The main characters of the novel "War and Peace. "War and Peace": characters

Alexey Durnovo talks about the prototypes of the heroes of Leo Tolstoy's famous epic.

Prince Andrei Bolkonsky

Nikolai Tuchkov

One of those characters whose image is more fictional than borrowed from specific people. As an unattainable moral ideal, Prince Andrei, of course, could not have a definite prototype. Nevertheless, in the facts of the character's biography, one can find a lot in common, for example, with Nikolai Tuchkov.

Nikolai Rostov and Princess Marya - the writer's parents

He, just like Prince Andrei, was mortally wounded in the Battle of Borodino, from which he died in Yaroslavl three weeks later. The scene of the wounding of Prince Andrei at the Battle of Austerlitz is probably borrowed from the biography of Staff Captain Fyodor (Ferdinand) Tizenhausen. He died with a banner in his hands, when he led the Little Russian grenadier regiment to the enemy bayonets in that very battle. It is possible that Tolstoy gave the image of Prince Andrei the features of his brother, Sergei. At least this applies to the story of the failed marriage of Bolkonsky and Natasha Rostova. Sergei Tolstoy was engaged to Tatyana Bers, but the marriage, postponed for a year, never took place. Whether because of inappropriate behavior bride, or because the groom had a gypsy wife, with whom he did not want to part.

Natasha Rostova

Sofya Tolstaya - the writer's wife

Natasha has two prototypes at once, the already mentioned Tatyana Bers and her sister Sophia Bers. Here it should be noted that Sophia is none other than the wife of Leo Tolstoy. Tatyana Bers married Senator Alexander Kuzminsky in 1867. She spent most of her childhood in the family of a writer and managed to make friends with the author of War and Peace, even though she was almost 20 years younger than him. Moreover, under the influence of Tolstoy, Kuzminskaya herself took up literary work. It seems that every person who went to school knows about Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya. She really rewrote War and Peace, a novel whose main character had many similarities with the author's wife.

Rostov

Ilya Andreevich Tolstoy - the grandfather of the writer

The surname Rostov was formed by replacing the first and last letters in the surname Tolstoy. "P" instead of "t", "v" instead of "d", well, minus "l". So the family, which occupies an important place in the novel, acquired a new name. The Rostovs are the Tolstoys, or rather the writer's paternal relatives. There is even a coincidence in the names, as in the case of the old Count Rostov.

Even Tolstoy did not hide the fact that Vasily Denisov is Denis Davydov

This name hides the writer's grandfather Ilya Andreevich Tolstoy. This man, in fact, led a rather wasteful lifestyle and spent enormous sums on entertainment events. And yet, this is not the good-natured Ilya Andreevich Rostov from War and Peace. Count Tolstoy was the governor of Kazan and a bribe taker known throughout Russia. He was removed from his post after the auditors discovered the theft of almost 15 thousand rubles from the provincial treasury. Tolstoy explained the loss of money by a "lack of knowledge."

Nikolai Rostov is the father of the writer Nikolai Ilyich Tolstoy. There are more than enough similarities between the prototype and the hero of War and Peace. Nikolai Tolstoy served in the hussars and went through all the Napoleonic wars, including the Patriotic War of 1812. It is believed that the descriptions of military scenes with the participation of Nikolai Rostov were taken by the writer from the memoirs of his father. Moreover, Tolstoy Sr. completed the financial collapse of the family with constant losses in cards and debts, and to remedy the situation, he married the ugly and withdrawn Princess Maria Volkonskaya, who was four years older than him.

Princess Mary

The mother of Leo Tolstoy, Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya, by the way, is also the full namesake of the book heroine. Unlike Princess Marya, she had no problems with the sciences, in particular with mathematics and geometry. She lived for 30 years with her father in Yasnaya Polyana (Bald Mountains from the novel), but never married, although she was a very enviable bride. The fact is that the old prince, in fact, had a monstrous character, and his daughter was a closed woman and personally rejected several suitors.

Dolokhov's prototype probably ate his own orangutan

Princess Volkonskaya even had a companion - Miss Hanessen, somewhat similar to Mademoiselle Bourienne from the novel. After the death of her father, the daughter began to literally give away property, after which her relatives intervened, arranging the marriage of Maria Nikolaevna with Nikolai Tolstoy. Judging by the memoirs of contemporaries, the arranged marriage turned out to be very happy, but short-lived. Maria Volkonskaya died eight years after the wedding, having managed to give birth to her husband four children.

Old Prince Bolkonsky

Nikolai Volkonsky, who left the royal service for the sake of raising his only daughter

Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky - an infantry general who distinguished himself in several battles and received the nickname "King of Prussia" from his colleagues. In character, he is very similar to the old prince: proud, self-willed, but not cruel. He left the service after the accession of Paul I, retired to Yasnaya Polyana and took up raising his daughter.

The prototype of Ilya Rostov is Tolstoy's grandfather, who ruined his career

For days on end he improved his household and taught his daughter languages ​​and sciences. An important difference from the character from the book: Prince Nikolai perfectly survived the War of 1812, and died only nine years later, a little short of seventy.

Sonya

Tatyana Ergolskaya is the second cousin of Nikolai Tolstoy, who was brought up in his father's house. In their youth, they had an affair that never ended in marriage. Not only Nikolai's parents opposed the wedding, but Yergolskaya herself. The last time she rejected a marriage proposal from her cousin was in 1836. The widowed Tolstoy asked for the hand of Yergolskaya, so that she would become his wife and replace the mother of five children. Ergolskaya refused, but after the death of Nikolai Tolstoy, she really took up the education of his sons and daughter, devoting the rest of her life to them.

Dolokhov

Fedor Tolstoy-American

Dolokhov also has several prototypes. Among them, for example, lieutenant general and partisan Ivan Dorokhov, the hero of several major campaigns, including the war of 1812. However, if we talk about character, then Dolokhov has more similarities with Fedor Ivanovich Tolstoy-American, who was famous in his time as a breter, player and lover of women. It must be said that Tolstoy is not the only writer who has placed the American in his works. Fedor Ivanovich is also considered the prototype of Zaretsky, Lensky's second from Eugene Onegin. Tolstoy got his nickname after he made a trip to America, during which he was taken off the ship and ate his own monkey.

Kuragins

Alexey Borisovich Kurakin

In this case, it is difficult to talk about the family, because the images of Prince Vasily, Anatole and Helen are borrowed from several people who are not related by kinship. Kuragin Sr. is undoubtedly Alexei Borisovich Kurakin, a prominent courtier during the reigns of Paul I and Alexander I, who made a brilliant career at court and made a fortune.

Prototypes of Helen - the wife of Bagration and the mistress of a classmate of Pushkin

He had three children, exactly like Prince Vasily, of whom his daughter brought him the most trouble. Alexandra Alekseevna really had a scandalous reputation, especially her divorce from her husband made a lot of noise in the world. Prince Kurakin, in one of his letters, even called his daughter the main burden of his old age. Looks like a character from War and Peace, doesn't it? Although, Vasily Kuragin spoke a little differently.

Anatole Kuragin, apparently, has no prototype, except for Anatoly Lvovich Shostak, who at one time seduced Tatyana Bers.

Ekaterina Skavronskaya-Bagration

As for Helen, her image is taken from several women at once. In addition to some similarities with Alexandra Kurakina, she has much in common with Ekaterina Skvaronskaya (Bagration's wife), who was known for her careless behavior not only in Russia, but also in Europe. At home, she was called the "Wandering Princess", and in Austria she was known as the mistress of Clemens Metternich, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Empire. From him, Ekaterina Skavronskaya gave birth - of course, out of wedlock - a daughter, Clementine. Perhaps it was the "Wandering Princess" that contributed to the entry of Austria into the anti-Napoleonic coalition. Another woman from whom Tolstoy could borrow Helen's traits is Nadezhda Akinfova. She was born in 1840 and was very famous in St. Petersburg and Moscow as a woman of scandalous reputation and rampant disposition. She gained wide popularity thanks to an affair with Chancellor Alexander Gorchakov, a classmate of Pushkin. By the way, he was 40 years older than Akinfova, the husband who was the chancellor's great-nephew.

Vasily Denisov

Denis Davydov

Every schoolchild knows that Denis Davydov was the prototype of Vasily Denisov. Tolstoy himself acknowledged this.

Julie Karagina

There is an opinion that Julie Karagina is Varvara Alexandrovna Lanskaya. She is known exclusively for the fact that she had a long correspondence with her friend Maria Volkova. From these letters Tolstoy studied the history of the War of 1812. Moreover, they almost completely entered War and Peace under the guise of correspondence between Princess Marya and Julie Karagina.

Pierre Bezukhov

Petr Vyazemsky

Alas, Pierre does not have any obvious or even approximate prototype. This character has similarities both with Tolstoy himself and with many historical figures who lived during the time of the writer and during the Patriotic War. There is, for example, a curious story about how the historian and poet Pyotr Vyazemsky went to the site of the Battle of Borodino. Allegedly, this incident formed the basis of the story of how Pierre traveled to Borodino. But Vyazemsky was at that time a military man, and he arrived on the battlefield not by an internal call, but by official duties.

Tolstoy's novel shows the evolution of heroines. The author does not deny them the ability to think, they are, in fact, concerned about global problems- problems of happiness, love of serving people, etc. The idea of ​​"simple female happiness" in Tolstoy's heroines turns out to be through suffering. The "best", beloved heroines of Tolstoy, like male heroes, are capable of development.

Natasha is Tolstoy's favorite heroine. The author reveals her character in continuous external and internal movement. Therefore, for the first time in the novel, she does not just appear, but “runs” into the hall, a spontaneous, full of vitality girl. Natasha, who grew up in the moral and pure atmosphere of the Rostov family, immediately captivates us with sincerity, endless love for life, for the people around her. She lives as her heart tells her, because from birth she has what Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov have been looking for in themselves for so long - the naturalness of the soul, which is so characteristic of the unspoiled spiritual world of children Saburov A.A. "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy. Problematics and poetics. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1959. - S. 210 .. That is why so often Tolstoy compares Natasha with a child. “What was going on in this childish receptive soul, which was so greedily catching and assimilating all the most varied impressions of life?” Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 9: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 122. - the writer asks with tenderness. Admiring his heroine, he appreciates in her simplicity, kindness and the ability to feel beauty and truth.

Natasha Rostova is not a small force; this is a goddess, an energetic, gifted nature, from which in another time and in another environment a woman of far remarkable might have emerged, but the fatal conditions of female life weigh on her, and she lives fruitlessly and almost dies from an excess of her undirected forces. The author depicts with special love the image of this lively, lovely girl at an age when the girl is no longer a child, but not yet a girl, with her frisky childish antics in which the future woman expresses herself. Natasha grows up as a happy, free bird, a beloved child in a kind, friendly family of Moscow bars, in which a constant atmosphere of love reigns.

Natasha internally and externally is somewhat similar, and this is no coincidence, to Tatyana Larina. It has the same openness to love and happiness, the same biological, unconscious connection with Russian national traditions and principles. For Tolstoy, this spiritual connection between the heroine and the people is very important.

The image of Natasha is revealed in the scene visiting her uncle. The final episode of this picture is Natasha's dance to the music of her uncle, who turned out to be an excellent guitarist - a performer of Russian songs. Uncle, with such skill and sincerity, took the first chords of the famous Russian song “On the Bridge Street”, that they immediately touched the listeners to the heart, and Natasha could no longer stand still, threw off her scarf and with her dance led to amazement of all those present. She, delighted and carried away by the singing of her uncle, who “sang like the people sing”, does not notice how she starts dancing. And in those moments she understands everything that "was in Anisya, and in Anisya's father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian person." We, like the author, are surprised, “where, how, when this countess, brought up by a French emigrant, sucked into herself from that Russian air that she breathed, this spirit ... But the spirit and methods were the same, inimitable, Russian, which and her uncle was waiting for her” Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 10: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 262 ..

Did such scenes of village entertainment actually take place? Could a writer in life itself observe similar patterns? Let us cite the memoirs of contemporaries. One of them writes: “It sometimes happens in the village that the old gentleman and the elderly mistress, like children, have fun in the circle of their faithful servants: they will call the maids, young and old, to the dining room, and sing and brisk dancers from the courtyards - and the fun went: and songs and dances - what are your gypsies! .. The old lady with participation follows all the movements and jumps of the rural Duports, the hustle and bustle of the crowd in circles and the dance at the exit of the homegrown Fanny and Taglioni. The old gentleman himself, dancing ... little by little begins to pull up - ah! in the puddles!.. a birch stood in the field... a sparrow thief... then resolutely adjoins the choir and finally completely lays aside all the greatness of the householder, drowning in fun, like cheese in butter!.. "Pictures of Russian life in the old days: From the notes of N.V. Sushkova // Raut for 1852: Sat. - M., 1852. - S. 482 - 483 ..

The scene of Natasha's dancing while visiting her uncle corresponds to a real episode that took place with Tatyana Kuzminskaya at the Dyakovs', the neighbors of the Tolstoys on the estate.

Varvara Valentinovna Nagornova (Tolstoy's niece) in 1916, in an appendix to the Novoye Vremya newspaper, published an article “Original by Natasha Rostova”, in which she said:

“In the sixth figure of the quadrille, the orchestra began to play “Kamarinsky”, Lev Nikolayevich began to call out who could dance “Russian”, but everyone stood in silence. Then he turned to Kolokoltsev with the words: “Walk through the “Russian”, can you really stand still?” The orchestra took more and more.

Well, well, - urged the uncle. Kolokoltsov took a decisive step forward and, describing a smooth circle, stopped in front of Tanya.

I saw her hesitation and I was afraid for her.”

Citing these memoirs, V.V. Nagornova in the book "My life in Yasnaya Polyana", T.A. Kuzminskaya continues:

“But not only Varya, but I myself felt shy, and at the same time I could hardly stand still. I felt how my heart trembled, how my shoulders, arms, legs trembled, and how they themselves, against my will, could do what they needed.

Varenka writes: “Her face expressed enthusiastic determination, and suddenly, akimbo with one hand and raising the other, she swam with light steps towards Kolokoltsev. Someone threw a handkerchief at her. Picking it up on the fly, she no longer cared about those around her, dancing as if she had never done anything else. Everyone applauded” Kuzminskaya T.A. My life at home and in Yasnaya Polyana. - Tula, 1960. - S. 417 ..

Excitement seizes Natasha during the reading of the Manifesto. In these moments, her soul is overwhelmed with a feeling of great love for the motherland, for her sake she is ready for any sacrifice. Perhaps the most remarkable episode of a whole series of wonderful genre paintings dedicated to Natasha Rostova is an episode of the evacuation of the wounded from Moscow, in which she proved herself to be a true patriot. This scene is written by Tolstoy with amazing skill. In Natasha's attitude towards the wounded soldiers, an organic connection with the people's life is expressed, the desire to give everything for the good of her people. She throws all her strength into somehow helping them. At such moments, the author admires his heroine Khalizev V.E., Kormilov S.I. Roman L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace": Proc. settlement - M.: Higher. school, 1983. - S. 59 ..

Natasha's disinterestedness, her willingness to give everything to suffering people, not thinking about her misfortunes, resonates in the hearts of all the Rostovs.

The best features of the Rostov family, connected with the Russian people by some invisible threads, stand out with particular relief, thanks to the contrast between them and Berg, who in these terrible days for Russian people still cares about only one thing: personal gain, the opportunity to get something for himself. .

It is significant to note that in the early version of this scene, an officer appeared who appeared from Rostopchin with an order to return the transport that had arrived from the village to evacuate the wounded Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 14: War and Peace. Draft editions and variants. - M .: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 365 .. Reshaping this plot situation in a radical way, Tolstoy brighter and deeper expressed the patriotic feelings of his beloved heroine Natasha and, on the contrary, removed colors from the image of Rostopchin that were completely alien to him.

The spiritual beauty of Natasha is also manifested in relation to her native nature. We hear sincere enthusiasm in her voice at night in Otradnoye. “Oh, what a delight! After all, such a lovely night has never, never happened ... So she would squat down, like this, grab herself under her knees - tighter, as tight as possible - and fly. Like this!" Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 9: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 210. - the girl exclaims. Harmonious connection with nature gives Natasha a feeling of happiness. But she knows how not only to be happy herself, but also makes others happy, being for them something like a guardian angel. Many episodes of the novel tell how Natasha inspires people, without noticing it herself, makes them better, kinder.

The author does not consider his heroine smart, prudent, adapted to life. But her simplicity, spirituality of the heart defeat the mind, learning and good manners. Despite her appearance, clearly ugly in childhood and adolescence, Natasha attracts even unfamiliar people. Unlike the “brilliant beauty” Helen, she does not strike with her external beauty, and, nevertheless, she is truly beautiful, because her soul, her inner world is beautiful. How expressive are her eyes, full of living human feelings: suffering, joy, love, hope. They are both “radiant”, and “curious”, and “begging”, and “scared”, and “attentive”. What wealth of the spiritual world is expressed in these eyes. The heroine is always charming, and in moments of happiness she is simply full of energy that fascinates and attracts. With this, Natasha fascinates Andrei Bolkonsky, acquaintance with whom becomes a new starting point in her life. A real, great feeling is born in it - love. The need and ability to love have always lived in Natasha. Her whole essence is love. But the love for her father and mother, for Nikolai and Sonya, even her “childish” love for Boris, differs from the new and deep feeling that flares up in her, making her even more beautiful.

But Tolstoy not only admires the noble deeds, appearance and inner world of his heroine, but also understands her in those moments of life when she makes mistakes, takes the wrong steps. After all, this is inevitable at this age, during the formation of character, the formation of personality. Natasha does not at all out of malice decide to run away with the idle talker, reveler Anatole Kuragin. She does this out of her inexperience, gullibility. Although even then he does not cease to love and respect Prince Andrei. Then, realizing her mistake, Natasha remains faithful to Bolkonsky until the end of his life. Bocharov S.G. "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy // Three masterpieces of Russian classics. - M.: Artist. literature, 1971. - S. 69 ..

The emotional and lively Natasha is contrasted in the novel by the meek and gentle Princess Marya, in whom humility and restraint are combined with a thirst for simple human happiness.

Differently than with the Rostovs, Tolstoy draws the atmosphere of the Bolkonsky estate, in which Princess Marya lives and is brought up. Many episodes of the novel speak of how despotic and strict with her daughter her father, in his own way loving her and wishing her well. In the portrait of Marya Bolkonskaya, as always with Tolstoy, extremely laconic, her radiant eyes are remembered, which made the ugly face of the princess beautiful in moments of strong spiritual uplift. The old prince Nikolai Bolkonsky seeks to give his daughter a serious education, giving her lessons himself. If Marya Volkonskaya is certainly smart, then Pierre perfectly answers the question about Natasha Rostova’s intellectual abilities, saying that she “does not deign to be smart,” because she is much higher and more complex than the concepts of intelligence and stupidity Bursov B.I. L.N. Tolstoy: Seminary. - L.: Uchpedgiz. Leningrad. department, 1963. - S. 94 ..

Princess Mary resignedly submits to her eccentric and despotic father, not only out of fear, but also out of a sense of duty as a daughter who does not have the moral right to judge her father. At first glance, she seems timid and downtrodden. But in her character there is hereditary Bolkon pride, an innate sense of self-worth, which manifests itself, for example, in her refusal of Anatole Kuragin's proposal. Despite the desire for quiet family happiness, which this ugly girl is deeply fraught with, she does not want to become the wife of a handsome secular man at the cost of humiliation and insult to her dignity. With particular force, the firmness and strength of character of this modest, shy girl is revealed during the Patriotic War of 1812. When the French companion promised Princess Mary, who found herself in a difficult situation, the protection of her compatriots, she stopped communicating with her and left Bogucharovo, as her patriotic feeling was offended.

Restrained, withdrawn, self-absorbed, Princess Marya leads a monotonous village life, poor in external events. Her searches, discoveries and disappointments occur most often in her soul, in her rich and rich inner world Saburov A.A. "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy. Problematics and poetics. - M.: Publishing House of Moscow. un-ta, 1959. - S. 185 ..

The ugly appearance of Princess Marya, the unattractiveness of which she exaggerates to herself, makes it impossible for her to love a man and family happiness. She sees in this the finger of God, which has outlined her path in life, and stifles in herself the slightest dream of happiness, like a devilish obsession: “my life is a life of selflessness and love,” she says, and transfers her thirst for love to a few close people. , father, brother, nephew, and gives her whole life to them, but her self-sacrifice is fruitless, and her love brings her nothing but suffering. She passionately adores her father and suffers.

Her father, an influential man under Catherine and exiled under Paul to the countryside, like all ambitious and energetic people condemned to forced inactivity, wastes his need for activity and administrative abilities on trifles, which, not finding their own soil, degenerate into petty, inexorable despotism. and selfishness. Everything in the house bows before his iron will, everything trembles in his gaze, the life of the household must go, like a well-arranged machine, along the path indicated by him. Activity is happiness, he says, and the whole day is busy; he has all fixed hours: for sharpening, building, studying with his daughter, writing notes - and he imagines that he is doing business, like a squirrel in a wheel imagines that he is running. He arranges the same happiness for his daughter. Princess Mary resignedly endures everything: not only does she not dare to complain, she would be glad to endure even this, if only her adored father looked at her with love, said an affectionate word to her; in her love for him, she comes to the complete humiliation of human dignity, to the very slavish subservience.

Her father calls her a fool, reproaches her with ugliness, and she does not think to be indignant; she not only does not allow herself to understand her father's shortcomings, but deliberately averts her eyes so as not to see them; her father, in a moment of anger, beats an old faithful servant, and she is tormented by one thought, how to behave decently on such an occasion: whether to maintain a sad look in order to show sympathy for the bad disposition of her father and thereby provoke the usual reproach that she is always ready to whimper, or to pretend that he does not notice anything, and that, even worse, makes him suspect himself of criminal indifference to the chagrin of his father.

When an old man out of his mind, out of anger at his son’s hated marriage, draws close to him the clever intriguer Bourien, who, taking advantage of his weakness, wants to profitably provide for herself, she reproaches herself with black thoughts. And as a reward for this boundless devotion, which takes her best years, she sees neglect, coldness; she feels that there will never be that strong connection between her and her father, as between him and her brother; she realizes that for her father she is no more than an insignificant screw in a machine, that he needs her only so that he can spend the prescribed hours with her on geometry lessons and see her face in its usual place, as an indispensable accessory of domestic order - and suffers .

She adores her brother and daughter-in-law and suffers for their discord, the reasons for which she cannot understand; she suffers doubly, feeling that, despite all her love for her brother, she cannot be anything in his life, that he has his own world of ideas, activities, plans in which she has no place; she suffers from her brother's misfortunes, but she cannot console him: she can only weep with him and show him the path in which she found consolation, which she cannot console her brother. She becomes passionately attached to her nephew, but her love and selfless devotion are useless and even harmful to the child, and she herself is brought new torment. She is tormented both for the health of the child and for his teaching. She herself teaches him, but this painful love increases her irritability, the inevitable consequence of her life, oppression and fear; she, in turn, intimidates the child and repels him from learning; laziness is followed by inevitable punishment, after which she is horrified by her anger and sheds tears of repentance, and the child runs out of the corner to console her. Meanwhile, the upbringing of children is exactly that thing, always available to a woman, in which the loving nature of Princess Mary could find the purpose of life; but in order to be an educator, she first had to re-educate herself, and this is the lot of a few strong natures, or grow up herself in the hands of educators who would look at her not as living material for dressing up according to one theory or another, but as a person who has his own rights, from which it is necessary to prepare a useful member of society. Prince Andrei, so that his son does not become a “tearful old girl,” as old Bolkonsky says, hurries to take him a tutor, and Princess Maria has only one thing left to do - pour out her feelings in correspondence with a friend and in prayer.

A blow is struck with her father, and during his illness Princess Mary endures that painful struggle that thousands of women endure and will have to endure when they see that life is free, life without eternal oppression and fear is revealed to them only by the death of a dear, close person, with which they are connected by a sacred and terrible duty for them. Princess Marya takes care of her father with all her devotion that does not change for a moment, but it is terrible to say, despite all her passionate love for her father, despite all her religiosity, she experiences a strange feeling: relief at the sight of her dying father. And she often unwittingly follows her father, not with the hope of finding signs of relief from the disease, but desiring to find signs of the approaching end. It was terrible for Princess Mary to recognize this feeling in herself, but it was in her. “And what was even more terrible for Princess Mary,” the author says further, “was that since the time of her father’s illness (even almost earlier, when she, expecting something, stayed with him), everything woke up in her. fallen asleep, forgotten personal desires and hopes. What had not crossed her mind for years was the thought of free life without the fear of a father, even thoughts about the possibility of love and family happiness, like the temptations of the devil, constantly rushed in her imagination ”Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 11: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 174 ..

A very large place in the disclosure of the central female characters of the novel - Natasha Rostova and Marya Bolkonskaya - has an epilogue. Having portrayed the capital's nobility critically, Tolstoy in the epilogue of the novel gave a certain ideal of noble families - this is the family of Nikolai Rostov and Marya Bolkonskaya and the family of Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova. To all the deceitful, selfish and immoral that is inherent in the big world, Tolstoy contrasted the simple, unsophisticated, harmonious in the estate life of the Rostovs and Bezukhovs.

Tolstoy writes: "As in every real family, several completely different worlds lived together in the Lysogorsky house, which, each holding its own peculiarity and making concessions to one another, merged into one harmonious whole ”Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 12: War and peace. - M .: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 273 ..

What especially delights the novelist in the life of these two similar family nests? First of all, the simplicity and naturalness of the whole process of family life. Nikolai Rostov turned out, as mentioned above, to be an excellent host who found his way to the peasant's heart; Princess Mary is a loving wife and a virtuous mother. “Nikolai lived with his wife so well that even Sonya and the old countess, who, out of jealousy, wanted disagreement between them, could not find a pretext for reproach” Ibid. - P. 262 .. And if sometimes hostile relations arose between them, then this rather emphasized the fullness of their happy life than threatened with any serious consequences. The selfless tender love of Princess Mary for her husband and children creates an atmosphere of spirituality in the family, ennobles Nicholas, who feels the sublimity and high morality of the world in which his wife lives.

The married life of Natasha and Pierre is also an idyll of family happiness. Having gone through all the trials of life, the heroine of Tolstoy does not lose all her best qualities: kindness, tenderness, responsiveness, dedication. She becomes stronger and more courageous. It has wisdom in it. And finally, Natasha finds the meaning of life. All of herself, all her soul, to the most hidden corner, she gives to Pierre. Family is mutual and voluntary slavery when you love and are loved. In the family, she finds the long-awaited peace and happiness.

The complete rebirth of Natasha, which occurred after her marriage, more than once caused sharp criticism against Tolstoy for the fact that he turned the sorceress Natasha, full of charm and grace, in marriage into just "a strong and prolific female."

In the literature on "War and Peace" it has been repeatedly written that Tolstoy, in solving the "women's issue", argued with the revolutionary democrats. In contrast to their broad propaganda of the emancipation of women from slave family ties, women's right to higher education, social activities etc., Tolstoy draws his ideal of a Russian woman - Natasha.

Depicted in the epilogue family life To his beloved heroine, Tolstoy gives a number of journalistic theses on the essence and purpose of marriage, the foundations of family life, the appointment of a woman in the family, etc. The main idea of ​​​​Tolstoy in matters of family and marriage comes down to the recognition of the complete incompatibility of the duties of a wife and mother with any other hobbies. exemplary wife and a mother, according to Tolstoy, is so absorbed in her family responsibilities that she does not and cannot have free time for anything else: “... She (Natasha), carrying, giving birth and feeding children and taking part in every minute of her husband's life, could not satisfy these needs otherwise than by refusing the light "Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 12: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 266 ..

The writer explains the behavior of his heroine by the ability of human nature to be completely immersed in one object. “The subject that Natasha completely immersed herself in was the family, i.e. a husband who had to be kept in such a way that he belonged inseparably to her, to the house - and children who had to be carried, born, fed and educated ”Ibid. - S. 267 ..

All these arguments of Tolstoy show that he came to a categorical conclusion about the incompatibility of the conjugal duties of a wife and mother with any other interests. A woman was born for only one thing: having reached the age when her physical development allows her to marry, she must start a family and concentrate all her attention and energy on creating a family nest, on the birth of children and their upbringing. Such a mission of a woman, according to the writer, follows from her very nature.

Tolstoy enters into a sharp and decisive polemic with those who are trying to lead a woman away from this path, once and for all destined for her. He writes: “The talk and reasoning about the rights of women, about the relationship of spouses, about their freedom and rights, although they have not yet been called, as they are now, questions, were then exactly the same as now; but these questions not only did not interest Natasha, but she decidedly did not understand them.

These questions, then, as now, existed only for those people who see in marriage only the pleasure that spouses receive from each other, that is, one beginning of marriage, and not all its meaning, consisting in the family "Tolstoy L.N. . Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 12: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 267 - 268 ..

I must say that in addition to the central female images are shown in the novel and simple people from the people. So, the scene at the uncle's house is beautiful in its simplicity and poetry. In it, Tolstoy expressed his love for everything Russian. Uncle himself - this typical Russian provincial landowner of an average hand - is full of poetic charm. He was loved throughout the province as the noblest and most disinterested eccentric. Tolstoy says that “he was called upon to judge family cases, he was made an executor, secrets were trusted to him, he was elected to judges and other positions ...” Ibid. - T. 10. - S. 264 ..

Full of poetry, charm and Russian beauty, a serf woman Anisya Fedorovna. Here is her portrait: “... A fat, ruddy, beautiful woman of about 40 entered, with a double chin and full, ruddy lips. With hospitable representativeness and attractiveness in her eyes and every movement, she looked around the guests and bowed respectfully to them with an affectionate smile. - S. 263 ..

The beauty and charm of the uncle and Anisya Fedorovna are complemented by truly Russian hospitality, that cordiality, the imprint of which lies on every dish of the village cuisine, prepared with such love for welcome guests.

Thus, such concepts as “soul”, “beauty”, “nature” are associated with the “best” women in the novel; they are more emotional perception of the world than men. The function of women in the novel is regenerating. So, Natasha helps Prince Andrei get out of spiritual crisis, in which he ended up after the death of his wife, Marya Bolkonskaya "rescues" Nikolai Rostov.

2 .3 Static female characters in the novel

The “best”, beloved female characters of Tolstoy are opposed in the novel by non-developing female characters, those who live only by themselves. This is Lisa Bolkonskaya, Sonya, Helen.

Let's start with the image of Liza Bolkonskaya.

The little princess Bolkonskaya is one of the most charming women in Petersburg; when she speaks, her squirrel lips so gracefully touch the lower one, her eyes are so bright, her childishly capricious antics are so sweet, the coquetry is so playful: all this must be mentioned, because in this sponge, eyes, antics and coquetry - all the little princess. She is one of those lovely flowers whose purpose is to adorn life, one of those cute baby dolls for whom life is today a ball with one princess, tomorrow a reception with another, crowds of admirers, dresses, chatter about the last performance and an anecdote at court and a light slander about the false teeth of one countess and the hair of another. Not a single serious thought ever flickered in those bright eyes, not a single question about the meaning of life flew from this cutely upturned lip. This lovely flower was transferred from the greenhouse that raised it and adorns the life of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, this child-pupa is a wife and is preparing to be a mother.

Prince Andrei is a thinking man; he is accustomed to stop before every phenomenon of life, to be aware of every impression and bring it even to the point of pain, and this man is the husband of a charming baby doll. How this happened, the author does not tell us. Probably, he, like every mortal, was carried away by the playful coquetry of a pretty doll and, thanks to the romantic spirit of the times, adorned his passion with the loud name of love, found meaning in this childish chatter and laughter, in these pretty eyes there is a lot of feeling and thought, and imagined that this doll there is exactly a girlfriend created for him. Of course, he was not slow to realize his mistake. We find them six months after the wedding. The pretty doll remained the same pretty doll even after her marriage. Intimacy with such a person as Prince Andrei brought absolutely nothing to the little princess. She does those cute little things of innocently playful coquetry with her husband, as she does with the idiot Ippolit Kuragin; her husband treats her with cold courtesy, as if she were a stranger. He is weary of life, in which there is no room for his strength, he dreams of glory, of exploits, and she pesters him with reproaches, which is why we women are happy with everything and do not want anything; he is going to go to the army, because war is the only way available to him to achieve his goals, and she cries in the tone of an offended child, why does he leave his wife in such a position - without that, with the help of her uncle, he could arrange imagine a brilliant career and be an aide-de-camp! The discord between them grows, both suffer. The little princess suffers as much as she can suffer; when he forgets about balls, admirers and court news; she still loves her husband, as far as her little heart is capable of loving, as she would love any beautiful young man who would become her husband. Spoiled by the world, probably spoiled at home, like all pretty brides, accustomed to worship, to adoration, she expected the same from her husband, she was offended by his coldness and neglect. “Why did you change to me, I didn’t do anything to you,” she reproaches. And in fact, why did he have to change to her. Her eyes are just as bright, her coquetry is just as sweetly playful, her squirrel lip, still gracefully flying off, touches the lower one, she is still charming, her admirers constantly assure her that why should her husband not love her, especially now that she is acquiring new rights to love him, preparing to be the mother of his child? Her pretty head will never understand this.

L. Tolstoy shows his attitude towards such women in the words of Prince Andrei: “Egoism, vanity, stupidity - these are women when they are shown as they are,” and the following advice to a friend: “Never marry, brother, until you say yourself that you did your best and until you stop loving the woman you chose until you see her clearly. Marry an old man good for nothing, otherwise everything that is good and high in you will be lost, everything will be spent on trifles ”Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 9: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 75 ..

From these words, one might get the impression that Tolstoy, who put them into the mouth of Prince Andrei, considers love to be something like dark water that obscures vision, and a fatal, irresistible force that turns the whole person upside down. “If you expect something from yourself ahead,” he continues his complaints, “then at every step you will feel that everything is closed to you, except for the living room, where you will stand on the same board with a lackey and an idiot.” Ibid. - P. 76 .. It is difficult to understand why an unsuccessful marriage could close everything that a person aspired to. But perhaps this expresses the attitude of the author to this type of women?

"Living room, gossip, balls - this is the world from which I can not get out" Ibid. - S. 79., - Prince Andrei complains further. But why? If his wife could not live without this world of living rooms, gossip and balls, then couldn't she live in them without him? After all, he himself was aware that his wife was “one of those rare women with whom a husband can be calm for his honor,” the little princess was not infected by the moral licentiousness of her circle, whose brilliant representative was the magnificent beauty Helen Bezukhova. Her puppet heart could not be carried away by a strong feeling for a person who could inspire him. Otherwise, she would have understood and appreciated her husband, and there would be no need for her to look far. Helen Bezukhova - a pretty woman surrounded by admirers, inevitably becomes the subject of gossip.

Prince Andrei, despising in words this world of living rooms, balls and gossip, in fact bowed before its laws. For the sake of this, leaving for the army, he acts with his wife as a complete despot: he takes the pregnant woman to his father, whom she is terribly afraid of, separates her from friends, habits, in order to save her from the courtship of the idiot Hippolytus. The little princess, forcibly torn from her native world, is bored unbearably in the village, although the consciousness that she is preparing to be a mother could open to her another world of sensations, hopes, thoughts, which turned more than one child into a woman. The author often mentions her happy, calm look of a pregnant woman, who looks inside herself, but this look does not reflect a single reasonable thought about the duties that await her, no anxiety about whether she is worthy of them, not a single word proving this breaks from her now ungracefully drawn-out squirrel sponge; she even becomes angry at her position when the arrival of a handsome socialite reminds her of her native world of living rooms, successes, admirers, and she, like a "war horse, having heard the trumpet," is preparing to indulge in the usual gallop of coquetry, and feels how much it interferes with her sweet childishness and playfully flirtatious antics. Even at the moment of permission, in which she could prepare herself, she remains the same pitiful child: she becomes frightened and cries with childish, capricious and even somewhat feigned tears, begging everyone to dissuade her that this is not that, "not terrible, inevitable that." She dies in childbirth. The husband returns with a resurrected feeling of love for the chrysalis-wife. Bleeding on the Pratsensky Heights and feeling death over him, disappointed in his dreams of glory, Prince Andrei suddenly felt that life was dear to him, and dear precisely to his family and wife. Under the influence of this feeling, Prince Andrei also wanted to live for his wife, this empty, insignificant woman, whom he did not want to entrust with the upbringing of his son (for his daughter, this empty, insignificant woman was quite an excellent teacher), and his own coldness and neglect of the doll-wife seemed cruel and unfair.

How could the death of the chrysalis produce such a revolution? Under the influence of his nervous, impressionable nature, still weak from his illness and recent wound, Prince Andrei on the face of his dead wife reads a whole story of deep hidden suffering, which the little princess was never able to feel. She was quite naturally upset by her husband’s coldness, his insulting neglect, she felt insulted, but childishly, fleetingly, and, having flushed a little, in a minute she was ready to laugh out loud for the hundredth time, talking about the false teeth of one countess, about the hair of another. She loved her husband; but the balls, dresses and successes in the world are the same; and if she had to choose between her husband and all this, she would be even more unhappy, having lost all this, than her husband's love. The little princess was not a deep nature, but, nevertheless, her cry of the soul, which the little princess did not know how to express consciously in life - “Why did you choose me when you could not love a woman like me? I didn't promise you anything, I didn't know anything, but you, you clever man, you, who have both experience and knowledge of life and people, why did you imagine that I could be the wife that you need, promised me love and happiness in order to later reject me with contempt ”Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 10: War and peace. - M .: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 159. - reflected on the face of a dying woman, is absolutely fair. If the little princess had survived, after the first joys of meeting, their life would have gone on as usual. Dark shadows and angularities, softened by the distance, would have appeared again, as before, her sweet childishness and playful coquetry would have begun to jar Prince Andrei to the pain; except that under the influence of dying remorse and feelings for her as the mother of his child, he would become more skillful in hiding his disdain for the pretty doll-wife and throwing indulgent caresses at her; but a woman, even such a doll as a little princess, is difficult to fool on this score, and, again puffing out angrily a squirrel sponge, the little princess in a childishly capricious voice would reproach her husband for not loving her, and wonder why it is men who are not satisfied with anything, and we, women, do not need anything in life. And the repentance of Prince Andrei, and the love that resurrected on the Pratsensky heights - everything would have been erased before the daily omnipotent influence of life, before those unintentional impartial insults that people of completely different characters, concepts inevitably inflict on each other, bound together by chains inseparable for them. But the little princess died, leaving behind the reputation of a departed angel, which every dead young and pretty woman always leaves for sensitive souls, unless she is positively a witch, but in her numerous admirers - the memory of a beautiful flower, mown so early by the merciless hand of death. But we; alas, so hard-hearted that we cannot recognize this hand as too ruthless.

It is impossible not to say about another female image of the novel - Sonya. We notice how throughout the story the author constantly and persistently compares two heroines: Sonya and Natasha. Natasha is lively, direct, life-loving, sometimes even self-willed. Sonya, on the other hand, looks like a harmless and defenseless animal, it is not for nothing that Tolstoy compares her with a kitten, which will later become a lovely cat. This is expressed in the smoothness, softness, flexibility of her movements, in some cunning and restraint of manners. She is inaccessible to those "peaks of feeling" that Natasha possesses, she lacks enthusiasm and naturalness. She is too grounded, too immersed in everyday life. It is Sonya who prevents Natasha's shameful escape with Anatole. But the author's sympathies at this moment are not on her side, he sympathizes not with the prudent and reasonable Sonya, but with the "criminal" Natasha. The beloved heroine of Tolstoy experiences her act with such force of shame and despair that she becomes higher than the virtuous Sonya, with her prudence and false dedication Lomunov K.N. Leo Tolstoy: Essay on life and work. - 2nd ed., add. - M.: Det. literature, 1984. - S. 184 ..

True, the author gives Sonya joyful moments of life, but these are just moments. She loves Nikolai Rostov, and at first he reciprocates her feelings. All her best, cherished memories are associated with him: common childhood games and pranks, Christmas time with fortune-telling and mummers, Nikolai's love impulse, the first kiss. But in the Rostov family they understand that their marriage is impossible. The Countess is trying to convince Sonya to respond to Dolokhov's proposal, because he is "a decent and, in some cases, a brilliant match for the dowry, orphan Sonya."

One important remark must be made here. There are two very young brides in the Rostovs' house. Dolokhov proposes to sixteen-year-old Sonya, and Denisov proposes to Natasha, who was not yet sixteen years old.

Notes of contemporaries confirm the historical fidelity of this phenomenon. At that time, girls were getting married almost as teenagers. So, for example, D. Blagovo writes: “The groom was twenty-five years old, the bride was fifteen; according to the then it was so accepted that the girls were given early in marriage; they told me that my mother's mother, Princess Meshcherskaya, was twelve years old when she got married. Grandmother's stories, from the memoirs of five generations, recorded and collected by her grandson D. Blagovo. - St. Petersburg, 1885. - S. 52 - 53 ..

Sonya refuses to marry Dolokhov. She promises Nikolai: "I love you like a brother and will always love you, and I don't need anything else." She lacks that will and those mental strength that Natasha has, in order to fight for her love, Sonya writes a letter to Nikolai, in which she gives him complete freedom, although deep down, of course, she does not want to give it up, despite the requests of the countess. She, as it were, makes a concession, hoping that Andrei Bolkonsky will recover and that she and Natasha will get married. And this means that the marriage of Nicholas and Princess Marya will become impossible, since in this case they will be considered relatives. But the whole trouble is that Nikolai himself no longer loves Sonya, but thinks only of Princess Marya: “A wonderful girl must be! That's it, angel! Why am I not free, why did I hurry with Sonya? The hopes of the heroine are not justified: Prince Andrei dies, and Nikolai Rostov connects his fate with Marya. And Sonya can only quietly and meekly love the one from whom she is unable to refuse. And after Nikolai's marriage, the poor girl does not stop thinking about him.

Sonya, of course, cannot be compared with Tolstoy's favorite heroines, but this is more her misfortune than her fault. She is an empty flower. The life of a poor relative, the feeling of constant dependence did not allow her soul to open up fully. Karpenko (responsible editor) and others - Kyiv: Vishcha school, 1978. - S. 173 ..

The next type of women in the novel who do not have development are numerous high-society beauties, mistresses of magnificent salons in St. Petersburg and Moscow - Helen Kuragina, Julie Karagina, Anna Pavlovna Sherer; cold and apathetic Vera Berg dreams of her own salon.

Secular society is immersed in eternal vanity. In the portrait of the beautiful Helen Tolstoy sees the whiteness of the shoulders, the gloss of her hair and diamonds, a very open chest and back, and a frozen smile. Such details allow the artist to emphasize the inner emptiness, the insignificance of the high society lioness. The place of genuine human feelings in luxurious living rooms is occupied by monetary calculation. The marriage of Helen, who chose the wealthy Pierre as her husband, is a clear confirmation of this.

The marriage of the daughter of Prince Vasily Helen with the rich heir to the Bezukhov estates Pierre takes in the novel significant place and reveals the moral face of high society, shows the essence of marriage in this society, where in the name of wealth, in the name of sybarite life, they commit any moral crime.

Pierre Bezukhov and Helen are antipodes in their mental and moral make-up. And if the case with the legacy of the old man Bezukhov had turned out differently, then neither Prince Vasily, nor a certain part of the St. Petersburg nobility would have ever thought of the possibility of Helen's marriage to Pierre. But Pierre suddenly became unusually rich; turned into one of the most "brilliant" suitors in Russia. Pierre’s new position decisively changed the attitude towards him from those around him: “He needed ... to accept a lot of people who previously didn’t want to know about his existence, and now they would be offended and upset if he didn’t want to see them” Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 9: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 244 ..

The relationship between Pierre and Helene, both before and after marriage, rested on false premises. Pierre did not love and could not love Helen, there was not even a shadow of spiritual kinship between them. Pierre is a noble, positive nature, with a kind, sympathetic heart. Helen, on the contrary, is cold, cruel, selfish, prudent and dexterous in her secular adventures. Her whole nature found an exact definition in Napoleon's remark: "C" est un superbe animal "(" This is a beautiful animal "). She knew that she was dazzlingly beautiful and that such an appearance could be used as the power of a predatory animal devouring a careless victim. She could not resist her beauty and good-natured Pierre."... He saw and felt all the charm of her body, which was covered only by clothes ... "So you still haven't noticed how beautiful I am? - Helen seemed to say. - You didn't notice "What am I a woman? Yes, I am a woman who can belong to anyone, and to you too," her look said. And at that very moment Pierre felt that Helen not only could, but should have been his wife ... "Ibid. . - S. 249 - 250 ..

Here is the view of a brilliant representative of the big world on one of the main issues human life- the question of marital happiness. Here is an example of a cynical profanation of the relationship of young people! Instead of a sincere feeling of love - a sign: "For sale at a reasonable price" Myshkovskaya L.M. Mastery of L.N. Tolstoy. - M.: Sov. writer, 1958. - S. 149 ..

The fidelity of the picture drawn by Tolstoy is confirmed on the pages of the works of his great predecessors - Griboyedov, Pushkin, Lermontov.

Let us refer to Famusov's answer to Sophia about a possible groom for her: “Whoever is poor is not a match for you” and vice versa;

Be poor, yes if you get it

Souls of a thousand two tribal,

That and the groom.

Pushkin's heroine, Tatyana Larina, speaks with deep sorrow about her marriage:

Me with tears of spells

Mother prayed for poor Tanya

All the lots were equal ...

The same sad thoughts are expressed by Baroness Shtral, the heroine of the drama "Masquerade" by Lermontov:

What is a woman? Her from her youth

In the sale of benefits, as a victim, they are removed.

As you can see, the analogy is complete, with the only difference being that the heroines of the cited works act as victims of vile high-society morality, while in Tolstoy, the principles of Prince Vasily are fully professed by his daughter Helen.

Tolstoy shows that the behavior of the daughter of Prince Vasily is not a deviation from the norm, but the norm of life of the society to which she belongs. Indeed, does Julie Karagina behave differently, having, thanks to her wealth, a sufficient choice of suitors; or Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya, placing her son in the guard? Even in front of the bed of the dying Count Bezukhov, Pierre's father, Anna Mikhailovna does not feel compassion, but fear that Boris will be left without an inheritance.

Tolstoy also shows Helen in family life. Family, children do not play a significant role in her life. Helen finds Pierre's words funny that spouses can and should be bound by feelings of heartfelt affection and love. Countess Bezukhova thinks with disgust about the possibility of having children. With surprising ease, she leaves her husband. Helen is a concentrated manifestation of complete lack of spirituality, emptiness, vanity.

Excessive emancipation leads a woman, according to Tolstoy, to a misunderstanding of her own role. In the salon of Helen and Anna Pavlovna Scherer, there are political disputes, judgments about Napoleon, about the position of the Russian army. Feeling false patriotism forces them to speak exclusively in Russian during the period of the French invasion. High-society beauties have largely lost the main features that are inherent in a real woman.

Helen Bezukhova is not a woman, she is a superbe animal. No novelist has yet met this type of harlot of the big world, who loves nothing in life but her body, lets her brother kiss her shoulders, and does not give money, cold-bloodedly chooses her lovers, like dishes on a map, and is not such a fool, to wish to have children; who knows how to maintain the respect of the world and even acquire a reputation as an intelligent woman thanks to her air of cold dignity and social tact. This type can only be developed in the circle where Helen lived; this adoration of one's own body can only develop where idleness and luxury give full play to all sensual impulses; this shameless calm - where a high position, providing impunity, teaches to neglect the respect of society, where wealth and connections provide every means to hide intrigue and shut up chatty mouths.

Another negative character in the novel is Julie Kuragina. One of the acts in the general chain of selfish aspirations and actions of Boris Drubetskoy was his marriage to the middle-aged and ugly, but rich Julie Karagina. Boris did not love her and could not love her, but the Penza and Nizhny Novgorod estates did not give him peace. Despite his disgust for Julie, Boris proposed to her. Julie not only accepted the offer, but, admiring the handsome, young groom, forced him to express everything that is said in such cases, although she was convinced of the complete insincerity of his words. Tolstoy notes that “she could demand this for the Penza estates and Nizhny Novgorod forests, and she got what she demanded” Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 10: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 314 ..

The arguments on this issue by M.A. Volkova in a letter to her friend, V.I. Lanskoy: “Before you said that wealth is the last thing in marriage; if you meet a worthy person and fall in love with him, then you can be content with small means and be a thousand times happier than those who live in luxury. So you argued three years ago. How your views have changed since you lived in luxury and vanity! Is it impossible to live without wealth? Are all those who have fifteen thousand a year really unhappy? Vestnik Evropy. - 1874. - No. 9. - S. 150 ..

And elsewhere: “I know young people who have more than 15 thousand a year, who did not dare to marry girls, also not without a fortune, but, in their opinion, not rich enough for them; that is, they believe that it is impossible to live with a family without having from eighty to one hundred thousand incomes ”Vestnik Evropy. - 1874. - No. 9. - S. 156 ..

It was considered necessary to have a luxurious house with beautiful and expensive furnishings, approximately the same as D. Blagovo describes in his notes: “Until 1812, the house was decorated according to the then very well stucco figures; the interior of the count's house: piece floors, gilded furniture; marble tables, crystal chandeliers, damask tapestries, in a word, everything was in proper order ... ”The stories of a grandmother, from the memoirs of five generations, recorded and collected by her grandson D. Blagovo. - St. Petersburg, 1885. - S. 283 ..

The house was furnished properly, otherwise you could quickly drop the reputation of your family name. But it was not only about luxurious surroundings, expensive dinners or outfits. All this, perhaps, could not cause such colossal expenses. It was also about burning life, in a card game, as a result of which whole fortunes were lost overnight. Tolstoy does not exaggerate at all, putting sad words about his riotous son Anatole into the mouth of Prince Vasily: “No, you know that this Anatole costs me 40,000 a year ...” Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 9: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 8 ..

M-lle Bourienne is exposed in the same unseemly light.

Tolstoy creates two significant episodes: Prince Andrei and m-lle Bourienne and Anatole and m-lle Bourienne.

Princess Mary's companion m-lle Bourienne, not without intent during the day, tries three times in secluded places to catch the eye of Prince Andrei. But, seeing the stern face of the young prince, without saying a word, he quickly leaves. The same m-lle Bourienne "conquers" Anatole in a few hours, finding herself in his arms at the first solitary meeting. This unseemly act of Princess Mary's fiancé is not at all an accidental or thoughtless step. Anatole, seeing an ugly, but rich bride and a pretty young Frenchwoman, “decided that here, in the Bald Mountains, it would not be boring. “Very stupid! - he thought, looking at her, - this demoiselle de compagnie (companion) is very pretty. I hope that she will take her with her when she marries me, he thought, la petite est gentille (little sweet) ”Tolstoy L.N. Full coll. cit.: [Jubilee edition 1828 - 1928]: In 90 volumes. Series 1: Works. T. 9: War and peace. - M.: Goslitizdat, 1953. - S. 270 - 271 ..

Thus, we see that Tolstoy does not try to create ideals, but takes life as it is. We see that these are living women, that this is exactly how they should feel, think, act, and any other image of them would be false. In fact, there are no consciously heroic female natures in the work, like Turgenev's Marianne from the novel "Nov" or Elena Stakhova from "On the Eve". Needless to say, Tolstoy's favorite heroines are devoid of romantic elation? Women's spirituality does not lie in intellectual life, not in the passion of Anna Pavlovna Scherer, Helen Kuragina, Julie Karagina for political and other male issues, but exclusively in the ability to love, in devotion to the family hearth. Daughter, sister, wife, mother - these are the main life positions in which the character of Tolstoy's favorite heroines is revealed.

In general, Tolstoy painted a historically correct picture of the position of a noblewoman in the conditions of life of both high society and the estate nobility. But having duly condemned the former, he turned out to be unjust in his attempts to surround the latter with a halo of supreme virtue. Tolstoy was deeply convinced that a woman, wholly devoting herself to the family, raising children, performs work of great social importance. And in this he is certainly right. It is impossible to agree with the writer only in the sense that all the interests of a woman should be limited to the family.

The solution of the women's issue in the novel caused sharp critical judgments already among Tolstoy's contemporaries, S.I. Sychevsky wrote: “Now, from all of the above, we will try to determine the attitude of the author, as a person with a wonderful mind and talent, to the so-called women's issue. None of the women is completely independent in him, with the exception of the depraved Helen. All others are only suitable to complement a man. Not one of them interferes with civil activity. The brightest of all the women of the novel "War and Peace" - Natasha - is happy with the joys of family and personal life ... In a word, Mr. Tolstoy solves the women's issue in the most so-called backward, routine sense "Kandiev B.I. Epic novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace": Commentary. - M.: Enlightenment, 1967. - S. 334 ..

But Tolstoy remained true to his point of view on the women's issue until the end of his life.

Today they are the heroes of the works of Leo Tolstoy.
"War and Peace"
“He (the author) smeared himself with a thin layer over all the characters. About each he could say to one degree or another: “It's me.” That's why the characters of the novel are very lively and very active.
And, by the way, very young. Willy-nilly, we present Pierre Bezukhov as a forty-year-old handsome man - smart Sergei Bondarchuk. But at the beginning of the story, he had just turned seventeen!

The central characters are the Rostov family. Among all the heroes of the novel, this surname has undergone the largest, but rather obvious alteration: Rostov - Tolstov - Tolstoy. The prototype of Ilya Andreevich Rostov was the writer's grandfather, Ivan Andreevich Tolstoy. The prototype of his wife is the writer's grandmother Pelageya Nikolaevna Tolstaya.
Nikolai Rostov is "written off" from the writer's father, Nikolai Ivanovich Tolstoy. And his grandiose and unexpected loss at cards is an episode from the life of Leo Tolstoy himself.
The prototype of Natasha Rostova, the writer's favorite heroine, was simultaneously two women close to him - his wife Sofya Andreevna, nee Bers, and her sister, Tatyana Andreevna Kuzminskaya-Bers.

:
Tatyana Bers was the greatest love of the brother of the great writer Leo Tolstoy - Sergei, whom the future classic adored.
She was not beautiful, but she was so sweet and charming! The naturalness of manners, errors in French, the passionate desire for love and happiness inherent in the real Tatyana Bers, completed the image of Rostova.

"I'm recording you all!" Leo Tolstoy said to his daughter-in-law. Under his pen, the image of Natasha Rostova was gradually born, "Ugly, with a big mouth, black-eyed living girl," a charming young creature, glowing from within with happiness and sincerity.

And this image of Tanya apparently inspired a hunting scene.

First love, and after a considerable period of time - Tanya's husband was her cousin Alexander Kuzminsky. It is his features that are visible in Boris Drubetsky, to whom Natasha turned her head due to her youthful enthusiasm and girlish frivolity.

Another family, the princes Bolkonsky, Leo Tolstoy "copied" from the maternal line of his kind. His mother is Maria Nikolaevna, nee Volkonskaya. - a prototype of Princess Marya, who later became the wife of Nikolai Rostov (whose prototype, as it was said above, was the writer's father). The prototype of the "old prince", Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, is the writer's maternal grandfather, Nikolai Sergeevich Volkonsky.

But Andrei Bolkonsky has no obvious prototypes. There are analogies with the fate of Nikolai Tuchkov, who died in 1812, there are analogies with other military men of that time.

Yes, and from himself, from his military experience, as already mentioned, Leo Tolstoy wrote off a lot when drawing Prince Andrei. His tragic death was "written off" from the biography of Prince Golitsyn.
Prince Dmitry Nikolaevich Golitsyn was born in 1786 in the family of the aristocrat Nikolai Alekseevich Golitsyn, who spent most of his life at court and abroad, was ambassador to Sweden for 7 years, had the title of senator and the rank of privy councillor. He owned the Arkhangelsk estate near Moscow, where even the highest persons were received.

Pierre Bezukhov, like Andrei Bolkonsky, has no real prototypes. He was "made" from various young people of that time, and naturally, from Lev Nikolayevich himself with his vague aspirations for justice and the common good (as well as with youthful outrages and scandals that also took place). Many literary critics point to Pyotr Andreevich Vyazemsky, who wore glasses and participated in the Battle of Borodino, though not as a civilian, but as a military man.

Chancellor Alexander Andreevich Bezborodko (1747 - 1799) is considered to be a likely prototype of his father, Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov. At least the surname about it is "spoken"
The Drubetskys and Dolokhovs also act in the novel. Their surnames, as it is not difficult to understand, the author derived from the well-known noble families of his time, the Trubetskoy and Dorokhovs. The prototypes of Dolokhov were partisans Ivan Dorokhov and Alexander Figner, as well as the famous duelist and brawler of those times, Fyodor Tolstoy-American, who was a distant relative of Lev Nikolaevich.
Denisov is definitely Denis Davydov.

But still, it should be borne in mind that none of the heroes is "copied" one to one. Even real-life Napoleon, Alexander I, Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly are still more heroes of Leo Tolstoy, and not portraits of political and military figures."
http://www.topauthor.ru/u_geroev_voyni_i_mira_est_prototipi_589a.html

"Sunday"
Initially, the work was written under the title "Konev's Tale", because in June 1887, Anatoly Fedorovich Koni told a story in front of Tolstoy about how one of the jurors during the trial recognized the woman he had once seduced in a prostitute accused of stealing.

This woman was called Rosalie Oni, and was a prostitute of the lowest rank, with a disfigured face. But the seducer, who probably once loved her, decided to marry her and worked hard. His feat was not completed: the woman died in prison.
It is generally accepted that the image of Nekhlyudov is largely autobiographical. The scene of the seduction of Katyusha is created by Tolstoy on the basis of personal memories of his youthful relationship with a maid named Gasha, who lived in his aunt's house. Shortly before his death, Tolstoy told his biographer P. I. Biryukov about the "crime" that he committed in his youth, seducing Gasha: "she was innocent, I seduced her, she was driven away, and she died."
Sofya Tolstaya also wrote about this in her diaries: “I know, he himself told me in detail that Lev Nikolayevich in this scene describes his relationship with his sister’s maid in Pirogovo.” By the way, the name Dmitry Nekhdyudov is often found in Tolstoy’s works: "Boyhood", "Morning of the landowner", "Lucerne" and aot in "Sunday". It is also often believed by researchers that this image is largely written off from the writer's brother (Dmitry?)

"Anna Karenina"
The portrait of the main character is based on Pushkin's daughter Maria Pushkina - Gartung. Appearance eldest daughter The great poet was so struck by the writer that he captured her features in the image of Anna Karenina. She served him as the type of Anna Karenina, not in character, not in life, but in appearance, He himself admitted this.
The prototype for the life (fate) of Tolstoy's heroine could also be Alexandra Alekseevna Obolenskaya (in tune with maiden name Anna - Oblonskaya) and Anna Stepanovna Pirogova, whose unhappy love led to death - she threw herself under a freight train.
But the fact that the appearance of Anna Karenina was written off from Pushkin's eldest daughter is unconditional. It's her shiny gray eyes that look dark with long lashes, and her curved ruddy lips and ivory shoulders.

Compare the portrait of Maria by Makarov (painted in 1860) and the description of Anna in the novel “On her head, in black hair, there was a small garland of pansies and the same on a black ribbon belt between white lace. There was a string of pearls on a chiseled strong neck. One to one.

It is possible that Praskovya Uvarova was inspired by the image of Kitty Shcherbatskaya. Here is an entry from the same time in L. Tolstoy's diary: “With boredom and drowsiness, I went to the Ryumins,” he writes on January 30, 1858, and suddenly it washed over me. P.S. cuteness. Fun all day."
Praskovia Sergeevna Uvarova (Shcherbatova) (1840-1924)

See also "War and Peace" The image of the inner world of a person in one of the works of Russian literature of the XIX century (based on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace") Option 2 The image of the inner world of a person in one of the works of Russian literature of the XIX century (based on the novel by L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace") Option 1 War and peace characterization of the image of Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova

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

It is complex because the composition of the book is multi-figured, dozens of storylines, intertwining, form its dense artistic fabric. Simply because all heterogeneous heroes belonging to incompatible class, cultural, property circles are clearly divided into several groups. And we find this division at all levels, in all parts of the epic.

What are these groups? And on what basis do we distinguish them? These are groups of heroes who are equally distant from the life of the people, from the spontaneous movement of history, from the truth, or equally close to them.

We have just said: Tolstoy's novel epic is permeated with the thought that the unknowable and objective historical process is directly controlled by God; that a person can choose the right path both in private life and in great history not with the help of a proud mind, but with the help of a sensitive heart. The one who guessed right, felt the mysterious course of history and no less mysterious laws of everyday life, he is wise and great, even if he is small in his social position. He who boasts of his power over the nature of things, who egoistically imposes his personal interests on life, is petty, even if he is great in his social position.

In accordance with this rigid opposition, Tolstoy's heroes are "distributed" into several types, into several groups.

In order to understand exactly how these groups interact with each other, let's agree on the concepts that we will use when analyzing Tolstoy's multi-figured epic. These concepts are conditional, but they make it easier to understand the typology of characters (remember what the word "typology" means, if you forgot, look up its meaning in the dictionary).

Those who, from the point of view of the author, are the furthest from a correct understanding of the world order, we will agree to call life-burners. Those who, like Napoleon, think they are in control of history, we will call leaders. They are opposed by the sages, who comprehended the main secret of life, understood that a person must submit to the invisible will of Providence. Those who simply live, listening to the voice of their own hearts, but do not particularly strive for anything, we will call ordinary people. Those - loved ones Tolstoy's heroes! - who painfully seeks the truth, we define as truth-seekers. And, finally, Natasha Rostova does not fit into any of these groups, and this is fundamental for Tolstoy, which we will also talk about.

So, who are they, the heroes of Tolstoy?

Life burners. They are busy only chatting, arranging their personal affairs, serving their petty whims, their egocentric desires. And at any cost, regardless of the fate of other people. This is the lowest of all ranks in the Tolstoyan hierarchy. The characters related to him are always of the same type; to characterize them, the narrator defiantly uses the same detail from time to time.

Anna Pavlovna Sherer, the head of the Moscow salon, appearing on the pages of War and Peace, every time with an unnatural smile, moves from one circle to another and treats the guests to an interesting visitor. She is sure that she forms public opinion and influences the course of things (although she herself changes her beliefs precisely in the wake of fashion).

The diplomat Bilibin is convinced that it is they, the diplomats, who manage the historical process (and in fact he is busy with idle talk); from one scene to another, Bilibin collects wrinkles on his forehead and utters a sharp word prepared in advance.

Drubetskoy's mother, Anna Mikhailovna, who stubbornly promotes her son, accompanies all her conversations with a mournful smile. In Boris Drubetsky himself, as soon as he appears on the pages of the epic, the narrator always highlights one feature: his indifferent calm of an intelligent and proud careerist.

As soon as the narrator starts talking about the predatory Helen Kuragina, he will certainly mention her luxurious shoulders and bust. And with any appearance of the young wife of Andrei Bolkonsky, the little princess, the narrator will pay attention to her parted lip with a mustache. This monotony of the narrative device testifies not to the poverty of the artistic arsenal, but, on the contrary, to the deliberate goal that the author sets. The playboys themselves are monotonous and unchanging; only their views change, the being remains the same. They don't develop. And the immobility of their images, the resemblance to deathly masks, is precisely emphasized stylistically.

The only one of the epic characters belonging to this group who is endowed with a mobile, lively character is Fedor Dolokhov. “Semenovsky officer, famous player and breter”, he is distinguished by an extraordinary appearance - and this alone distinguishes him from the general series of playboys.

Moreover: Dolokhov is languishing, bored in that whirlpool of worldly life that sucks in the rest of the “burners”. That is why he indulges in all serious, gets into scandalous stories (the plot with a bear and a quarterman in the first part, for which Dolokhov was demoted to the rank and file). In battle scenes, we become witnesses of Dolokhov's fearlessness, then we see how tenderly he treats his mother ... But his fearlessness is aimless, Dolokhov's tenderness is an exception to his own rules. And the rule becomes hatred and contempt for people.

It is fully manifested in the episode with Pierre (becoming Helen's lover, Dolokhov provokes Bezukhov to a duel), and at the moment when Dolokhov helps Anatole Kuragin prepare the kidnapping of Natasha. And especially in the scene of the card game: Fedor cruelly and dishonestly beats Nikolai Rostov, vilely taking out on him his anger at Sonya, who refused Dolokhov.

Dolokhovsky's rebellion against the world (and this is also the "world"!) of life-burners turns into the fact that he himself burns his life, lets it into spray. And it is especially offensive to realize the narrator, who, by singling out Dolokhov from the general series, as if gives him a chance to break out of the terrible circle.

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

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

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

External beauty replaces Helen's internal content. This characteristic extends to her brother, Anatol Kuragin. A tall handsome man with “beautiful big eyes”, he is not gifted with a mind (although not as stupid as his brother Ippolit), but “on the other hand, he also had the ability of calmness, precious for light, and unchanging confidence.” This confidence is akin to the instinct of profit, which owns the souls of Prince Vasily and Helen. And although Anatole does not pursue personal gain, he hunts for pleasures with the same insatiable passion and with the same readiness to sacrifice any neighbor. So he does with Natasha Rostova, falling in love with her, preparing to take her away and not thinking about her fate, about the fate of Andrei Bolkonsky, whom Natasha is going to marry ...

Kuragins play the same role in the vain dimension of the world that Napoleon plays in the “military” dimension: they personify secular indifference to good and evil. At their whim, the Kuragins involve the surrounding life in a terrible whirlpool. This family is like a pool. Approaching him at a dangerous distance, it is easy to die - only a miracle saves both Pierre, and Natasha, and Andrei Bolkonsky (who would certainly have challenged Anatole to a duel, if not for the circumstances of the war).

Leaders. The lowest "category" of heroes - life-burners in Tolstoy's epic corresponds to the upper category of heroes - leaders. The way they are portrayed is the same: the narrator draws attention to a single trait of character, behavior or appearance of the character. And every time the reader encounters this hero, he stubbornly, almost intrusively, points to this trait.

The playboys belong to the "world" in the worst of its meanings, nothing in history depends on them, they revolve in the emptiness of the cabin. Leaders are inextricably linked with war (again, in the bad sense of the word); they stand at the head of historical collisions, separated from ordinary mortals by an impenetrable veil of their own greatness. But if the Kuragins really involve the surrounding life in the worldly whirlpool, then the leaders of the peoples only think that they are involving humanity in the historical whirlwind. In fact, they are only the toys of chance, miserable tools in the invisible hands of Providence.

And here let's stop for a second to agree on one thing. important rule. And once and for all. In fiction, you have already met and will come across images of real historical figures more than once. In the epic of Tolstoy, this is Emperor Alexander I, and Napoleon, and Barclay de Tolly, and Russian and French generals, and the Moscow Governor-General Rostopchin. But we must not, we have no right to confuse "real" historical figures with their conventional images that operate in novels, short stories, and poems. And the emperor, and Napoleon, and Rostopchin, and especially Barclay de Tolly, and other characters of Tolstoy, bred in War and Peace, are the same fictional characters as Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova or Anatole Kuragin.

The external outline of their biographies can be reproduced in a literary work with scrupulous, scientific accuracy - but the internal content is “embedded” in them by the writer, invented in accordance with the picture of life that he creates in his work. And therefore, they look like real historical figures not much more than Fedor Dolokhov looks like his prototype, reveler and daredevil R. I. Dolokhov, and Vasily Denisov looks like the partisan poet D. V. Davydov.

Only having mastered this iron and irrevocable rule, we will be able to move on.

So, discussing the lowest category of the heroes of War and Peace, we came to the conclusion that it has its own mass (Anna Pavlovna Sherer or, for example, Berg), its own center (Kuragins) and its own periphery (Dolokhov). According to the same principle, the highest rank is organized and arranged.

The chief of the leaders, and therefore the most dangerous, the most deceitful of them, is Napoleon.

There are two Napoleonic images in Tolstoy's epic. Odin lives in the legend of the great commander, which is told to each other by different characters and in which he appears either as a powerful genius, or as a powerful villain. In this legend different stages not only visitors to the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer believe their way, but also Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov. At first we see Napoleon through their eyes, we imagine him in the light of their life ideal.

And another image is a character acting on the pages of the epic and shown through the eyes of the narrator and the heroes who suddenly encounter him on the battlefields. For the first time, Napoleon as a character in "War and Peace" appears in the chapters devoted to the battle of Austerlitz; first, the narrator describes him, then we see him from the point of view of Prince Andrei.

The wounded Bolkonsky, who quite recently idolized the leader of the peoples, notices on the face of Napoleon, bending over him, "a radiance of complacency and happiness." Having just experienced a spiritual upheaval, he looks into the eyes of his former idol and thinks "about the insignificance of greatness, about the insignificance of life, which no one could understand the meaning of." And “his hero himself seemed so petty to him, with this petty vanity and joy of victory, in comparison with that high, just and kind sky that he saw and understood.”

The narrator, in the Austerlitz chapters, in the Tilsit chapters, and in the Borodino chapters, invariably emphasizes the everydayness and comic insignificance of the appearance of a person who is idolized and hated by the whole world. A “fat, short” figure, “with broad, thick shoulders and an involuntarily protruding belly and chest, had that representative, portly appearance that people of forty years of age have in the hall.”

In the novel image of Napoleon there is not a trace of that power, which is contained in his legendary image. For Tolstoy, only one thing matters: Napoleon, who imagined himself the engine of history, is in fact pitiful and especially insignificant. Impersonal fate (or the unknowable will of Providence) made him a tool historical process, and he imagined himself the creator of his victories. It is to Napoleon that the words from the historiosophical finale of the book refer: “For us, with the measure of good and bad given to us by Christ, there is nothing immeasurable. And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth.

A reduced and degraded copy of Napoleon, a parody of him - the Moscow mayor Rostopchin. He fusses, flickers, hangs up posters, quarrels with Kutuzov, thinking that the fate of Muscovites, the fate of Russia, depends on his decisions. But the narrator sternly and steadily explains to the reader that Moscow residents began to leave the capital, not because someone called them to do this, but because they obeyed the will of Providence that they guessed. And the fire broke out in Moscow not because Rostopchin wanted it that way (and even more so not contrary to his orders), but because it could not help but burn down: in the abandoned wooden houses where the invaders settled, fire inevitably breaks out sooner or later.

Rostopchin has the same relation to the departure of the Muscovites and the Moscow fires that Napoleon has to the victory at Austerlitz or to the flight of the valiant French army from Russia. The only thing that is truly in his power (as well as in the power of Napoleon) is to protect the lives of the townspeople and militias entrusted to him, or to scatter them out of whim or fear.

The key scene in which the narrator's attitude to the "leaders" in general and to the image of Rostopchin in particular is concentrated is the lynching of the merchant's son Vereshchagin (volume III, part three, chapters XXIV-XXV). In it, the ruler is revealed as a cruel and weak person who is mortally afraid of an angry crowd and, in horror before it, is ready to shed blood without trial or investigation.

The narrator seems extremely objective, he does not show his personal attitude to the actions of the mayor, he does not comment on them. But at the same time, he consistently contrasts the "metal-voiced" indifference of the "leader" - the uniqueness of a separate human life. Vereshchagin is described in great detail, with obvious compassion (“strumming with shackles ... pressing the collar of a sheepskin coat ... with a submissive gesture”). But after all, Rostopchin does not look at his future victim - the narrator specifically repeats several times, with pressure: "Rostopchin did not look at him."

Even the angry, gloomy crowd in the courtyard of the Rostopchinsky house does not want to rush at Vereshchagin, accused of treason. Rostopchin is forced to repeat several times, setting her against the merchant's son: “Beat him! .. Let the traitor die and not shame the name of the Russian! ...Cut! I order!". Ho, and after this direct call-order "the crowd groaned and advanced, but again stopped." She still sees a man in Vereshchagin and does not dare to rush at him: "A tall fellow, with a petrified expression on his face and with a raised hand stopped, stood next to Vereshchagin." Only after, in obedience to the officer’s order, the soldier “with a distorted anger hit Vereshchagin on the head with a blunt broadsword” and the merchant’s son in a fox sheepskin coat “shortly and the highest degree the barrier of human feeling, which still held the crowd, broke through instantly. Leaders treat people not as living beings, but as instruments of their power. And therefore they are worse than the crowd, more terrible than it.

The images of Napoleon and Rostopchin stand at opposite poles of this group of heroes in War and Peace. And the main "mass" of leaders here is formed by all sorts of generals, chiefs of all stripes. All of them, as one, do not understand the inscrutable laws of history, they think that the outcome of the battle depends only on them, on their military talents or political abilities. It does not matter which army they serve at the same time - French, Austrian or Russian. And in the epic Barclay de Tolly, a dry German in the Russian service, becomes the personification of this whole mass of generals. He does not understand anything in the spirit of the people and, together with other Germans, believes in the scheme of the correct disposition.

The real Russian commander Barclay de Tolly, in contrast to the artistic image created by Tolstoy, was not a German (he came from a Scottish, moreover, Russified family a long time ago). And in his work he never relied on a scheme. But here lies the line between the historical figure and his image, which is created by literature. In Tolstoy's picture of the world, the Germans are not real representatives of a real people, but a symbol of foreignness and cold rationalism, which only hinders the understanding of the natural course of things. Therefore, Barclay de Tolly, like a novel hero, turns into a dry "German", which he was not in reality.

And on the very edge of this group of heroes, on the border that separates the false leaders from the wise men (we’ll talk about them a little later), stands the image of the Russian Tsar Alexander I. He is so isolated from the general series that at first it even seems that his image is devoid of boring unambiguity, that it is complex and multifaceted. Moreover: the image of Alexander I is invariably served in a halo of admiration.

Ho let's ask ourselves the question: whose admiration is it, the narrator or the characters? And then everything will immediately fall into place.

Here we see Alexander for the first time during the review of the Austrian and Russian troops (Volume I, Part Three, Chapter VIII). At first, the narrator describes him neutrally: "The handsome, young Emperor Alexander ... attracted all the power of attention with his pleasant face and sonorous, quiet voice." Then we begin to look at the tsar through the eyes of Nikolai Rostov, who is in love with him: “Nicholas clearly, to all the details, examined the beautiful, young and happy face of the emperor, he experienced a feeling of tenderness and delight, the like of which he had never experienced. Everything - every feature, every movement - seemed charming to him in the sovereign. The narrator discovers the usual features in Alexander: beautiful, pleasant. And Nikolai Rostov discovers in them a completely different quality, a superlative degree: they seem to him beautiful, “charming”.

Ho here is chapter XV of the same part; here the narrator and Prince Andrei, who is by no means in love with the sovereign, alternately look at Alexander I. This time there is no such internal gap in emotional assessments. The sovereign meets with Kutuzov, whom he clearly does not like (and we still do not know how highly the narrator appreciates Kutuzov).

It would seem that the narrator is again objective and neutral:

“An unpleasant impression, only like the remnants of fog in a clear sky, ran across the young and happy face of the emperor and disappeared ... the same charming combination of majesty and meekness was in his beautiful gray eyes, and on thin lips the same possibility of various expressions and the prevailing expression good-natured, innocent youth.

Again the “young and happy face”, again the charming appearance... And yet, pay attention: the narrator lifts the veil over his own attitude to all these qualities of the king. He says bluntly: "on thin lips" there was "the possibility of various expressions." And the “expression of complacent, innocent youth” is only the predominant, but by no means the only one. That is, Alexander I always wears masks, behind which his real face is hidden.

What is this face? It is contradictory. It has both kindness, sincerity - and falseness, lies. But the fact of the matter is that Alexander opposes Napoleon; Tolstoy does not want to belittle his image, but cannot exalt it. Therefore, he resorts to the only possible way: he shows the king, first of all, through the eyes of heroes who are devoted to him and worship his genius. It is they who, blinded by their love and devotion, pay attention only to the best manifestations of the various faces of Alexander; it is they who recognize in him the real leader.

In Chapter XVIII (volume one, part three), Rostov again sees the tsar: “The sovereign was pale, his cheeks were sunken and his eyes were sunken; but the more charm, meekness was in his features. This is a typical Rostov look - the look of an honest but superficial officer in love with his sovereign. However, now Nikolai Rostov meets the tsar away from the nobles, from the thousands of eyes fixed on him; in front of him is a simple suffering mortal, grieving the defeat of the army: "Only something long and fervently spoke to the sovereign," and he, "apparently crying, closed his eyes with his hand and shook hands with Tolya." Then we will see the tsar through the eyes of the obligingly proud Drubetskoy (volume III, part one, chapter III), the enthusiastic Petya Rostov (volume III, part one, chapter XXI), Pierre Bezukhov at the moment when he is captured by the general enthusiasm during the Moscow meeting of the sovereign with deputations of the nobility and merchants (volume III, part one, chapter XXIII)...

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

And the result of the "Alexander" plot line will be summed up only in the Epilogue, where the narrator will try his best to maintain justice in relation to the king, bring his image closer to the image of Kutuzov: the latter was necessary for the movement of peoples from west to east, and the first - for the return movement peoples from east to west.

Ordinary people. Both the playboys and the leaders in the novel are opposed by “ordinary people”, led by the truth-seeker, the Moscow mistress Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova. In their world, she plays the same role that the St. Petersburg lady Anna Pavlovna Sherer plays in the little world of the Kuragins and Bilibins. Ordinary people have not risen above the general level of their time, their epoch, have not come to know the truth of people's life, but instinctively live in conditional agreement with it. Although they sometimes act incorrectly, human weaknesses are fully inherent in them.

This is a mismatch, this difference of potentials, a combination in one personality different qualities, good and not so, favorably distinguishes ordinary people from both playboys and leaders. The heroes assigned to this category, as a rule, are shallow people, and yet their portraits are painted in different colors, obviously devoid of unambiguity, uniformity.

Such, on the whole, is the hospitable Moscow family of the Rostovs, a mirror image of the Petersburg clan of the Kuragins.

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

The count is not too smart, but at the same time he is fully endowed from God with heart gifts - hospitality, cordiality, love for family and children. Two scenes characterize him from this side, and both are permeated with lyricism, ecstasy of delight: a description of a dinner in a Rostov house in honor of Bagration and a description of a dog hunt.

And one more scene is extraordinarily important for understanding the image of the old count: the departure from the burning Moscow. It is he who first gives the reckless (from the point of view of common sense) order to let the wounded into the carts. Having removed the acquired property from the cart for the sake of Russian officers and soldiers, the Rostovs deal the last irreparable blow to their own condition ... But not only save several lives, but also, unexpectedly for themselves, give Natasha a chance to reconcile with Andrei.

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

And yet, she also has a special gift of humanity, which separates her from the crowd of playboys, brings her closer to the truth of life. It is a gift of love for one's own children; love instinctively wise, deep and selfless. The decisions she makes regarding her children are dictated not just by the desire for profit and saving the family from ruin (although for her too); they are aimed at arranging the life of the children themselves the best way. And when the countess finds out about the death of her beloved youngest son in the war, her life, in essence, ends; barely avoiding insanity, she instantly grows old and loses active interest in what is happening around.

All the best Rostov qualities were passed on to the children, except for the dry, prudent and therefore unloved Vera. Having married Berg, she naturally moved from the category of "ordinary people" to the number of "life-burners" and "Germans". And also - except for the pupil of the Rostovs Sonya, who, despite all her kindness and sacrifice, turns out to be an "empty flower" and gradually, following Vera, slides from the rounded world of ordinary people into the plane of life-burners.

Especially touching is the youngest, Petya, who completely absorbed the atmosphere of the Rostov house. Like his father and mother, he is not too smart, but he is extremely sincere and sincere; this sincerity is expressed in a special way in his musicality. Petya instantly surrenders to the impulse of the heart; therefore, it is from his point of view that we look from the Moscow patriotic crowd at Tsar Alexander I and share his genuine youthful enthusiasm. Although we feel that the narrator's attitude to the emperor is not as unambiguous as the young character. Petya's death from an enemy bullet is one of the most piercing and most memorable episodes of Tolstoy's epic.

But just as the playboys, the leaders, have their own center, so do the ordinary people who populate the pages of War and Peace. This center is Nikolai Rostov and Marya Bolkonskaya, whose life lines, separated over the course of three volumes, eventually intersect anyway, obeying the unwritten law of affinity.

"A short curly young man with an open expression", he is distinguished by "swiftness and enthusiasm." Nikolai, as usual, is shallow (“he had that common sense of mediocrity, which told him what was supposed to be,” the narrator says bluntly). Ho, on the other hand, is very emotional, impulsive, cordial, and therefore musical, like all Rostovs.

One of the key episodes of the storyline of Nikolai Rostov is the crossing of the Enns, and then a wound in the hand during the battle of Shengraben. Here the hero first encounters an insoluble contradiction in his soul; he, who considered himself a fearless patriot, suddenly discovers that he is afraid of death and that the very thought of death is absurd - him, whom "everyone loves so much." This experience not only does not reduce the image of the hero, on the contrary: it is at that moment that his spiritual maturation takes place.

And yet, it’s not for nothing that Nikolai likes it so much in the army and so uncomfortable in ordinary life. The regiment is a special world (another world in the middle of the war), in which everything is arranged logically, simply, unambiguously. There are subordinates, there is a commander, and there is a commander of commanders - the sovereign emperor, whom it is so natural and so pleasant to adore. And the whole life of civilians consists of endless intricacies, of human sympathies and antipathies, the clash of private interests and the common goals of the class. Arriving home on vacation, Rostov either gets entangled in his relationship with Sonya, or completely loses to Dolokhov, which puts the family on the brink of a financial disaster, and actually flees from ordinary life to the regiment, like a monk to his monastery. (The fact that the same rules apply in the army, he does not seem to notice; when in the regiment he has to solve complex moral problems, for example, with officer Telyanin, who stole a wallet, Rostov is completely lost.)

Like any hero who claims an independent line in the novel space and an active participation in the development of the main intrigue, Nikolai is endowed with a love plot. He is a kind little fair man, and therefore, having given a youthful promise to marry the dowry Sonya, he considers himself bound for the rest of his life. And no mother's persuasion, no hints of relatives about the need to find a rich bride can shake him. Moreover, his feeling for Sonya goes through different stages, either completely fading away, then returning again, then disappearing again.

Therefore, the most dramatic moment in the fate of Nikolai comes after the meeting in Bogucharov. Here, during the tragic events of the summer of 1812, he accidentally meets Princess Marya Bolkonskaya, one of the richest brides in Russia, whom they would dream of marrying him. Rostov selflessly helps the Bolkonskys get out of Bogucharov, and both of them, Nikolai and Marya, suddenly feel a mutual attraction. But what is considered the norm among “life-thrillers” (and most “ordinary people” too) turns out to be an almost insurmountable obstacle for them: she is rich, he is poor.

Only Sonya's refusal of the word given to her by Rostov, and the strength of natural feeling, are able to overcome this barrier; Having married, Rostov and Princess Marya live soul to soul, as Kitty and Levin will live in Anna Karenina. However, the difference between honest mediocrity and an impulse to seek the truth lies in the fact that the former does not know development, does not recognize doubts. As we have already noted, in the first part of the Epilogue between Nikolai Rostov, on the one hand, Pierre Bezukhov and Nikolenka Bolkonsky, on the other, an invisible conflict is brewing, the line of which stretches into the distance, beyond the plot action.

Pierre, at the cost of new moral torments, new mistakes and new quests, is drawn into the next turn of a big story: he becomes a member of the early pre-Decembrist organizations. Nikolenka is completely on his side; it is easy to calculate that by the time of the uprising on Senate Square, he will be a young man, most likely an officer, and with such a heightened moral sense, he will be on the side of the rebels. And the sincere, respectable, narrow-minded Nikolai, who once and for all stopped in development, knows in advance that in which case he will shoot at the opponents of the legitimate ruler, his beloved sovereign ...

Truth Seekers. This is the most important of the ranks; without heroes-truth-seekers, there would be no epic "War and Peace" at all. Only two characters, two close friends, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov, have the right to claim this special title. They also cannot be called unconditionally positive; to create their images, the narrator uses a variety of colors, but it is precisely because of the ambiguity that they seem especially voluminous and bright.

Both of them, Prince Andrei and Count Pierre, are rich (Bolkonsky - initially, illegitimate Bezukhov - after the sudden death of his father); smart, albeit in different ways. Bolkonsky's mind is cold and sharp; Bezukhov's mind is naive, but organic. Like many young people of the 1800s, they are in awe of Napoleon; the proud dream of a special role in world history, which means that the conviction that it is the individual who controls the course of things is equally inherent in both Bolkonsky and Bezukhov. From this common point, the narrator draws two very different storylines, which at first diverge very far, and then reconnect, intersecting in the space of truth.

But here it is just revealed that they become truth-seekers against their will. Neither one nor the other is going to seek the truth, they do not strive for moral perfection, and at first they are sure that the truth was revealed to them in the image of Napoleon. They are pushed to an intense search for truth by external circumstances, and perhaps by Providence itself. It's just that the spiritual qualities of Andrei and Pierre are such that each of them is able to respond to the challenge of fate, to respond to her silent question; that is the only reason why they ultimately rise above the general level.

Prince Andrew. Bolkonsky is unhappy at the beginning of the book; he does not love his sweet but empty wife; indifferent to the unborn child, and after his birth does not show special paternal feelings. The family "instinct" is as alien to him as the secular "instinct"; he cannot be included in the category of "ordinary" people for the same reasons that he cannot be in the category of "life-burners". But he not only could break into the number of elected "leaders", but he would very much like to. Napoleon, we repeat again and again, is a life example and a guide for him.

Having learned from Bilibin that the Russian army (it takes place in 1805) was in a hopeless situation, Prince Andrei is almost glad of the tragic news. “... It occurred to him that it was precisely for him that it was intended to lead the Russian army out of this situation, that here it was, that Toulon, which would lead him out of the ranks of unknown officers and open the first path to glory for him!” (volume I, part two, chapter XII).

How it ended, you already know, we analyzed the scene with the eternal sky of Austerlitz in detail. The truth is revealed to Prince Andrei herself, without any effort on his part; he does not gradually come to the conclusion about the insignificance of all narcissistic heroes in the face of eternity - this conclusion appears to him immediately and in its entirety.

It would seem that Bolkonsky's storyline has been exhausted already at the end of the first volume, and the author has no choice but to declare the hero dead. And here, contrary to ordinary logic, the most important thing begins - truth-seeking. Having accepted the truth immediately and in its entirety, Prince Andrei suddenly loses it and begins a painful, long search, returning by a side road to the feeling that once visited him on the field of Austerlitz.

Arriving home, where everyone considered him dead, Andrei learns about the birth of his son and - soon - about the death of his wife: the little princess with a short upper lip disappears from his life horizon at the very moment when he is ready to finally open his heart to her! This news shocks the hero and awakens in him a sense of guilt before his dead wife; leaving military service (along with a vain dream of personal greatness), Bolkonsky settles in Bogucharovo, does housework, reads, and brings up his son.

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

Bolkonsky, who learned the truth of the eternal sky, thinks that it is enough to give up personal pride in order to find peace of mind. Ho, in fact, village life cannot accommodate his unspent energy. And the truth, received as if as a gift, not personally suffered, not found as a result of a long search, begins to elude him. Andrei is languishing in the village, his soul seems to be drying up. Pierre, who has arrived in Bogucharovo, is struck by the terrible change that has taken place in a friend. Only for a moment does the prince awaken a happy sense of belonging to the truth - when for the first time after being wounded he pays attention to the eternal sky. And then the veil of hopelessness again covers his life horizon.

What happened? Why does the author “doom” his hero to inexplicable torment? First of all, because the hero must independently “ripen” to the truth that was revealed to him by the will of Providence. Prince Andrei has a difficult job ahead of him, he will have to go through numerous trials before he regains a sense of unshakable truth. And from that moment on, the storyline of Prince Andrei is likened to a spiral: it goes on a new turn, repeating the previous stage of his fate at a more complex level. He is destined to fall in love again, again to indulge in ambitious thoughts, again to be disappointed both in love and in thoughts. And finally, come back to the truth.

The third part of the second volume opens with a symbolic description of Prince Andrei's trip to the Ryazan estates. Spring is coming; at the entrance to the forest, he notices an old oak at the edge of the road.

“Probably ten times older than the birches that made up the forest, it was ten times thicker and twice as tall as each birch. It was a huge, two-girth oak, with broken branches, which can be seen for a long time, and with broken bark, overgrown with old sores. With his huge clumsy, asymmetrically spread out clumsy hands and fingers, he stood between smiling birches like an old, angry and contemptuous freak. Only he alone did not want to submit to the charm of spring and did not want to see either spring or the sun.

It is clear that Prince Andrei himself is personified in the image of this oak, whose soul does not respond to the eternal joy of renewing life, has become dead and extinguished. Ho, on the affairs of the Ryazan estates, Bolkonsky should meet with Ilya Andreevich Rostov - and, having spent the night in the Rostovs' house, the prince again notices a bright, almost starless spring sky. And then he accidentally hears an excited conversation between Sonya and Natasha (volume II, part three, chapter II).

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

Returning to St. Petersburg, Bolkonsky is involved in social activities with renewed vigor; he believes that he is now driven not by personal vanity, not by pride, not by "Napoleonism", but by a disinterested desire to serve people, to serve the Fatherland. His new hero, idol is the young energetic reformer Speransky. Bolkonsky is ready to follow Speransky, who dreams of transforming Russia, just as he was ready to imitate Napoleon in everything, who wanted to throw the whole Universe at his feet.

Ho Tolstoy builds the plot in such a way that the reader from the very beginning feels something is not entirely right; Andrei sees a hero in Speransky, and the narrator sees another leader.

The judgment about the "insignificant seminarian" who holds the fate of Russia in his hands, of course, expresses the position of the fascinated Bolkonsky, who himself does not notice how he transfers the features of Napoleon to Speransky. A mocking clarification - "as Bolkonsky thought" - comes from the narrator. Speransky’s “contemptuous calmness” is noticed by Prince Andrei, and the “leader’s” arrogance (“from an immeasurable height ...”) is noticed by the narrator.

In other words, Prince Andrei, on a new round of his biography, repeats the mistake of his youth; he is again blinded by the false example of someone else's pride, in which his own pride finds its nourishment. But here in Bolkonsky's life a significant meeting takes place - he meets the very Natasha Rostova, whose voice moonlit night in the Ryazan estate brought him back to life. Falling in love is inevitable; marriage is a foregone conclusion. But since the stern father, the old man Bolkonsky, does not give consent to an early marriage, Andrei is forced to go abroad and stop working with Speransky, which could tempt him, entice him to his former path. And the dramatic break with the bride after her failed flight with Kuragin completely pushes Prince Andrei, as it seems to him, to the sidelines of the historical process, to the outskirts of the empire. He is again under the command of Kutuzov.

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

It is no coincidence that Tolstoy uses the folklore principle of the hero's triple test: after all, unlike Napoleon and Speransky, Kutuzov is truly close to the people, is one with them. Until now, Bolkonsky was aware that he worshiped Napoleon, he guessed that he was secretly imitating Speransky. And the hero does not even suspect that he follows the example of Kutuzov in everything. The spiritual work of self-education proceeds in him latently, implicitly.

Moreover, Bolkonsky is sure that the decision to leave Kutuzov’s headquarters and go to the front, to rush into the thick of battles, comes to him spontaneously, by itself. In fact, he takes over from the great commander a wise view of purely folk character war, which is incompatible with court intrigues and the pride of "leaders". If the heroic desire to pick up the regimental banner on the field of Austerlitz was the "Toulon" of Prince Andrei, then the sacrificial decision to participate in the battles of the Patriotic War is, if you like, his "Borodino", comparable on a small level of an individual human life with the great Battle of Borodino, morally won Kutuzov.

It is on the eve of the Battle of Borodino that Andrei meets Pierre; between them there is a third (again folklore number!) significant conversation. The first took place in St. Petersburg (volume I, part one, chapter VI) - during it, Andrei for the first time threw off the mask of a contemptuous secular person and frankly told a friend that he was imitating Napoleon. During the second (Volume II, Part Two, Chapter XI), held in Bogucharovo, Pierre saw before him a man who mournfully doubted the meaning of life, the existence of God, who had become internally dead and had lost the incentive to move. This meeting with a friend became for Prince Andrei "an epoch from which, although in appearance it is the same, but in the inner world, his new life began."

And here is the third conversation (Volume III, Part Two, Chapter XXV). Having overcome an involuntary alienation, on the eve of the day when, perhaps, both of them will die, the friends once again frankly discuss the most subtle, most important topics. They do not philosophize - there is neither time nor energy for philosophizing; but each of their words, even very unfair (like Andrey's opinion about the prisoners), is weighed on special scales. And the final passage of Bolkonsky sounds like a premonition of imminent death:

“Oh, my soul, lately it has become hard for me to live. I see that I began to understand too much. And it’s not good for a person to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ... Well, not for long! he added.

The injury on the field of Borodin repeats in composition the scene of the injury of Andrey on the field of Austerlitz; and there, and here the truth is suddenly revealed to the hero. This truth is love, compassion, faith in God. (Here's another plot parallel.) Ho in the first volume we had a character to whom the truth appeared against all odds; now we see Bolkonsky, who managed to prepare himself for the acceptance of the truth at the cost of mental anguish and throwing. Please note: the last person Andrei sees on the Austerlitz field is the insignificant Napoleon, who seemed great to him; and the last one he sees on the Borodino field is his enemy, Anatole Kuragin, also seriously wounded ... (This is another plot parallel that allows us to show how the hero has changed over the time that has passed between three meetings.)

Andrey has a new date with Natasha ahead; last date. Moreover, the folklore principle of triple repetition “works” here too. For the first time Andrey hears Natasha (without seeing her) in Otradnoe. Then he falls in love with her during Natasha's first ball (Volume II, Part Three, Chapter XVII), talks to her and makes an offer. And here is the wounded Bolkonsky in Moscow, near the Rostovs' house, at the very moment when Natasha orders the wagons to be handed over to the wounded. The meaning of this final meeting is forgiveness and reconciliation; having forgiven Natasha, reconciled with her, Andrey finally comprehended the meaning of love and is therefore ready to part with earthly life ... His death is depicted not as an irreparable tragedy, but as a solemnly sad result of the earthly career he has passed.

No wonder it is here that Tolstoy carefully introduces the theme of the Gospel into the fabric of his narrative.

We are already used to the fact that the heroes of Russian literature of the second half of XIX centuries often pick up this main book of Christianity, which tells about the earthly life, teaching and resurrection of Jesus Christ; remember at least Dostoevsky's novel Crime and Punishment. However, Dostoevsky wrote about his own time, while Tolstoy turned to the events of the beginning of the century, when educated people from high society turned to the Gospel much less often. For the most part, they read Church Slavonic poorly, they rarely resorted to the French version; only after World War II did work begin on translating the Gospel into living Russian. It was headed by the future Metropolitan of Moscow Filaret (Drozdov); The release of the Russian Gospel in 1819 influenced many writers, including Pushkin and Vyazemsky.

Prince Andrei is destined to die in 1812; Nevertheless, Tolstoy went on a decisive violation of chronology, and in Bolkonsky's dying thoughts he placed quotations from the Russian Gospel: "The birds of heaven do not sow, they do not reap, but your Father feeds them ..." Why? Yes, for the simple reason that Tolstoy wants to show: the gospel wisdom entered Andrei's soul, it became part of his own thoughts, he reads the Gospel as an explanation of his own life and his own death. If the writer "forced" the hero to quote the Gospel in French or even in Church Slavonic, this would immediately separate Bolkonsky's inner world from the Gospel world. (In general, in the novel, the characters speak French the more often, the farther they are from the national truth; Natasha Rostova generally speaks only one line in French over four volumes!) But Tolstoy’s goal is exactly the opposite: he seeks to forever link the image of Andrei, who found the truth , with the theme of the gospel.

Pierre Bezukhov. If the storyline of Prince Andrei is spiral, and each subsequent stage of his life repeats the previous stage on a new turn, then Pierre's storyline - up to the Epilogue - looks like a narrowing circle with the figure of the peasant Platon Karataev in the center.

This circle at the beginning of the epic is immeasurably wide, almost like Pierre himself - "a massive, fat young man with a cropped head, wearing glasses." Like Prince Andrei, Bezukhov does not feel like a truth seeker; he also considers Napoleon a great man and is content with the widespread idea that great people, heroes, rule history.

We get to know Pierre at the very moment when, from an excess of vitality, he takes part in carousing and almost robbery (the story of the quarter). life force- his advantage over the dead light (Andrey says that Pierre is the only "living person"). And this is his main trouble, since Bezukhov does not know where to apply his heroic strength, it is aimless, there is something Nozdrevskoe in it. Special spiritual and mental demands are inherent in Pierre from the very beginning (which is why he chooses Andrei as his friend), but they are scattered, not clothed in a clear and distinct form.

Pierre is distinguished by energy, sensuality, reaching passion, extreme ingenuity and myopia (in direct and figuratively); all this dooms Pierre to rash steps. As soon as Bezukhov becomes the heir to a huge fortune, the "life burners" immediately entangle him with their nets, Prince Vasily marries Pierre to Helen. Of course, family life is not given; accept the rules by which the high-society "burners" live, Pierre cannot. And now, having parted with Helen, for the first time he consciously begins to look for an answer to questions that torment him about the meaning of life, about the destiny of man.

"What's wrong? What well? What should you love, what should you hate? Why live and what am I? What is life, what is death? What power controls everything? he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions, except for one, not a logical answer, not at all to these questions. This answer was: “If you die, everything will end. You will die and you will know everything, or you will stop asking.” But it was terrible to die” (Volume II, Part Two, Chapter I).

And then on his life path he meets an old freemason-mentor Osip Alekseevich. (Masons were members of religious and political organizations, “orders”, “lodges”, which set themselves the goal of moral self-improvement and intended to transform society and the state on this basis.) Metaphor life path the road along which Pierre travels serves in the epic; Osip Alekseevich himself approaches Bezukhov at the post station in Torzhok and starts a conversation with him about the mysterious destiny of man. From the genre shadow of the family novel, we immediately move into the space of the novel of upbringing; Tolstoy hardly noticeably stylizes "Masonic" chapters as novel prose of the late 18th - early 19th century. So, in the scene of Pierre's acquaintance with Osip Alekseevich, much makes us remember A. N. Radishchev's "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow".

In Masonic conversations, conversations, readings and reflections, Pierre reveals the same truth that appeared on the field of Austerlitz to Prince Andrei (who, perhaps, also went through the “Masonic trial” at some point; in a conversation with Pierre, Bolkonsky mockingly mentions gloves, which Masons receive before marriage for their chosen one). The meaning of life is not in a heroic feat, not in becoming a leader, like Napoleon, but in serving people, feeling involved in eternity ...

But the truth is revealed a little, it sounds muffled, like a distant echo. And gradually, more and more painfully, Bezukhov feels the deceitfulness of the majority of Freemasons, the discrepancy between their petty secular life and the proclaimed universal ideals. Yes, Osip Alekseevich forever remains a moral authority for him, but Freemasonry itself eventually ceases to meet Pierre's spiritual needs. Moreover, reconciliation with Helen, to which he went under Masonic influence, does not lead to anything good. And having taken a step in the social field in the direction set by the Masons, having started a reform in his estates, Pierre suffers an inevitable defeat: his impracticality, gullibility and unsystematic doom the land experiment to failure.

Disappointed Bezukhov at first turns into a good-natured shadow of his predatory wife; it seems that the whirlpool of "life-burners" is about to close over him. Then he again begins to drink, revel, returns to the bachelor habits of his youth, and eventually moves from St. Petersburg to Moscow. We have noted more than once that in Russian literature of the 19th century Petersburg was associated with the European center of bureaucratic, political, cultural life Russia; Moscow - with a rural, traditionally Russian habitat of retired nobles and lordly loafers. The transformation of Pierre from St. Petersburg into a Muscovite is tantamount to his rejection of any life aspirations.

And here the tragic and purifying events of the Patriotic War of 1812 are approaching. For Bezukhov, they have a very special, personal meaning. After all, he has long been in love with Natasha Rostov, hopes for an alliance with whom are twice crossed out by his marriage to Helen and Natasha's promise to Prince Andrei. Only after the story with Kuragin, in overcoming the consequences of which Pierre played a huge role, does he actually confess his love to Natasha (Volume II, Part Five, Chapter XXII).

It is no coincidence that immediately after the scene of the explanation with Natasha Tolstaya, Pierre’s eyes show the famous comet of 1811, which foreshadowed the beginning of the war: “It seemed to Pierre that this star fully corresponded to what was in his softened and encouraged soul that blossomed into a new life.” The theme of the national test and the theme of personal salvation merge together in this episode.

Step by step, the stubborn author leads his beloved hero to comprehend two inextricably linked "truths": the truth of sincere family life and the truth of nationwide unity. Out of curiosity, Pierre goes to the Borodino field just on the eve of the great battle; observing, communicating with the soldiers, he prepares his mind and his heart to perceive the thought that Bolkonsky will express to him during their last conversation at Borodino: the truth is where they are, ordinary soldiers, ordinary Russian people.

The views that Bezukhov professed at the beginning of War and Peace are being reversed; before he saw in Napoleon the source of historical movement, now he sees in him the source of supra-historical evil, the incarnation of the Antichrist. And he is ready to sacrifice himself for the salvation of mankind. The reader must understand: spiritual path Pierre passed only to the middle; the hero has not yet “grown up” to the point of view of the narrator, who is convinced (and convinces the reader) that the point is not Napoleon at all, that the French emperor is just a toy in the hands of Providence. But the experiences that befell Bezukhov in French captivity, and most importantly, his acquaintance with Platon Karataev, will complete the work that has already begun in him.

During the execution of the prisoners (a scene that refutes Andrei's cruel arguments during the last Borodino conversation), Pierre himself recognizes himself as an instrument in the hands of others; his life and his death do not really depend on him. And communication with a simple peasant, a “rounded” soldier of the Apsheron regiment, Platon Karataev, finally reveals to him the prospect of a new philosophy of life. The purpose of a person is not to become a bright personality, separate from all other personalities, but to reflect in himself the people's life in its entirety, to become a part of the universe. Only then can one feel truly immortal:

“Ha, ha, ha! Pierre laughed. And he said aloud to himself: - Don't let the soldier let me in. Caught me, locked me up. I am being held captive. Who me? Me? Me - my immortal soul! Ha, ha, ha! .. Ha, ha, ha! .. - he laughed with tears in his eyes ... Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the departing, playing stars. “And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!..” (Volume IV, Part Two, Chapter XIV).

It is not for nothing that these reflections of Pierre sound almost like folk verses, they emphasize, strengthen the internal, irregular rhythm:

The soldier did not let me in.
Caught me, locked me up.
I am being held captive.
Who me? Me?

The truth sounds like folk song, and the sky, into which Pierre directs his gaze, makes the attentive reader remember the finale of the third volume, the view of the comet, and, most importantly, the sky of Austerlitz. But the difference between the Austerlitz scene and the experience that visited Pierre in captivity is fundamental. Andrei, as we already know, at the end of the first volume comes face to face with the truth, contrary to his own intentions. He just has a long, roundabout way to get there. And Pierre for the first time comprehends her as a result of painful searches.

But there is nothing definitive in Tolstoy's epic. Remember, we said that Pierre's storyline only seems to be circular, that if you look into the Epilogue, the picture changes somewhat? Now read the episode of Bezukhov's arrival from St. Petersburg and especially the scene of a conversation in the office with Nikolai Rostov, Denisov and Nikolenka Bolkonsky (chapters XIV-XVI of the first Epilogue). Pierre, the same Pierre Bezukhov, who has already comprehended the fullness of the public truth, who has renounced personal ambitions, again starts talking about the need to correct social ill-being, about the need to counteract the mistakes of the government. It is not difficult to guess that he became a member of the early Decembrist societies and that a new thunderstorm began to swell on the historical horizon of Russia.

Natasha, with her feminine instinct, guesses the question that the narrator himself would obviously like to ask Pierre:

“Do you know what I'm thinking about? - she said, - about Platon Karataev. How is he? Would he approve of you now?

No, I would not approve, - said Pierre, thinking. - What he would approve of is our family life. He so desired to see beauty, happiness, tranquility in everything, and I would proudly show him us.

What happens? Did the hero begin to shy away from the truth he had gained and suffered? And is the “average”, “ordinary” person Nikolai Rostov right, who speaks with disapproval of the plans of Pierre and his new comrades? So Nikolai is now closer to Platon Karataev than Pierre himself?

Yes and no. Yes, because Pierre undoubtedly deviates from the "round", family, nationwide peaceful ideal, he is ready to join the "war". Yes, because he had already gone through the temptation of striving for the public good in his Masonic period, and through the temptation of personal ambitions - at the moment when he "counted" the number of the beast in the name of Napoleon and convinced himself that it was he, Pierre, who was destined to save humanity from this villain. No, because the entire epic "War and Peace" is permeated with a thought that Rostov is not able to comprehend: we are not free in our desires, in our choice, to participate or not to participate in historical upheavals.

Pierre is much closer than Rostov to this nerve of history; among other things, Karataev taught him by his example to submit to circumstances, to accept them as they are. Entering a secret society, Pierre moves away from the ideal and into in a certain sense returns in his development a few steps back, but not because he wants to, but because he cannot deviate from the objective course of things. And, perhaps, having partially lost the truth, he will know it even more deeply at the end of his new path.

Therefore, the epic ends with a global historiosophical reasoning, the meaning of which is formulated in his last phrase: "it is necessary to abandon the conscious freedom and recognize the dependence that we do not feel."

Sages. We've talked about playboys, about leaders, about ordinary people, about truth-seekers. Ho there is in "War and Peace" another category of heroes, opposite to the leaders. These are the sages. That is, characters who have comprehended the truth of public life and are an example for other heroes seeking the truth. These are, first of all, staff captain Tushin, Platon Karataev and Kutuzov.

Staff Captain Tushin first appears in the scene of the Battle of Shengraben; we see him first through the eyes of Prince Andrei - and this is not accidental. If circumstances had turned out differently and Bolkonsky would have been internally ready for this meeting, she could have played the same role in his life as the meeting with Platon Karataev played in Pierre's life. However, alas, Andrei is still blinded by the dream of his own Toulon. Having defended Tushin (volume I, part two, chapter XXI), when he is guiltily silent in front of Bagration and does not want to betray his boss, Prince Andrei does not understand that behind this silence lies not servility, but an understanding of the hidden ethics of folk life. Bolkonsky is not yet ready to meet with "his own Karataev."

"A small round-shouldered man", the commander of an artillery battery, Tushin from the very beginning makes a very favorable impression on the reader; external awkwardness only sets off his undoubted natural mind. Not without reason, characterizing Tushin, Tolstoy resorts to his favorite technique, draws attention to the hero’s eyes, this is a mirror of the soul: “Silently and smiling, Tushin, shifting from bare foot to foot, looked inquiringly with large, intelligent and kind eyes ...” (volume I, part two, chapter XV).

But why does the author pay attention to such an insignificant figure, moreover, in the scene that immediately follows the chapter dedicated to Napoleon himself? The guess does not come to the reader immediately. Only when he reaches chapter XX does the image of the staff captain gradually begin to grow to symbolic proportions.

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

The narrator shows this little man close-up: “... His own fantastic world was established in his head, which was his pleasure at that moment. The enemy cannons in his imagination were not cannons, but pipes from which an invisible smoker emitted smoke in rare puffs. At this moment, it is not the Russian and French armies that are confronting each other; confronting each other is little Napoleon, who imagines himself great, and little Tushin, who has risen to true greatness. The staff captain is not afraid of death, he is only afraid of his superiors, and immediately becomes shy when a staff colonel appears on the battery. Then (Glavka XXI) Tushin cordially helps all the wounded (including Nikolai Rostov).

In the second volume, we will once again meet with Staff Captain Tushin, who lost his arm in the war.

Both Tushin and another Tolstoyan sage, Platon Karataev, are endowed with the same physical properties: they are small in stature, they have similar characters: they are affectionate and good-natured. Ho Tushin feels himself an integral part of the common people's life only in the midst of the war, and in peaceful circumstances he is a simple, kind, timid and very ordinary person. And Plato is involved in this life always, in any circumstances. And in war, and especially in a state of peace. Because he carries the world in his soul.

Pierre meets Plato at a difficult moment in his life - in captivity, when his fate hangs in the balance and depends on many accidents. The first thing that catches his eye (and in a strange way calms him) is Karataev's roundness, the harmonious combination of external and internal appearance. In Plato, everything is round - both movements, and the life that he establishes around him, and even the homely smell. The narrator, with his characteristic persistence, repeats the words "round", "rounded" as often as in the scene on the Austerlitz field he repeated the word "sky".

Andrei Bolkonsky during the battle of Shengraben was not ready to meet with "his own Karataev", staff captain Tushin. And Pierre, by the time of the Moscow events, had matured to learn a lot from Plato. And above all, a true attitude to life. That is why Karataev "remained forever in Pierre's soul the strongest and dearest memory and personification of everything Russian, kind and round." After all, on the way back from Borodino to Moscow, Bezukhov had a dream during which he heard a voice:

“War is the most difficult subjection of human freedom to the laws of God,” said the voice. - Simplicity is obedience to God, you can't get away from Him. And they are simple. They don't talk, they do. The spoken word is silver, and the unspoken is golden. A person cannot own anything while he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of her, everything belongs to him ... To unite everything? Pierre said to himself. - No, do not connect. You can’t connect thoughts, but to connect all these thoughts - that’s what you need! Yes, you need to match, you need to match! (volume III, part three, chapter IX).

Platon Karataev is the embodiment of this dream; everything is connected in him, he is not afraid of death, he thinks in proverbs, in which the age-old folk wisdom, - not without reason, and in a dream, Pierre hears the proverb "The spoken word is silver, and the unspoken is golden."

Can Platon Karataev be called a bright personality? No way. On the contrary: he is not a person at all, because he does not have his own special, separate from the people, spiritual needs, there are no aspirations and desires. For Tolstoy he is more than a personality; he is a part of the people's soul. Karataev does not remember his own words spoken a minute ago, because he does not think in the usual sense of this word. That is, he does not build his reasoning in a logical chain. Just like you would say modern people, his mind is connected to the public consciousness, and Plato's judgments reproduce over personal folk wisdom.

Karataev does not have a “special” love for people - he treats all living beings equally lovingly. And to the master Pierre, and to the French soldier, who ordered Plato to sew a shirt, and to the rickety dog ​​that had nailed to him. Not being a person, he does not see personalities around him either, everyone he meets is the same particle of a single universe as he is. Death or separation is therefore of no importance to him; Karataev is not upset when he learns that the person with whom he became close suddenly disappeared - after all, nothing changes from this! Immortal life people continues, and in every new one you meet, its unchanging presence will be revealed.

The main lesson that Bezukhov learns from communication with Karataev, the main quality that he seeks to learn from his "teacher" is voluntary dependence on the eternal life of the people. Only it gives a person a real sense of freedom. And when Karataev, having fallen ill, begins to lag behind the column of prisoners and is shot like a dog, Pierre is not too upset. Karataev's individual life is over, but the eternal, nationwide one, in which he is involved, continues, and there will be no end to it. That is why Tolstoy completes the storyline of Karataev with the second dream of Pierre, who was seen by the captive Bezukhov in the village of Shamshevo:

And suddenly Pierre introduced himself as a living, long-forgotten, meek old teacher who taught geography to Pierre in Switzerland ... he showed Pierre a globe. This globe was a living, oscillating ball, without dimensions. The entire surface of the sphere consisted of drops tightly compressed together. And these drops all moved, moved, and then merged from several into one, then from one they were divided into many. Each drop strove to spill out, to capture the greatest space, but others, striving for the same, squeezed it, sometimes destroyed it, sometimes merged with it.

That's life, - said the old teacher ...

God is in the middle, and each drop seeks to expand in order to reflect Him in the largest size ... Here he is, Karataev, now he has spilled over and disappeared ”(Volume IV, Part Three, Chapter XV).

In the metaphor of life as a "liquid oscillating ball" made up of individual drops, all symbolic images"War and peace", which we talked about above: and the spindle, and the clockwork, and the anthill; a circular movement that connects everything with everything - this is Tolstoy's idea of ​​the people, of history, of the family. The meeting of Platon Karataev brings Pierre very close to comprehending this truth.

From the image of staff captain Tushin, we climbed, as if on a step up, to the image of Platon Karataev. Ho and from Plato in the space of the epic one more step leads up. The image of the People's Field Marshal Kutuzov is placed here on an unattainable height. This old man, gray-haired, fat, walking heavily, with a face disfigured by a wound, towers over Captain Tushin, and even over Platon Karataev. The truth of nationality, perceived by them instinctively, he comprehended consciously and elevated it to the principle of his life and his military activity.

The main thing for Kutuzov (unlike all leaders headed by Napoleon) is to deviate from a personal proud decision, to guess the right course of events and not prevent them from developing according to God's will, in truth. We meet him for the first time in the first volume, in the scene of the review near Brenau. Before us is an absent-minded and cunning old man, an old campaigner, who is distinguished by an "affection of respectfulness." We immediately understand that the mask of an unreasoning campaigner, which Kutuzov puts on when approaching ruling persons, especially the tsar, is just one of the many ways of his self-defense. After all, he cannot, must not allow the real interference of these self-satisfied persons in the course of events, and therefore he is obliged to affectionately evade their will, without contradicting it in words. So he will evade the battle with Napoleon during the Patriotic War.

Kutuzov, as he appears in the battle scenes of the third and fourth volumes, is not a doer, but a contemplator, he is convinced that victory requires not the mind, not the scheme, but "something else, independent of the mind and knowledge." And above all - "you need patience and time." The old commander has both in abundance; he is endowed with the gift of "calm contemplation of the course of events" and sees his main purpose in not doing harm. That is, listen to all the reports, all the main considerations: support useful (that is, those that agree with the natural course of things), reject harmful ones.

A main secret, which Kutuzov comprehended, as he is depicted in War and Peace, is the secret of maintaining the national spirit, main force in the fight against any enemy of the Fatherland.

That is why this old, feeble, voluptuous person embodies Tolstoy's idea of ​​an ideal policy, who comprehended the main wisdom: a person cannot influence the course historical events and must renounce the idea of ​​freedom in favor of the idea of ​​necessity. Tolstoy “instructs” Bolkonsky to express this thought: watching Kutuzov after he was appointed commander-in-chief, Prince Andrei reflects: “He will not have anything of his own ... He understands that there is something stronger and more significant than his will - this is the inevitable course of events ... And most importantly ... that he is Russian, despite the novel by Janlis and French sayings ”(Volume III, Part Two, Chapter XVI).

Without the figure of Kutuzov, Tolstoy would not have solved one of the main artistic tasks of his epic: to oppose the “deceitful form of a European hero who supposedly controls people, which history has come up with”, “a simple, modest and therefore truly majestic figure” folk hero, which will never settle into this "deceitful form".

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

Does she belong to the "life burners"? It is impossible to think about this. With her sincerity, with her heightened sense of justice! Does she belong to "ordinary people", like her relatives, the Rostovs? In many ways, yes; and yet it is not for nothing that both Pierre and Andrey are looking for her love, are drawn to her, distinguished from the general ranks. At the same time, you can’t call her a truth seeker. No matter how much we reread the scenes in which Natasha acts, we will never find a hint of a search moral ideal, truth, truth. And in the Epilogue, after marriage, she even loses the brightness of her temperament, the spirituality of her appearance; baby diapers replace for her what Pierre and Andrei are given reflections on the truth and the purpose of life.

Like the rest of the Rostovs, Natasha is not endowed with a sharp mind; when in chapter XVII of part four last volume, and then in the Epilogue we see her next to the emphatically intelligent woman Marya Bolkonskaya-Rostova, this difference is especially striking. Natasha, as the narrator emphasizes, simply "did not deign to be smart." On the other hand, it is endowed with something else, which for Tolstoy is more important than an abstract mind, even more important than truth-seeking: the instinct to know life empirically. It is this inexplicable quality that brings the image of Natasha close to the "wise men", primarily to Kutuzov, despite the fact that in everything else she is closer to ordinary people. It is simply impossible to "attribute" it to any one category: it does not obey any classification, it breaks out beyond the limits of any definition.

Natasha, "black-eyed, with a big mouth, ugly, but alive", the most emotional of all the characters in the epic; therefore she is the most musical of all the Rostovs. The element of music lives not only in her singing, which everyone around recognizes as wonderful, but also in Natasha's voice itself. Remember, after all, Andrei's heart trembled for the first time when he heard Natasha's conversation with Sonya on a moonlit night, without seeing the girls talking. Natasha's singing heals brother Nikolai, who falls into despair after losing 43 thousand, which ruined the Rostov family.

From one emotional, sensitive, intuitive root, both her egoism, fully revealed in the story with Anatole Kuragin, and her selflessness, which manifests itself both in the scene with carts for the wounded in burning Moscow, and in the episodes where it is shown how she takes care of the dying Andrei, how he takes care of his mother, shocked by the news of Petya's death.

And the main gift that is given to her and which raises her above all the other heroes of the epic, even the best ones, is a special gift of happiness. All of them suffer, suffer, seek the truth or, like the impersonal Platon Karataev, affectionately possess it. Only Natasha unselfishly enjoys life, feels its feverish pulse and generously shares her happiness with everyone around her. Her happiness is in her naturalness; that is why the narrator contrasts so harshly the scene of Natasha Rostova's first ball with the episode of her acquaintance and falling in love with Anatole Kuragin. Please note: this acquaintance takes place in the theater (volume II, part five, chapter IX). That is, where the game reigns, pretense. This is not enough for Tolstoy; he makes the epic narrator "descend" down the steps of emotions, use sarcasm in the descriptions of what is happening, strongly emphasize the idea of ​​the unnatural atmosphere in which Natasha's feelings for Kuragin are born.

It is not for nothing that the most famous comparison of "War and Peace" is attributed to the lyrical heroine, Natasha. At the moment when Pierre, after a long separation, meets Rostova with Princess Marya, he does not recognize Natasha, and suddenly “a face with attentive eyes with difficulty, with effort, like a rusty door opens, smiled, and from this dissolved door suddenly it smelled and doused Pierre with forgotten happiness ... It smelled, engulfed and swallowed him all ”(Volume IV, Part Four, Chapter XV).

Ho Natasha's true vocation, as Tolstoy shows in the Epilogue (and unexpectedly for many readers), was revealed only in motherhood. Having gone into children, she realizes herself in them and through them; and this is not accidental: after all, the family for Tolstoy is the same cosmos, the same integral and saving world, like the Christian faith, like the life of the people.

He not only wrote a wonderful work "War and Peace", but also showed Russian life for several decades. Researchers of Tolstoy's work have calculated that the writer depicted more than 600 characters on the pages of his novel. Moreover, each of these characters has a clear and accurate description of the writer. This allows the reader to draw a detailed portrait of each character.

In contact with

Character system in the novel "War and Peace"

Of course, the main character of Tolstoy's work is the people. According to the author, this is the best thing in the Russian nation. According to the novel, the people include not only ordinary people who have nothing, but also nobles who live not for themselves, but for others. But the people in the novel are opposed by aristocrats:

1. Kuragins.
2. Salon visitors Anna Scherer.

It can be immediately determined from the description that all these characters are the negative characters of the novel. Their life is unspiritual and mechanical, they perform artificial and lifeless actions, they are incapable of compassion, they are selfish. These heroes cannot change even under the influence of life.

In a completely different way, Lev Nikolayevich portrays his positive characters. Their actions are guided by the heart. These positive actors include:

1. Kutuzov.
2. Natasha Rostov.
3. Platon Karataev.
4. Alpatych.
5. Officer Timokhin.
6. Officer Tushin.
7. Pierre Bezukhov.
8. Andrei Bolkonsky.

All these heroes able to empathize, develop and change. But it is the war of 1812, the trials that it brought, that makes it possible to understand to which camp the characters of Tolstoy's novel can be attributed.

Pyotr Rostov is the central character of the novel

Count Peter Rostov is the youngest child in the family, Natasha's brother. At the beginning of the novel, the reader sees him as a very young child. So, in 1805 he was only 9 years old. And if at this age the writer only notices that he is fat, then the characterization of Peter at the age of 13 is added to the fact that the teenager turns out to be handsome and cheerful.

At the age of 16, Peter goes to war, although he had to go to university, and soon becomes a real man, an officer. He is a patriot and worries about the fate of his Motherland. Petya spoke excellent French and could feel sorry for the captured French boy. Going to war, Petya dreams of doing something heroic.

And despite the fact that at first his parents did not want to let him go to the service, and then they found a place where it was safer, he still joins the army with a friend. As soon as he was appointed assistant general, he was immediately taken prisoner. Deciding to take part in the battle with the French, helping Dolokhov, Petya dies, having been wounded in the head.

Natasha Rostova will name her only son after him, who will never be able to forget her brother, with whom she was so close.

Minor male characters

There are many minor characters in the novel "War and Peace". Among them, the following characters stand out:

1. Drubetskoy Boris.
2. Dolokhov.

Tall and blond Boris Drubetsky was brought up in the Rostov family and was in love with Natasha. His mother, Princess Drubetskaya, was a distant relative of the Rostov family. He is proud and dreams of a military career.

Having got into the guard thanks to the efforts of his mother, he also participates in the military campaign of 1805. The characterization of him by the writer is unflattering, since Boris tries to make only “useful” acquaintances. So, he is ready to spend all the money to pass for a rich man. He becomes the husband of Julie Kuragina, as she is rich.

Guards officer Dolokhov is a bright secondary character in the novel. At the beginning of the novel, Fyodor Ivanovich is 25 years old. He was born a respectable lady Marya Ivanovna, belonging to a poor noble family. Women liked the officer of the Semyonovsky regiment, because he was handsome: medium height, with curly hair and blue eyes. A firm voice and a cold look were harmoniously combined in Dolokhov with his education and intelligence. Despite the fact that Dolokhov is a player and loves a revelry life, he is still respected in society.

Fathers of the Rostov and Bolkonsky families

General Bolkonsky has long been retired. He is rich and respected in society. He performed his service during the reign of Catherine II, so Kutuzov is his good friend. But the character of the father of the Bolkonsky family is difficult. Nikolai Andreevich happens not only strict, but also severe. He takes care of his health and appreciates order in everything.

Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov is a positive and bright hero of the novel. His wife is Anna Mikhailovna Shinshina. Ilya Andreevich is raising five children. He is rich and cheerful, kind and self-confident in character. The old prince is very trusting and easily deceived.

Ilya Andreevich is a sympathetic person, a patriot. He receives wounded soldiers in his house. But he did not follow the state of the family at all, therefore he becomes the culprit of ruin. The prince dies in 1813, trying to survive the tragedies of his children.

Minor female characters

In the work of Leo Tolstoy there are many minor characters that make it possible to understand the events that the author describes. In the work "War and Peace" female characters are represented by the following heroines:

1. Sonya Rostova.
2. Julie Kuragin.
3. Vera Rostova.

Sonya Rostova is the second cousin of Natasha Rostova, the protagonist of the novel War and Peace. Sofya Alexandrovna is an orphan and a dowry. For the first time, readers see her at the beginning of the novel. Then, in 1805, she was barely 15 years old. Sonya looked beautiful: her waist was thin and miniature, a large and thick black braid wrapped around her head twice. Even the look, soft and withdrawn, bewitched.

The older the girl got, the more beautiful she looked. And at 22, according to Tolstoy's description, she was somewhat like a cat: smooth, flexible and soft. She was in love with Nikolenka Rostov. She even refuses her love to the “brilliant” groom Dolokhov. Sonya knew how to read skillfully in front of different audiences. She usually read in a thin voice and very diligently.

But Nicholas chose to marry Marya Bolkonskaya. And the economic and patient Sonya, who managed the household so skillfully, remained to live in the house of the young Rostov family, helping them. At the end of the novel, the writer shows her at the age of 30, but she is also not married, but is busy with the Rostov children and caring for the sick princess.

Julie Kuragina is a minor heroine in the novel. It is known that after the death of her brothers in the war, left with her mother, the girl becomes a rich heiress. At the beginning of the novel, Julie is already 20 years old and the reader learns that she is from a decent noble family. Her virtuous parents raised her, and in general, Julie was familiar to the Rostov family from childhood.

Julie did not have any special external data. The girl was chubby and ugly. But she dressed fashionably and always tried to smile. Because of her red face, poorly covered with powder, and wet eyes, no one wanted to marry her. Julie is a bit naive and very stupid. She tries not to miss a single ball or a theatrical performance.

By the way, Countess Rostova dreamed of marrying Nikolai to Julie. But for the sake of money, Boris Drubetskoy marries her, who hates Julie and hopes to see her very rarely after the wedding.

Another minor female character in Leo Tolstoy's novel "War and Peace" is Vera Rostova. This is the eldest and unloved daughter of Princess Rostova. After her marriage, she became Vera Berg. At the beginning of the novel, she was 20 years old, and the girl was four years older than her sister Natasha. Vera is a beautiful, intelligent and well-mannered and educated girl with a pleasant voice. Both Natasha and Nikolai believed that she was too correct and somehow insensitive, as if she had no heart at all.