Leo Tolstoy called the principle of depicting the characters of heroes « dialectics of the soul. "
Personal in relation to the heroes is that

• change, improve, strive for an unattainable ideal,
• unloved heroes are static.

As a means of revealing the characters of the heroes of the novel "War and Peace", the writer, in addition to the expressed author's position, also uses a number of artistic techniques.

Artistic means of revealing characters in the novel

Portraits of the heroes of the novel

In the portrait of his heroes, Tolstoy emphasizes one recurring detail: the thickness of Pierre, the marbling of Helene's shoulders, the radiant eyes of Princess Marya, the trembling of Napoleon's thigh, the decrepitude of Kutuzov ...

Tolstoy is not afraid to show the ugliness of his characters. Natasha can

"To dissolve your big mouth, becoming completely nasty",

princess Mary's ugliness is constantly set off by her radiant eyes. In moments of strong shocks, a transformation can occur with the heroes. Describing the meeting between Natasha and Andrei in Mytishchi, Tolstoy writes that his face was scary for Rostova, but at the same time the most wonderful feelings unite the heroes. When Princess Marya fell in love with Nikolai Rostov,

“For the first time, all that pure spiritual inner work by which she had lived until now came out”:

the appearance of the heroine becomes beautiful: breast feminine notes appear, femininity and grace are manifested in the movements.

Character characteristics

The characteristics of a character can be given by another character. Thus, Pierre thinks of Helene:

"Elena Vasilievna, who never loved anything except her body, and one of the stupidest women in the world, seems to people to be the height of perfection, and they worship her before."

The author himself can highlight the dominant character.

"The essence of her life - love - is still alive in her,"

- says Tolstoy about Natasha.

Tolstoy, explaining the mistakes of his heroes (Pierre, Natasha), every time speaks of an intuitive feeling of something bad, repeats the words synonyms: "disgusting", "forbidden", "unnatural", "dishonest", "something indecent", “Indecent intent”.

Contrast as an artistic means in the novel "War and Peace"

One of Tolstoy's favorite techniques for revealing the characters of his characters is contrast.

So at the contrast reception there is a description of the first ball of Natasha Rostova, when her living, pure beauty is compared with the marble beauty of Helene and is opposed to her, as true - false. The images of Kutuzov and Napoleon appear as antagonists in the novel (see:).

Nature in the disclosure of characters

The character of the hero is also determined by his ability to feel.

This ability is possessed by:

• prince Andrew (sky of Austerlitz, oak on the way to Otradnoe),
• Pierre (starry sky),
• Natasha (night in Otradnoye)

- all the favorite characters of the writer. A contrast is built between Natasha and Sonya's dialogue at night in Otradnoye. The beauty of a summer night is alien to Sonia.

Speeches of heroes as a characteristic

The speech of the character himself can also serve as his characteristic. The order of the old prince Bolkonsky to his son before leaving for the army speaks of the high moral requirements for the honor of the nobility and service to the Motherland, of the hidden love for his son, of concern for his fate:

"Remember one thing, Prince Andrey: if they kill you, it will hurt me, the old man ... and if I find out that you did not behave like the son of Nikolai Bolkonsky, I will be ... ashamed!"

Comparison as a tool

The writer often uses comparisons to characterize the hero or his condition:

"Always spoke lazily, as an actor speaks the role of an old play"

(about Prince Vasily Kuragin),

an evening at Anna Pavlovna Sherer's is compared to a spinning workshop in which

"Spindles from different sides evenly and without stopping rustled",

about Pierre's condition:

"It was as if the main screw that held his whole life in his head was twisted."

Description as a method of revealing the characters of "War and Peace"

Important events in the hero's life can be commented on through the description of the episode. About Prince Andrew:

"A new, gratifying and reassuring feeling came over him when, looking at these girls, he realized the existence of other, completely alien to him and just as legitimate human interests as those that occupied him."

When describing the character of the hero, his actions, the manifestation of the author's irony is possible, as, for example, when describing the behavior of Prince Vasily when Kutuzov was appointed commander-in-chief.

By showing the dialectics of the souls of his heroes, Tolstoy allows us to penetrate into the aspirations, experiences, the essence of the actions of people whose life is separated from ours by almost two hundred centuries.

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Genre features of the novel "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy

Iva Zyuzina

III course, Ph.D. 4636

Russian philology

The novel "War and Peace" is a large-scale work. It covers 16 years (from 1805 to 1821) of the life of Russia and more than five hundred different heroes. Among them there are real characters of the described historical events, fictional characters and many people to whom Tolstoy does not even give names, for example, "the general who ordered", "the officer who did not get there." Thus, the writer wanted to show that the movement of history does not occur under the influence of any specific individuals, but thanks to all participants in the events. To combine such a huge amount of material into one work, the author created a genre that had not been used by any writer before, which he called an epic novel. This is one of the few works in world literature of the 19th century, for which the name of an epic novel is rightfully proposed. Events of a large historical scale, life in general, not private, form the basis of its content, it reveals the historical process, an unusually wide coverage of Russian life in all its layers has been achieved, and as a result of this, the number of characters is so large, in particular characters from the popular environment.

The novel describes real historical events: the Austerlitz, Shengrabenskoye, Borodino battles, the conclusion of the Tilsit peace, the capture of Smolensk, the surrender of Moscow, partisan war and others, in which real historical personalities manifest themselves. Historical events in the novel also play a compositional role. Since the Battle of Borodino largely determined the outcome of the war of 1812, 20 chapters are devoted to its description, it is the culmination center of the novel. The work contains pictures of the battle, giving way to the image of the world as the complete opposite of war, peace, as the existence of a community of many, many people, as well as nature, that is, everything that surrounds a person in space and time. Disputes, misunderstandings, latent and overt conflicts, fear, hostility, love ... All this is real, alive, sincere, like the heroes of a literary work themselves.

The breadth of coverage of the Russian nation in the work is striking: noble estates, aristocratic metropolitan salons, village holidays and diplomatic receptions, the greatest battles and pictures of peaceful life, emperors, peasants, dignitaries, landowners, merchants, soldiers, generals. We meet more than 500 characters on the pages of the novel. All of them, especially the goodies, are in constant search. Favorite heroes of Tolstoy are not perfect, but they strive for perfection, they are looking for the meaning of life, tranquility for them is equivalent to spiritual death. But the path to truth and truth is difficult and thorny. The characters created by Tolstoy reflect the moral and philosophical research of the author of the novel himself. The novel tells about the events taking place at three stages of the struggle between Russia and Bonapartist France. Volume 1 describes the events of 1805, when Russia was waging a war on its territory with France in alliance with Austria. In the 2nd volume of 1806-1807, when the Russian troops were in Prussia. The third and fourth volumes are devoted to a broad image of the Patriotic War of 1812, which Russia waged on its native land. The epilogue takes place in 1820.

The most complex artistic, historical and philosophical fabric of the novel is woven from everyday life and historical pictures, from the depiction of epoch-making events in the life of the people and the culminating moments of the life of individuals - great and unknown, real and fictional; from the speech of the narrator and the passionate monologues of the author himself, who, as it were, came to the fore and removed his heroes, stopped the action of the novel in order to talk about something of the utmost importance with the reader, sharply challenge the generally accepted point of view of professional historians, and substantiate his principles.

The very first and general theme of any epic is war and peace. The title is in the highest degree consistent with the "spirit of the epic", which, as everyone admits, is performed in Tolstoy's book. What the theme and the main event of the book are about is war and peace, and in the composition the main division is carried out into chapters into "peaceful" and "military", replacing each other. At the same time, the meaning of the title seems to double - namely, the meaning of the second concept: peace. Here it is no longer so unambiguous and simple - the question arises in what sense the word "world" is given, for the text of the book provides a basis for this. After all, this word is not only in the title, but also penetrates the entire text of the novel, covers a wide range of content and forms a whole grid of meanings. The "world" in the text of Tolstoy's novel, in its essence, is untranslatable. This is not only the “peace” that is opposite to war, a sign of silence, peace and harmony, but also “peace”, which appears in the sense of the cosmic meaning - “all the world” or “all people”.

In the "world" the author has given the specific meaning of worldly life, all the infinity of connections in human life with its diversity of relationships, opinions, events, comprehensible or not goals, in which it is necessary to orientate and make decisions. This life "in the world", which is the image of the "disorder of free light", is contrasted with another meaning of "peace" in Tolstoy's novel. In the context of the novel, another meaning of "peace" is the antipode of the word "earth", which in its meaning approaches the word "heaven" and resembles with the concepts of God, faith and death. The world is not just a general connection of human life, which more than once appeared to the characters in Tolstoy's books as chaos, a play of chance, but it is also a special purposeful connection, a harmonious whole, a "kingdom of truth." Within the boundaries of the original text, this difference is also conveyed by different spellings of a specific word - "mir" and "mir", where the concept of "mir" appears in places where it is clearly opposed to war, and "mir" is used in the meaning of "the whole world / all people."

There have been many attempts to study the main composition of the novel, which are fundamentally different in their approach. At first, the researchers saw their task in finding in the novel the main stages in the development of the action, what they should be according to generally accepted concepts of composition - the opening, the culmination, the denouement. Of the author's works on this topic, one can note T.L. Motyleva, who clarifies in her research that despite the lack of a tie in the generally accepted sense of the word - an initial event that would determine the further development of the action, from the very first pages of the work there is an imminent conflict , which underlies the epic. Namely: the contradiction and the brewing war between the Russian state and the Napoleonic army. The main spring of the action is a concrete deepening and development of this storyline, the battle of Borodino can be considered the culmination of the narrative, and the expulsion of Napoleon from Russia can be considered the denouement. In this case, the place of the denouement itself is rather unusual - since the action of the novel does not stop after it. This traditional view of the composition of the novel, according to other researchers, is a too general scheme that does not cover the completeness and logic of the plot lines of the novel, just as it does not subordinate many of the life processes depicted in the book.

Another attempt to interpret the composition of the novel can be noted in the works of B. Bursov, who decides to move away from the traditional theoretical and literary scheme. He adheres to the theory of the separate compositional centers of "War and Peace", which are the most significant moments of the historical event in it, but taken separately. In the first volume, such a center, according to Bursov, is the Battle of Austerlitz, and in the third - Borodino. Moreover, the significance of the Battle of Borodino is considered here, not only as the compositional center of the third volume, but also of the entire work as a whole.

A completely different principle of considering the peculiarities of the composition of the novel was derived in the monograph by A. Saburov. The episode of the Borodino battle is recognized as the culmination of the work, but the leading role in this development is taken by his so-called "external structure" I. This development examines the relationship in the novel of the factual side and fiction, war and peace, the author's reasoning and the narrative part, the scenic and descriptive element. As a result, this work examines the peculiarities of the genre composition of the novel separately from the writer's specific views on life, from the peculiarities of his worldview. A method that was not accepted by another part of the researchers, who focused in their developments on the moral and philosophical ideas of the author and Reeve. The development was adopted. specifies the peculiarities of the Jeanne composition of the novel separately from the specific views of the writer on life, the specific novel (V. Selinov, S. Leushev).

Of course, without taking into account the philosophical basis of the novel, it is impossible to understand the methods of its construction. Everything here is determined by the desire of the writer to substantiate artistically his view of people, life, and society. The author's fiction occupies no less place in the novel than reliable material in terms of significance, and also contains many philosophical premises in understanding not only military actions, but also in everyday civil and everyday life of people. Particular attention is paid to the role of the masses in history, the ethical representations of the best and thinking people from the advanced families of the nobility, the material and career motives of the ruling class, the problems of love, marriage and family.

The fiction in the novel also expands from the intentions of the writer, in addition to the historical event, to show in its entirety the life of people, which is not always directly related to the ongoing war. According to the writer himself, reflected in the draft preface, he distinguishes his task from the task of the historian: “The historian and the artist, describing the historical epoch, have two completely different subjects. As the historian will be wrong, if he tries to present a historical person in all his wholeness, in all the complexity of relations to all aspects of life, and thus involuntarily overlooking and overshadowing his main task - to indicate the participation of a person in a historical event, so the artist will not fulfill his work understanding a person as a historian, always presenting it in a historical sense ”(13, 57). Precisely these words of the author himself show that he considers it his duty to touch all aspects of life and, of course, to illuminate them from a philosophical point of view. The task of the writer is to create an epic, i.e. as it seems to him, a complete picture of the life of society at the beginning of the century with all types of life and customs of serf Russia. Mainly, this intention explains the exceptional completeness of the description of everyday life phenomena - the birth and death of a person, the experiences of lovers, hunting, gambling, duel, illness, disobedience of peasants to a lady, the experiences of a soldier's mother, poisoning of a lover, religious feelings of a person - in a word, everything that then there was a man. Throughout the reading of the entire novel, one can see how the writer tries to fully embrace the life of the era, describe the life of humanity at a certain historical stage, show the sequence of events and how people lived then.

For two equal halves, the author assigns a place in the novel to both military operations and civilian events. In this respect, the alternation of military and everyday scenes is given in approximately equal parts, it is in equilibrium in relation to the whole volume of the novel. Interrupting the descriptions of military operations, the narrative describes the development of almost all the lines of family chronicle - the lives of the Kuragin, Bolkonsky, Bezukhov, Rostov. In the work on the first half of the novel, descriptions of all families are usually carried out - for example, after the Shengraben battle in connection with the development of the plot, the Kuragin, Pierre Bezukhov and the Bolkonsky are shown. About any events in the family life of the Rostovs are not mentioned here, but the author mentions them, observing the accepted order of keeping them in the field of vision of the narrative.

In the author's mind, the two halves of the novel - the military-historical and the civil one - correspond to the meaning of the title - "War and Peace" and serve as its refinement; peace here again is thought of not only as the opposite of war, but also as the everyday civil, non-military life of people. In the comparison of one and the other, however, there are also semantic shades that speak about the influence of war on the world, people, their views, feelings and behavior.

The combination of family chronicles with the events of the people's war represents the main pivot of the development of the action in the novel. In a skillful interweaving of two-sided action, the author traces the private destinies of people with a life of observation, finding out how people of different positions, views and characters withstood the great test and behaved, what influence a crucial historical moment had on them.

In accordance with this, the novel begins with a show of the world, and then moves on to the pictures of war. Thus, the reader gets acquainted with the main characters before they become participants in the war. And this already affects the very perception of the description of war as a phenomenon - it is no longer just a war, but a war with the participation of familiar faces who have their own lives, thoughts and aspirations.

Artistic features of the novel "War and Peace"

1. Mastery of composition. The composition of the novel is striking in its complexity and harmony. The novel develops many storylines. These plot lines often overlap and intertwine. Tolstoy traces the fate of individual heroes (Dolokhov, Denisov, Julie Karagina) and entire families (Rostovs, Bolkonsky, Kuragin).

Complex interweaving of human relations, complex feelings of people, their personal, family, social life are revealed in the pages of the novel along with the depiction of great historical events. Man is somehow captured by these events.

A distinctive feature of the composition of War and Peace is that the writer constantly transfers the action from one place to another, moves from events associated with one line to events associated with another line, from private destinies to historical pictures. Now we are in the Bolkonskys 'estate, then in Moscow, in the Rostovs' house, then in the St. Petersburg secular salon, then at the theater of military operations.

This transfer of actions is far from accidental and is determined by the author's intention. Due to the fact that the reader sees different events taking place simultaneously in different areas, he compares them, juxtaposes and thus deeper understands their true meaning. Life appears before us in all its fullness and diversity.

To sharply highlight the features of certain events and characters, the writer often resorts to the method of contrast. This is expressed in the very title of the novel War and Peace, and in the system of images, and in the arrangement of chapters.

Tolstoy opposes the corrupted life of the Petersburg aristocracy to the life of the people. The contrast is contained both in the depiction of individual characters (Natasha Rostova and Helen Bezukhova, Andrei Bolkonsky and Anatol Kuragin, Kutuzov and Napoleon), and in the description of historical events (the Battle of Austerlitz - the Battle of Borodino).

2. Psychological analysis. In the novel, we find the deepest psychological analysis, which manifests itself in the author's narration, in the transmission of the characters' internal monologues, in the "eavesdropping of thoughts." Psychologism also affects in dreams as a form of reproduction of emotional experiences, subconscious processes. One of the psychologists discovered 85 shades of eye expression and 97 shades of a human smile in the novel, which helped the writer to reveal the variety of emotional states of the characters. Such attention to the slightest nuances of the movement of the human soul was a real discovery of L.N. Tolstoy and was called the disclosure method "Dialectics of the soul".

3. Portraits of heroes. The psychological characteristics are portraits of heroes, whose function is to give a visible image of a person. The peculiarity of the portrait characterization of the characters in the novel is that it is usually woven from details, one of which is persistently repeated (the radiant eyes of Princess Mary, the same smile for all Helen, the short lip of Liza Bolkonskaya with mustache, etc.)

4. Landscape descriptions. An equally important role is played by landscape descriptions that help to understand the situation in which the hero lives and acts (the hunting scene at the Rostovs'), his state and train of thought (the sky of Austerlitz), the nature of his experiences (two times meeting of Prince Andrey with an oak tree), the emotional world of the hero (moonlit night in Otradnoye). Pictures of nature are given by Tolstoy not by themselves, but in the perception of his characters.

It is impossible to overestimate the significance of the novel - the epic War and Peace, which for all times remains a great work of Russian classical literature.

The epic novel by L.N. Tolstoy is practically the only work of Russian literature of this scale. It reveals a whole layer of history - the Patriotic War of 1812, the military campaigns of 1805-1807. Real historical figures are depicted, such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor Alexander I, commander-in-chief of the Russian army Mikhail Ilarionovich Kutuzov. Using the example of the Bolkonskys, Rostovs, Bezukhovs, Kuraginys, Tolstoy shows the development of human relations, the creation of families. The people's war becomes the central image of the war of 1812. The composition of the novel "War and Peace" by Tolstoy is complex, the novel is huge in terms of its volume of information, and it amazes with the number of heroes (more than five hundred). Tolstoy showed everything in action, in life.

Family thought in Tolstoy’s novel

Throughout the novel, there are four storylines - four families, changing their composition depending on the circumstances. Kuragins are an image of vulgarity, self-interest and indifference to each other. The Rostovs are an image of love, harmony and friendship. The Bolkonskys are an image of prudence and activity. Bezukhov builds his family towards the end of the novel, finding his ideal of life. Tolstoy describes families, using the principle of comparison, somewhere and the principle of contrast. But this does not always mean what is good and what is bad. What is present in one family may be in addition to another. So in the epilogue of the novel we see a combination of three families: Rostov, Bezukhov and Bolkonsky. This gives a new round of relations. Tolstoy says that the main component of any family is love and respect for each other. And family is the main meaning of life. There are no great stories of people; they cost nothing without a family, without close and loving families. You can withstand any difficult situations if you are strong, and you are strong as a family. The significance of the family in the novel is undeniable.

Folk thought in Tolstoy's novel

The war of 1812 was won thanks to the strength, fortitude and faith of the Russian people. The people in its entirety. Tolstoy does not distinguish between peasants and nobles - in war, everyone is equal. And everyone has one goal - to free Russia from the enemy. "The club of the people's war," says Tolstoy of the Russian army. It is the people who are the main force that defeated the enemy. What can military leaders without a people? A simple example is the French army, which Tolstoy shows in contrast to the Russian one. The French, who fought not for faith, not for strength, but because they needed to fight. And the Russians, following the old Kutuzov, for faith, for the Russian land, for the tsar-father. Tolstoy confirms the idea that the people make history.

Features of the novel

Many of the characteristics in Tolstoy’s novel are presented through contrast or antithesis. The image of Napoleon is contrasted with the image of Alexander I as an emperor, the image of Kutuzov as a commander. The description of the Kuragin family is also based on the principle of contrast.

Tolstoy is the master of the episode. Almost all portraits of heroes are given through action, their actions in certain situations. The stage episode is one of the features of Tolstoy's narration.

The landscape in the novel "War and Peace" also occupies a certain place. The description of the old oak is an integral element in the description of the mental state of Andrei Bolkonsky. We see a calm Borodino field before the battle, not a single leaf will move on the trees. The fog in front of Austerlitz warns us of an invisible danger. Detailed descriptions of the estate in Otradnoye, natural views presented to Pierre when he is in captivity - all these are necessary elements of the composition "War and Peace". Nature helps to understand the state of the heroes without forcing the author to resort to verbal descriptions.

Novel title

The title of the novel War and Peace contains an artistic device called an oxymoron. But the name can be understood literally. The first and second volumes are divided among themselves scenes of war or peace. The third volume is almost entirely devoted to war; in the fourth, the world prevails. This is also a trick of Tolstoy. Still, peace is more important and necessary than any war. At the same time, a war without life in the "world" is impossible. There are those who are there - in the war, and those who remained to wait. And their expectation, at times, is one salvation to return.

The genre of the novel

Leo Tolstoy himself did not give the exact name of the genre to the novel "War and Peace". In fact, the novel reflected historical events, psychological processes, social and moral problems, raised philosophical questions, the heroes live family and household relations. The novel contains all aspects of human life, reveals characters, shows destinies. An epic novel - this is precisely the genre that was given to Tolstoy's work. This is the first epic novel in Russian literature. Indeed, Leo Tolstoy created a great work that has stood the test of time. It will be read at all times.

Product test

Each serious literary work has as its goal to convey to the reader the point of view of the author. In some work it will be just one idea, but in the novel "War and Peace" Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy tried to present and develop his philosophy. He wrote: "Historians describe incorrectly externally, but it is necessary in order to understand, guess the internal structure of life." And since the philosophical concept developed by him was new and original, the author created a genre called an epic novel.

Initially, Tolstoy wanted to write a work about the Decembrist who had returned from exile, and the title had already been invented: "All is well that ends well." But the author realized that it is impossible to describe the phenomenon without indicating the reasons that caused it. This led Tolstoy to a more global concept of describing historical events in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. Following the change of purpose, the name of the novel changes, becoming more global in nature: "War and Peace." This title not only illustrates the alternation and combination of military and peaceful episodes in the novel, as it might seem at first glance, but also includes various meanings of the word "peace". "Peace" is both a state "without war", and the peasant community, and the universe (that is, everything that surrounds us; the physical and spiritual environment). This novel tells about the fact that there is war in the life of an entire people and in the life of every person, what role wars play in world history, this is a novel about the origins of war and its outcome.

Creating the novel, the author studied the causes of historical events: the senseless and shameful campaign for the Russians of 1805-1807, during which even the accustomed to not argue the real military Nikolai Rostov was tormented by terrible doubts: "why are the severed arms, legs, dead people?" Here Tolstoy draws all our attention to the fact that war "is a phenomenon contrary to human reason." Then Tolstoy goes on to describe the events of the Patriotic War of 1812, which crippled the lives of millions, who killed Petya Rostov, Platon Karataev and Prince Andrei, who brought mourning to each family. After all, with every person who died on the battlefield, his entire unique spiritual world disappears, thousands of threads are torn, dozens of lives of loved ones are crippled ... But all these deaths had a righteous goal - the liberation of the Fatherland. And therefore in 1812 "the club of the people's war rose with all its formidable and majestic strength ...". And this movement could only be led by a person who knew how to renounce all his own desires in order to express the will of the people, to be close to him, and for this he did not need to be a genius, but he just needed to be able to "not interfere with anything good, not allow anything bad." Such was Kutuzov, such could not have been Napoleon, who was waging a war of conquest.

Tolstoy sets forth his historical concept on these examples. He believes that least of all the cause of any historical phenomenon is the will of one or several people in power, that the outcome of an event determines the behavior of each individual, seemingly insignificant, person and the nation as a whole.

Tolstoy paints Napoleon and Kutuzov as opposed in everything, constantly, for example, points to Napoleon's cheerfulness and self-confidence and Kutuzov's lethargy. This technique of antithesis is applied throughout the novel, starting with the title itself, War and Peace.

The genre of the work also determines the composition of the novel. The composition "War and Peace" is also based on the method of antithesis. The novel "War and Peace" is a large-scale work. It covers 16 years (from 1805 to 1821) of the life of Russia and more than five hundred different heroes, among which there are real characters of the described historical events, heroes invented by the author himself, and many people whom Tolstoy does not even give names, such as "general who ordered, "" an officer who did not arrive. " By this, the author confirms his point of view that the movement of history does not take place under the influence of any specific personalities, but thanks to all participants in the events.

To combine such a huge material into one work, a new genre was needed - the epic genre. For this, the antithesis technique is also used. So, all heroes can be divided into those gravitating towards the pole of Napoleon and heroes gravitating towards the pole of Kutuzov; moreover, the former, such as, for example, the Kuragins family, and the whole secular society, headed by Anna Pavlovna Scherer, Berg, Vera and others, receive some features of Napoleon, although not so pronounced: this is the cold indifference of Helen, and narcissism and narrowness Berg's views, and the egoism of Anatol, and the hypocritical righteousness of Vera, and the cynicism of Vasil Kuragin. The heroes who are closer to the pole of Kutuzov, just like him, are natural and close to the people, just as sensitively react to global historical events, taking them as personal misfortunes and joys (such are Pierre, Andrei, Natasha). Tolstoy endows all his positive heroes with the ability to improve themselves, their spiritual world develops throughout the novel, only Kutuzov and Platon Karataev are not looking for anything, they are not changing, since they are "static in their positivity."

Tolstoy also compares the heroes with each other: Prince Andrey and Anatol are different in their attitude to love, to Natasha; the opposite is Dolokhov, who seeks revenge "for his ignoble origin", severe, cruel, cold, and Pierre, kind, sensitive, trying to understand the people around him and help them; cold, artificial, dead spiritually beautiful Helene and alive, natural Natasha Rostova with a big mouth and big eyes, becoming even more ugly when she cries (but this is a manifestation of her naturalness, for which Natasha Tolstoy loves most of all).

In the novel "War and Peace" the portrait characterization of the heroes plays an important role. The writer singles out a separate feature in the portrait of the hero and constantly draws our attention to it: these are Natasha’s big mouth, Mary’s radiant eyes, Prince Andrei’s dryness, Pierre’s massiveness, Kutuzov’s old age and decrepitude, and Platon Karatayev’s roundness, and even Napoleon's fat thighs. But the other traits of the heroes change, and Tolstoy describes these changes so that you can understand everything that happens in the soul of the heroes. Often Tolstoy uses the technique of contrast, emphasizing the discrepancy between the appearance and the inner world, the behavior of the characters and their inner state. For example, when Nikolai Rostov, upon returning home from the front, when meeting with Sonya dryly greeted her and addressed her as "you", in their hearts they "called each other on" you "and kissed tenderly."

Being an innovator in the creation of a new genre of the novel, Tolstoy also invented a new way of studying and depicting the feelings, experiences, and movements of the heroes' souls. This new method of psychologism, called “dialectics of the soul” by Chernyshevsky, is to pay close attention to the development, change the internal spiritual state of the characters, to study the smallest details of their feelings, while the plot itself seems to be relegated to the background. Only good heroes are endowed with the ability to internal change, self-improvement in the novel. And Tolstoy values \u200b\u200bthis ability most of all in people (in combination with naturalness, kindness and closeness to the people). Every goodie in the novel strives to "be quite good." But in the novel there are heroes who cultivate themselves, pondering their actions. These heroes live by reason. These heroes include Prince Andrew, Pierre before the meeting with Platon Karataev and Princess Marya. And there are heroes who live according to their inner instincts, prompting them to certain actions. Such are Natasha, Nikolai, Petya and the old Count of Rostov. Plato Karataev and Kutuzov belong to this type.

In order to reveal the inner world of his heroes as best as possible, Tolstoy subjects them to the same tests: secular society, wealth, death, love.

Since the novel "War and Peace" is an epic novel, it describes real historical events: the Austerlitz, Shengraben, Borodino battles, the conclusion of the Tilsit peace, the capture of Smolensk, the surrender of Moscow, partisan war and others, in which, as already As stated above, real historical figures manifest themselves. Historical events also play a compositional role in the novel. For example, since the Battle of Borodino largely determined the outcome of the war of 1812, 20 chapters of the novel are devoted to its description, and in fact it is the culmination center.

In addition to historical events, the author pays great attention to the development of relationships between the characters - this is where the plot lines of the novel are formed. The novel features a large number of storylines. The novel is like a chronicle of the life of several families: the Rostov family, the Kuragin family, the Bolkonsky family.

The novel is not narrated in the first person, but the author’s presence in each scene is palpable: he always tries to assess the situation, show his attitude to the hero’s actions through their description, through the hero’s internal monologue, or through the author’s retreat, reasoning. Sometimes a writer gives the reader the right to understand what is happening, showing the same event from different points of view. An example of such an image is the description of the Borodino battle: first, the author gives a detailed historical information about the alignment of forces, about the readiness for battle on both sides, tells about the point of view of historians; then he shows us the battle through the eyes of a layman in military affairs - Pierre Bezukhov (that is, shows a sensual rather than a logical perception of the event), reveals the thoughts of Prince Andrei and the behavior of Kutuzov during the battle. In the scene of the council in Fili, the author first hands over the floor to six-year-old Malasha (again, a sensory perception of the event), and then gradually moves on to an objective presentation of events on his own behalf. And the entire second part of the epilogue more likely resembles a philosophical treatise on the theme “Driving Forces of History”.

In his novel, L. N. Tolstoy sought to express his point of view on historical events, to show his attitude to many life problems, to answer the main question: "What is the meaning of life?" And Tolstoy's credo in this matter sounds so that one cannot but agree with him: "We must live, we must love, we must believe."

So, in the novel "War and Peace" L.N. Tolstoy sought to expound his philosophical concept of life, and for this he had to "invent" a new genre of literary work - an epic novel, as well as a special kind of psychologism - the "dialectic of the soul." His work took the form of a philosophical and psychological historical novel, in which he examines and guesses the "internal structure of life."