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The theme of personality education in the trilogy of L.N. Tolstoy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" and the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky "Teenager"

Tolstoy Dostoevsky education personality

Introduction

Chapter 1. Man and the world: the influence of the environment on the education of the individual

1.1 Stages of human maturation

1.2 Family types:

a) Family family in the trilogy of L.N. Tolstoy

b) “Random Family” in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky

1.3 Factors determining the development of personality:

a) The authority of a mentor during childhood and adolescence

b) Natural inclinations of a creative personality in youth

conclusions

Chapter 2. The ideal of a perfect person and ways to achieve it

2.1 Moral guidelines on the path to a perfect person

2.2 Results of the artistic study of man in the aspect of the theme of personality education in the trilogy of L.N. Tolstoy and the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky

conclusions

Conclusion

List of used literature

Methodological application

Introduction

The topic of this work is one of the most important and complex, eternally relevant in world culture. Every philosopher, public figure, and writer has reflected on the issue of human upbringing. The Russian national geniuses of the 19th century are no exception - Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy and Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, who lived, thought and created almost at the same time, but never met in their lives. Tolstoy began his creative journey with the autobiographical trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" (1852-57), where he very thoroughly analyzed the stages of human formation and development, identifying common features and complexities of this process that are characteristic of all people. Dostoevsky wrote a novel on this topic, “The Teenager” (1875), in which the author to a certain extent polemicizes with his contemporary, who depicted a rather favorable (compared to Dostoevsky’s novel) picture of the growing up of the protagonist of the trilogy, Nikolai Irtenyev.

The difference in approaches to this problem between the two writers is determined by their philosophy, life experience and the subject of the image. Tolstoy’s focus is on the prosperous patriarchal family of the Irtenyevs, where the tone is set by the deeply religious, kindest mother, Natalya Nikolaevna Irtenyeva, who managed to give the child so much love in childhood that this supply was later enough for the rest of his life. Despite all the alarming signals about the impending collapse of the patriarchal foundations of life (not the best economic situation of the family, the wild lifestyle of the father, the symbolic meaning of the death of the mother, moving from the village to Moscow), nevertheless, in general, Tolstoy sings a hymn to the poetic estate life of a wealthy noble family , still firmly protected by the power of tradition from the approaching bourgeois world with its cult of individualism, competition, and general disunity. Dostoevsky focuses attention precisely on this impending world order, where “everything is apart” and “there is no leadership in the chaos of good and evil.” In this regard, in the novel “Teenager” he depicts the “random family” of A.P. Versilov, where high birth (the nobleman Versilov) is combined with illegitimacy (Arkady is the bastard son of the landowner and his servant Sofia Andreevna), and as if in mockery, fate gives the main the hero has the noble surname Dolgoruky (his formal father, the courtyard man Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky). Tolstoy was attracted by the idea of a great novel, “Four Epochs of Development,” where he was going to depict the general laws of human development in each of the eras: childhood, adolescence, adolescence and youth. As you know, the last fourth part, “Youth,” remained unwritten, and “Youth” was only half written. But in the first three parts the author managed to “sharply outline the characteristic features of each era of life” using the example of Nikolenka Irtenyev, and each of the parts of the trilogy has a generalizing chapter (chapters: “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”), in which the author draws conclusions of a universal human nature, revealing to each reader his own history of the soul. Although we are talking about a boy from a wealthy noble family, the author constantly refers to the reader’s experience, emphasizing the closeness of the protagonist’s experiences with those experienced by each person in the corresponding period of life. Thus, Tolstoy focuses on universal human aspects inherent in all people, regardless of their environment of upbringing. The same thing that separates them (environment, upbringing, social status) is also, of course, in the author’s sphere of attention, but is, as it were, in the background. Thus, the era of childhood is characterized by openness of the soul, love for the whole world; adolescence is characterized by self-doubt, a tendency to speculate, heightened self-esteem and isolation in one’s inner world; youth reveals to a person the beauty of feelings, the desire for the ideal of love and friendship, and awareness of the purpose of life. It is no coincidence that when Tolstoy’s story entitled “The Story of My Childhood” was first published in the Sovremennik magazine in 1852, the author sent a dissatisfied letter to the editor

a letter where he wrote: “Who cares about history my childhood?"1. Dostoevsky, of course, also studies the universal laws of the spiritual life of 20-year-old Arkady, taking the example of a wounded soul, offended from birth, who through the years carries this offense against his father, his origins and the whole world in general. There are many such children at any time, and Dostoevsky is interested in the “history of the human soul,” using the example of which he can better study the main question for him - about the nature of good and evil in man, about the innate duality of each person. For a detailed analysis of evil and sin in man, the writer sharpens many points, showing the obviously wounded by life, distorted, “angry” soul of a teenager, in which, however, there lives a sincere craving for the bright and good. Despite all the different approaches of writers to depicting the history of the soul of a growing person, they are united, in our opinion, by one most important moral guideline - the search for the spiritual foundations of personal development, moral support, without which a person will be absolutely lost in the complex world of good and evil. In many aspects, both writers agree, for example, recognizing the primary importance of the authority of parents, a family atmosphere, and a sense of belonging to the life of their people.

Among the huge number of literary works on the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, there are also comparative studies. Thus, D.S. Merezhkovsky already compared two geniuses, both bringing them closer and dividing them. In the famous work “L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky” (1902), he wrote: “In Russian literature there are no writers more internally close and at the same time more opposed to each other than Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy” [Merezhkovsky 2000: 42 ]. Analyzing Tolstoy’s trilogy, Merezhkovsky notes a certain duality of consciousness of the main character and explains this by the fact that the author himself is “a weak, lost, painfully divided person, like all the people of his time” [Merezhkovsky 2000: 55].

The author also notes that already in this first work a distinctive feature of Tolstoy’s talent appeared: a strict analysis and moral assessment of his thoughts and actions, without which, obviously, it is impossible to imagine a full-fledged personality: “In any case, he judges himself and his adolescent thoughts, which calls his “philosophies”, with such rigor and honesty in this first work, with which he later never judged himself even on the famous, so searingly repentant and self-flagellation pages of “Confession” [Merezhkovsky 2000: 15-16]. In Tolstoy, according to Merezhkovsky, two principles are combined: Christian and pagan, and the latter clearly predominates, and Merezhkovsky calls the writer “a seer of the flesh,” and further comparing Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, writes: “Such are they in their eternal contradiction and eternal unity, - ...a seer of the flesh, Leo Tolstoy, a seer of the spirit, Dostoevsky; one striving for the spiritualization of the flesh, the other for the embodiment of the spirit” [Merezhkovsky 2000: 187]. Dostoevsky, according to Merezhkovsky, looked into the “abyss of the spirit” like no one else and saw that “this depth has no bottom” [Merezhkovsky 2000: 187]. Although there is a certain schematicism in Merezhkovsky’s approach (after all, the pagan principle is also present in Dostoevsky’s heroes and sometimes even this is more pronounced than in Tolstoy’s heroes, and Prince Andrei, for example, can hardly be called the embodiment of the carnal element of life), still in his In his bright work, the author caught the main fundamental difference between the artistic worlds of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: showing the unity and struggle of the physical and spiritual in man, Tolstoy strives for balance in the depiction of these principles, while Dostoevsky delves into the spheres of thought, the human spirit, while emphasizing the darkest of his manifestations. This difference is fully manifested in the comparison of Tolstoy’s trilogy with the novel “The Adolescent”.

V.V. Veresaev contrasts Tolstoy and Dostoevsky even more categorically in the famous book “Living Life” (1910). The chapter on Dostoevsky is called “Man is Damned.” The researcher notes that Dostoevsky’s heroes, in particular the Teenager, are incapable of loving people, humanity (The Teenager says that he “grew up in the corner”2 and most of all wants to “go into his shell,” but here are Versilov’s words: “In my opinion, man is created with the physical impossibility of loving his neighbor,” etc.), the devil is firmly entrenched in their souls and controls them, anger, the darkest principles prevail in people. And the main reason for this: impending death and fear of destruction, disbelief in God: “Without God it is not only impossible to love humanity, without God life is completely impossible” [Veresaev 1978: 276]. The researcher correctly notices all the painful distortions in the souls of Dostoevsky’s heroes, but at the same time focuses on the analysis of these distortions, but in almost every novel of the writer there are heroes who have found both God and the inner harmony of the soul and serve as a moral beacon for the “lost” characters. In the novel “Teenager”, this is, first of all, a man of the people - Makar Ivanovich, without whom Arkady’s upbringing would have had different results.

Veresaev’s chapter on Tolstoy’s work is called “Long live the whole world!” In contrast to Dostoevsky’s heroes, who tend to hide in a corner, Tolstoy’s heroes feel their unity with the world, even if they are alone in nature (like Nikolai Irtenyev in the forest in the chapter “Youth”). While Dostoevsky’s heroes speculate and try to rationally justify the need to “love people, be moral and noble,” Tolstoy’s heroes simply live and enjoy life, according to Veresaev’s thoughts. “Tolstoy generally treats reason with the deepest distrust,” writes the author [Veresaev 1988: 339]. In a certain sense, this is fair, but aren’t deep reflections and philosophizing a distinctive feature of the hero of “Adolescence” and “Youth”? Yes, it is impossible to comprehend life only with reason, but at the same time N. Irtenyev is one of the most reflective heroes of Russian literature, and he is very intense

comprehends everything that happens around him. Trust in nature and life is what holds Tolstoy’s heroes and gives them strength, since Tolstoy, unlike Dostoevsky, does not see evil in nature, he believes in its wisdom and benevolence towards man: “Nature leads man wisely, lovingly and tenderly according to his life path”... And even more: “God is life, and life is God... Dostoevsky says: find God, and life will come by itself. Tolstoy says: find life, and God will come of his own accord. Dostoevsky says: the absence of life is from godlessness, Tolstoy says: godlessness is from the absence of life” [Veresaev 1988: 463]. We cannot agree with the researcher that Tolstoy never had a “mystical horror” before death, like Dostoevsky’s heroes, because the theme of death is one of the most important in Tolstoy, starting with the chapter “Grief” in the story “Childhood.” And the absolute cult of life, supposedly taking place in Tolstoy’s work, leads to the ideal of the natural man, which in the trilogy, in particular, manifests itself only during certain periods of the spiritual growth of the protagonist (in Nikolenka’s childhood, moments in his youth). In general, in Veresaev’s book the emphasis is placed on the differences in the approach to man between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, while the writers had much in common on this issue.

The article by L.S. Drobat “On Dostoevsky’s novel “The Teenager” and Tolstoy’s trilogy” contains a comparative analysis of the works of the two writers. The author of the article claims that when starting to write the novel “The Teenager,” Dostoevsky wanted to create a story of a person growing up in real Russian reality, and not in the mythical one that was depicted in Tolstoy’s trilogy. Dostoevsky does not see in his contemporary world those foundations and traditions that existed during the period described by Tolstoy; on the contrary, he finds that “already many such... Russian tribal families with uncontrollable force are moving en masse into random families and merging with them in general disorder and chaos." Dostoevsky’s hero, unlike Nikolenka Irtenyev, was not given “neither an established way of life” nor the “warmth of family relations” of a patriarchal family in his childhood. And therefore, the lack of “connection with “ancestral legends” makes Arkady’s memories fragmentary and harsh” [Drobat 1984: 73]. As Drobat notes, both Arkady and Nikolenka have bad inclinations, for example, vanity, pride (although their manifestations are different and depend on the environment, era, and personality traits). It is important that, despite the difference in eras and classes described by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, the authors equally see in the personality of their heroes resistance to the bad influences of the environment, a healthy moral core that can keep them from the harmful influences of the outside world, i.e. .e. the author of the article emphasizes the humanistic attitude of both writers towards man, faith in him, despite all his errors and vices. Overall, Drobat's article contains many valuable thoughts and deep observations on the topic of interest to us.

We find a very deep analysis of the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (in their comparison) in the book by G.D. Kurlyandskaya “The moral ideal of the heroes of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky.” The author carefully studies the understanding of man and the method of depicting his spiritual world in all its contradictions by two writers. The researcher writes that Tolstoy, of course, learned the lessons of J.J. Rousseau about the good principles of human nature and the harmful influence of civilization on human upbringing, but the writer “did not limit himself to Rousseauian achievements in the interpretation of the human personality,” but managed not only to “deepen the artistic tradition of Enlightenment thought,” but also “to raise it to a qualitatively new level, to say a new word in the depiction of man in his most complex relationship with history and nature” [Kurlyandskaya 1988: 13].

“Enlightenment tendencies in the work of L.N. Tolstoy, associated with the opposition of nature, the unconditionally positive essence of the depravity of the social system, distorting it, are defeated by a dialectical understanding of the inner life of man,” the author rightly writes [Kurlyandskaya 1988: 24]. Tolstoy, like no one before him, was able to show how complex the process of growth and formation of personality is, how ambiguous are all the influences on it - both external and emanating from the depths of the soul of the person himself: “In the experiences of Tolstoy’s hero, everything is dialectically complex and intertwined. Evil in a person cannot be reduced only to the influence of a vicious social environment. Evil and good do not exist in mechanical divisions and contrasts; “dialectics of the soul” consists of depicting subtle and subtle transitions between them... For example, the psychological states of Nikolenka Irtenyev were distinguished by... an interweaving of contradictory internal stimuli. The desire to improve morally imperceptibly... overflowed into narcissism... One way or another, this “bodily”, personal introduces egoistic shades into the highest states of the soul” [Kurlyandskaya 1988: 25]. And the main problem for a person’s spiritual development lies in his individual limitations on earth; according to Tolstoy the philosopher, egoism prevents one from becoming completely spiritually free. And a person’s whole life, in essence, is an oscillation “between polar extremes: the sacrificial impulse of merging with others” and “the self-loving consciousness of one’s worth.” At the same time, as the researcher notes, Tolstoy firmly believes in the ability of a person to overcome the “physical”, narrow personal and grow to universal values. Comparing the works of writers, Kurlyandskaya notes that, like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky develops the teachings of the Enlightenment and “turns to a dialectical understanding of the complexity and inconsistency of human nature itself. Good and evil are not external forces, they are rooted in the very nature of man and sometimes inseparably merge with each other, while remaining opposites” [Kurlyandskaya 1988: 59]. Just like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky understood the dual nature of man (spiritual and material at the same time). Evil is hidden very deeply in a person, and often he gives himself over to the elements of evil with pleasure, but then he repents and stigmatizes himself all the more energetically, sometimes even exaggerating his sins. But in the main thing, as the author of the work writes, “it is the recognition of the law of life as the law of love that Dostoevsky closes with Tolstoy” [Kurlyandskaya 1988: 63]. These reasonings and discoveries of the author are also important for the topic of personality education, because it reveals how writers understood human nature, including the nature of a child. Dostoevsky depicts “the struggle of opposing principles in the personality of the hero” (and the teenager too), who reaches the last line, but does not lose the ability to be reborn thanks to his free spiritual essence. Thus, the author writes, both writers believe, in spite of everything, in the final victory of the good principles in man. Kurlyandskaya makes deep conclusions and discoveries regarding the psychologism of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, their understanding of the spiritual development of man, mainly on the basis of such novels as “War and Peace”, “Crime and Punishment”, “Idiot”, which depict adults (although and young) heroes. And although Kurlyandskaya’s discoveries are quite applicable to Tolstoy’s trilogy and the novel “The Teenager,” the question of depicting the process of a person’s growing up and age-related changes in his soul remains beyond the scope of research. Also, the author does not consider the topic of the role of the educator, a person who is a moral authority for the young hero, which, in our opinion, is of extreme importance in childhood and adolescence.

G.S. Pomerants in the book “Openness to the Abyss: Meetings with Dostoevsky” makes a rather bold comparison of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, who, from the author’s point of view, are united in their rejection of civilization, “based on the atomism of the individual, which has replaced the feelings that bind people into a family , society, people, dry egoistic calculation, smelling of pure waste" [Pomerantz 2003: 42]. Moreover, according to the author, the favorite heroes of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are very similar, they are distinguished only by the conditions in which they were formed: the thinking hero of Tolstoy, for example, Nikolai Irtenyev, is the same “underground” man of Dostoevsky, but “raised in preferential conditions” , and Dostoevsky’s hero is Nikolai Irtenyev, “transported to extremely unfavorable conditions,” which “strained” his nerves, leading him “to chronic intellectual hysteria” [Pomerantz 2003: 21]. And the difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is only in their different attitudes towards the same, relatively speaking, “underground man”: if Tolstoy believes that his hero can return to his true rational and good nature, then Dostoevsky is rather interested in how one A funny person can “corrupt all of humanity.” In other words, Tolstoy focuses on the good beginning in man, and Dostoevsky examines the evil in human nature with a magnifying glass, although the heroes of both writers themselves are very similar. The author of the book even calls Dostoevsky’s talent “cruel”, following other researchers, since Dostoevsky exaggerates evil in order to better examine it, mercilessly dissecting the human soul. And yet it seems that Dostoevsky has not so much a “cruel” as a compassionate talent: after all, revealing the evil in human nature, he sacredly believes in the victory of the good principle of the soul. In our opinion, the author of the work is right in many respects, although such a rapprochement between the heroes of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky still looks somewhat conventional: the main thing that distinguishes Tolstoy’s heroes is their rootedness in their cultural environment and the harmonious balance of the intellectual and emotional spheres of the individual, as well as the indispensable closeness to folk soil (the image of Natalya Savishna in the trilogy). The author of the work himself further notes that the fundamental difference between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky is that Dostoevsky “called to the soil,” but this “soil” was not “an established patriarchal life” (like Tolstoy), but “the inner layer of the human soul, which the saints of the Middle Ages discovered within themselves” [Pomerantz: 2003: 43]. Continuing this comparison, the author notes that Tolstoy’s novel is similar to a “patriarchal aristocratic family”, where “everything is in its place, there is a certain order in everything” [Pomerantz: 2003: 54], and Tolstoy’s heroes are healthy characters, they follow in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers. And in Dostoevsky’s novels, representatives of very different classes can meet in the same living room, because... all “class boundaries have collapsed,” and tradition does not determine people’s lives. And, of course, one cannot help but recognize the author’s conclusion at the end of the chapter as correct: “For both, only in man himself is the only complete human truth” [Pomerantz: 2003: 60].

In one of the works of recent years, the article by I.N. Kartashov “Problems of education in the creative consciousness of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky,” it is noted that in recent years the work of both writers “is increasingly becoming the subject of close pedagogical interest.” [Kartashov 2003:377]. The author notes that the heroes of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are “intellectuals capable of deeply feeling,” including what is moral and what is not. In other words, the development of feelings and thinking increases the chances of correctly navigating the world of moral values, therefore the complex spiritual world of the heroes is the focus of the authors’ attention. Both writers describe in detail the emotional sphere of the child, because It is this area that plays a decisive role in the development of thinking and the human psyche. And if Nikolenka grows up in an atmosphere that is generally psychologically comfortable in childhood, then Arkady has a lack of communication with both his family and peers, which leads to the formation of an extremely closed, individualistic character. As has already been established, “a lack of communication is one of the most important causes of delays and deviations in the mental development of a child” [Kon 1982: 29].

Both writers, at the same time, “reserved to a person the right to freely choose between good and evil” [Kartashov 2003: 376], and this showed their special respect for a person, confidence in his ability to understand the complexities of this world himself. It can be noted that the author of the study agrees with predecessors who dealt with this problem in the most important conclusion: in the matter of moral choice, a special role is played by “conscience, in the understanding of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, an intuitive evaluative criterion that communicates with God, truth” [Kartashov 2003: 379]. One cannot but agree with this conclusion of the author of the work.

The trilogy of Leo Tolstoy has been carefully studied, especially in Soviet literary criticism. For example, in the book by Chuprina I.V. “L. Tolstoy’s trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence” and “Youth” provides a detailed analysis of Tolstoy’s first work: its concept, ideological and artistic concept, place in literary criticism of that time. The author notes that Tolstoy’s main task during the period of work on the trilogy was to show “the process of moral formation of personality” [Chuprina 1961: 79]. Tolstoy, according to the researcher, recognizes in a person a “originally good beginning”, so strong “to resist distorting factors and, ultimately, win” [Chuprina 1961: 74]. The author’s main attention “is directed inside the developing and changing human soul, to its two opposite sides: good and everything that interferes with it. The struggle of these opposite sides in a person constitutes the main conflict of the work” [Chuprina 1961: 83]. In the first part of the trilogy, the story “Childhood,” Tolstoy shows the most “positive phase” of development, “when natural goodness prevails,” Nikolenka’s soul is lovingly open to the whole world; in adolescence, the “deep, good spiritual essence” is eclipsed by superficial environmental influences and personal egoism; and in youth, a moral desire to improve awakens, which begins to deny the false upper layer of the soul. In other words, the semantic center of the trilogy is “a depiction of the internal evolution of a developing personality, moreover, this means first the distortion of the original good essence and then its revival” [Chuprina 1961: 73]. Chuprina rightly notes that Tolstoy, when deciding the issue of personality formation, attaches great importance to the environment in which it occurs; in the trilogy this influence is mainly negative, but in Nikolai’s soul there constantly lives a “natural moral feeling”, which “correctly shows him good and evil " One cannot but agree with the researcher that Tolstoy shows the process of distortion of the natural good essence of a person under the influence of external (environment) and internal (vanity, selfishness) factors. But this would not be the complete truth. The environment, external influences for Tolstoy are not only something harmful, extraneous in the process of personality formation, the external world, with all its imperfections, is also the most valuable experience for the maturing soul, and it enriches it with the knowledge of good and evil.

As for the novel “The Teenager,” according to researchers of his work, in general, this work of Dostoevsky is the least studied and appreciated. I would like to note the article by Bursov B. “Teenager - a novel of education”, which, in our opinion, contains many interesting discoveries. Bursov writes about the “nobility” and “sublimity” of Arkady’s nature, his sensitivity to all moral issues: “Perhaps world literature does not know another hero who would have a soul so sensitive to all injustice and so often offended” [Bursov 1971: 66 ]. It seems, however, that the hero of Tolstoy’s trilogy has an equally sensitive soul. The author of the article notes that Dostoevsky is interested in the process of life itself in the novel, and not the result (a kind of “dialectics of life”), Dostoevsky depicts life “not as the past, but as what is happening,” and this is the peculiarity of his style [Bursov 1971: 67] . (And here, for my part, I would like to note a certain parallel with Tolstoy’s creative method, his “dialectics of the soul,” discovered by Chernyshevsky). Comparing Dostoevsky’s novel with the classic European “novel of education” of the 18th-19th centuries (for example, “The School Years of Wilhelm Meister Goethe”), the author of the article notes that this genre did not take root in Russian literature, and our writers depicted not only the spiritual formation of the hero, but also tied his path to the historical era and always expressed hope for the victory of the good in man. Thus, Bursov writes: “In general, in Dostoevsky’s last two novels, “The Adolescent and The Brothers Karamazov,” the forces of good and light rush out much more clearly and more persistently than before” [Bursov 1971: 65]. Analyzing the image of Versilov, the author notes that he is “a confused man who does not know the way”, like Arkady himself. Both heroes are subject to constant delusions and mistakes. “Versilov is the personification of disorder - the main theme and idea of the novel,” notes Bursov [Bursov 1971: 70]. In this chaos of the novel, Arkady often gets lost, he rushes from his father (the bearer of the noble idea) to Makar Dolgoruky (the guardian of national values) and as a result is enriched by the wisdom of both: “The teenager has no choice but... to find his own path, to somehow connect the experience of his two fathers - Andrei Petrovich Versilov and Makar Ivanovich Dolgoruky,” the researcher concludes [Bursov 1971: 71]. Bursov's work is one of the most profound, in our opinion, but it is devoted to only one novel - “Teenager”.

Semenov E.I. in the work “Dostoevsky’s Novel “Teenager”” notes that in the Russian realistic novel of the 19th century the achievements of the “novel of education” of the 18th-19th centuries were “inherited and creatively rethought.” (“The Years of the Study of Wilhelm Meister” by Goethe (1796); “Emile, or on Education” by J. J. Rousseau (1762); “David Copperfield” by Dickens (1849); “Education of the Sentiments” by Flaubert (1869) and especially the faith of European writers into man as the creator of his own destiny, into the possibility of improving human nature, social circumstances. In Tolstoy’s work, the enlightenment nature of man appeared not as an embodied ideal, but as “an ever-flowing, living, never-ending, non-stop process of becoming a personality, improving oneself in a changing world” [ Semyonov 1979: 50].

Many interesting articles about Dostoevsky’s novel are contained in the collection “F. M. Dostoevsky’s Novel “Teenager”: Reading Possibilities,” where the following fair thought is expressed: “The writer found the courage to tell the truth and express it in an adequate artistic form (chaos-like, but not chaotic)… The reader was not ready for such a “gift” [Novel “Teenager”: reading opportunities 2003: 6].

V.A. Viktorovich, in his article “The Novel of Knowledge and Faith,” notes that Dostoevsky’s contemporary criticism failed to read the novel deeply, only Skabichevsky had a hunch that this chaos in the novel is a reflection of chaotic reality. The researcher notes that all the heroes in one way or another bear the imprint of duality, a moral split personality, this quality is especially clearly manifested in Versilov and Arkady, who has the “soul of a spider”, while sincerely craving “pretty”. Dostoevsky’s goal, according to the author, in spite of everything, is “to believe in the image of God contained in man” [Viktorovich 2003: 27]. At the same time, the author of the article does not develop the idea of how to achieve this “goodness”, what, besides faith in a person, can help on this path. N.S. Izmestieva in the article “The Creative Word” in the novel “Teenager”

offers a rather original reading of the novel. According to the author, at the beginning of the novel, Arkady is nothing more than a puppet in the wrong hands, they play with him without taking him seriously as a person. From this external world, which resembles a theater, the hero goes into his sacred inner world and creates his own Universe with the help of words. “The tragedy of the doll ends in unconsciousness. The illness completely frees the hero from the power of the label and marks the transition to a different type of reality” [Izmestyeva 2003:162]. The appearance of Makar heals Arkady and is an illustration of the parable of the shepherd and the lost sheep, but the most important event still occurs in connection with the hero’s creation of his inner world through the spiritual word, which is his notes about the history of his own soul. One can hardly agree that at the beginning of the novel Arkady “behaves like... a jester, a fool” and “they dress him up like a doll and play with him,” but the conclusion about the importance for Dostoevsky of such a hero’s activity as writing is certainly valuable. notes, that is, a close look deep into the soul and attempts to understand it.

In the book “Literary Preface: Issues of History and Poetics” Lazarescu O.G. writes about the special importance for Tolstoy of the moral side of art, and this is manifested even in the artistic form itself, the genre. According to the author, Tolstoy shows the path of “spiritual trials” of a “hero changing beyond recognition” [Lazarescu 2007: 306]. The author of the work analyzes the features of the novel “War and Peace,” but the ideas expressed are directly related to the trilogy, where “the ideal of distinguishing between good and evil” is the semantic core of the work. As the researcher further notes, in Dostoevsky’s novel “The Teenager,” the preface “appears not only as a metaphor for the “extra” or “past,” but as a structural part of the novel itself” [Lazarescu 2007: 310], and the work itself tells about the preliminary period, which is as if a preface to the beginning of a new real era in the hero’s life.

“The preface in this new genre is... a way of creating new forms” [Lazarescu 2007: 311] of beauty and order, while Dostoevsky “problematized the very understanding of completeness,” which has become very conventional and rather conveys the “spirit of the times.” For our topic, of particular interest is the author’s idea that the novel “Teenager” “is built on the combination, synchronization and interchange of various discourses: fact and idea, which the hero is obsessed with and which replaces the fact for him; “notes” about life and life itself, experienced as writing a novel... Such a combination introduces new coordinates into the novel discourse, opening up new possibilities for the hybridization of the novel genre” [Lazarescu 2007: 310]. This combination of different discourses also conveys the “spirit of the times,” so the need to describe one’s life in a teenager does not arise by chance; this craving for order and “prettiness” also carries an educational meaning.

One of the latest works on Dostoevsky’s work is the dissertation of F.V. Makarichev. “Artistic individualology in the poetics of F. M. Dostoevsky,” in which the author proposes a new approach to the study of the system of images of Dostoevsky’s novels. Makarichev takes a critical approach to the hitherto existing typological approach in the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s images; he states: “A whole series of traditionally identified “types” (ideologist, double, holy fool, hanger-on, etc.) exhibit the properties of being combined in one image of the hero, so that the typological boundaries between them are blurred..." [Makarichev 2017: 15]. Thus, in one image “in different plot conditions,” first one or another typical property comes to the fore. The images of Dostoevsky's heroes are distinguished, according to the author, by the dynamic synthetic properties and characteristics. The scientist sees in the novel “Teenager” an expression of the theme of “profiteering” in a simplified form - Arkady under Versilov and Makar, and the type of double in the novel is represented by the image of Versilov (“especially on the eve of the tragic split of his personality”). It seems, in our opinion, that the image of Arkady also bears the stamp of duality: the best qualities coexist in him (unselfishness, craving for communication, family instinct) and isolation, the desire to retreat into one’s own corner, even cynicism. At the same time, the author of the study notes that often the role of a hero, for example, a “holy fool,” is inherent in almost all significant characters in Dostoevsky’s novels, and in the scenes of “strains” and “kinks” there is always an element of foolishness. Here we can add on our own that this trait also exists in the image of Arkady, who plays the fool, for example, in the Tushara boarding house.

The researcher sees two poles in the system of images of Dostoevsky’s novels, between which all the characters are located: a rationalist, a skeptic (for example, Versilov) and a believer in the Divine principle (Makar).

It is of interest to analyze the image of Versilov, which, according to the author of the work, combines two opposing ideas: Westernism and Slavophilism, which is expressed in Versilov’s special talent for acting. Moreover, Versilov considers the “ability to introduce himself” as a characteristic feature of the nobility, thereby revealing his moral inferiority, a tragic split. Thus, we can continue this thought in the light of our topic: Dostoevsky shows how difficult it is for the younger generation to make a decision in life if the “fathers” themselves lack a coherent worldview. Type kills the personality, as the author of the work believes, but Dostoevsky’s heroic images are capable of “giving themselves over to the different elements of human nature” [Makarichev 2017: 41], they are synthetic and multifunctional. Makarichev's work undoubtedly deserves great attention and study by all who are interested in Dostoevsky's poetics.

In this work, the author, of course, relies on all the discoveries that were made in the works of earlier researchers of the works of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. At the same time, an attempt will be made to develop and concretize ideas regarding the topic of personality education in the works of the writers under consideration. In this case, the emphasis will be on the fact that Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, having deeply studied psychology and issues of moral development, came to similar conclusions about the ways of educating a perfect person, but expressed this differently in their works.

Subject this work is relevant at the present time, since great writers have touched upon the deep issues of personality education, and their discoveries in this area will always be in demand by society. The prosperous Irtenyev family and the “random” family in Dostoevsky’s novel are equally relevant for our time, since in modern realities such families can be found to one degree or another.

Object of study This work contains two classic works of Russian literature on the topic of personality education, in which this issue is explored in great detail: L.N. Tolstoy’s trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" and F.M. Dostoevsky's novel "Teenager".

Subject of research This work is the problematic of these works: the stages and paths of personality development, factors influencing the formation of character, the moral ideal of a person in the understanding and depiction of L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky, artistic techniques for revealing this topic.

Target of this work: to find out what was common in solving the topic of education by L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky and what distinguishes them, as well as what ideas of the authors may be in demand at present in the education of the personality of a modern person.

To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks: 1) study scientific literature on this topic; 2) summarize the ideas and scientific discoveries of literary scholars who have studied this topic; 3) determine the influence of the environment on the formation of personality in the novels of two writers; 4) determine ways to achieve the ideal of a perfect person through an analysis of the stages of personality development in selected novels.

Novelty of the research lies in the primary attention to what unites the two writers on the issue of personality education, and how their discoveries can be used in our time.

Goals And tasks research has determined the following work structure: this work includes introduction, two chapters And conclusion. Chapterfirst contains a comparison of writers' positions on the issue of the influence of the environment on the formation of personality, the relationship between external (social) and internal ("work of the soul") factors of life in the formation of a person, the importance of family for a child, his social status on

example of the works studied in the work.

Chapter two examines such a problem as the idea of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky about what a perfect person is, whether it is possible to become one and how to achieve this in a socially unjust society.

At the end of the work is attached list of used literature.

Chapter 1. Man and the world: the influence of the environment on the education of the individual

1.1 Stages of human maturation

L.N. Tolstoy paid special attention to the child all his life and was himself an innovative teacher, the author of pedagogical articles and new teaching methods (while teaching at the Yasnaya Polyana school). Tolstoy wrote: “In all centuries and among all people, the child seems to be a model of innocence, sinlessness, goodness, truth and beauty. Man will be born perfect - there is a great word spoken by Rousseau, and this word, like a stone, will remain solid and true.” And although the writer subsequently complicated his attitude to Rousseau’s concept, in Tolstoy’s work the child, in many ways, remained the standard of moral purity and goodness. Therefore, it is deeply symbolic that the writer’s first published work is devoted to the theme of childhood: the first part of the trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" was published in the 9th issue of the Sovremennik magazine for 1852, when the author was 24 years old. And in his later years, when creating “Memoirs” (1901), Tolstoy noted that from birth to 14 years of age he experienced “an innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood,” followed by “a terrible 20-year period... of serving ambition and vanity.” . It is these years from 10 to 16 years (partially) that are described in Tolstoy’s trilogy. Moreover, the author was interested, first of all, not in the external events of the hero’s life, but in his inner world, “the history of the human soul” during the period of its growing up. Such an artistic depiction of the inner world of a small person was a new word in literature. As is known, this gave the critic Chernyshevsky, in an article about Tolstoy’s early works, the basis to define the new artistic method of the novice writer as “dialectics of the soul,” that is, a description of “the mental process itself” [Chernyshevsky 1978: 516], its forms, its laws. The reader first saw the world through the eyes of a 10-year-old child, Nikolai Irtenyev - a sensitive, complex, morally gifted person. Tolstoy was able to show the intrinsic value of the child’s spiritual world, the uniqueness of his child’s view of the world, and even in some ways his superiority over adults. It seems that Tolstoy could rightfully say: “When I wrote “Childhood,” it seemed to me that before me no one had ever felt and depicted all the charm and poetry of childhood” (1908). The deep psychological essence of this period of a person’s life, regardless of the environment, is what is most important for the author of the trilogy. It is interesting that in the original edition of the story “Childhood” (draft “Four Epochs of Development” - summer 1851), the main character is the illegitimate son of a certain princess, who explains his misfortunes by “chance”, i.e. external circumstances, but later Tolstoy moves away from this plan and the theme of “environment” manifests itself in a different way. The main thing in the trilogy is the “history of the soul” in its deep processes and the universal human aspects in the psychology of the child.

Of course, Tolstoy's hero Nikolai Irtenyev is shown as a socially determined character. And all his sensitivity fits into the culture of the aristocratic family where he was born and growing up, although the author emphasizes the universality of the laws of childhood. As a realist writer, Tolstoy accurately reflects the habits, customs, culture of precisely the circle to which he himself belonged, and therefore, even in childhood, when the child is ready to love the whole world, starting from the ants in the forest, the social, class principle is somehow manifested in German For example, in the chapter “Natalya Savishna” a scene of Nikolenka’s resentment towards the kind old lady is described: “Natalya Savishna, just Natalia, speaks you to me and also hits me in the face with a wet tablecloth, like a yard boy. No, this is terrible! . In these thoughts the master is already clearly visible, although the hero is only 10 years old! Thus, as Kurlyandskaya writes, the spiritual basis of life lying in the depths of the “I”, which constitutes the essence of man, appears conditioned, historically, socially determined” [Kurlyandskaya 1988: 94]. But still, this “free spiritual essence” takes its toll in this scene: first Nikolenka cries “out of anger,” and then, after reconciliation with the old woman, “tears flowed even more abundantly, but no longer from anger, but from love and shame.” Thus, depicting the inner world of the hero, the author clearly records all external influences on the soul of Nikolenka the child and differentiates purely psychological, social and age-related motives of feelings and experiences. If we compare all parts of the trilogy in this aspect, then it is in the story “Childhood” that the hero is most autonomous and happy in his children’s world, because he is less able to comprehend external events. His childishness protects his serene inner world from the invasion of everything negative, and if it nevertheless penetrates his soul, it does not leave deep traces. Thus, the negative effect of dissatisfaction with Karl Ivanovich in Chapter 1, failure to hunt, separation from mother, etc. quickly passes. Even the death of his mother truly frightened Nikolenka only when he heard the cry of horror of a peasant girl who saw the face of her late mother in the coffin: “... and the thought that... the face of the one I loved more than anything in the world could excite horror, as if for the first time she revealed to me the bitter truth and filled my soul with despair.” Characterizing the era of childhood, Tolstoy notes those features that make it happy, despite any external events. This is, first of all, the inner mood of a child for whom “the two best virtues - innocent gaiety and the boundless need for love - were the only motivations in life.” Of course, the childhood of a noble boy in a relatively prosperous family should be like this, but still the internal attitude towards love for everything (“You will also pray that God will give happiness to everyone, so that everyone will be happy...”) makes the era of childhood the best, in my opinion Tolstoy, stage of life.

1.2 Family types

Of great importance, at the same time, is the environment of adults, which creates the conditions for the manifestation of these best childhood personality traits. In the story, these are, first of all, members of Nikolenka’s family, who do the most important thing for him - they love him and evoke a reciprocal feeling in him: mummy, Natalya Savishna, Karl Ivanovich, etc. The central image in this series is, of course, the image of mother Natalya Nikolaevna Irteneva. It is interesting that Tolstoy himself lost his mother early: he was one and a half years old when Maria Nikolaevna died, and Tolstoy did not remember her, and in the story “Childhood” the image of the mother is, of course, the main moral and semantic center, the core on which a prosperous life rests. spiritually, the world of a child. Thus, Tolstoy emphasizes the idea that without a mother there cannot be a truly full-fledged, happy childhood, and, creating a picture of Nikolenka’s ideal world in the first part of the trilogy, Tolstoy deviates from autobiographical truth and describes the death of his mother when the main character is already 10 years old. The presence of a loving mother is an indispensable condition for the formation of a healthy personality of a child; her love (even in the form of memories, ideas about her, if she passed away early) will then accompany the person throughout his life and will always be an invisible support in the psychological sense. It is noteworthy that Tolstoy himself also manifested this even in the last years of his life. Here is Tolstoy’s entry (he is 78 years old!) dated March 10, 1906 about the desire to “cling to a loving, compassionate being and... be consoled”: “Yes, she is my highest idea of pure love... earthly, warm, maternal... you, mamma, you caress me. It's all crazy, but it's all true." And in “Memoirs,” written in his later years, Tolstoy paints the following image of his mother: “She seemed to me such a high, pure, spiritual being that often (in the middle period of my life) while struggling with the temptations that beset me, I prayed to her soul , asking her to help me, and this prayer always helped me."

No less significant is the image of Natalya Savishna, who serves as a nanny, grandmother, a very loving person close to Nikolenka. Mama and Natalya Savishna are the two closest images to Nikolenka, and it is they who create that morally healthy atmosphere, which is a solid psychological foundation for the rest of her life. It is no coincidence that the last chapter of the story “Childhood” is devoted to memories of Natalya Savishna and mother and a description of the death of the old woman, who, as the author writes, “had such a strong and beneficial influence on my direction and development of sensitivity.” We can say that Nikolenka was lucky in his childhood to see before him such examples of virtue as Natalya Savishna, his mother, and it was the real example and the bright, warm moments he experienced that educated his soul and gave him moral strength for moral guidelines in his future life. “Her whole life was pure, selfless love and selflessness,” writes the author about Natalya Savishna. To be fair, such people cannot be met very often in life, so it is impossible to hope that every person will be as lucky in childhood as Nikolenka. The main character himself was able to appreciate the soul of Natalya Savishna, having already become an adult, and in childhood, as Tolstoy writes, “it never occurred to me what a rare, wonderful creature this old woman was.” As N.Yu. Belyanin rightly writes, “the formation of Nikolenka as a person under the influence of Karal Ivanovich, Natalya Savishna, maman, will open up the prospect of the harmony of the universe” [Belyanin 2003: 355]. It is impossible not to notice that of particular importance for the upbringing of Nikolenka’s healthy personality is the fact that both Mama and Natalya Savishna are described as deeply religious personalities. Meekness, humility, patience and selflessness - such virtues distinguish them both. It is no coincidence that an entire chapter of “Grisha” is dedicated to the holy fool “great Christian,” whose faith was so strong, and the prayer that the children overheard made such a strong impression on Nikolenka that memories of him, as Tolstoy writes, “will never die in my heart.” memory." The theme of the role of religion in education is one of the main ones in the trilogy, and therefore it is no coincidence that in the story “Youth”, which describes the revival of the soul of the main character, there are chapters “Confession”, “Trip to the Monastery”, in which the author returns to the theme of faith and repentance , Christian humility. As a child, Nikolenka saw living examples of truly Christian behavior: his mother, Natalya Savishna, Grisha, and he will keep these memories for the rest of his life. For Tolstoy, this topic is especially important, since in his old age he himself came to true religiosity (already consciously) and admitted that the faith of the common people helped him a lot in this. Analyzing the manifestation of religious feelings in different periods of growing up, Tolstoy wrote in the drafts for the novel “Four Epochs of Development”:

“The feeling of love for God and for one’s neighbors is strong in childhood; in adolescence, these feelings are drowned out by voluptuousness, arrogance and vanity; in youth, pride and a tendency to intellectualize; in youth, everyday experience revives these feelings.”

The extreme importance of family conditions in the formation of personality is noted by modern psychologist I.S. Kon: “There is practically not a single social or psychological aspect of the behavior of adolescents and young men that would not depend on their family conditions in the present or in the past” [Kon 1982: 77 ]. We can say that Nikolenka received in early childhood such a strong vaccination against evil and lies, which he will see in large quantities in the world, that he will no longer be able to get too seriously lost and morally fall, despite all the difficulties of life. As Belyanin writes, Nikolenka “brought out of life’s trials a harmony of worldview, which testifies to the rootedness of Christian virtues in his consciousness” [Belyanin 2003: 358]. So, everything that Nikolai received in childhood is so deeply rooted in him that it constitutes the essence of his soul and subconscious.

1. Introduction. A.K. Tolstoy as a playwright

Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875), a writer of bright and multifaceted talent, was distinguished throughout his career by his constant interest in historical topics. How organically history enters, for example, into Tolstoy’s lyrics can be seen from the poem, without which it is generally impossible to imagine this poet: “My bells, steppe flowers...” Of all the wildflowers, the poet chooses the bell - “bell-flower”; and what the poet hears in the ringing of bells is said in the initial version of the poem:

You are ringing about the past

Time is distant,

About everything that has bloomed,

What is there no more...

The secret of the originality and charm of this poem is how intimately and lyrically the historical theme is felt here.

Following this most popular poem, let us recall Tolstoy’s most significant prose work - the historical novel “Prince Silver”. The background to the creation of the novel is marked by an interesting detail: having turned (at the end of the 40s) to this topic, Tolstoy, apparently, initially tried to realize his plan in the form of a drama. Thus, a test of strength was made in the very field of creativity to which many years later the writer devoted himself entirely: historical drama. The mature artist devoted seven years of his life (1863 - 1869) to the creation that became the pinnacle of his work - a dramatic trilogy based on Russian history of the 16th century. Tolstoy turned to those times when the Russian state was shocked by internal cataclysms, when the ancient dynasty was cut short and Russia found itself on the threshold of the Time of Troubles. The image of this entire era - one of the most dramatic in Russian history - was captured by Tolstoy the playwright in his historical triptych, in three tragedies: “The Death of Ivan the Terrible”, “Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich” and “Tsar Boris”.

2. Main part. Historical trilogy by A.K. Tolstoy

2.1. Reasons for the author's appeal to Russian history of the 16th century

The trilogy is connected into a single whole not only by chronology - the sequence of three reigns - but also by the unity of problematics: in three different manifestations, the playwright presented a cross-cutting central idea, “the tragic idea of autocratic power” (in the words of the famous literary critic, academician N. Kotlyarevsky). This problem was objectively relevant in Russian society in the 00s of the 19th century, when the crisis of autocracy became so clear (after the Crimean War), and for Tolstoy personally it was acutely urgent. In conditions of intense ideological and political struggle, when the central event was the formation of revolutionary democratic ideology and aesthetics, Tolstoy’s position was very unique. He did not hide his rejection of the revolutionary democratic movement, seeing in it nothing but “nihilism” - and at the same time, taking advantage of his closeness to Emperor Alexander II, he stood up for the convicted Chernyshevsky; on the other hand, being an aristocrat by birth and way of thinking, Tolstoy was sharply critical of government circles and openly opposed autocratic despotism, the dominance of the bureaucracy, and censorship arbitrariness. Tolstoy’s ideology can be defined as an “aristocratic opposition” - and in it, the romantic idealization of the disappeared “aristocratic-knightly” forms of life is inseparable from his artistic nature, which did not find its ideals of freedom, love and beauty in modern reality. “Our entire administration and general system are a clear enemy of everything that is art, from poetry to the organization of streets” is a statement very characteristic of Tolstoy. The poet does not accept the bureaucratization of the Russian state system, he is depressed by the fragmentation and degeneration of the “monarchical principle”, he is sad about the disappearance of the “knightly principle” in public and private life, he is repulsed by unreasonableness, deformity, lawlessness, inertia in any of their manifestations - in a word, he the thirst for a harmonious structure of Russian life remains unsatisfied.

Rejection of modern reality, a keen sense of the crisis state of Russian statehood, reflections on the roots of the crisis and the fate of Russia in general - all this determined Tolstoy the playwright’s turn to Russian history of the 16th century, to three successive reigns: Ivan the Terrible, Fyodor and Boris Godunov.

2.2 Contrast between human and historical truth in the trilogy

Already from the names of the tragedies it is clear that Tolstoy’s focus is on the personalities of the three monarchs: not social conflicts, but the psychological springs of individual characters, with their inner passions, are the driving force of these historical tragedies. At the same time, Tolstoy’s artistic-historical method is characterized by the primacy of moral categories: he assessed historical events from the point of view of ethical laws, which seemed to him equally applicable to all times. The playwright was repeatedly pointed out to the “dissimilarity” of his characters with real historical figures; to this he responded (in a note entitled “Project for staging the tragedy “The Death of Ivan the Terrible”): “The poet... has only one duty: to be true to himself and to create characters so that they do not contradict themselves; human truth is his law; it is not bound by historical truth. If it fits into its shape, so much the better; doesn’t fit - he manages without her.” Contrasting “human” and “historical” truth, Tolstoy defended his right to evaluate any historical reality from the standpoint of universal moral meaning and to recreate this reality with the help of his “moral-psychological historicism.”

2.3 The concept of Russian history in the view of Tolstoy - the artist

To understand why the playwright chose the reign of Ivan the Terrible to begin his trilogy, we need to remember Tolstoy’s unique concept of Russian history as an artist.

Tolstoy repeatedly expressed his historical ideas, judgments, likes and dislikes in poetic form; but one of his ballads is, as it were, a “symbol of faith”, where the main idea of his peculiar “romantic historicism” is expressed. This ballad is “Someone else’s grief.” The lyrical hero of “Bells”, galloping on a horse in the expanse of the steppe, seems to be transformed here into a kind of conditional historical “Russian hero”: his free running is constrained by a dense forest, in which three uninvited riders sit behind him, personifying the ancient, but inescapable grief for Russia. These are “Yaroslav’s grief” (ancient Russian princely strife), “Tatar grief” (Mongol yoke) and “Ivan Vasilich’s grief” (the reign of Ivan the Terrible). For Tolstoy, the darkest event in Russian history is the Mongol yoke: it not only destroyed Ancient Rus' (bloodless by feudal strife), but also gave birth on Russian soil to those forms of autocratic despotism (most fully embodied in Ivan the Terrible), which distorted the essence of national life, as it developed in Ancient Rus'.

2.4 The main idea of the play “The Death of Ivan the Terrible”

The cruel and bloody despotism of Ivan the Terrible was for Tolstoy one of the three main evils of all Russian history; It is not surprising that the poet repeatedly turned to this era in his work (ballads “Vasily Shibanov”, “Prince Mikhailo Repnin”, “Staritsky Voivode”, the novel “Prince Serebryany”). When he began work on the tragedy “The Death of Ivan the Terrible” (it was created in 1803 - early 1804) and he needed numerous historical materials, their main source was the book, which for many years was the poet’s favorite reading, “History of the Russian State” Karamzin. “Excellent reason,” darkened by the cruel suspicion of the tyrant; deep passions and a strong will, caught in “servility to the most vile lusts” - this portrait of a “monster”, vividly and pathetically drawn by Karamzin, became a prototype for Tolstoy’s John. However, the playwright structured the material borrowed from Karamzin’s “History” in a very original way: the action takes place in the year of the tsar’s death (1584) - and to this year Tolstoy “pulled” and timed many events that actually happened both before and after this year. This was done primarily for the purpose of the most acute “psychologization” of the image of the main character. With this preference for “dramatic psychologism,” the “chronicle,” Tolstoy stood out sharply among contemporary playwrights who gravitated toward the genre of historical chronicle (which, in Tolstoy’s opinion, was not drama, but “history in dialogues”). In his dramatic practice, he defended the right to “deviate from history” for the sake of artistic and ideological tasks; and the justification for this free handling of historical facts was to be the internal ideological and artistic integrity of the work.

This integrity is present in the tragedy “The Death of Ivan the Terrible”. The most important dynastic event of the last years of the life of Ivan IV - the murder of the heir to the throne Ivan - the playwright transfers from 1581 to 1584; Moreover, he makes this event a kind of “prologue” to his tragedy. With this “last atrocity,” which exhausted “God’s long-suffering abyss,” begins the ominous “fall” of John, which ultimately reveals the terrible spectacle of the “collapse” of the entire state - the result of his insane tyranny. The entire construction of the tragedy is oriented, “aimed” at identifying this main idea, which in the finale is focused with some even “didacticism” (which is generally characteristic of the entire trilogy) in the words of boyar Zakharyin (the only “bright” character in this play): “This is the punishment of autocracy ! This is the outcome of our disintegration!” The playwright himself commented on this moral and political outcome of his tragedy, explaining its general idea in the “Project” of the production. Saying that Ivan the Terrible’s “jealous suspicion” and “unbridled passion” prompts him to destroy everything that could, in his opinion, harm his power (“the preservation and strengthening of which is the goal of his life”), the playwright summarized the result of his life as follows: tragedy: “...serving one exclusive idea, destroying everything that has a shadow of opposition or a shadow of superiority, which, in his opinion, is the same thing, at the end of his life he remains alone, without helpers, in the middle of a disordered state, defeated and humiliated by his enemy Batory, and dies, not taking with him even the consolation that his heir, the feeble-minded Fyodor, will be able to worthily fight the dangers bequeathed to him, the disasters caused and brought upon the earth by John himself through the very measures with which he dreamed of elevating and establish your throne."

The great Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was very fond of children and youth. In them he saw ideal people, not yet spoiled by the vices and troubles of life. This pure, pristine light illuminates the beginning of his famous trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth". The main character of the trilogy, Nikolenka Irtenyev, wakes up because Karl Ivanovich hit him with a firecracker and a fly fell on his head. This made the boy very angry, and he begins to analyze his mentor’s behavior in an aloof and cold manner. Even his robe, cap and tassel seem disgusting to Nikolenka. But Nikolenka is a very kind boy, and his attitude towards his mentor quickly changes for the better. The irritation of a suddenly awakened person passes, giving way to a more natural state of love and gratitude for the teacher for the boy.

The author himself acts here as a psychologist. He scrupulously examines the child's behavior at various points in his life. Another episode with Nikolenka is not externally connected with the first, but an internal psychological connection is discernible. Nikolenka returns from hunting and decides to draw everything he saw over the past day. But since he only had blue paint, he very vividly depicted a blue boy riding a blue horse and blue dogs. The boy is in a great mood, he admires his blue creations, but suddenly a thought occurs to him: are there blue hares? Having asked his father about this and received an affirmative answer, Nikolenka drew a blue hare, but turned it into a blue bush, and from the bush he made a blue tree, then instead of a tree - clouds, and so on. All this eventually angered him, and he tore up the drawings. Why was there irritation this time? After all, first the boy drew blue dogs, and he liked them. It's simple: when the boy surrendered to the creative process, without thinking about anything, no questions arose before him, but as soon as he began to explore the creative process, irritation immediately arose. Tolstoy seems to be saying that the spontaneity of a living feeling is always more harmonious than a cold, rational attitude towards life. Children are born with spontaneity, but as they grow older, many people lose this gift. Tolstoy often turns to the analysis of this moment. For example, when he describes children's games, a similar situation occurs: the children sat down on the ground and, imagining that they were sailing on a boat, began to “row”. Only Nikolenka’s brother Volodya sat motionless. When he was reprimanded, he said that this was all nonsense and that whether they waved their hands more or less, nothing would change. It seems that Volodya was right, but agreeing with him means ruining the whole game. The chapter ends like this: “If you really judge, then there will be no game. But there won’t be a game, what will be left then?” Indeed, cold reason shows that there are no blue hares, that sitting on the grass and waving your arms, you won’t swim anywhere, and Karl Ivanovich’s cap and robe are really not that attractive. But in love, kindness and fantasy there is truth that adorns our lives.

I noticed that Tolstoy’s little hero overcomes irritation with the world with his love for the people around him. And these people, with their reciprocal love for Nikolenka, help him overcome various temporary negative emotions, as, for example, in the case of the fly.

After the release of the second part of the trilogy, “Adolescence,” N.G. Chernyshevsky wrote: “Extraordinary observation, subtle analysis of mental movements, clarity and poetry in pictures of nature, elegant simplicity are the hallmarks of Count Tolstoy’s talent.”

I got the impression that all six years of Nikolenka Irtenyev’s life passed before my eyes (the reader meets the boy when he turns 10, and leaves when he is 16), but in the trilogy there is no consistent, day after day, description of the life of the heroes. This is a story about just a few but significant episodes.

So, in “Adolescence” the author talks about the saddest days in Nikolenka’s life, when he received a unit, was rude to the teacher, opened his father’s briefcase and broke the key. Tolstoy tells in detail over the course of six chapters how the hero was punished and how his punishment ended.

In “Youth” three days are especially highlighted: the day after entering the university, the day following it, when Nikolenka makes visits, and then his visit to the Nekhlyudov family.

Nikolenka and Nekhlyudov discover a new moral law. But correcting all of humanity turned out to be very difficult, because even sincere and persistent attempts at self-improvement most often failed. Behind all these lofty concepts, ordinary vanity, narcissism, and arrogance were often hidden.

In my opinion, the last part of the trilogy is more devoted not to the throwing of the heroes, but to the author’s attempt to prove to himself the possibility of moral improvement.

In her youth, Nikolenka constantly plays some role with varying success. Either the role of a lover with an eye on the novels he had read, or of a philosopher, since he was little noticed in the world, and with thoughtfulness he could disguise his failure, or of a great original. All this pushed his real feelings and thoughts into the background.

Nikolenka strives to be loved, tries to please. But no matter how much the hero wants to be like the people around him, the author shows that this cannot be done because the world is morally alien to him. These people never created moral values and did not try to follow them, much less suffered from the fact that they could not be realized in life. They, unlike Nikolenka, always used those moral laws that were accepted in their environment and were considered mandatory.

I, as a reader, believe that Nikolenka, despite all her failures, will never stop in her moral quest. It is not for nothing that at the end of the trilogy he again sits down to write the rules of life with the conviction that he will never do anything bad, will not spend a single minute idly and will never change his rules. I understand that this impulse was inherent in the writer himself. Tolstoy either renounced his entire past life, or affirmed the truth that was newly revealed to him. But for us he remained a man who constantly strived for moral self-improvement, full of doubts and contradictions, and therefore real.

The grandmother is a countess, one of the most important figures in the trilogy, as if representing a bygone majestic era (like Prince Ivan Ivanovich). B.'s image is covered with universal reverence and respect. She knows how to use a word or intonation to make clear her attitude towards a person, which for many others is a decisive criterion. The narrator portrays her not so much through static characteristics, but through a description of her interactions with other characters who arrive to congratulate her on her name day, her reactions and words. B. seems to feel his strength and power, his special significance. After the death of her daughter, Nikolenka's mother, she falls into despair. Nikolenka catches her at the moment when she is talking to the deceased as if she were alive. Despite the importance of the old woman, he considers her kind and cheerful, and her love for her grandchildren especially intensifies after the death of their mother. Nevertheless, the narrator compares her with a simple old woman, housekeeper Natalya Savishna, finding that the latter had a greater influence on his worldview.

Valakhina Sonechka is the daughter of a friend of the Irtenievs, Mrs. Valakhina. Nikolenka meets her at her grandmother’s birthday and immediately falls in love. Here is his first impression: “...A wonderful twelve-year-old girl in a short open muslin dress, white pantaloons and tiny black shoes emerged from the shrouded person. There was a black velvet ribbon on the little white neck; her head was covered in dark brown curls, which in front went so well with her beautiful dark face, and in the back with her bare shoulders...” He dances a lot with S., makes her laugh in every possible way and is jealous of other boys. In “Youth,” Nikolenka, after a long separation, meets again with S., who has turned ugly, but “the lovely bulging eyes and the bright, good-naturedly cheerful smile were the same.” The matured Nikolenka, whose feelings require food, again becomes interested in her.

Grap Ilinka is the son of a foreigner who once lived with the Irtenievs’ grandfather, owed him something and considered it his duty

send to them I. “A boy of about thirteen, thin, tall, pale, with a bird’s face and a good-natured, submissive expression.” People pay attention to him only when they want to laugh at him. This character - a participant in one of the games of the Ivins and Irtenievs - suddenly becomes the object of general mockery, ending with him crying, and his hunted appearance painfully affects everyone. The narrator's memory of him is associated with remorse and is, according to his admission, the only dark spot of his childhood.

“How did I not come to him, protect him and comfort him?” - he asks himself. Later I., like the narrator, enters the university. Nikolenka admits that he is so used to looking down on him that he is somewhat unpleasant that he is the same student, and he refuses I.’s father’s request to allow his son to spend the day with the Irtenievs. From the moment I entered the university, I., however, leaves Nikolenka’s influence and behaves with constant defiance.

Grisha is a wanderer, a holy fool. “A man of about fifty, with a pale elongated face pitted with smallpox, long gray hair and a sparse reddish beard.” Very tall. “His voice was rough and hoarse, his movements were hasty and uneven, his speech was meaningless and incoherent (he never used pronouns), but the accents were so touching, and his yellow, ugly face sometimes took on such an openly sad expression that, listening to him, it was impossible to resist from some mixed feeling of regret, fear and sadness.” What is mainly known about him is that he walks barefoot in winter and summer, visits monasteries, gives icons to those he loves, and speaks mysterious words that are taken for predictions. To see the heavy chains that he wears on himself, the children spy on how he undresses before going to bed, they see how selflessly he prays, causing the narrator a feeling of tenderness: “Oh, great Christian Grisha! Your faith was so strong that you felt the closeness of God, your love was so great that the words flowed out of your mouth by themselves - you did not believe them with your mind...”

Dubkov is an adjutant, a friend of Volodya Irtenyev. “...A small, wiry brunette, no longer in his first youth and a little short-legged, but handsome and always cheerful. He was one of those limited people who are especially pleasant precisely because of their limitations, who are unable to see objects from different sides and who are always carried away. The judgments of these people can be one-sided and erroneous, but they are always sincere and fascinating.” A big fan of champagne, visiting women, playing cards and other entertainment.

Epifanova Avdotya Vasilievna - neighbor of the Irtenyevs, then the second wife of Pyotr Aleksandrovich Irtenyev, Nikolenka's father. The narrator notes her passionate, devoted love for her husband, which, however, does not in the least prevent her from loving to dress beautifully and go out into society. Between her and the young Irtenievs (with the exception of Lyubochka, who fell in love with her stepmother, who reciprocates her feelings) a strange, playful relationship is established, hiding the absence of any relationship. Nikolenka is surprised at the contrast between the young, healthy, cold, cheerful beauty that E. appears before the guests, and the middle-aged, exhausted, melancholy woman, sloppy and bored without guests. It is her untidiness that deprives her of the narrator’s last respect. About her love for her father, he notes: “The only goal of her life was to acquire the love of her husband; but she seemed to do everything on purpose that could possibly be unpleasant to him, and all with the goal of proving to him the full power of her love and readiness to sacrifice herself.” E.'s relationship with her husband becomes the subject of special attention for the narrator, since the “thought of family” already occupied Tolstoy at the time of creating the autobiographical trilogy and will be developed in his subsequent works. He sees that in their relationship, “a feeling of quiet hatred, that restrained disgust for the object of affection, which is expressed by an unconscious desire to cause all possible minor moral troubles to this object,” begins to appear.

Zukhin is Nikolenka's university friend. He is eighteen years old. An ardent, receptive, active, wild nature, full of strength and energy, wasted in revelry. He drinks from time to time. The narrator meets him at a meeting of a circle of students who decided to prepare for exams together. “...A small, dense brunette with a somewhat plump and always glossy, but extremely intelligent, lively and independent face. This expression was especially given to him by his low, but hunchbacked forehead above his deep black eyes, bristly short hair and a thick black beard, which always seemed unshaven. He never seemed to think about himself (which I always especially liked in people), but it was clear that his mind was never idle.” He does not respect or like science, although it comes to him with extreme ease.

3. - a type of commoner, intelligent, knowledgeable, although not belonging to the category of people comme il faut, which at first evokes in the narrator “not only a feeling of contempt, but also some personal hatred that I felt for them for the fact that, without being comme il faut, they seemed to consider me not only their equal, but even good-naturedly patronized me.” Despite the overwhelming disgust for their unkempt appearance and manners, the narrator feels something good in Z. and his comrades and is drawn to them. He is attracted by knowledge, simplicity, honesty, the poetry of youth and daring. In addition to the abyss of shades that make up the difference in their understanding of life, Nikolenka cannot get rid of the feeling of inequality between him, a wealthy man, and them, and therefore cannot “enter into an even, sincere relationship with them.” However, gradually he is drawn into their life and once again discovers for himself that the same Z., for example, judges literature better and more clearly than him and in general is not only in no way inferior to him, but even superior, so that the height, with which he, a young aristocrat, looks at Z. and his comrades - Operov, Ikonin and others - is imaginary.

Ivin Seryozha is a relative and peer of the Irtenievs, “a dark, curly-haired boy, with an upturned hard nose, very fresh red lips, which rarely completely covered the slightly protruding upper row of white teeth, dark blue beautiful eyes and an unusually lively expression on his face. He never smiled, but either looked completely seriously, or laughed heartily with his ringing, distinct and extremely entertaining laugh.” His original beauty amazes Nikolenka, and he falls in love with him like a child, but does not find any response in I., although he feels his power over him and unconsciously, but tyrannically uses it in their relationship.

Irtenev Volodya (Vladimir Petrovich) is Nikolenka’s older brother (by a year and several months). The consciousness of his seniority and primacy constantly prompts him to actions that hurt his brother’s pride. Even the condescension and grin that he often bestows on his brother turns out to be a reason for resentment. The narrator characterizes V. as follows: “He was ardent, frank and fickle in his hobbies. Fascinated by the most varied subjects, he devoted himself to them with all his soul.” He emphasizes the “happy, noble and frank character” of V. However, despite occasional and short-lived disagreements or even quarrels, relations between the brothers remain good. Nikolenka involuntarily gets carried away by the same passions as V., but out of pride she tries not to imitate him. With admiration and a feeling of some envy, Nikolenka describes V.’s admission to the university and the general joy in the house on this occasion. V. makes new friends - Dubkov and Dmitry Nekhlyudov, with whom he soon diverges. His favorite entertainment with Dubkov is champagne, balls, cards. V.’s relationship with the girls surprises his brother, because he “did not allow the idea that they could think or feel anything human, and even less allowed the possibility of talking with them about anything.”

Irtenev Nikolenka (Nikolai Petrovich) is the main character on whose behalf the story is told. Nobleman, count. From a noble aristocratic family. The image is autobiographical. The trilogy shows the process of internal growth and development of N.’s personality, his relationships with people around him and the world, the process of comprehending reality and himself, the search for mental balance and the meaning of life. N. appears before the reader through his perception of different people with whom his life one way or another encounters him.

The birth of L. Tolstoy as a writer was the result of exceptionally intense spiritual work. He constantly and persistently engaged in self-education, drew up grandiose, seemingly impossible educational plans for himself and implemented them to a large extent. No less important is his internal, moral work on self-education - it can be traced in the “Diary” of the future writer: L. Tolstoy has been conducting it regularly since 1847, constantly formulating the rules of behavior and work, the principles of relationships with people.

It is worth pointing out the three most important sources of L. Tolstoy’s worldview: educational philosophy, literature of sentimentalism, Christian morality. From a young age he became a champion of the ideal of moral self-improvement. He found this idea in the works of enlighteners: J.J. Rousseau and his student F.R. de Weiss. The latter’s treatise “Foundations of Philosophy, Politics and Morality” - one of the first works read by L. Tolstoy - stated: “The general ... goal of the existence of the universe is constant improvement to achieve the greatest possible good, which is achieved by the private desire to improve each individual particles."

From the educators, young Tolstoy initially developed an exceptional faith in reason, in its ability to help a person in the fight against any prejudices. However, he soon formulates another conclusion: “Inclinations and the measure of reason have no influence on a person’s dignity.” L. Tolstoy sought to understand where human vices come from, and came to the conclusion that “the vices of the soul are corrupted noble aspirations.” Corruption occurs as a result of a person’s attachment to the earthly world. The writer was greatly influenced by Stern’s “Sentimental Journey”, in which the dominant idea is the opposition of two worlds: the existing world, which “perverts the minds” of people, leading them to mutual enmity, and the world of the proper, desired for the soul. In the Gospel, Tolstoy also found the antithesis of “this world” and the “Kingdom of Heaven.”

However, the idea of Christian kenosis (self-deprecation of the individual) was alien to the young Tolstoy. The writer believed in the inner forces of man, capable of resisting selfish passions and the harmful influence of the earthly world: “I am convinced that an infinite, not only moral, but even an infinite physical force is invested in a person, but at the same time a terrible brake is placed on this force - love for to oneself, or rather the memory of oneself, which produces impotence. But as soon as a person breaks out of this brake, he gains omnipotence.”

L. Tolstoy believed that self-love, the carnal principle in a person, is a natural phenomenon: “the desire of the flesh is personal good. Another thing is that the aspirations of the soul are an altruistic substance, “the good of others.” Tolstoy felt the discord of two principles in a person and the contradiction between a potential and a real person as his own, personal contradiction. The method of close psychological analysis, attention to the mental and spiritual process, when one, subtle phenomena of inner life replace others, was at first a method of self-education, before it became a method of artistic depiction of the human soul - a method of psychological realism.

Tolstoy’s “dialectics of the soul” was brilliantly manifested in his first significant work - the biographical trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth”, on which he worked for 6 years (1851-1856). A book was conceived “about four eras of development” - the story of youth was not written. The purpose of the trilogy is to show how a person enters the world, how spirituality arises in him, and moral needs arise. A person’s inner growth is determined by his ever-changing attitude towards the world around him and his ever-deeper self-knowledge. The story is written from the perspective of an adult who recalls the crisis moments of his formation, but experiences them with all the spontaneity of a boy, teenager, or youth. The author here was interested in the general age laws of human life. He protested against the title given to the first part of the trilogy by the editor of the Sovremennik magazine N.A. Nekrasov - “The History of My Childhood”: why this word “mine”, what is important is not the private life of the barchuk Nikolenka Irtenyev, but childhood in general as a stage in human development .

Normal childhood is characterized by its own law of perception of the world. It seems to Nikolenka that joy is the norm of life, and sorrows are deviations from it, temporary misunderstandings. This perception is determined by the child’s ability to love people close to him without thought or reflection. His heart is open to people. The child is characterized by an instinctive craving for the harmony of human relationships: “Happy, happy, irrevocable time of childhood! How not to love, not to cherish memories of her? These memories refresh, elevate my soul and serve as a source of the best pleasures for me.”

The story captures precisely those moments when this harmony is disrupted, not only by dramatic events on the external plane (forced departure from the parental nest, then the death of the mother), but also by the internal, moral and analytical work that has begun. Nikolenka increasingly begins to notice unnaturalness, falsehood in the behavior of her relatives and household members (father, grandmother, governess Mimi, etc.) and even in herself. It is no coincidence that the hero recalls such episodes in his life when he has to justify himself (congratulations to his grandmother, cruel treatment of Ilenka Grap, etc.). The development of the boy’s analytical abilities leads to a differentiated perception of the once united “adults”: he contrasts his father’s constant posturing with the constant sincerity and warmth of the old forge Natalya Savvishna. Particularly important is the episode in which the hero watches how he and his loved ones say goodbye to his mother’s body: he is shocked by the deliberate showiness of his father’s pose, Mimi’s feigned tearfulness, he understands the children’s frank fear more clearly, and he is deeply touched only by Natalya Savvishna’s grief - only her quiet tears and calm pious speeches bring him joy and relief.

It is in these descriptions that the “democratic direction” is concentrated, which Tolstoy re-evaluated in the last decade of his life. In 1904, in “Memoirs” Tolstoy wrote: “In order not to repeat myself in the description of childhood, I re-read my writing under this title and regretted that I wrote it, it was not well written, literary, insincere. It could not have been otherwise: firstly, because my idea was to describe the story not of my own, but of my childhood friends, and therefore there was an awkward confusion of the events of their and my childhood, and secondly, because at the time of writing this I was far from independent in forms of expression, but was influenced by two writers, Stern (Sentimental Journey) and Töpfer (My Uncle’s Library), who had a strong influence on me at that time. I especially didn’t like the last two parts now: adolescence and youth, in which, in addition to the awkward confusion of truth with fiction, there is also insincerity: the desire to present as good and important that which I did not consider then good and important - my democratic direction".

“Adolescence” reflects the law of another age stage - the inevitable discord between a teenager and the world in which he lives, his inevitable conflicts with those near and far. The consciousness of a teenager goes beyond the narrow confines of the family: the chapter “A New Look” shows how for the first time he experiences the thought of social inequality of people - the words of his childhood friend Katenka: “After all, we will not always live together... you are rich - you have Pokrovskoye, and We’re poor—mama has nothing.” The “new look” affected the revaluation of all people: everyone has weaknesses and flaws, but especially in the new self-esteem. With painful joy, Nikolenka realizes her difference from others (her peers, her older brother and his comrades) and her loneliness. And the confession of teacher Karl Ivanovich, who told his autobiography - the story of a renegade man - made Nikolenka feel like a person spiritually related to him. Discord with the world occurs as a result of the loss of childhood innocence. So, for example, the hero, taking advantage of his father’s absence, unlocks his father’s briefcase and breaks the key. Quarrels with relatives are perceived as a loss of trust in the world, as complete disappointment in it; raise doubts about the existence of God. This discord is not a consequence of the teenager’s thoughtlessness. On the contrary, his thought works intensively: “During the course of the year, during which I led a solitary, self-centered, moral life, all abstract questions about the purpose of man, about the future life, about the immortality of the soul already appeared to me... It seems to me that the mind The human in each individual person develops along the same path along which it develops in entire generations.” The hero in a short time experienced a whole series of philosophical trends that flashed through his mind. But reasoning did not make him happy. On the contrary, the discord between the tendency to reflect and the lost faith in goodness became a source of new torment. According to Tolstoy, it is important for a person to quickly go through the period of separation from people, to run through the “desert” of adolescence, in order to restore harmony with the world.

“Youth” begins with the return of faith in goodness. Chapter one of the final story, “What I Consider the Beginning of Youth,” opens with these words: “I said that my friendship with Dmitry opened me up to a new perspective on life, its purpose and relationships. The essence of this view was the conviction that the purpose of man is the desire for moral improvement and that this improvement is easy, possible and eternal.” Tolstoy and his hero will more than once be convinced of how difficult and unfree it is, but they will remain faithful to this understanding of the purpose of life to the end.

Already in this story it is determined that improvement depends on a person’s ideals, and his ideals may turn out to be mixed and contradictory. On the one hand, Nikolenka dreams of being kind, generous, loving, although he himself notes that often his thirst for perfection is mixed with trivial ambition - the desire to appear at his best. On the other hand, in his dreams the young man cherishes not only the universal ideal of humanity, but also a very primitive secular example of a commt il faut man, for whom excellent French is most important, especially in accent; then “the nails are long, peeled and clean”, “the ability to bow, dance and talk” and, finally, “indifference to everything and a constant expression of a certain graceful contemptuous boredom.”

The chapter “Come il faut” was received ambiguously by contemporaries. N. Chernyshevsky saw in the story “the boasting of a peacock whose tail does not cover it...”. However, the text of the chapter shows how arbitrary such a reading appears. Nikolenka, as a socialite, treats her university commoner acquaintances with disdain, but soon becomes convinced of their superiority. Meanwhile, he fails the first university exam, and his failure is evidence not only of poor knowledge of mathematics, but also of the failure of general ethical principles. It is not for nothing that the story ends with a chapter with the significant title “I’m Failing.” The author leaves his hero at the moment of a new moral impulse - to develop new “rules of life.”

Tolstoy's first stories predetermined the peculiarities of his worldview in his later work. In the chapter “Youth” of the story of the same name, a pantheistic perception of nature is outlined. “... and it all seemed to me that the mysterious majestic nature, attracting the bright circle of the month to itself, stopped for some reason at one high, indefinite place in the pale blue sky and together stood everywhere and seemed to fill the entire immense space, and I, an insignificant worm , already defiled by all the petty, poor human passions, but with all the immense mighty power of imagination and love - it all seemed to me at those moments that it was as if nature, and the moon, and I, we were one and the same.”

Like all the works of L. N. Tolstoy, the trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" was, in fact, the embodiment of a large number of plans and undertakings. While working on the work, the writer carefully honed every phrase, every plot combination, and tried to subordinate all artistic means to a strict adherence to the general idea. In the text of Tolstoy’s works, everything is important, there are no trifles. Every word is used for a reason, every episode is thought out.

The main goal of L. N. Tolstoy is to show the development of a person as an individual during his childhood, adolescence and youth, that is, during those periods of life when a person most fully feels himself in the world, his indissolubility with it, and then when the separation of himself begins from the world and understanding of its environment. Individual stories form a trilogy, the action in them takes place according to the idea, first in the Irtenevs’ estate (“Childhood”), then the world expands significantly (“Adolescence”). In the story “Youth,” the theme of family and home sounds much more muted, giving way to the theme of Nikolenka’s relationship with the outside world. It is no coincidence that with the death of the mother in the first part the harmony of relationships in the family is destroyed, in the second the grandmother dies, taking with her enormous moral strength, and in the third the father remarries a woman whose smile is always the same. The return of former family happiness becomes completely impossible. There is a logical connection between the stories, justified primarily by the writer’s logic: the formation of a person, although divided into certain stages, is actually continuous.

The first-person narration in the trilogy establishes the connection of the work with the literary traditions of the time. In addition, it psychologically brings the reader closer to the hero. And finally, such a presentation of events indicates a certain degree of autobiographical nature of the work. However, it cannot be said that autobiography was the most convenient way to realize a certain idea in a work, since it was precisely this, judging by the statements of the writer himself, that did not allow the original idea to be realized. "LN Tolstoy conceived the work as a tetralogy, that is, he wanted to show the four stages of development of the human personality, but the philosophical views of the writer himself at that time did not fit into the framework of the plot. Why is it an autobiography? The fact is that, as he said N. G. Chernyshevsky, L. N. Tolstoy “extremely carefully studied the types of life of the human spirit in himself,” which gave him the opportunity to “paint pictures of the internal movements of a person.” However, it is important that in the trilogy there are actually two main characters: Nikolenka Irteniev and an adult, remembering his childhood, adolescence, youth. Comparison of the views of a child and an adult individual has always been the object of interest of L. N. Tolstoy. And distance in time is simply necessary: L. N. Tolstoy wrote his works about everything that is currently moment he was worried, which means that in the trilogy there should have been a place for an analysis of Russian life in general. And I must say, there was.

Here, the analysis of Russian life is a kind of projection of his own life. To see this, it is necessary to turn to those moments of his life, in which a connection can be traced with the trilogy and other works of Lev Nikolaevich.

Tolstoy was the fourth child in a large noble family. His mother, nee Princess Volkonskaya, died when Tolstoy was not yet two years old, but according to the stories of family members, he had a good idea of “her spiritual appearance”: some of his mother’s traits (brilliant education, sensitivity to art, a penchant for reflection and even portrait resemblance Tolstoy gave Princess Marya Nikolaevna Bolkonskaya ("War and Peace"). Tolstoy's father, a participant in the Patriotic War, who was remembered by the writer for his good-natured, mocking character, love of reading, and hunting (served as the prototype for Nikolai Rostov), also died early (1837). Raising children studied by a distant relative T. A. Ergolskaya, who had a huge influence on Tolstoy: “she taught me the spiritual pleasure of love.” Childhood memories always remained the most joyful for Tolstoy: family legends, first impressions of the life of a noble estate served as rich material for his works, were reflected in the autobiographical story "Childhood".

When Tolstoy was 13 years old, the family moved to Kazan, to the house of a relative and guardian of the children, P. I. Yushkova. In 1844, Tolstoy entered Kazan University at the Department of Oriental Languages of the Faculty of Philosophy, then transferred to the Faculty of Law, where he studied for less than two years: his studies did not arouse any keen interest in him and he passionately indulged in secular entertainment. In the spring of 1847, having submitted a request for dismissal from the university “due to poor health and home circumstances,” Tolstoy left for Yasnaya Polyana with the firm intention of studying the entire course of legal sciences (in order to pass the exam as an external student), “practical medicine,” languages, agriculture, history, geographical statistics, write a dissertation and “achieve the highest degree of excellence in music and painting.”

After a summer in the countryside, disappointed by the unsuccessful experience of managing under new conditions favorable to the serfs (this attempt is depicted in the story “The Morning of the Landowner,” 1857), in the fall of 1847 Tolstoy went first to Moscow, then to St. Petersburg to take candidate exams at the university. His lifestyle during this period often changed: he spent days preparing and passing exams, he devoted himself passionately to music, he intended to start an official career, he dreamed of joining a horse guards regiment as a cadet. Religious sentiments, reaching the point of asceticism, alternated with carousing, cards, and trips to the gypsies. In the family he was considered “the most trifling fellow,” and he was able to repay the debts he incurred then only many years later. However, it was precisely these years that were colored by intense introspection and struggle with oneself, which is reflected in the diary that Tolstoy kept throughout his life. At the same time, he had a serious desire to write and the first unfinished artistic sketches appeared.

In 1851, his elder brother Nikolai, an officer in the active army, persuaded Tolstoy to go together to the Caucasus. For almost three years, Tolstoy lived in a Cossack village on the banks of the Terek, traveling to Kizlyar, Tiflis, Vladikavkaz and participating in military operations (at first voluntarily, then he was recruited). The Caucasian nature and the patriarchal simplicity of Cossack life, which struck Tolstoy in contrast with the life of the noble circle and with the painful reflection of a person in an educated society, provided material for the autobiographical story “Cossacks” (1852-63). Caucasian impressions were also reflected in the stories “Raid” (1853), “Cutting Wood” (1855), as well as in the later story “Hadji Murat” (1896-1904, published in 1912). Returning to Russia, Tolstoy wrote in his diary that he fell in love with this “wild land, in which the two most opposite things - war and freedom - are so strangely and poetically combined.” In the Caucasus, Tolstoy wrote the story "Childhood" and sent it to the magazine "Sovremennik" without revealing his name (published in 1852 under the initials L.N.; together with the later stories "Adolescence", 1852-54, and "Youth", 1855 -57, compiled an autobiographical trilogy). Tolstoy's literary debut immediately brought real recognition.

In 1854, Tolstoy was assigned to the Danube Army in Bucharest. Boring life at the headquarters soon forced him to transfer to the Crimean Army, to besieged Sevastopol, where he commanded a battery on the 4th bastion, showing rare personal courage (awarded the Order of St. Anne and medals). In Crimea, Tolstoy was captivated by new impressions and literary plans (he was planning, among other things, to publish a magazine for soldiers); here he began writing a series of “Sevastopol stories”, which were soon published and had enormous success (even Alexander II read the essay “Sevastopol in December” ). Tolstoy's first works amazed literary critics with the boldness of his psychological analysis and a detailed picture of the “dialectics of the soul” (N. G. Chernyshevsky). Some of the ideas that appeared during these years allow one to discern in the young artillery officer the late Tolstoy the preacher: he dreamed of “founding a new religion” - “the religion of Christ, but purified of faith and mystery, a practical religion.”

In November 1855, Tolstoy arrived in St. Petersburg and immediately entered the Sovremennik circle (N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, A. N. Ostrovsky, I. A. Goncharov, etc.), where he was greeted as a “great hope of Russian literature" (Nekrasov). Tolstoy took part in dinners and readings, in the establishment of the Literary Fund, became involved in the disputes and conflicts of writers, but felt like a stranger in this environment, which he described in detail later in “Confession” (1879-82): “These people disgusted me, and I was disgusted with myself." In the fall of 1856, Tolstoy, having retired, went to Yasnaya Polyana, and at the beginning of 1857 he went abroad. He visited France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany (Swiss impressions are reflected in the story “Lucerne”), returned to Moscow in the fall, then to Yasnaya Polyana.

In 1859, Tolstoy opened a school for peasant children in the village, helped to establish more than 20 schools in the vicinity of Yasnaya Polyana, and this activity fascinated Tolstoy so much that in 1860 he went abroad for the second time to get acquainted with the schools of Europe. Tolstoy traveled a lot, spent a month and a half in London (where he often saw A.I. Herzen), was in Germany, France, Switzerland, Belgium, studied popular pedagogical systems, which generally did not satisfy the writer. Tolstoy outlined his own ideas in special articles, arguing that the basis of education should be “the freedom of the student” and the rejection of violence in teaching. In 1862 he published the pedagogical magazine "Yasnaya Polyana" with books for reading as an appendix, which became in Russia the same classic examples of children's and folk literature as those compiled by him in the early 1870s. "ABC" and "New ABC". In 1862, in the absence of Tolstoy, a search was carried out in Yasnaya Polyana (they were looking for a secret printing house).

However, about the trilogy.

According to the author’s plan, “Childhood”, “Adolescence” and “Youth”, as well as the story “Youth”, which, however, was not written, were supposed to make up the novel “Four Epochs of Development”. Showing step by step the formation of Nikolai Irtenyev's character, the writer carefully examines how his hero's environment influenced him - first a narrow family circle, and then an increasingly wider circle of his new acquaintances, peers, friends, rivals. In his first completed work, dedicated to the early and, as Tolstoy argued, the best, most poetic time of human life - childhood, he writes with deep sadness that rigid barriers have been erected between people, separating them into many groups, categories, circles and circles. The reader has no doubt that it will not be easy for Tolstoy’s young hero to find a place and a job in a world living according to the laws of alienation. The further course of the story confirms this assumption. Adolescence turned out to be a particularly difficult time for Irtenyev. Drawing this “era” in the hero’s life, the writer decided to “show the bad influence” on Irtenyev of “the vanity of the teachers and the clash of family interests.” In the scenes of Irtenyev's university life from the story "Youth", his new acquaintances and friends - commoner students - are depicted with sympathy, their mental and moral superiority over the aristocratic hero, who professed the code of a secular man, is emphasized.

The sincere desire of the young Nekhlyudov, who is the main character in the story “The Morning of the Landowner,” to benefit his serfs looks like the naive dream of a dropout student who, for the first time in his life, saw how hard his “baptized property” lives.

At the very beginning of Tolstoy’s writing career, the theme of the disunity of people powerfully invades his work. In the trilogy “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth” the ethical inconsistency of the ideals of a secular person, an aristocrat “by inheritance” is clearly revealed. The writer’s Caucasian military stories (“Raid”, “Cutting Wood”, “Demoted”) and stories about the defense of Sevastopol amazed readers not only with the harsh truth about the war, but also with his bold denunciation of aristocratic officers who came to the active army for ranks, rubles and awards . In “The Morning of the Landowner” and “Polykushka” the tragedy of the Russian pre-reform village is shown with such force that the immorality of serfdom became even more obvious to honest people.

In the trilogy, each chapter contains a certain thought, an episode from a person’s life. Therefore, the construction within the chapters is subordinated to internal development, the conveyance of the hero’s state. Tolstoy's long phrases, layer by layer, level by level, build a tower of human sensations and experiences. L.N. Tolstoy shows his heroes in those conditions and in those circumstances where their personality can manifest itself most clearly. The hero of the trilogy finds himself facing death, and here all conventions no longer matter. The hero’s relationship with ordinary people is shown, that is, the person is, as it were, tested by the “nationality”. In small but incredibly bright inclusions, moments are woven into the fabric of the narrative in which we are talking about something that goes beyond the understanding of a child, which can only be known to the hero from the stories of other people, for example, war. Contact with something unknown, as a rule, turns into almost a tragedy for a child, and memories of such moments come to mind primarily in moments of despair. For example, after a quarrel with St.-Jerme, Nikolenka begins to sincerely consider herself illegitimate, recalling snatches of other people’s conversations.

Of course, L.N. Tolstoy masterfully uses such traditional Russian literature methods of presenting a person’s characteristics as describing a portrait of a hero, depicting his gesture, manner of behavior, since all of these are external manifestations of the inner world. The speech characteristics of the heroes of the trilogy are extremely important. The refined French language is good for people comme il faut, a mixture of German and broken Russian characterizes Karl Ivanovich. It is also not surprising that the German’s heartfelt story is written in Russian with occasional inclusions of German phrases.

So, we see that L. N. Tolstoy’s trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth" is built on a constant comparison of the inner and outer world of a person. The autobiographical nature of the trilogy is obvious.

The main goal of the writer, of course, was to analyze what constitutes the essence of each person. And in the skill of carrying out such analysis, in my opinion, L.N. Tolstoy has no equal.

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Creation of Tolstoy's trilogy. Autobiographical trilogy by L.N. Tolstoy "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth". Main theme. Stages of spiritual development of Nikolenka Irtenyev. Mastery of psychological analysis. List of used literature

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Introduction

Chapter 1. Man and the world: the influence of the environment on the education of the individual

1.1 Stages of human maturation

1.2 Family types:

a) Family family in the trilogy of L.N. Tolstoy

b) “Random Family” in the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky

1.3 Factors determining the development of personality:

a) The authority of a mentor during childhood and adolescence

b) Natural inclinations of a creative personality in youth

conclusions

Chapter 2. The ideal of a perfect person and ways to achieve it

2.1 Moral guidelines on the path to a perfect person

2.2 Results of the artistic study of man in the aspect of the theme of personality education in the trilogy of L.N. Tolstoy and the novel by F.M. Dostoevsky

conclusions

Conclusion

List of used literature

Methodological application

Introduction

Chapter 1. Man and the world: the influence of the environment on the education of the individual

1.2 Family types

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