Forms of expression “dialectics of the soul. Tolstoy - the master of the image of the dialectic of the soul From the "dialectic of the soul" - to the "dialectic of character"

L.N. Tolstoy is known not only as a brilliant writer, but also as an amazingly deep and subtle psychologist. Roman L.N. Tolstoy's "War and Peace" opened to the world a gallery of immortal images. Thanks to the subtle skill of the writer-psychologist, we can penetrate into the complex inner world of the characters, learning the dialectics of the human soul.

The main means of psychological depiction in the novel "War and Peace" are internal monologues and psychological portraits.

The image of Pierre Bezukhov is one of the most important in the novel. The author introduces us to his hero from the first pages of the work, in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Sherer. Contemporaries noted a noticeable similarity between the character and the author. Indeed, Pierre Bezukhov expresses many of the writer's cherished thoughts. But they should not be identified in everything.

The image of Pierre Bezukhov, like the images of Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky, is given in dynamics, that is, in constant development. Leo Tolstoy emphasizes the sincerity, childish gullibility, kindness and purity of his hero's thoughts. Pierre willingly and even joyfully submits to someone else's will, naively believing in the benevolence of others. He becomes a victim of the greedy Prince Vasily and an easy prey for crafty Masons, who are also not indifferent to his condition. Tolstoy remarks: obedience "does not even seem to him a virtue, but happiness."

One of the moral delusions of the young Bezukhov is the unconscious need to imitate Napoleon. In the first chapters of the novel, he admires the “great man”, considering him the defender of the conquests of the French Revolution, later he rejoices in his role as a “benefactor”, and in the long term - a “liberator” of the peasants, in 1812 he wants to save people from Napoleon, the “Antichrist”. The desire to rise above people, even dictated by noble goals, invariably leads him to a spiritual dead end. According to Tolstoy, both blind obedience to someone else's will and morbid conceit are equally untenable: both are based on an immoral outlook on life, recognizing for some people the right to command, and for others the obligation to obey.

Young Pierre is a representative of the intellectual noble elite of Russia, who treated with contempt the “close” and “understandable”. Tolstoy emphasizes the "optical self-deception" of the hero, alienated from everyday life: in the ordinary, he is not able to consider the great and the infinite, he sees only "one limited, petty, worldly, meaningless." Pierre's spiritual insight is the comprehension of the value of ordinary, "non-heroic" life. Having experienced captivity, humiliation, seeing the underside of human relations and high spirituality in an ordinary Russian peasant Platon Karataev, he realized that happiness lies in the person himself, in “satisfaction of needs”. “... He learned to see the great, eternal and infinite in everything, and therefore ... he threw a pipe into which he still looked through people's heads,” Tolstoy emphasizes.

At each stage of his spiritual development, Pierre painfully solves philosophical questions that "cannot be got rid of." These are the simplest and most insoluble questions: “What is 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 governs everything? The tension of moral searches intensifies in moments of crisis. Pierre often experiences "disgust for everything around him", everything in himself and in people seems to him "confusing, meaningless and disgusting." But after violent bouts of despair, Pierre again looks at the world through the eyes of a happy man who has comprehended the wise simplicity of human relations.

Being in captivity, Pierre for the first time felt the feeling of complete merging with the world: "and all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me." He continues to feel joyful enlightenment even after liberation - the whole universe seems to him reasonable and "well-arranged." Tolstoy notes: “now he did not make any plans ...”, “he could not have a goal, because he now had faith - not faith in words, rules and thoughts, but faith in a living, always tangible God.”

As long as a person is alive, Tolstoy argued, he follows the path of disappointments, gains and new losses. This also applies to Pierre Bezukhov. The periods of delusions and disappointments that succeeded spiritual enlightenment were not the moral degradation of the hero, the return of the hero to a lower level of moral self-awareness. Pierre's spiritual development is a complex spiral, each new turn brings the hero to a new spiritual height.

In the epilogue of the novel, Tolstoy not only introduces the reader to the "new" Pierre, convinced of his moral rightness, but also outlines one of the possible ways of his moral movement, associated with a new era and new circumstances of life.

Psychologism of the novel "War and Peace"

At the end of 1855, Tolstoy returned to St. Petersburg and was accepted by the editors of the Sovremennik magazine as a Sevastopol hero and already a famous writer. N. G. Chernyshevsky in the eighth issue of Sovremennik for 1856 dedicated to him a special article "Childhood" and "Adolescence". Military stories of Count L. N. Tolstoy ". In it, he gave an exact definition of the originality of Tolstoy's realism, drawing attention to the features of psychological analysis. "... Most poets, - wrote Chernyshevsky, - are primarily concerned with the results of the manifestation of inner life, ... and not about the mysterious process through which a thought or feeling is developed ... The peculiarity of Count Tolstoy's talent is that he is not limited to depicting the results of a mental process: he is interested in the process itself ... its forms, laws, dialectics of the soul, to put it in a definitive term".
Since then, the "defining term" - "dialectics (*97) of the soul" - has firmly entrenched itself in Tolstoy's work, for Chernyshevsky really managed to notice the very essence of Tolstoy's talent. Tolstoy's predecessors, depicting the inner world of a person, as a rule, used words that accurately called emotional experience: "excitement", "remorse", "anger", "contempt", "malice". Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this: "To talk about a person: he is an original, kind, smart, stupid, consistent person, etc. - words that do not give any idea about a person, but have a claim to describe a person, while often they only confuse ". Tolstoy is not limited to precise definitions of certain mental states. He goes further and deeper. He "points the microscope" at the secrets of the human soul and captures the very process of the birth and formation of a feeling even before it has matured and acquired completeness. He paints a picture of mental life, showing the approximateness and inaccuracy of any ready-made definitions.
Chernyshevsky defines Tolstoy's "dialectics of the soul" as a constant depiction of the inner world of heroes in motion, in development. Psychologism (showing characters in development) allows not only to objectively depict a picture of the mental life of the characters, but also to express the author's moral assessment of the depicted.
Means of psychological depiction in Tolstoy:
1. Psychological analysis on behalf of the author-narrator.
2. Disclosure of involuntary insincerity, a subconscious desire to see oneself better and intuitively seek self-justification (for example, Pierre's thoughts about whether or not to go to Anatole Kuragin after he gives Bolkonsky the word not to do this).
3. An internal monologue that creates the impression of “overheard thoughts” (for example, the stream of consciousness of Nikolai Rostov while hunting and chasing a Frenchman; Prince Andrei under the sky of Austerlitz).
4. Dreams, disclosure of subconscious processes (for example, Pierre's dreams).
5. Impressions of the characters from the outside world. Attention is focused not on the object and phenomenon itself, but on how the character perceives them (for example, Natasha's first ball).
6. External details (for example, oak on the road to Otradnoe, the sky of Austerlitz).
7. The discrepancy between the time in which the action actually took place and the time of the story about it (for example, Marya Bolkonskaya's internal monologue about why she fell in love with Nikolai Rostov).
According to Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy was interested "most of all - the mental process itself, its forms, its laws, the dialectics of the soul, in order to directly depict the mental process with an expressive, definitive term." Chernyshevsky noted that Tolstoy's artistic discovery was the depiction of an internal monologue in the form of a stream of consciousness. Chernyshevsky identifies the general principles of the "dialectic of the soul":
a) the image of the inner world of a person in constant motion, contradiction and development (Tolstoy: "man is a fluid substance");
b) Tolstoy's interest in turning points, crisis moments in a person's life;
c) eventfulness (the influence of the events of the external world on the inner world of the hero).
(It is often noted that on the numerous pages of Tolstoy's books, the souls of the main characters go through complex and multifaceted processes of reincarnation. This refers to the concept of "dialectics of the soul", because watching the spiritual growth or fall of the hero, we realize what served or prevented this. The personalities of the heroes change and grow - through struggle and suffering, through hardships and joys, through life's ups and downs.Tolstoy saw the ideal of a person in the authenticity of his personality, he tried to reveal the spiritual essence and depth of the hero through moments when a person controls himself and his behavior least of all. Tolstoy created turning points in the seemingly calm life of the heroes (Natasha, Anna Karenina, Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre) in order to rid them of the artificial, alien. Showing the true face of the heroes, their sincere motives and experiences, the writer showed his personal attitude towards people and the fact what a real person should be. His heroes were in a constant, complicated search for themselves themselves and sincere life, they had to fight for this right not only with others, but also with their own contradictory psyche. Through destruction, struggle and loss, Tolstoy rid them of the superficial and empty, thus showing how the history of the formation of their souls proceeded).
The main means of psychological depiction in the novel "War and Peace" are internal monologues and psychological portraits:
The image of Pierre Bezukhov is one of the most important in the novel. The author introduces us to his hero from the first pages of the work, in the salon of Anna Pavlovna Sherer. Contemporaries noted a noticeable similarity between the character and the author. Indeed, Pierre Bezukhov expresses many of the writer's cherished thoughts. But they should not be identified in everything.

The image of Pierre Bezukhov, like the images of Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky, is given in dynamics, that is, in constant development. Leo Tolstoy emphasizes the sincerity, childish gullibility, kindness and purity of his hero's thoughts. Pierre willingly and even joyfully submits to someone else's will, naively believing in the benevolence of others. He becomes a victim of the greedy Prince Vasily and an easy prey for crafty Masons, who are also not indifferent to his condition. Tolstoy remarks: obedience "does not even seem to him a virtue, but happiness."

One of the moral delusions of the young Bezukhov is the unconscious need to imitate Napoleon. In the first chapters of the novel, he admires the “great man”, considering him the defender of the conquests of the French Revolution, later he rejoices in his role as a “benefactor”, and in the long term - a “liberator” of the peasants, in 1812 he wants to save people from Napoleon, the “Antichrist”. The desire to rise above people, even dictated by noble goals, invariably leads him to a spiritual dead end. According to Tolstoy, both blind obedience to someone else's will and morbid conceit are equally untenable: both are based on an immoral outlook on life, recognizing for some people the right to command, and for others the obligation to obey.

Young Pierre is a representative of the intellectual noble elite of Russia, who treated with contempt the “close” and “understandable”. Tolstoy emphasizes the "optical self-deception" of the hero, alienated from everyday life: in the ordinary, he is not able to consider the great and the infinite, he sees only "one limited, petty, worldly, meaningless." Pierre's spiritual insight is the comprehension of the value of ordinary, "non-heroic" life. Having experienced captivity, humiliation, seeing the underside of human relations and high spirituality in an ordinary Russian peasant Platon Karataev, he realized that happiness lies in the person himself, in “satisfaction of needs”. “... He learned to see the great, eternal and infinite in everything, and therefore ... he threw a pipe into which he still looked through people's heads,” Tolstoy emphasizes.

At each stage of his spiritual development, Pierre painfully solves philosophical questions that "cannot be got rid of." These are the simplest and most insoluble questions: “What is 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 governs everything? The tension of moral searches intensifies in moments of crisis. Pierre often experiences "disgust for everything around him", everything in himself and in people seems to him "confusing, meaningless and disgusting." But after violent bouts of despair, Pierre again looks at the world through the eyes of a happy man who has comprehended the wise simplicity of human relations.

Being in captivity, Pierre for the first time felt the feeling of complete merging with the world: "and all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me." He continues to feel joyful enlightenment even after liberation - the whole universe seems to him reasonable and "well-arranged." Tolstoy notes: “now he did not make any plans ...”, “he could not have a goal, because he now had faith - not faith in words, rules and thoughts, but faith in a living, always tangible God.”

As long as a person is alive, Tolstoy argued, he follows the path of disappointments, gains and new losses. This also applies to Pierre Bezukhov. The periods of delusions and disappointments that succeeded spiritual enlightenment were not the moral degradation of the hero, the return of the hero to a lower level of moral self-awareness. Pierre's spiritual development is a complex spiral, each new turn brings the hero to a new spiritual height.

In the epilogue of the novel, Tolstoy not only introduces the reader to the "new" Pierre, convinced of his moral rightness, but also outlines one of the possible ways of his moral movement, associated with a new era and new circumstances of life.

Tolstoy - the master of the image of the dialectic of the soul

Introduction - 3

1. The dialectic of the soul in the works of L. N. Tolstoy - 4

2. Dialectics of the writer's soul - 5

Conclusion - 14

Literature - 15

I Introduction

I chose the theme of the dialectics of the soul by L. N. Tolstoy, because, as it seems to me, Lev Nikolayevich, like no one else, shows the development, evolution of man. Throughout the story, many of Tolstoy's characters change, their inner world changes, but the reader himself will have to assess whether the death of Anna Karenina was inevitable, whether Andrei Bolkonsky found his path ...

With the light hand of N. G. Chernyshevsky, critics called “dialectics of the soul” one of the most important features of the works of Leo Tolstoy - penetration into the souls of their heroes, empathy with them throughout their development.

1. The dialectic of the soul in Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

The writer L. N. Tolstoy depicts the inner world of this or that person, the hero of his work, in his own way. By discovering the "dialectic of the soul", Tolstoy moves towards a new understanding of human character. With its help, delving into the details of a person’s state of mind, he notices in him experiences and feelings that are not subject to anyone else. Lev Nikolaevich, like no one before him, gave examples of the artistic depiction of moving, developing events and "fluid", complex, contradictory, living human characters. Unlike many other writers, Tolstoy does not give full, exhaustive characteristics of the characters at the beginning of the work. The image of the hero, his portrait and, most importantly, character, are given by the writer in motion, are gradually formed from features and signs that manifest themselves in how the hero acts, what he talks about and thinks, what impression he makes on others. Tolstoy was fascinated by the depiction of the very process of the mental life of the characters, by showing the "dialectic of the soul." The artistic images created by Tolstoy amaze with their vitality. Tolstoy's predecessors, depicting the inner world of a person, as a rule, used words that accurately called emotional experience: "excitement", "remorse", "anger", "contempt", "malice". Tolstoy was dissatisfied with this: “To talk about a person: he is an original, kind, smart, stupid, consistent person, etc. - words that do not give any idea about a person, but have a claim to describe a person, while often they only confuse ". Tolstoy is not limited to precise definitions of certain mental states. He goes further and deeper. He "points the microscope" on the secrets of the human soul and captures the very process of the birth and formation of a feeling even before it has matured and acquired completeness. He paints a picture of mental life, showing the approximateness and inaccuracy of any ready-made definitions. He implants his ideas about the world around him in his characters. As we read his works, we become their heroes, we worry about their fate and what is happening, we look forward to the outcome of the events described. All this speaks of the great talent of the great writer. It seems to me that it is much easier for him to convey this or that spiritual mood of a person than for an artist. He has a rich Russian language at his disposal, which he uses as widely as a brilliant artist uses a palette of paints to paint portraits. But in order to understand all the silent feelings that the painter puts into his creation, not only attention is required, but also some mutual understanding.

2. Dialectic of the writer's soul

The secrets of Leo Tolstoy's work are largely understood if we study the biography of the greatest prose writer. The dialectic of Tolstoy's soul is torment, the transition through internal contradictions, it is a constant striving for perfection. But we also see the simplification of a person who grows up and then grows old. Simplification in the highest, Christian sense. If the young Tolstoy takes large-scale material, the problems of life and death, the problems of history, then in old age he increasingly writes children's stories, the heroes of which are peasant children. And these morals are unobtrusive, but wise and kind. A man who proudly tore off his cross in childhood preaches Christian values ​​in old age.

The diary that Tolstoy kept from 1847 until the end of his life was his first literary school - a school of scrupulous self-study, capturing the secret movements of the soul, the severity of the moral rules prescribed for oneself. The autobiography characteristic of Tolstoy also comes from the diary.

Tolstoy considered two years of solitary life in the Caucasus to be extremely significant for his spiritual development. The story "Childhood" written here - Tolstoy's first printed work - together with the stories "Boyhood" (1852-54) and "Youth" (1855-57) that appeared later, was part of the extensive plan of the autobiographical novel "Four Epochs of Development", the last part of which - "Youth" - was never written. In the first stories, Tolstoy, as it were, transferred the realistic principles of the natural school of the 40s. - objectivity, accuracy and detail of descriptions - in the field of research of psychology, the inner world of a child, a teenager, then a young man. He claims to be a researcher of human nature who wants to understand the hidden laws by which consciousness moves. Already in "Childhood" Nikolenka Irteniev learns to pursue every shadow of falsehood, insincerity in feeling (his own and someone else's). In the following stories of the trilogy, the hero's dissatisfaction with himself, reflection and introspection, a vague feeling of the sharp contradictions of life, and a thirst for moral perfection are growing. The psychology of a child for Tolstoy is the first reason to study the “natural person”, alien to class privileges.

In 1851-53 Tolstoy took part in military operations in the Caucasus (first as a volunteer, then as an artillery officer), and in 1854 he was sent to the Danube army. Shortly after the start of the Crimean War, he was transferred to Sevastopol at his personal request (in the besieged city, he fights on the famous 4th bastion). Army life and episodes of the war gave Tolstoy material for the stories "The Raid" (1853), "Cutting the Forest" (1853-55), as well as for the artistic essays "Sevastopol in the month of December", "Sevastopol in May", "Sevastopol in August 1855 year" (all published in Sovremennik in 1855-56). These essays, traditionally called "Sevastopol Stories", boldly combined a document, a report and a plot narrative; they made a huge impression on Russian society. The war appeared in them as an ugly bloody massacre, contrary to human nature. The final words of one of the essays, that his only hero is the truth, became the motto of all further literary activity of the writer. Trying to determine the originality of this truth, N. G. Chernyshevsky perceptively pointed out two characteristic features of Tolstoy's talent - "dialectics of the soul" as a special form of psychological analysis and "immediate purity of moral feeling" (Poln. sobr. sobr., vol. 3, 1947, p. 423 , 428).

In 1855, Tolstoy arrived in St. Petersburg, became close to the staff of Sovremennik, met N. A. Nekrasov, I. S. Turgenev, I. A. Goncharov, Chernyshevsky, and others. environment, to get used to the circle of professionals, to establish their creative position; this is also the time of searches, trials, mistakes, creative experiments. In the story "The Morning of the Landowner" (1856, a fragment of the unrealized "Novel of the Russian Landowner") Chernyshevsky for the first time noted the author's "muzhik" view of things. Written under the influence of A. V. Druzhinin's circle, the story "Albert" (1857-58) expressed the idea of ​​"chosenness", the sacred fire invested in the artist from above. In the story "Lucerne" (1857), inspired by the impressions of the first trip to Western Europe (1857), Tolstoy's social temperament, fiercely attacking bourgeois hypocrisy, heartlessness, social injustice, foreshadows the author of "Resurrection" and later journalistic treatises. The novel "Family Happiness" (1858-59) was intended to show the collapse of the ideal of a secluded "happy world". At the end of the novel, Tolstoy's future concept of a woman's family duty, her virtue and self-sacrifice in marriage was born. The novel, published in Russkiy Vestnik by M. N. Katkov (which marked Tolstoy's departure from Sovremennik), did not have any notable success with readers.

Tolstoy's gravitation towards the folk theme, the broad epic already matured in the story "The Cossacks" (1853-63). In the Caucasus, among the majestic nature and simple, pure-hearted people, the hero of the story is more fully aware of the falsity of secular society and renounces the lie in which he lived before. The criterion of the truth of social behavior for Tolstoy. becomes the nature and consciousness of man, close to nature, almost merging with it.

Dissatisfied with his work, disappointed in secular and literary circles, Tolstoy at the turn of the 60s. decided to leave literature and settle in the countryside. In 1859-1862, he devoted a lot of energy to the school for peasant children he founded in Yasnaya Polyana, studied the organization of pedagogical work in Russia and abroad (travel 1860-61), published the pedagogical journal Yasnaya Polyana (1862), preaching a free, devoid of strict program and government discipline system of education and upbringing.

In 1862, T. married Sofya Andreevna Bers (1844-1919) and began to live patriarchally and in solitude on his estate as the head of a large and ever-increasing family. During the years of the peasant reform, Tolstoy acted as a conciliator in the Krapivensky district, resolving disputes between landowners and peasants, as a rule, in favor of the latter. In his worldview at this time, fidelity to the spirit of the old tribal aristocracy, far from the court and living on the concepts of estate honor, and democratic aspirations are fancifully combined. The "conscientious nobility" as it were gives the peasant a hand over the head of the bourgeoisie, the bureaucracy and the urban philistinism.

An aristocrat by upbringing and family tradition, Tolstoy found a way out of the spiritual crisis of the late 50s. in rapprochement with the people, their interests and needs. The whole logic of the ideological and creative searches of the writer of the early 60s. - the desire to depict folk characters (the story "Polikushka", 1861-63), the epic tone of the narration ("Cossacks"), attempts to turn to history to understand the present (the beginning of the novel "Decembrists", 1860-61, published 1884) - led him to the idea of ​​the epic novel "War and Peace".

60s - the heyday of the artistic genius of Tolstoy Behind were the "years of study" and "years of wandering." Living a sedentary, measured life, he found himself in intense, concentrated spiritual creativity. The original paths mastered by Tolstoy, for all his apparent literary loneliness, led to a new rise in national culture.

"War and Peace" (1863-69, beginning of publication in 1865) became a unique phenomenon in Russian and world literature, combining the depth and secrecy of a psychological novel with the scope and multi-figure epic fresco. With his novel, the writer responded to the urgent desire of literature of the 60s. to understand the course of historical development, the role of the people in the decisive epochs of national life. Appeal to the special state of the people's consciousness in the heroic time of 1812, when people from different strata of the population united in resistance to foreign invasion, created the basis for the epic. In turn, the poetry of the national community found support in the utopian view of the writer, who lovingly recreated the life of the local nobility at the beginning of the century. In alienation from his people at the time of terrible trials, Tolstoy sees the main vice of the "ghostly" life of the St. Petersburg court and secular society. And, on the contrary, the patriotism of the Rostovs appears as part of the general element of people's life. The novel is permeated by the most important thought-feeling of the artist, which also organizes its plot. The first stage of a person's awareness of himself as a person is his release from the fetters of the estate, caste, circle (this is how Andrey Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov stand out and move away from the court circle, the Scherer salon). The second stage is the merging of personal consciousness with a huge extra-personal world, with the people's truth, enriching it and dissolving oneself in it. Despite the inconsistency of the spiritual quests of Bolkonsky and Bezukhov, the main result in the movement of their destinies remains the overcoming of egoism and class isolation: from proud individuality, subjectivity, the heroes come to the consciousness of their involvement in other people, the people (Levin, Nekhlyudov, the heroes of Tolstoy's later works, will follow a similar path). The author of “War and Peace” sees the national Russian traits in the “hidden warmth of patriotism”, in disgust for ostentatious heroics, in a calm faith in justice, in modest dignity and courage (images of ordinary soldiers, Timokhin, captain Tushin). The folk wisdom of Kutuzov stands out even brighter in comparison with the decorative grandeur of Napoleon, whose appearance is satirically reduced. With all the artistic freedom in depicting historical figures, Tolstoy does not put them at the center of his epic. He gravitates toward the recognition of the objective driving forces of history that shape the fate of the people, the nation. The war between Russia and the Napoleonic troops is depicted as a nationwide war. The Russians, according to Tolstoy, raised the "club of the people's war", which "nailed the French until the whole invasion died."

The completeness and plasticity of the image, the branching and intersection of destinies, incomparable pictures of Russian nature are features of the epic style of War and Peace. The concepts of fate and fate, characteristic of the classical epic, are replaced in Tolstoy by the concept of life in its spontaneous flow and overflow. Tolstoy rejects the traditional notion of a "hero". His hero in the novel, as it were, becomes life itself (private and general, “swarming”), its unhurried course, its joys and sorrows, victories and failures, its simple and eternal moments (birth, love, death), the triumph of its constant renewal. Thought, psychology, no less than "life" in its actions and accomplishments, occupy the author of the novel. Difficult internal struggle, unexpected disappointments and discoveries, new comprehension of thought and new doubts - this is what invariably accompanies the quest of Tolstoy's heroes. The author creates the illusion of a continuously ongoing mental process, the "core" of which consists in striving for truth, for justice, making its way through the inertia of life, the customs of the environment, the mood of the moment.

The obvious contradictions of Tolstoy's thought, his distrust of theoretical knowledge, the idealization of the patriarchal mind, which is especially evident in the artistic type of Platon Karataev, also affected the novel. The philosophical reasoning of the author about freedom and necessity, about the driving forces of the historical process, is marked by features of fatalism. T. considers the concept of freedom as an instinctive force of life, not subject to reason. But in the very attempt to explain the processes of life, taking into account the dialectical correlation of freedom and necessity, summing up the manifestation (direction) of the will of countless individuals, Tolstoy stands incomparably higher than contemporary bourgeois historians (such as A. Thiers), who often considered the “free” actions of an outstanding personality to be the main spring of history.

In the early 70s. the writer is again captured by pedagogical interests; he writes "ABC" (1871-72) and later "New alphabet" (1874-75), for which he composes original stories and transcriptions of fairy tales and fables, which made up four "Russian Books for Reading". For a while, Tolstoy returned to teaching at the Yasnaya Polyana school. However, symptoms of a mental crisis soon begin to appear. With the weak power over Tolstoy of the traditional church faith, from a young age undermined in him by skeptical analysis, his hope for personal immortality also threatened to collapse. A keen sense of the symptoms of a social turning point in the 70s, associated with Russia's transition to the bourgeois path of development, intensified the crisis of Tolstoy's moral and philosophical worldview.

The spirit of mournful reflection, a joyless look at modernity emanates from many pages of Tolstoy's central work of the 70s. - the novel "Anna Karenina" (1873-77, published 1876-77). Like the novels by I. S. Turgenev and F. M. Dostoevsky, written at the same time, "Anna Karenina" is an acutely problematic work, full of signs of the time, up to the newspaper "topics of the day." Tolstoy was increasingly losing hope for the possibility of reconciling the interests of the peasantry and the "conscientious" nobility. Disappointment in the bourgeois reforms of the 60s, which did not bring the expected social peace, calm and prosperity, T. took as proof of the futility of drastic changes in general. He watches with alarm how the remnants of the patriarchal way of life are crumbling under the onslaught of bourgeois progress, how morals are falling, family foundations are weakening, the aristocracy is degenerating, how impractical eccentrics Oblonsky are selling their ancestral forests and lands on the cheap to the moneybags Ryabinins. Tolstoy's historical optimism is shattered, but with all the more force he seeks support and last refuge in patriarchal mores, in the family. All attempts by Konstantin Levin, who is looking for the meaning of life, to understand the basics of the economy and social structure lead him to a dead end, and the only undoubted blessing after all the crises of personal feelings is family happiness and the naive faith of the old peasant Fokanych, who “lives to his heart, remembers God” .

Conclusion

It seems to me that in this work I was able to show that the characters of the books, their development, their inconsistency and internal struggle are imprinted by the "dialectics of the soul" of the author himself - Leo Tolstoy.

L. N. Tolstoy writes "talking" literary works, conveying this or that idea in a simpler and more accessible language. His techniques are different, Tolstoy has a special approach to each character. But whatever the way of conveying the mood, emotional experiences, love and hate of the created characters or landscape, the essence remains the same: the author is able to convey to us something without which, perhaps, life would be incomplete.

Literature

Bursov B. I., L. N. Tolstoy. Seminary, L., 1963

Gromov, Pavel. "On the style of Leo Tolstoy "Dialectics of the Soul"" in "War and Peace". Publisher: L.: Fiction. 1977

Tolstoy L.N.. Complete works, vol. 1-90 (anniversary edition), M. - L., 1928-58

Dialectics souls... - a writer of everyday life and masters subtle psychological analysis. ... Korolenko is characteristically realistic image people's life, attention ...

In his epic "War and Peace" L. Tolstoy managed to create unique images, focusing on the formation of heroes as individuals, the spiritual development of each. Tolstoy showed how the most vital impressions or events turn out to be decisive, cause instant changes in the life position of the hero, in his idea of ​​the world and himself in this world. The writer made a discovery in literature, which was later called Tolstoy's "dialectics of the soul".

Tolstoy distinguishes two main states in the human soul: what makes a person human, its moral essence, stable and unchanging, and fake, what society imposes (secular etiquette, desire for career growth and observance of external propriety). “The history of the soul” is the name of the process during which a person goes through ups and downs and, having got rid of unnecessary “fuss”, as a result becomes real. Such a hero is the most important for the author, therefore Tolstoy seeks to feel and show a person at the most crucial moments of his life.

For example, 1812 is such a turning point for Pierre Bezukhov, especially his time in captivity. It was then, having suffered various hardships, that Pierre learned to truly appreciate life. In the same place, having met with Platon Karatevim, he comes to the conclusion that all human misfortunes arise "not because of a lack, but because of an excess." Karataev lives in full harmony with the whole world. It is inherent in the desire to change the environment, to remake it in accordance with some abstract ideals. He feels part of a single natural organism, lives easily and joyfully, which largely affects the worldview of Pierre Bezukhov. Thanks to Plato and other soldiers, Pierre joins folk wisdom, achieves inner freedom and peace.

Of all the heroes of the novel "War and Peace", it is Bezukhov, in my opinion, that can be called a truth seeker. Pierre is an intellectual person, looking for answers to the main moral, philosophical, social questions, seeking to find out what is the meaning of human existence. The hero of Tolstoy is kind, selfless, disinterested. He is far from material interests, because he has an amazing ability not to be “infected” with meanness, greed and other vices of the society that surrounded him. And yet, only a sense of belonging to the people, the awareness of a common national disaster as a personal grief opens up new ideals for Pierre. Soon, Bezukhov finds long-awaited happiness next to Natasha, whom he secretly loved all his life, even from himself.

A deep inner rebirth occurs with Andrei Volkonsky. Andrei's conversation with Pierre on the ferry, meeting with an old oak tree, a night in Otradnoye, love for Natasha, a second injury - all these events cause drastic changes in his spiritual state. Similar changes occur with Natasha Rostova, and with her brother Nikolai, and with Maria - all of Tolstoy's favorite heroes go a long way before getting rid of everything artificial that they had, finally finding themselves.

In my opinion, it is no coincidence that in the novel all the author's favorite characters make tragic mistakes. Obviously, it is important for the writer to see how they atone for their guilt, how they themselves realize these mistakes.

Prince Andrei goes to the war of 1805 because he is tired of secular chatter, he is looking for something real. Volkonsky, like his idol Napoleon, really wants to find "his Toulon." However, the dream and real life differ markedly, especially when Prince Andrei finds himself on the battlefield. Andrei Volkonsky, like Napoleon in the battle of Arcoli, picked up the banner on the field of Austerlitz and led the troops. But this flag, in his dreams fluttered so proudly over his head, in reality turned out to be only a heavy and uncomfortable stick: “Prince Andrei again grabbed the banner and, dragging it by the pole, fled with the battalion.” Tolstoy also denies the concept of a beautiful death, so even the description of the hero’s injury is given in a very harsh form: “As if with a strong cue, one of the nearest soldiers, as it seemed to him, hit him in the head. It was a little painful, and most importantly, unpleasant ... ”War is meaningless, and the author does not accept the desire to become like Napoleon, the person who decided it. Perhaps that is why, already wounded Prince Andrei, lying on the battlefield, sees a high, clear sky above him - a symbol of truth: “How could I not have seen this high sky before? And how happy I am that I finally got to know him. So, everything is a hoax, everything is a hoax except this endless sky.” Prince Andrei refuses the chosen path, glory and the symbol of this glory - Napoleon. He finds other values: happiness just to live, to see the sky - to be.

The hero recovers and returns to the family estate. He goes to his family, to his "little princess", from whom he once fled and who is about to give birth. However, Lisa dies during childbirth. Andrew's soul is in turmoil: he suffers because of guilt before his wife. Prince Andrei confesses to Pierre: “I know only two real misfortunes in life: remorse and illness. And happiness is only the absence of these two evils.” Under Austerlitz, the hero understood the great truth: the infinite value is life. But misfortune in life can be not only illness or death, but also a restless conscience. Before the battle, Prince Andrei was ready to pay any price for a moment of glory. But when his wife died, he realized that neither Toulon was worth the life of a loved one. After a conversation on the ferry with Pierre Vezukhova about the meaning of being, about the purpose of a person, Andrey finally feels that he is open to people. Apparently, this is why Natasha Rostova appears in his life, whose natural inner beauty is able to revive Volkonsky's soul in new feelings.

Opening the "dialectics of the soul", Tolstoy moves towards a new understanding of human character. We have already seen how in the story "Childhood" "little things" and "details" of children's perception blur and loosen the stable boundaries in the character of the adult Nikolai Irtenyev. The same is observed in the "Sevastopol stories". Unlike ordinary soldiers, adjutant Kalugin has ostentatious, "non-Russian" courage. Vain posturing is typical in one way or another for all aristocratic officers, this is their class trait.
But with the help of the "dialectics of the soul", delving into the details of Kalugin's state of mind, Tolstoy suddenly notices in this person such experiences and feelings that do not fit into the officer code of an aristocrat and oppose him. Kalugin "suddenly became frightened: he ran five steps at a trot and fell to the ground ...". The fear of death, which the aristocrat Kalugin despises in others and does not allow in himself, suddenly takes possession of his soul.
In the story "Sevastopol in August," the soldiers, hiding in a dugout, read from the primer: "The fear of death is an innate feeling in man." They are not ashamed of this simple and so understandable feeling. Moreover, this feeling protects them from hasty and careless steps. Pointing his "artistic microscope" at Kalugin's inner world, Tolstoy discovered emotional experiences in the aristocrat that brought him closer to ordinary soldiers. It turns out that (*98) even in this person there are wider possibilities than those instilled in him by his social position, the officer environment.
Turgenev, who reproached Tolstoy for the excessive "pettiness" and meticulousness of psychological analysis, in one of his letters said that the artist must be a psychologist, but secret, not explicit: he must show only the results, only the results of the mental process. Tolstoy pays the main attention to the process, but not for its own sake. "Dialectics of the soul" plays a large meaningful role in his work. If Tolstoy had followed Turgenev's advice, he would not have discovered anything new in the aristocrat Kalugin. After all, the natural feeling of fear of death in Kalugin did not enter into his character, into a psychological “result”: “Suddenly, someone’s steps were heard ahead of him. ". However, the "dialectics of the soul" opened Kalugin prospects for change, prospects for moral growth.
Tolstoy's psychological analysis reveals infinitely rich possibilities for renewal in man. Social circumstances very often limit and suppress these possibilities, but they are not able to destroy them at all. Man is a more complex being than the forms into which life sometimes drives him. There is always a reserve in a person, there is a spiritual resource for renewal and liberation. The feelings that Kalugin had just experienced had not yet entered into the result of his mental process, remained unincarnated, underdeveloped in him. But the very fact of their manifestation speaks of the possibility of a person to change his character, if he surrenders to them to the end. Thus, Tolstoy's "dialectic of the soul" tends to develop into a "dialectic of character." “One of the most common and widespread superstitions is that each person has one of his own specific properties, that there is a person who is kind, evil, smart, stupid, energetic, apathetic, etc.,” Tolstoy writes in his novel “Resurrection.” “People We can say of a person that he is more often kind than evil, more often smart than stupid, more often energetic than apathetic, and vice versa, but it will not be true if we say about one person that he is kind or smart ", but about the other, that he is evil or stupid. And we always divide people like that. And this is not true. People are like rivers: the water is lonely in all and everywhere the same, but each river is sometimes narrow, sometimes fast, sometimes wide, now quiet, now clean, now cold, now muddy, (*99) now warm. So are people. Each person bears in himself the rudiments of all human properties and sometimes manifests one, sometimes another, and is often completely unlike himself, remaining everything between by that one and by ourselves."
"The fluidity of a person", his ability to abrupt and decisive changes is constantly in the center of Tolstoy's attention. After all, the most important motive of the biography and work of the writer is the movement to moral heights, self-improvement. Tolstoy saw this as the main way to transform the world. He was skeptical of revolutionaries and materialists, and therefore soon left the editorial office of Sovremennik. It seemed to him that the revolutionary restructuring of the external, social conditions of human existence was a difficult task and hardly promising. Moral self-improvement is a clear and simple matter, a matter of the free choice of each person. Before sowing good around, one must become kind oneself: it is from moral self-improvement that one must begin the transformation of life.
This explains Tolstoy's keen interest in the "dialectic of the soul" and the "dialectic of the character" of man. The leading motive of his work will be the test of the hero for variability. The ability of a person to be renewed, the mobility and flexibility of his spiritual world, his psyche are for Tolstoy an indicator of moral sensitivity, giftedness and vitality. If these changes were impossible in a person, Tolstoy's view of the world would collapse, his hopes would be destroyed.
Tolstoy believes in the creative, world-changing power of the artistic word. He writes with the conviction that his art enlightens human souls, teaches "to love life." Like Chernyshevsky, he considers literature a "textbook of life." He equates the writing of novels with a concrete practical matter, which he often prefers in comparison with literary work.