Why war and peace is the most national novel. Why is L.N. Tolstoy’s epic called “War and Peace. Movement from west to east

On August 26, 1856, on the day of his coronation, Alexander II issued the Highest Manifesto, which provided for an amnesty for all Decembrists. In the same year, apparently impressed by this event, Leo Tolstoy decided to write a novel about the Decembrist returning from exile. However, he did not begin to implement his plan immediately, but only four years later, in 1860.

Tolstoy informs the publisher of many Decembrist notes, Alexander Herzen, about the beginning of his work in a letter from Brussels dated March 14, 1861:

« ...you can’t imagine how interested I am in all the information about the Decembrists in Polar Star. About four months ago I started a novel, the hero of which should be the returning Decembrist. I wanted to talk to you about this, but I never had time l".

In the same letter he gives a description of the main character:

“My Decembrist should be an enthusiast, a mystic, a Christian, returning to Russia in 1956 with his wife, son and daughter and trying on his strict and somewhat ideal view of the new Russia.<…>Turgenev, to whom I read the beginning, liked the first chapters.”

By 1861, three chapters were written in which the Decembrist Pyotr Ivanovich Labazov was actually brought out, returning with his wife Natalya Nikolaevna, daughter Sonya and son Sergei from Siberian exile to Moscow. However, despite Turgenev’s flattering assessment, the novel “The Decembrists” did not advance beyond these chapters.

The further he goes, the more the desire to paint a large-scale canvas matures in Tolstoy. " The epic kind becomes natural to me", he notes in his diary on January 3, 1863. Gradually, the original concept of the “Decembrists” expands and deepens. Tolstoy comes to the conclusion that starting the novel from 1856 is not entirely correct - it is necessary to include the year of the Decembrist uprising itself in the narrative.

“But even in 1825, my hero was already a mature family man. To understand him, I needed to travel back to the era of his youth, and his youth coincided with the glorious era of 1812 for Russia. Another time I abandoned what I had started and began to write from the time of 1812, the smell and sound of which are still audible and dear to us, but which is now so distant from us that we can think about it calmly.”

In mid-1863, Tolstoy’s search resulted in the idea of ​​the novel “Three Times” - in his own words, a work “from the time of the 1810s and 20s.”

The writer intends to consistently take his hero through the Patriotic War, the uprising on Senate Square and show his return from Siberian exile. Over time, the original plan changed more and more. For example, in the seventh sketch (there were fifteen in total), the time of action shifts to 1805, although the early plan included 1811. In Tolstoy we read:<…>“I was ashamed to write about our triumph in the fight against Bonaparte’s France without describing our failures and our shame.

Lev Tolstoy. Self-portrait. 1862 However, this ambitious plan is also soon revised: in the twelfth version of the beginning, the time frame is defined quite clearly and compressed to nine years - from 1805 to 1814. Tolstoy no longer plans to describe the fate of one Decembrist, this idea receded into the background, and, as the writer himself admitted, “both young and old people, both men and women of that time” came to the forefront, that is, the same “».

popular thought

However, it would be incorrect to say that the concept of “War and Peace” had nothing more in common with “The Decembrists.” In the same twelfth version of the beginning there is the following description of Pierre:

This passage testifies to the direct continuity between the novel being created and the work about the Decembrist, begun in 1860. In addition, it clearly states that this Decembrist was the same Pierre Bezukhov. And although Tolstoy by this time had already abandoned the idea of ​​​​bringing the action of the novel to 1856, he still intended to maintain a direct connection with the original plan.

In the final version of War and Peace, Tolstoy abandons this idea and carefully disguises all hints about Pierre's future. It is interesting that this was precisely what served as a reason for contemporaries reproach the writer for the incompleteness of the historical picture.

In particular, Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev was very surprised that the entire Decembrist element was omitted from the novel. These claims are not entirely fair. Firstly, in 1805–1812 the Decembrist movement did not yet exist, therefore, it could not be reflected in the novel. But at the same time, it tells in detail about the Masonic movement, to which, as is known, many of the future Decembrists belonged. In the epilogue, which takes place in 1820, the writer gives direct indications of the future fate of his heroes: he briefly but quite clearly speaks of Pierre’s involvement in the Decembrist organization (apparently, the Union of Welfare), and in the poetic dream of Nikolenka Bolkonsky, an uprising is discerned December 14. Having completed War and Peace, Tolstoy nevertheless did not abandon his plan to write a novel about the Decembrists, about people who, according to his definition, were “ everything is sorted - as if a magnet was passed over the top layer of a pile of rubbish with iron filings, and the magnet pulled them out

“...I, along with everyone else, based, however, on rumors, expected to soon have the great pleasure of reading your new novel, which, as they said, would serve as a continuation of War and Peace.”

However, this time the novel, despite the enormous research work done, remained unfinished. Why? There are several reasons. The first, external one, which can rather be called a reason, was that Tolstoy was not allowed to become familiar with the real investigative file about the Decembrists. This apparently cooled his enthusiasm greatly. The second, internal, as the writer himself admitted, stemmed from what he did not find in this topic “universal interest”: “This whole story had no roots.” The wording is very vague. Information that can be found from Countess Alexandra Andreevna Tolstoy and Sofia Andreevna Tolstoy will help you understand it.

The first recalled that when she asked why Lev Nikolaevich did not continue the novel, he answered: “ Because I found that almost all the Decembrists were French" Sofya Andreevna Tolstaya also writes about this:

“But suddenly Lev Nikolaevich became disillusioned with this era. He argued that the December riot was the result of the influence of the French aristocracy, most of whom emigrated to Russia after the French Revolution. She later educated the entire Russian aristocracy as tutors. This explains why many of the Decembrists were Catholics. If all this was grafted on and not created on purely Russian soil, Lev Nikolaevich could not sympathize with it.”

The same idea appears in a letter from Vladimir Stasov, who in 1879 asked Tolstoy:

“We had a hundred ridiculous rumors that you abandoned the Decembrists because you suddenly saw that all Russian society was not Russian, but French?!”

One way or another, the theme of Decembrism will be forgotten by the writer for 25 years.

Tolstoy will once again turn to the history of the Decembrists already in 1903–1904 in connection with the idea of ​​writing a novel about Nicholas I. But, like the previous ones, this plan will also remain unfulfilled.

145 years ago, a major literary event took place in Russia - the first edition of Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” was published. Separate chapters of the novel had been published earlier - Tolstoy began publishing the first two parts in Katkov’s Russky Vestnik several years earlier, but the “canonical”, complete and revised version of the novel was published only a few years later. Over the century and a half of its existence, this world masterpiece and bestseller has acquired a mass of scientific research and reader legends. Here are some interesting facts about the novel that you may not know.

How did Tolstoy himself evaluate War and Peace?

Leo Tolstoy was very skeptical about his “main works” - the novels “War and Peace” and Anna Karenina.” So, in January 1871, he sent Fet a letter in which he wrote: “How happy I am... that I will never write verbose rubbish like “War” again.” Almost 40 years later, he has not changed his mind. On December 6, 1908, an entry appeared in the writer’s diary: “People love me for those trifles - “War and Peace”, etc., which seem very important to them.” There is even more recent evidence. In the summer of 1909, one of the visitors to Yasnaya Polyana expressed his delight and gratitude to the then generally recognized classic for the creation of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina”. Tolstoy’s answer was: “It’s the same as if someone came to Edison and said: “I respect you very much because you dance the mazurka well.” I attribute meaning to completely different books.”

Was Tolstoy sincere? Perhaps there was some authorial coquetry here, although the whole image of Tolstoy the Thinker strongly contradicts this guess - he was too serious and unfeigned a person.

"War and Peace" or "War and Peace"?

The name “War Peace” is so familiar that it has already become ingrained into the subcortex. If you ask any more or less educated person what the main work of Russian literature of all times is, a good half will say without hesitation: “War and Peace.” Meanwhile, the novel had different versions of the title: “1805” (an excerpt from the novel was even published under this title), “All’s well that ends well” and “Three Times”.

There is a well-known legend associated with the name of Tolstoy’s masterpiece. Often they try to play off the title of the novel. Claiming that the author himself put some ambiguity into it: either Tolstoy meant the opposition of war and peace as the antonym of war, that is, peace, or he used the word “peace” in the meaning of community, society, land...

But the fact is that at the time when the novel was published, such ambiguity could not exist: two words, although pronounced the same, were written differently. Before the spelling reform of 1918, in the first case it was written “mir” (peace), and in the second case “mir” (Universe, society).

There is a legend that Tolstoy allegedly used the word “world” in the title, but all this is the result of a simple misunderstanding. All editions of Tolstoy’s novel during his lifetime were published under the title “War and Peace,” and he himself wrote the title of the novel in French as “La guerre et la paix.” How could the word “peace” sneak into the name? Here the story bifurcates. According to one version, this very name was handwritten on a document submitted by Leo Tolstoy to M.N. Lavrov, an employee of Katkov’s printing house during the first full publication of the novel. It is very possible that there really was a typo by the author. This is how the legend arose.

According to another version, the legend could have appeared later due to a typo made during the publication of the novel under the editorship of P. I. Biryukov. In the edition published in 1913, the title of the novel is reproduced eight times: on the title page and on the first page of each volume. “World” was printed seven times and “mir” only once, but on the first page of the first volume.
About the sources of "War and Peace"

When working on the novel, Leo Tolstoy took his sources very seriously. He read a lot of historical and memoir literature. In Tolstoy’s “list of used literature” there were, for example, such academic publications as: the multi-volume “Description of the Patriotic War in 1812”, the history of M. I. Bogdanovich, “The Life of Count Speransky” by M. Korf, “Biography of Mikhail Semenovich Vorontsov” by M. . P. Shcherbinina. The writer used materials from French historians Thiers, A. Dumas Sr., Georges Chambray, Maximelien Foix, Pierre Lanfré. There are also studies about Freemasonry and, of course, memoirs of direct participants in the events - Sergei Glinka, Denis Davydov, Alexei Ermolov and many others; there was also a solid list of French memoirists, starting with Napoleon himself.

559 characters

Researchers have calculated the exact number of heroes of War and Peace - there are exactly 559 of them in the book, and 200 of them are completely historical figures. Many of the remaining ones have real prototypes.

In general, when working on the surnames of fictional characters (coming up with first and last names for half a thousand people is already a lot of work), Tolstoy used the following three main ways: he used real surnames; modified real names; created completely new surnames, but based on real models.

Many episodic characters in the novel have completely historical surnames - the book mentions the Razumovskys, Meshcherskys, Gruzinskys, Lopukhins, Arkharovs, etc. But the main characters, as a rule, have quite recognizable, but still fake, encrypted surnames. The reason for this is usually cited as the writer’s reluctance to show the character’s connection with any specific prototype, from which Tolstoy took only some features. These are, for example, Bolkonsky (Volkonsky), Drubetskoy (Trubetskoy), Kuragin (Kurakin), Dolokhov (Dorokhov) and others. But, of course, Tolstoy could not completely abandon fiction - so, on the pages of the novel appear quite noble-sounding, but still not associated with a specific family surnames - Peronskaya, Chatrov, Telyanin, Desalles, etc.

The real prototypes of many of the novel's heroes are also known. So, Vasily Dmitrievich Denisov is a friend of Nikolai Rostov, his prototype was the famous hussar and partisan Denis Davydov.
A friend of the Rostov family, Maria Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, was copied from the widow of Major General Nastasya Dmitrievna Ofrosimova. By the way, she was so colorful that she also appeared in another famous work - Alexander Griboedov portrayed her almost portraitally in his comedy “Woe from Wit.”

Her son, raider and reveler Fyodor Ivanovich Dolokhov, and later one of the leaders of the partisan movement, embodied the features of several prototypes at once - the war heroes of the partisans Alexander Figner and Ivan Dorokhov, as well as the famous duelist Fyodor Tolstoy the American.

Old Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky, an elderly nobleman of Catherine, was inspired by the image of the writer’s maternal grandfather, a representative of the Volkonsky family.
But Tolstoy saw Princess Maria Nikolaevna, the daughter of the old man Bolkonsky and the sister of Prince Andrei, in Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya (in Tolstoy’s marriage), his mother.

Film adaptations

We all know and appreciate the famous Soviet film adaptation of “War and Peace” by Sergei Bondarchuk, released in 1965. The 1956 production of “War and Peace” by King Vidor is also known, the music for which was written by Nino Rota, and the main roles were played by Hollywood stars of the first magnitude Audrey Hepburn (Natasha Rostova) and Henry Fonda (Pierre Bezukhov).

And the first film adaptation of the novel appeared just a few years after the death of Leo Tolstoy. The silent film by Pyotr Chardynin was published in 1913; one of the main roles (Andrei Bolkonsky) in the film was played by the famous actor Ivan Mozzhukhin.

Some numbers

Tolstoy wrote and rewrote the novel over the course of 6 years, from 1863 to 1869. As researchers of his work have calculated, the author manually rewrote the text of the novel 8 times, and rewrote individual episodes more than 26 times.

First edition of the novel: twice as long and five times more interesting?

Not everyone knows that in addition to the generally accepted one, there is another version of the novel. This is the very first edition that Leo Tolstoy brought to Moscow to the publisher Mikhail Katkov in 1866 for publication. But Tolstoy was unable to publish the novel this time.

Katkov was interested in continuing to publish it in pieces in his “Russian Bulletin”. Other publishers did not see any commercial potential in the book at all - the novel seemed too long and “irrelevant” to them, so they offered the author to publish it at his own expense. There were other reasons: Sofya Andreevna demanded that her husband return to Yasnaya Polyana, as she could not cope alone with running a large household and looking after the children. In addition, in the Chertkovo Library, which had just opened for public use, Tolstoy found a lot of materials that he certainly wanted to use in his book. Therefore, having postponed the publication of the novel, he worked on it for another two years. However, the first version of the book did not disappear - it was preserved in the writer’s archive, was reconstructed and published in 1983 in the 94th volume of “Literary Heritage” by the Nauka publishing house.

Here is what the head of the famous publishing house Igor Zakharov, who published it in 2007, wrote about this version of the novel:

"1. Twice shorter and five times more interesting.
2. There are almost no philosophical digressions.
3. It’s a hundred times easier to read: the entire French text has been replaced by Russian in Tolstoy’s own translation.
4. Much more peace and less war.
5. Happy ending...”

Well, it's our right to choose...

Elena Veshkina

The strength of “War and Peace” lies precisely in the fact that the writer, incomparable in artistic sensitivity, presented the social, moral, psychological history of the era, recreated the emotional experiences of different people of that time, their spiritual aspirations. A. A. Fet, who often saw Tolstoy in those years, wrote: “Lev Nikolaevich was in the midst of writing War and Peace; and I, who knew him during periods of direct creativity, constantly admired him, admired his sensitivity and impressionability, which could be compared to a large and thin glass bell that sounds at the slightest shock.”

N. N. Strakhov rightly noted that Tolstoy “captured not individual features, but the whole - that life atmosphere that varies among different individuals and in different strata of society.” This difference in “atmosphere” is clearly and fully revealed in the novel - for example, in the estate of the old Prince Bolkonsky, a disgraced general of Suvorov’s times, and the bankrupt Moscow hospitable Count Rostov; in bureaucratic, “French-German” St. Petersburg and in “Russian” patriarchal Moscow. This is always a historically and socially determined difference.

The most sensitive of Tolstoy's contemporaries caught this spirit of the times, which, according to P. V. Annenkov, “is embodied on the pages of the novel, like the Indian Vishnu, easily and freely, countless times.”

Another critic, P. Shchebalsky, wrote in 1868, when only half of the novel was published: “The people of 1805-1812 are almost the same and act in almost the same conditions as the people of the present generation - this alone almost separates them from us, and this, it seems to us, is quite clearly expressed by Count Tolstoy. Look around you, and you will not find around you either the hussar type, which was bred in the person of Denisov, or the landowners who would go bankrupt as good-naturedly as Count Rostov (nowadays they are also going bankrupt, but at the same time they are angry), nor the commuters, nor the masons, nor the general babble in a language that is a mixture of French and Nizhny Novgorod.”

Tolstoy himself considered the use of French in Russian noble society at the beginning of the 19th century to be a characteristic sign of the times. The article “A few words about the book “War and Peace”” substantiates the historical and artistic legitimacy of the fact that in Russian works not only Russians, but also the French speak partly in Russian, partly in French. It is known that in 1873, including “War and Peace” in the Collected Works, Tolstoy replaced the French text with Russian throughout. This replacement caused significant damage to the artistic system of the novel, depriving it of one of the brightest features that recreate the era, and one of Tolstoy’s strong means of social and psychological characterization of characters. Later, the novel was republished in the same edition, with dialogues in French.

Both contemporaries and subsequent generations of readers were amazed by the breadth of coverage of life material and the comprehensive epic nature of the work. No wonder Tolstoy said that he “wanted to seize everything.” Reproaches for the incompleteness of the historical picture affected only three points. I. S. Turgenev was surprised why the entire Decembrist element was missed; P.V. Annenkov found that there were no commoners who had already declared themselves at that time; Radical critics wondered why the horrors of serfdom were not shown. Only the last reproach can be considered fair, and even then only partially.

The Decembrist movement could not be shown, since the narrative is limited to the historical framework of 1805-1812, when this movement did not yet exist. Moving forward in the epilogue to 1820, Tolstoy briefly but quite clearly speaks of Pierre’s involvement in the Decembrist organization (apparently, the Union of Welfare), conveys the political disputes of that time, and in Nikolsnka Bolkonsky’s poetic dream he gives a premonition of the uprising on December 14th. The same social movement that preceded Decembrism in our country and is indeed characteristic of the beginning of the 19th century - Freemasonry - is shown in War and Peace in sufficient detail.

It is characteristic that in general the noble culture of that time is represented in the novel mainly by the mental and moral quests of the “educated minority.” The inner world of the people of that time was recreated in incomparably greater detail than the culture of noble life, and not only in terms of aristocratic salons and clubs, but even the estates dear to the author’s heart. Theatrical life and literary salons are mentioned in passing, although the memoirs of contemporaries (for example, “Notes” by S. Zhikharev) provided abundant material of this kind. Of the writers, only the publisher of the “Russian Messenger” S. Glinka, N. Karamzin with his “Poor Liza” and writers of patriotic odes are named. This attention to pre-Decembrist themes reflected the same popular thought that permeates the novel.

The novel “War and Peace” is permeated with the idea of ​​the great importance of the nobility in the destinies of the nation, in the history of Russia. At the same time, for the author of the Sevastopol stories, “Morning of the Landowner”, “Cossacks”, the criterion for the truth of noble culture and moral principles was the attitude of this class towards the people, the degree of responsibility for the common life.

He did not want to show merchants and seminarians, he wrote polemically in one of the drafts of the preface to Tolstoy’s novel, because he was not interested in them. It ended, however, with the fact that (occasionally, it’s true, but still) the merchant Ferapontov is shown burning his shop in Smolensk, and the merchant meeting in the Slobodsky Palace, and the “seminarian of seminarians” Speransky.

Tolstoy depicts the Rostov and Bolkonsky families with great sympathy, because: they are participants in historical events, patriots; they are not attracted to careerism and profit; they are close to the Russian people. Characteristic features of the Rostov Bolkonskys 1. Older generation....

“Deep knowledge of the secret movements of psychological life and the immediate purity of moral feeling, which now gives a special physiognomy to the works of Count Tolstoy, will always remain essential features of his talent” (N.G. Chernyshevsky) Beautiful...

1867 L. M. Tolstoy completed work on the epoch-making novel of his work, “War and Peace.” The author noted that in “War and Peace” he “loved the people’s thought,” poeticizing the simplicity, kindness and morality of the Russian people. This “folk thought” by L. Tolstoy...

The action of L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” begins in July 1805 in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Scherer. This scene introduces us to representatives of the court aristocracy: Princess Elizaveta Bolkonskaya, Prince Vasily Kuragin, his children - soulless...

The novel “War and Peace” was originally conceived as a novel about a Decembrist who returned from exile, revised his views, condemned the past and became a preacher of moral self-improvement. The creation of the epic novel was influenced by the events of that time (60s of the 19th century) - Russia’s failure in the Crimean War, the abolition of serfdom and its consequences.

The theme of the work is formed by three main issues: the problems of the people, the noble community and the personal life of a person, determined by ethical standards. The main artistic device used by the writer is antithesis. This technique is the core of the entire novel: the novel contrasts two wars (1805-1807 and 1812), and two battles (Austerlitz and Borodino), and military leaders (Kutuzov and Napoleon), and cities (St. Petersburg and Moscow ), and the characters. This opposition is already embedded in the very title of the novel: “War and Peace.”

This name has a deep philosophical meaning. The fact is that in the word “world” before the revolution there was a different letter designation for the sound “and” - i is decimal, and the word was written “mir” - that is, it also had the meaning “society, people, people”. The topics touched upon in the novel illuminate important aspects of people's life, views, ideals, life and morals of various strata of society.

But both then and now the title of the novel is interpreted based on the whole variety of meanings contained in these concepts. Just as “war” means not only the military actions of warring armies, but also the warlike hostility of people in peaceful life, separated by social and moral barriers, the concept of “peace” appears and is revealed in the epic in its various meanings. Peace is the life of a people who are not in a state of war. The world is a peasant gathering that started a riot in Bogucharovo. The world is everyday interests, which, unlike mortal life, so prevent Nikolai Rostov from being a “wonderful person” and so annoy him when he comes on vacation and does not understand anything in this “stupid world.” Peace is a person’s immediate environment, which is always next to him, no matter where he is: in war or in peaceful life.

But the world is the whole world, the universe. Pierre speaks about him, proving to Prince Andrey the existence of the “kingdom of truth.” Peace is the brotherhood of people, regardless of national and class differences, to which Nikolai Rostov proclaims greetings when meeting with the Austrians. The world is life. The world is also a worldview, a circle of ideas of heroes.

The epic beginning in the novel connects the pictures of war and peace into a single picture with invisible threads. Peace and war go side by side, intertwine, interpenetrate and condition each other. In the general concept of the novel, the world denies war, because the content and need of the world is work and happiness, a free and natural and therefore joyful manifestation of personality. And the content and need of war is disunion, alienation and isolation, hatred and hostility of people defending their selfish individual interests, this is the self-affirmation of their egoistic “I”, bringing destruction, grief, and death to others. The horror of the death of hundreds of people on the dam during the retreat of the Russian army after Austerlitz is all the more shocking because Tolstoy compares all this horror with the sight of the same dam at another time, when “the old miller sat here for so long with fishing rods while his grandson, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, was fingering a silver quivering fish in a watering can.”

The terrible result of the Borodino battle is depicted in the following picture: “Several tens of thousands of people lay dead in different positions in the fields and meadows, where for hundreds of years the peasants of the villages of Borodino, Gorok, Kovardina and Sechenevsky." Here the horror of murder in war becomes clear to Rostov when he sees “the roomy face of the enemy with a hole in the chin and blue eyes.”

To tell the truth about the war, Tolstoy concludes, is very difficult. His innovation is connected not only with the fact that he showed man in war, but mainly with the fact that, having debunked the false one, he was the first to discover the heroism of war, presenting war as an everyday matter and at the same time as a test of all the spiritual strength of a person. And it inevitably happened that the bearers of true heroism were simple, modest people, such as Captain Tushin or Timokhin, forgotten by history; “sinner” Natasha, who achieved the allocation of transport for the Russian wounded; General Dokhturov and Kutuzov, who never spoke about his exploits. They are the ones who forget about themselves and save Russia.

The very combination of “war and peace” has already been used in Russian literature, in particular, in A. S. Pushkin’s tragedy “Boris Godunov”:

Describe, Not philosophizing slyly,

All That, why witness V life you will:

War And world, council sovereigns,

Ugodnikov the Saints miracles.

Tolstoy, like Pushkin, uses the combination “war and peace” as a universal category.

There was fierce debate about the meaning of the title of Tolstoy's novel War and Peace. Now it seems that everyone has come to more or less definite interpretations.

Antithesis in the broad sense of the word

Indeed, if you read just the title of the novel, then the simplest contrast immediately catches your eye: a peaceful, calm life and military battles, which occupy a very significant place in the work. The meaning of the title “War and Peace” lies, as it were, on the surface. Let's consider this side of the issue. Of the four volumes of the novel, only the second covers exclusively peaceful life. In the remaining volumes, the war is interspersed with descriptions of episodes from the life of various parts of society. It is not for nothing that the count himself, calling his epic in French, wrote only La guerre et la paix, which is translated without additional interpretation: “war is war, and peace is only everyday life.” There is reason to think that the author considered the meaning of the title “War and Peace” without additional subtext. Nevertheless, it is embedded in it.

Old disputes

Before the reform of the Russian language, the word “peace” was written and interpreted in two ways. These were “mir” and “mir” through i, which in Cyrillic was called “and”, and izhitsa, which was written as “and”. These words differed in meaning. “Mir” is a time without military events, and the second option meant the universe, the globe, society. Spelling could easily change the meaning of the title "War and Peace." Employees of the country's main Russian Language Institute found out that the old spelling, which appeared in a single rare publication, was nothing more than a typo. There was also one typo found in a business document that caught the attention of some commentators. But the author wrote only “peace” in his letters. How the title of the novel came about has not yet been reliably established. Again we will refer to our leading institute, in which linguists have not established exact analogies.

Problems of the novel

What issues are addressed in the novel?

• Noble society.
• Private life.
• Problems of the people.

And all of them are in one way or another connected with wars and peaceful life, which reflects the meaning of the name “War and Peace”. The author's artistic technique is opposition. In the 1st part of the first volume, the reader has just plunged into the life of St. Petersburg and Moscow, when the 2nd part immediately takes him to Austria, where preparations are underway for the Battle of Shengraben. The 3rd part of the first volume mixes Bezukhov’s life in St. Petersburg, Prince Vasily’s trip with Anatoly to the Bolkonskys and the battle of Austerlitz.

Contrasts of society

The Russian nobility is a unique layer. In Russia, the peasantry perceived him as foreigners: they spoke French, their manners and way of life were different from the Russian. In Europe, on the contrary, they were looked at as “Russian bears.” They were strangers in any country.

In their native country they could always expect a peasant revolt. Here is another contrast in society that reflects the meaning of the title of the novel “War and Peace.” As an example, let's give an episode from the third volume, part 2. When the French approached Bogucharov, the men did not want to let Princess Marya go to Moscow. Only the intervention of N. Rostov, who happened to pass by with a squadron, saved the princess and pacified the peasants. For Tolstoy, wartime and peacetime are intertwined, as is the case in modern life.

Movement from west to east

The author describes two wars. One is alien to the Russian person, who does not understand its meaning, but fights the enemy, as his superiors order, without sparing himself, even without the necessary uniform. The second is clear and natural: defending the Fatherland and fighting for their families, for a peaceful life in their native land. This is also indicated by the meaning of the title of the novel “War and Peace”. Against this background, the opposite, antagonistic qualities of Napoleon and Kutuzov are revealed, and the role of the individual in history is clarified.

The epilogue of the novel tells a lot about this. It provides comparisons of emperors, commanders, generals, and also analyzes issues of will and necessity, genius and chance.

Contrast between battles and peaceful life

In general, L. Tolstoy divides peace and war into two polar parts. War, which completely fills the history of mankind, is disgusting and unnatural. It causes hatred and hostility in people and brings destruction and death.

Peace is happiness and joy, freedom and naturalness, work for the benefit of society and the individual. Each episode of the novel is a song of the joys of peaceful life and a condemnation of war as an indispensable attribute of human life. This opposition is the meaning of the title of the epic novel “War and Peace.” The world, not only in the novel, but also in life, denies war. The innovation of L. Tolstoy, who himself participated in the battles of Sevastopol, lies in the fact that he showed not its heroism, but the reverse side - everyday, genuine, testing all the spiritual strength of a person.

Noble society, its contrasts

The nobles do not form a single cohesive mass. St. Petersburg, the high society, looks down on the closed-minded, good-natured Muscovites. The Scherer salon, the Rostov house and the unique, intellectual Bogucharovo, which stands apart altogether, are such different worlds that they will always be separated by an abyss.

The meaning of the title “War and Peace”: essay

L. Tolstoy devoted six years of his life (1863 - 1869) to writing an epic novel, which he later spoke about with disdain. But we appreciate this masterpiece for opening the widest panorama of life, which includes everything that surrounds a person day after day.

The main technique that we see in all episodes is antithesis. The entire novel, even the description of peaceful life, is built on contrasts: the ceremonial salon of A. Scherer and the cold family way of Lisa and Andrei Bolkonsky, the patriarchal warm family of the Rostovs and the rich intellectual life in God-forsaken Bogucharovo, the miserable quiet existence of Dolokhov’s adored family and his external, empty , the flashy life of an adventurer, Pierre’s unnecessary meetings with Freemasons who do not ask deep questions about the reconstruction of life, like Bezukhov.

War also has polar sides. The foreign campaign of 1805-1806, meaningless for Russian soldiers and officers, and the terrible year 12, when, retreating, they had to give a bloody battle near Borodino and surrender Moscow, and then, having liberated their homeland, drive the enemy across Europe to Paris, leaving him in integrity.

A coalition that was formed after the war when all countries united against Russia, fearing its unexpected power.

L. N. Tolstoy (“War and Peace”) invested an infinite amount of his philosophical reasoning into the epic novel. The meaning of the name is not amenable to unambiguous interpretation.

It is multidimensional and multifaceted, like the life itself that surrounds us. This novel has been and will be relevant at all times and not only for Russians, who understand it more deeply, but also for foreigners who turn to it again and again, making feature films.