s and 1920s, which has been occupying me completely since the fall ... I am now a writer with all the strength of my soul, and I write and think about, as I have never written or thought about. "

How one of the world's largest creations was created is evidenced by the manuscripts of War and Peace: over 5200 finely written sheets have been preserved in the writer's archive. They can be used to trace the entire history of the creation of the novel.

Initially, Tolstoy conceived a novel about a Decembrist who returned after 30 years of exile in Siberia. The novel began in 1856, shortly before the abolition of serfdom. But then the writer revised his plan and moved on to 1825 - the era of the Decembrist uprising. Soon the writer abandoned this beginning and decided to show the youth of his hero, which coincided with the terrible and glorious time of the Patriotic War of 1812. But Tolstoy did not stop there either, and since the war of 1812 was inextricably linked with 1805, he began his entire work from that time. Having transferred the beginning of the action of his novel half a century into the depths of history, Tolstoy decided to lead through the most important events for Russia, not one, but many heroes.

Tolstoy called his idea - to capture in artistic form the half-century history of the country “Three pores”. The first time is the beginning of the century, its first decade and a half, the time of the youth of the first Decembrists who went through the Patriotic War of 1812. The second time is the 1920s with their main event - the uprising on December 14, 1825. The third time - the 50s, an unfortunate end for the Russian army Crimean War, sudden death Nicholas I, the amnesty of the Decembrists, their return from exile and the waiting time for changes in the life of Russia. However, in the process of working on the work, the writer narrowed the scope of his original plan and focused on the first pore, touching only in the epilogue of the novel the beginning of the second pore. But even in this form, the concept of the work remained global in scope and required the writer to exert all his strength. At the beginning of his work, Tolstoy realized that the usual framework of the novel and historical story would not be able to accommodate all the richness of the content he had conceived, and began to persistently seek a new art form, he wanted to create literary work completely unusual type. And he succeeded. "War and Peace", according to L.N. Tolstoy, - not a novel, not a poem, not a historical chronicle, this is an epic novel, new genre prose, which after Tolstoy became widespread in Russian and world literature.

"I LOVE PEOPLE'S THOUGHT"

“For a work to be good, one must love the main main idea in it. So in Anna Karenina I loved family thought, in War and Peace I love popular thought as a result of the war of 1812 ”(Tolstoy). The war, which was deciding the issue of national independence, opened to the writer the source of the nation's strength - the social and spiritual power of the people. The people are making history. This thought illuminated all events and faces. "War and Peace" became a historical novel, received the majestic form of an epic ...

The appearance of "War and Peace" in the press has provoked the most contradictory criticism. Radical Democratic magazines of the 60s. greeted the novel with fierce attacks. In Iskra for 1869, M. Znamensky's "Literary and drawing potpouri" appears [V. Kurochkin], a parody of the novel. N. Shelgunov speaks of him: "an apology for a well-fed lordship." T. is attacked for idealizing the aristocratic milieu, for bypassing the position of the serf peasantry. But the novel did not receive recognition in the reactionary camp of the nobility. Some of its representatives agreed to accuse Tolstoy in an antipatriotic direction (see P. Vyazemsky, A. Narov, and others). A special place is occupied by the article by N. Strakhov, to-ry emphasized the accusatory side of "War and Peace". Very interesting is the article by Tolstoy himself "A Few Words on War and Peace" (1868). Tolstoy, as it were, justified himself in some of the accusations when he wrote: “In those days they also loved, envied, looked for truth, virtue, were carried away by passions; the same was a difficult mental and moral life ... "

"WAR AND PEACE" FROM THE MILITARY POINT OF VIEW

Roman gr. Tolstoy is interesting for the military in a twofold sense: by describing scenes of military and military life and by the desire to draw some conclusions regarding the theory of military affairs. The first, that is, the scenes, are inimitable and, in our extreme conviction, can constitute one of the most useful additions to any course in the theory of military art; the latter, that is, the conclusions, do not stand up to the most condescending criticism due to their one-sidedness, although they are interesting as a transitional stage in the development of the author's views on military affairs.

HEROES ABOUT LOVE

Andrei Bolkonsky: “I would not believe someone who would tell me that I can love like that. This is not at all the feeling that I had before. The whole world is divided for me into two halves: one - she and there is all happiness, hope, light; the other half - everything where it is not, there is all despondency and darkness ... I cannot but love the light, I am not to blame for this. And I am very happy ... "

Pierre Bezukhov: “If there is God and there is future life, that is, truth is virtue; and man's highest happiness is to strive to attain them. You have to live, you have to love, you have to believe ... "

"MOTHER MAN"

Already in years Soviet power Lenin more than once expressed his feeling of immense pride in Tolstoy's genius; he knew and loved his works well. Gorky recalled how on one of Lenin's visits he saw a volume of "War and Peace" on his table. Vladimir Ilyich immediately started talking about Tolstoy: “What a lump, eh? What a hardened human being! Here, this, my friend, is an artist ... And - do you know what else is amazing? Prior to this count, there was no real man in literature.

Who in Europe can be put next to him?

He answered himself:

No one "

"MIRROR OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION"

One side, brilliant artist, which gave not only incomparable pictures of Russian life, but also first-class works of world literature. On the other hand, there is a landowner who is foolish in Christ.

On the one hand, there is a remarkably strong, direct and sincere protest against public lies and falsehood; on the other hand, there is a "Tolstoyan", that is, a worn-out, hysterical squish called a Russian intellectual who, publicly beating himself in the chest, says: " I am nasty, I am nasty, but I am engaged in moral self-improvement; I don't eat any more meat and now I eat rice cakes. "

On the one hand, ruthless criticism of capitalist exploitation, exposure of government violence, court comedies and government controlled, revealing the entire depth of the contradictions between the growth of wealth and the gains of civilization and the growth of poverty, savagery and torment of the working masses; on the other hand - the foolish preaching of "non-resistance to evil" by violence.

REVALUATION

"In January 1871, Tolstoy sent a letter to Fet:" How happy I am ... that I will never write verbose nonsense like "War"

December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: "People love me for those trifles -" War and Peace ", etc., which seem very important to them"

“In the summer of 1909, one of the visitors Yasnaya Polyana expressed his delight and gratitude for the creation of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". Tolstoy replied: "It's like someone came to Edison and said:" I really respect you for dancing the mazurka well. " I attribute meaning to completely different books of mine. "

FAT AND AMERICAN

The Americans declared the four-volume work of Leo Tolstoy "War and Peace" as the main novel of all times and peoples. The experts at Newsweek magazine have compiled a list of one hundred books, declared by the publication as the best ever written. As a result of the selection, the top ten, in addition to Leo Tolstoy's novel, included: "1984" by George Orwell, "Ulysses" by James Joyce, "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov, "Noise and Fury" by William Faulkner, "The Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison, "On lighthouse "by Virginia Woolf," Iliad "and" Odyssey "by Homer," Pride and Prejudice "by Jane Austen and" The Divine Comedy»Dante Alighieri.

One of the most fundamental and highly artistic works of prose in history domestic literature is the epic novel "War and Peace". The high ideological and compositional perfection of the work is the fruit of many years of work. The story of Tolstoy's War and Peace reflects the hard work on the novel from 1863 to 1870.

Interest in the subject of the Decembrists

At the heart of the work - Patriotic War 1812, its reflection on the fate of people, the awakening of moral and patriotic feelings, the spiritual unity of the Russian people. However, before starting to create a story about the Patriotic War, the author changed his plans many times. For many years he was worried about the topic of the Decembrists, their role in the development of the state and the outcome of the uprising.

Tolstoy decided to write a work reflecting the history of the Decembrist, who returned in 1856 after 30 years of exile. The beginning of the story, according to Tolstoy's plan, was to begin in 1856. Later, the author decides to start his story from 1825 in order to show what reasons led the hero to exile. But plunging into the abyss of historical events, the author felt the need to depict not only the fate of one hero, but the very Decembrist uprising, its origins.

Initial concept

The work was conceived as a story, and later as a novel, The Decembrists, on which he worked in 1860-1861. Over time, the author is not satisfied only with the events of 1825 and comes to the understanding that it is necessary to disclose in the work earlier historical events that formed the wave patriotic movement and the awakening of civic consciousness in Russia. But the author did not stop there either, understanding the inextricable connection of the events of 1812 with their origins, which date back to 1805. Thus, the idea of ​​creative recreation of artistic and historical reality is planned by the author in a half-century large-scale painting reflecting the events from 1805 to 1850s.

"Three pores" in the history of Russia

The author called such a plan to recreate historical reality “Three pores”. The first of them was supposed to reflect the historical realities of the 19th century, which personified the conditions for the formation of young Decembrists. The next time is the 1820s - the moment of the formation of civic activity and the moral position of the Decembrists. The culmination of this historical period, according to Tolstoy's plan, was a direct description of the Decembrist uprising, its defeat and consequences. The third time was conceived by the author as a recreation of the reality of the 50s, marked by the return of the Decembrists from exile under the amnesty in connection with the death of Nicholas I. The third part was to become the personification of the time of the onset of the long-awaited changes in the political atmosphere of Russia.

Such a global idea of ​​the author, which consists in depicting a very wide time period filled with numerous and significant historical events, demanded tremendous stress from the writer and artistic forces... The work, in the final of which it was planned to return Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova from exile, did not fit into the framework of not only a traditional historical story, but even a novel. Realizing this and realizing the importance of a detailed recreation of the paintings of the war of 1812 and its starting points, Lev Nikolaevich decides to narrow the historical framework of the conceived work.

The final artistic design

In the final idea of ​​the author, the extreme time point turns out to be the 20s of the 19th century, which the reader learns about only in the prologue, while the main events of the work coincide with historical reality from 1805 to 1812. Despite the fact that the author decided to convey the essence historical era more succinctly, the book has never been able to fit into any of the traditional historical genres. A piece combining detailed description all aspects of war and peacetime, resulted in a four-volume novel-epic,

Work on the novel

Despite the fact that the author established himself with the final version of the artistic concept, the work on the work was not easy. During the seven-year period of its creation, the author repeatedly gave up work on the novel and returned to it again. The peculiarities of the work are evidenced by the numerous manuscripts of the work, preserved in the writer's archive, numbering more than five thousand pages. It is from them that the history of the creation of the novel "War and Peace" is traced.

The archive contained 15 draft versions of the novel, which indicates the extreme responsibility of the author to work on the work, a high degree of introspection and criticism. Realizing the importance of the subject matter, Tolstoy wanted to be as close as possible to the true historical facts, philosophical and moral views society, civic sentiments of the first quarter XIX century. To write the novel "War and Peace", the writer had to study many memoirs of eyewitnesses to the war, historical documents and scientific works, personal letters. "When I write the historical, I like to be true to reality to the smallest detail," Tolstoy argued. As a result, it turned out that the writer unwittingly collected a whole collection of books dedicated to the events of 1812.

In addition to working on historical sources, for a reliable depiction of the events of the war, the author visited the places of military battles. It was these trips that formed the basis for the unique landscape sketches, transforming the novel from a historical chronicle into a highly artistic work of literature.

The title of the work chosen by the author represents main idea... The world that lies in peace of mind and in the absence of hostilities on native land, is able to make a person truly happy. L.N. Tolstoy, who, during the creation of the work, wrote: "The artist's goal is not to undeniably resolve the issue, but to make people love life in its countless, never-exhausting all its manifestations," undoubtedly, he managed to realize his ideological plan.

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Tolstoy's "War and Peace" as an epic novel

Tolstoy began work on the novel in 1863, right after the fiftieth anniversary of the victory over the French in the Patriotic War of 1812, and finished in 1869.

Tolstoy took a long time to come to the idea of ​​"War and Peace". At first, he conceived a work called "The Decembrists", the protagonist of which was to be the Decembrist Volkhonsky-Lobazov, returning from Siberian exile. According to the author's idea, this energetic old man should have stood out very strongly against the background of his compatriots who had lost their "thoughts of high aspiration" and who were not capable of decisive action. Considering that the focus of the work would be a description of the Russian public and everyday life of that time, and the basis of the novel was a similar satirical opposition, "The Decembrists" could be called a socio-psychological novel.

But the events of 1825 led the author to 1812, because it was the social upsurge after the victory over Napoleon that gave rise to the Decembrist uprising. Thus, Tolstoy comes to the idea of ​​a new work - historical novel"Three pores", in which the process of formation and formation of the character of the protagonist proceeded against the background of historical events of the beginning of the 19th century.

Tolstoy, working on this work, is fond of depicting sketches of the Patriotic War, and the novel begins to look more and more like a historical chronicle, where the facts are lined up in a strict chronological order... So the author understands that history has already become an independent subject of narration, and the work increasingly resembles a heroic poem. This is how the idea of ​​a work called "All is well that ends well" appears. This novel already includes more than just a description of life noble society, but also sketches of peasant life. There are already familiar heroes - Rostovs, Bezukhov and Bolkonsky. This is the penultimate version of Tolstoy's novel, and after abandoning this version, the author begins work on War and Peace. Thus, the work retained the signs of the genres of all previous plans: the novel, the heroic poem, as well as the historical chronicle, where the people - the main character history, and the Patriotic War is not a background, but the ideological and compositional center of the work.

"The epic family becomes one natural to me," Tolstoy writes in his diary on January 3, 1863, shortly before the start of writing the novel. Two and a half years later (September 30, 1865) Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “There is poetry of the novelist: 1) [...] 2) in the picture of morals built on historical event- Odyssey, Iliad, 1805 ”, that is, he drew a parallel between the works of Homer and his novel.

Tolstoy appreciated the epic because in its center are the fates of not one or several heroes, but of the entire people and even peoples. In 1868, Tolstoy wrote an article "A few words about the book" War and Peace ", where he tried to answer the question of what exactly his novel is. Reflecting on the genre, he wrote: “This is not a novel, even less a poem, even less a historical chronicle. "War and Peace" is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed. " And further Tolstoy writes that the problem with the definition of the genre that War and Peace faced is characteristic of many other works: an example of the opposite. Starting from " Dead souls"Gogol and before" Of a dead house"Dostoevsky, in the new period of Russian literature there is not a single fictional work of prose, a little out of mediocrity, which would fit into the form of a novel, poem or story." That is, according to Tolstoy, all the great works of Russian literature do not fit into traditional views about a European romance.

In the twentieth century, literary scholars nevertheless managed to agree on the issue of the genre definition of the novel: they called the work an epic novel, primarily because War and Peace is an integral work of fiction, but many features of many novels can be seen in it.

1. Historical novel. The reader understands that it is historical work when he sees a reference to the past, and also meets in the novel real historical figures such as Kutuzov, Napoleon, Alexander I. Tolstoy, while working on the novel, used many historical sources. For example, the author turned to books on Freemasonry, to the works of war historians (both Russian and French) and to historical chronicles... But Tolstoy's interaction with historians is more reminiscent of a dispute than a full-fledged collaboration, which is why the author often turns to the memoirs of his contemporaries - to the works of Russian and French memoirists.
2. Psychological novel. Contemporaries found it strange to combine the historical and psychological works... A.S. Pushkin followed this path in the novel “ Captain's daughter"And in the drama" Boris Godunov ". In Tolstoy's novel there are many fictional characters, but there were prototypes for them: Denisov - Denis Davydov; the prototype of the old prince Bolkonsky is Tolstoy's maternal grandfather - Volkonsky, etc. Tolstoy built heroes so that their actions and way of thinking did not conflict with the real heroes of the era, that is, there is no contradiction between the actions of real heroes and fictional ones. NG Chernyshevsky very accurately defined the features of Tolstoy's psychologism. According to him, the author of "War and Peace" is interested in "himself mental process, its forms, its laws, the dialectic of the soul ”. The critic called the "dialectic of the soul" a detailed reproduction in fiction feelings in motion: the process of the origin of feelings, then development, then transmission to another hero. The readers will see the stages of the spiritual quests of the main characters, such as Pierre Bezukhov, Andrei Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova.
3. The novel also has features of a battle romance. Tolstoy describes in great detail the Shengraben, Austerlitz and Borodino battles, the number of soldiers, the disposition of troops, the loss of killed and captured, and so on.
4. Traits of love or family romance are also present in War and Peace in large numbers. In the novel, there are more than ten love lines, each of which is described in sufficient detail.

In War and Peace, you can also see the features of many other novels, for example, an educational novel, secular, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and so on. Variety of plot directions, a large number of characters and plot lines, coverage of a large time interval, referring to historical sources and the presence of real historical figures in the work allows us to confidently call "War and Peace" an epic novel.