The novel "Anna Karenina". Ideological and moral searches of L. Tolstoy; features of the genre. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy. Genre and composition of the novel. Socio-psychological essence of Anna's tragedy Conclusions by chapter

Composition, novel genre

The peculiarity of the composition of the novel is that in the center of it there are two stories that develop in parallel: the story of Anna Karenina's family life, and the fate of the nobleman Levin, who lives in the village and strives to improve the economy. These are the main characters of the novel. Their paths intersect at the end of the work, but this does not affect the development of events in the novel. There is an internal connection between the images of Anna and Levin. The episodes associated with these images are united by contrast, or according to the law of correspondence, one way or another, complement each other. This connection helps the author to demonstrate the unnaturalness, falsity of human life.

The originality of the genre

The peculiarity of the Anna Karenina genre lies in the fact that this novel combines features inherent in several types of novelistic creativity. It contains primarily the features that characterize family romance... The history of several families, family relationships and conflicts are highlighted here. It is no coincidence that Tolstoy emphasized that when creating "Anna Karenina" he was possessed by family thought, while, working on "War and Peace", he wanted to embody popular thought. But at the same time, Anna Karenina is not only a family novel, but also a social, psychological novel, a work in which the history of family relations is closely connected with the depiction of complex social processes, and the portrayal of the heroes' fate is inseparable from their deep disclosure. inner peace... Showing the movement of time, characterizing the formation of a new social order, the way of life and the psychology of various strata of society, Tolstoy gave his novel features of an epic.

The embodiment of family thought, socio-psychological narration, the features of the epic are not separate "layers" in the novel, but those principles that appear in their organic synthesis. And just as the social constantly penetrates into the outlining of personal, family relations, so the depiction of the individual aspirations of the heroes, their psychology, largely determines the epic features of the novel. The strength of the characters created in him is determined by the brightness of the embodiment of their own, personal and at the same time the expressiveness of the disclosure of those social ties and relations in which they exist.

Tolstoy's brilliant skill in Anna Karenina has evoked an enthusiastic appraisal of the writer's outstanding contemporaries. “Count Leo Tolstoy,” wrote V. Stasov, “has risen to such a high note that Russian literature has never taken. Even among Pushkin and Gogol themselves, love and passion were not expressed with such depth and striking truth as Tolstoy now does. V. Stasov noted that the writer knows how "with a wonderful sculptor's hand to sculpt such types and scenes that no one before him knew in our entire literature ..." Anna Karenina "will remain a bright, huge star forever and ever!" Dostoevsky, who viewed the novel from his ideological and creative positions, also highly appreciated Karenina. He wrote: "Anna Karenina" is perfection as a work of art ... and such, with which nothing similar from European literature in the present era can be compared. "

The novel was created as if at the turn of two eras in the life and work of Tolstoy. Even before the completion of Anna Karenina, the writer was carried away by new social and religious quests. They received a certain reflection in the moral philosophy of Konstantin Levin. However, the complexity of the problems that occupied the writer in new era, all the complexity of his ideological and life path are widely reflected in the journalistic and artistic works of the writer of the eighties - nine hundred years.

The novel "Anna Karenina" is called "Pushkin's" novel by L.N. Tolstoy. Pushkin's capacity in combination with the religious and moral conceptuality of the novel explains aphoristic language "Anna Karenina", its richness with phraseological units, cultural quotes and reminiscences. By making extensive use of phraseology, the writer acts not only as a user, but also as a creator of language and culture. Already in the very selection of phraseological units from the national phraseological fund, in its specific input into the text of the work, the depth of his skill is manifested, the author's individuality of the writer lies.

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Plot and composition

One of the first, earliest definitions of the plot of "Anna Karenina" was preserved in a letter to SA Tolstoy: "The plot of the novel is an unfaithful wife and the whole drama that stemmed from this." In the initial sketches, the circle of events covered a closed and relatively small area of \u200b\u200bprivate life. “The idea is so private,” Tolstoy said. “And there cannot and should not be great success” (62, 142).

The creative history of "Anna Karenina" testifies to the fact that the initial concept at a certain stage of the work gave way to a broader artistic concept. "I often sit down to write one thing," Tolstoy confessed, "and suddenly I turn to wider roads: the composition is expanding." The drafts of his works are traces of the enormous work of the artist, who stepped over mountains of options in order to achieve the only correct solution to his theme.

There is nothing in the original formula: “the unfaithful wife and all the drama that came from this” that would be characteristic of Tolstoy. This definition applies to a great many novels based on the plot of the unfaithful wife. "To make this woman only miserable and innocent" - this is how Tolstoy defined his creative task, formulating the same plot differently in his own moral sense.

The problem of guilt itself acquires in the novel not only moral, but also plot, historical meaning. It was in the 70s, as N.K. Mikhailovsky noted, that the type of "penitent nobleman" appeared in literature. The purest and most complete embodiment of this phenomenon was Tolstoy. Naturally, therefore, that in his novel, too, he pondered the psychology of a person who was or is conscious of his guilt, even if he was “guilty without guilt” ...

“The main thing for me is to feel that I am not to blame,” says Levin. “It's not my fault that God created me such that I need to live and love,” Anna exclaims. Each of them has many excuses, but the word "guilt" does not leave their tongues. And in this they are also very similar to each other.

Anna justifies herself, recalling the abandoned house, but all her memories serve her as a reproach - and she blames Karenin “everything that she could find bad in him, not forgiving him anything for the terrible guilt she was guilty of before him ".

Tolstoy considered the awakening of his own sense of guilt more important than the "judicial" pressure of accusations and accusations. This point of view is very characteristic of Tolstoy.

In the sketches for the novel One Hundred Years, which Tolstoy worked on before starting Anna Karenina, there are already reflections on the "law of good", which is the basis of the novel about the unfaithful wife "and the whole drama that has come from this.

"Everywhere and always, wherever you look," writes Tolstoy, "the struggle, despite the threatening death, is the struggle between the blind striving for the satisfaction of the passions embedded in man, between lust and the requirement of the law of good, trampling death and giving meaning to human life ..." (17, 228). These words did not disappear in Tolstoy's creative laboratory.

Initially, they had no direct relation to Anna Karenina. But when this novel was written, they became an explanation of its inner psychological meaning, of how Tolstoy himself understood the struggle between "the power of evil" - "a blind desire to satisfy the passions embedded in a person" - and "the law of good."

In the epic work, where all the heroes are captured by the "stream of life", Tolstoy did not look for the "guilty", because he saw an infinite number of reasons and justifications for every act and every word. “I will not judge people,” he said in the same outline of the novel “One Hundred Years”. “I will only describe the struggle between lust and conscience of both private individuals and public officials ...” (17, 229).

From here there was already one step to the epigraph to Anna Karenina: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay," which means, first of all, exactly what Tolstoy had already said: "I will not judge people." He assumes the role of a truthful chronicler, "impartial as fate."

Among the heroes of the novel there is not a single "villain", and there are no impeccably virtuous characters. All of them are not free in their deeds and opinions, because the results of their efforts are complicated by opposing aspirations and do not coincide with the original goals.

This creates an epic, deterministic picture of life. “Every person,” writes Tolstoy in Anna Karenina, “knowing to the smallest detail the complexity of the conditions surrounding him, involuntarily assumes that the complexity of these conditions and the difficulty of understanding them are only his personal, accidental feature, and does not think that others are surrounded by the same complexity of their personal conditions as he is. "

That is why they are so often mistaken in their judgments about each other and are even inclined to believe that "the life that he himself leads is one real life, and that the friend leads is only a ghost." Tolstoy's heroes, captured by the epic stream, seem to be unaware of what they are doing. And above all the confusion and turmoil of their lives, a "higher power" soars calmly, which turns out to be retribution. "In everything there is a limit, in everything there is retribution, you will not pass it," Tolstoy said (48, 118).

Karenin's tragedy was that Anna suddenly became incomprehensible to him. "That depth of her soul, always before open to him, was closed from him." And Anna herself, as it were, understands his new position. She "seemed to say directly to him:" Yes, it is closed, and this is how it should be and will be going forward. "

"Now," writes Tolstoy about Karenin, "he experienced a feeling similar to what a person would experience if he returned home and found his house locked." However, Karenin did not lose hope ... "Maybe there is still a key," thought Alexei Alexandrovich. "

The metaphor of the house and the key is repeated in the novel on different planes. The meaning of this metaphor is most clearly revealed in the story about Seryozha. “He was nine years old,” writes Tolstoy, “he was a child; but he knew his soul, it was dear to him, he took care of it, as the eyelid protects the eye, and without the key of love would not let anyone into his soul.

House, key, soul, love - these concepts in Tolstoy's novel pass into each other. Karenin was offended and confused by what had happened in his house. He decides "that everything in the world is evil." And he decides to punish this evil with his will.

This is how Karenin's soul arises "the desire that she (Anna) not only not triumph, but receive retribution for her crime." True, he felt that he himself was not so perfect as to judge Anna. Yet the vengeful feeling seized him too.

This was for Tolstoy one of the most important moral knots of the novel. Here it was not only the logic of the characters and events that constituted the plot of the book, but also the general view of the problem of guilt and justification. In our criticism, it has already become indisputable that the epigraph of Tolstoy's novel is associated in its origin with A. Schopenhauer's book "The World as Will and Representation."

This book was translated into Russian by A. Fet. Tolstoy read it both in translation and in the original. “No man,” Schopenhauer writes, “is authorized to act as a purely moral judge and vindicator and to punish the deed of another with the pain that he inflicts on him. Therefore, to impose repentance on him for this would be rather an extremely arrogant arrogance; hence the biblical: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay."

“They will be judged by God, not by us,” says the novel about Anna and Vronsky. But for Tolstoy, God was life itself, as well as the moral law that "is contained in the heart of every person."

Fet perfectly understood Tolstoy's idea. At the beginning of his article on the novel Anna Karenina, he put Schiller's verses:

The law of nature looks for itself

Behind everything ...

And this fully corresponded to the inner nature of Tolstoy's novel, its philosophical and artistic meaning.

Tolstoy did not recognize that Countess Vronskaya and all the "secular rabble" who had already prepared "lumps of dirt" had the right to be judges of Anna Karenina. Retribution did not come from them. In one of his later books, created after Anna Karenina, Tolstoy writes: “People do a lot of bad things to themselves and to each other only because weak, sinful people have taken upon themselves the right to punish other people. "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." Only God punishes, and then only through the person himself ”(44, 95).

The last phrase is a translation (“only God punishes”) and an interpretation (“and then only through man himself”) of an ancient biblical saying, which Tolstoy took as an epigraph to his novel. Countess Vronskaya tells Koznyshev about Anna Karenina: "Yes, she finished, as such a woman should have finished ... Even she chose a vile, low death." "It's not for us to judge, Countess," Sergei Ivanovich said with a sigh, "but I understand how hard it was for you."

In the novel, the logic of events develops in such a way that retribution follows on the heels of the heroes. Tolstoy thinks about the moral responsibility of man for his every word and every deed. And the thought of the epigraph consists, as it were, of two concepts: “there are no guilty ones in the world” and “it is not for us to judge”. Both of these concepts perfectly corresponded to the inner nature of Tolstoy's epic thinking.

When Karenin met a lawyer, a servant of the law, he felt the unreliability of the legal trial against Anna Karenina. Retribution, according to Tolstoy, was in her soul. Even at the beginning of the novel, Anna casually drops the phrase: "No, I will not throw a stone." And how many stones were thrown at her! Only Levin understood her and thought: "What an amazing, sweet and pitiful woman."

In Lermontov's poem "Justification" there are lines that are very close to the inner meaning of the novel: "But before the court of the crafty crowd // Tell us that someone else is judging us // And that to forgive the holy right // You bought by suffering.

If the desire for judgment and condemnation belongs to the "secular rabble", then the "holy right" of forgiveness belongs to the people. In the drafts of the epilogue of Anna Karenina it is said: “Through humiliation and deprivation of all kinds, they (the people) have bought the dear right to be clean from anyone’s blood and from judgment over neighbors” (20, 555). For Tolstoy, the story of Anna Karenina was a pretext for a broader formulation of the problem of guilt, condemnation and retribution.

With an epigraph, Tolstoy only pointed to the primary source of that thought, which more than once in Russian literature sounded like a reminder of the "formidable judge" of history, patiently waiting in the wings. So, Lermontov reminded the "confidants of debauchery" about him. So, Tolstoy turned to him, exposing the secrets of his time.

The idea of \u200b\u200bretribution and retribution is related not only and even not so much to the history of Anna and Vronsky, but to the whole society, which found in Tolstoy its strict everyday life writer. He hated "sin", not "sinner" and discovered the meaning of hatred for "sinner" with a secret love for "sin."

Proceeding from the most abstract principles of "morality", looking at life "from the point of view of eternity", Tolstoy created a work imbued with a keen understanding of the historical and social laws of his era. "Tolstoy points to" I will repay "- Fet writes in his article about" Anna Karenina "- not as a rod of an obnoxious mentor, but as a punitive force of things." Tolstoy was well aware of this essentially non-religious, namely, the historical and psychological interpretation of the idea of \u200b\u200bretribution in his novel. And he completely agreed with her. “Everything that I wanted to say has been said,” he remarked about Fet's article about “Anna Karenina” (62, 339).

The image of the "gilded youth" in the person of Vronsky and " the mighty of the world this "in the person of Karenin could not but arouse the indignation of" real secret advisers. " The sympathy for the life of the people, embodied in Levin, also did not arouse delight among "real secular people." "And, I suppose, they sense," wrote Fet to Tolstoy, "that this novel is a strict incorruptible judgment on our entire order of life."

But then the epigraph also acquires a new, social meaning as an indication of the approaching "terrible judgment" over the whole system of life, which fully corresponds to the nature of Tolstoy's "bright realism" and his perspicacious view of the future.

In Tolstoy's novels, the character of the hero is of paramount importance. In accordance with the character, the circle of events is also determined, that is, the plot of the work. If the plot is the "history of the human soul", the development of character and the internal connection of conflicts, then the plot is an external grouping of persons and a sequence of events. The plot is the artistic substrate of the plot, the inner basis of characters and positions.

When Tolstoy said in 1873, at the beginning of work on the novel "Anna Karenina", that "conceived persons and events" found their place and "began so abruptly that the novel came out", he obviously had in mind the clearly defined plot of the future book ... His diaries show that the plot usually took shape at the earliest stages of work. Starting to write "Cossacks", Tolstoy noted in his diary: "The whole story is invariably ready" (48, 20).

In order to open up space for further changes, it was necessary first to "close the circle". “I can’t draw a circle otherwise,” writes Tolstoy, “how to bring it together and then correct the wrongs at the beginning” (62, 67). The circle metaphor was very important to him. He repeated it many times. Preparing the manuscript of Anna Karenina for publication, Tolstoy noted: "So much has been written, and the circle is almost closed."

As Tolstoy “made a circle” and “corrected mistakes at the beginning,” the plot basis of his book expanded and the family novel turned into a social novel.

The internal basis for the development of the plot in the novel "Anna Karenina" is the gradual liberation of a person from class prejudices, from the confusion of concepts and the painful falsehood of the laws of separation and enmity. If Anna Karenina's life searches ended in disaster, then Konstantin Levin, through doubt and despair, paves his own path. It was the road to the people, to goodness and truth, as Tolstoy understood them.

Levin knew all the "negative decisions" well, but he was inspired by the search for a "positive program" - the "law of good." This is precisely the source of the plot movement of the novel. To understand the meaning and significance of the law of good, it was necessary to see the destructive action of the "force of evil" in society and in the private life of a person.

The "power of evil" is embodied in Karenin's pharisaic atrocities and the public opinion he represents. And Karenin himself is burdened by this "force" and yet obeys it. "He felt that, besides the good spiritual power that guided his soul, there was another, coarse, equally or even more imperious force that guided his life, and that this power did not give him the humble calm that he desired."

The law in the novel receives an expanded interpretation. This is, firstly, the legal norm of the concepts of family, property and the state, secondly, public opinion about human life and behavior, and, finally, thirdly, moral idea, which determines the assessment and self-esteem of the heroes and their fate. There is a real drama of the law in this complex interweaving of various values \u200b\u200band reappraisals, because it operates in the conditions of a “turned-over” society.

Therefore, Tolstoy skeptically depicts the legal norms of the era, which are gradually turning into a rigid form that is losing its life-forming content. The law can no longer protect the Karenin family from destruction, save Oblonsky's property, or resolve Levin's doubts.

Even more sharply Tolstoy depicts the public opinion of his era, guessing in it the features of cold pharisaism. And the whole novel gradually turns into a court of society. This explains the sharply hostile attitude that Anna Karenina met in higher circles.

But as a moralist, Tolstoy strove to retain only the moral core, hoping that everything else would be formed by itself and the reassessment of values \u200b\u200bwould end with a clear consciousness of a "positive program." This point of view leaves an imprint on Levin's character and on the entire novel.

Tolstoy "argues in an abstract way," writes VI Lenin, "he admits only the point of view of the" eternal "principles of morality, the eternal truths of religion." In one of his later works, Tolstoy called the “castle of the vault” of his philosophy “religious consciousness” (36, 202). But his religious and philosophical terminology could not smooth out the historical and political acuteness of his novel. And the very clash of contemporary, historical positions with an abstract understanding of the "eternal principles" of morality and religion is a characteristic contradiction of "Anna Karenina".

The correlation between the "circles" of events in relation to the "law" in the lives of Anna and Levin gives the whole novel an undeniable unity. It is created by many seemingly imperceptible correspondences of ideas and positions throughout the breadth of the epic narrative.

At the beginning of the novel, Anna Karenina is depicted “in law” of family and social life. The break with Karenin made her illegal. “I don't know the laws,” says Anna. But she knows very well what Aleksey Aleksandrovich Karenin is: "He only needs lies and decency." After leaving the family, Anna loses the rights to her son. He is taking away his son, she thinks, and probably, according to their stupid law, it is possible.

Anna cannot find a foothold. Vronsky, having grown cold to her, could act according to the laws of the "enlightened time." He could say, “I'm not holding you. You can go wherever you want ... If you need money, I will give it to you. How many rubles do you need? " Vronsky never said anything like that to Anna! He seems to have always loved her, although he did not always understand. This "devil" whispers to Anna doubts.

But these doubts were possible precisely because she was “outlawed”, because she could not find a “fulcrum”. Tolstoy also argued that "passion" is not a support, but a "break", "failure", "misfortune". Therefore, the conflict in the novel acquires an extraordinary psychological acuteness. Anna feels that she cannot live “in the law”, but understands that life “outside the law” threatens her with insults and death. Her storyline is built on this conflict.

Anna Karenina's revolt was brave and strong. Humility is not at all characteristic of her. And not only before people or before the law, but also before the "supreme judge." When she said, "My God," neither "God," nor "mine" mattered to her. "She knew ahead that the help of religion is possible only on condition of renunciation of what constituted the whole meaning of life for her."

Anna comes to renounce her usual way of life. “All lies, all lies, all evil,” she says on the eve of her death. All issues were resolved negatively, and this killed her will to live. She was looking for moral support and did not find it. And all the human voices around her fell silent, only the growing hum of the railway remained.

If Anna Karenina's storyline unfolds “in the law” (in the family) and “outside the law” (outside the family), then Levin’s storyline moves from being “in the law” (in the family) to the realization of the illegality of all social development (“we are outside the law "). The circles of events in both cases have a common center. Anna's narrowing circle leads her to selfish, painful, almost insane selfishness. Levin's expanding circle is filled with an altruistic desire for the infinite.

Levin cannot confine himself to arranging only his own personal happiness. At the noble elections in Kashin, in the bureaucratic den, in the drawing room of Countess Pain, in the English club he is a stranger, and on his estate, in the haymaking, among household chores, at home, in his own environment. The fulcrum for Levin was the consciousness of responsibilities in relation to the earth, to the family, in relation to the law of goodness, to his soul.

And he knew all the "power of evil" that eventually took possession of Anna Karenina's soul. And he asked himself: "Is it really only negative?" And he was already on the verge of suicide when another truth was revealed to him: "Everything for others, nothing for oneself." So the moral law became clear in his soul when he saw the starry sky above his head.

“It was already completely dark, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds. The clouds were on the opposite side. Lightning flashed from there and distant thunder was heard. Levin listened to the drops evenly falling from the lindens in the garden and looked at the familiar triangle of stars and at the Milky Way with its branches passing in the middle of it. With each flash of lightning, not only the Milky Way, but also the bright stars disappeared, but as soon as the lightning went out, as if thrown by some mark with a hand, they again appeared in the same places. "Well, what confuses me?" Levin said to himself, feeling forward that the resolution of his doubts, although he did not yet know it, was already ready in his soul.

The losses of Anna Karenina were as dear to Tolstoy as Levin's discoveries. Anna's search ended in disaster. She rejected false laws and did not accept the true ones. Levin discovered the "law of good", which brought him an understanding of what one can know, what needs to be done and what one can hope for. Tolstoy considered these three questions to be the essence of the philosophical understanding of life. But these three questions worried also Anna, who in the very last hour of her life was thinking about “reason”.

And Anna, like Levin, had a presentiment that "happiness is possible only with the strict observance of the law of good." But the law of good, according to Tolstoy, requires greater moral efforts from everyone than the non-judgmental "power of evil." Levin's spiritual quest, no less than Anna's moral suffering, belongs to the history of the human soul, which, according to Dostoevsky, was developed in Tolstoy's novel "with terrible depth and strength, with a realism of artistic depiction unprecedented in our country."

Anna and Levin are close to each other as characters, as individuals who are capable of many "sacrifice and malice and love." And Anna, no less than Levin, has a deep inner conscientiousness. And only from him does she not hide the entire "gravity of her position." And most importantly, Tolstoy's own character was reflected in Levin no less than in Anna Karenina.

Tolstoy called Anna Karenina "a wide, free novel." This definition is based on the old Pushkin term: "free novel". This genre attracted Tolstoy with its inexhaustible artistic possibilities.

There are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic digressions in Anna Karenina. But there is an undeniable connection between Pushkin's novel and Tolstoy's novel, which manifests itself in the genre, in the plot and in the composition. In Tolstoy's novel, just as in Pushkin's novel, the paramount importance belongs not to the plot completion of the provisions, but to the creative concept, which determines the selection and choice of material and opens up scope for the development of plot lines.

"Insert into a spacious roomy frame // New paintings, open us a diorama", - wrote Pushkin about the new genre of free novel. A wide and free novel arose on the basis of overcoming literary schemes and conventions. The plot of an old novel, for example, by Walter Scott or by Dickens, was built on the fabulous completeness of the provisions. It was this tradition that Tolstoy rejected. “I can’t and don’t know how,” he said, “to put certain boundaries on my fictitious persons - such as marriage or death ... I involuntarily imagined that the death of one person only aroused interest in other persons, and marriage seemed for the most part to be a tie, and not a denouement of interest ”(13, 55).

In the famous Letters on Literature, Balzac very accurately defined the features of the traditional European novel: “No matter how great the number of accessories and the multitude of images, the modern novelist should, like Walter Scott, Homer of this genre, group them according to their meaning, subject them to his sun systems - intrigue or hero - and lead them like a sparkling constellation, in a certain order. "

And Tolstoy's romance continued after Levin's marriage and even after Anna's death. The sun of Tolstoy's romantic system is not a hero or intrigue, but "family thought" and "popular thought", which leads many of his images, "like a sparkling constellation, in a certain order."

Tolstoy's work amazed critics and readers with its uniqueness. He was seen as an artist who can change the prevailing literary norms. Melchior de Vogue in his book "Russian Novel" wrote: "Here comes the Scythian, a real Scythian, which will remake all our intellectual habits."

Tolstoy's innovation was seen as a deviation from the norm. In essence, it was so, but it did not testify to the destruction of the genre, but to the expansion of its laws. Tolstoy called his favorite epic form "the novel of wide breathing." In 1862, Tolstoy wrote: "And now he is drawn to free work de longue haleine - a novel or the like." (60, 451). And in 1891 he wrote in his diary: "I began to think how good it would be to write a novel de longue haleine, illuminating it with the present view of things" (52, 5).

The novel "Anna Karenina" is a novel in eight parts, far exceeding in volume all the classic Russian novels of the previous era, except perhaps only "War and Peace". The fruitful source of Tolstoy's poetics was the Pushkin form of the "free novel".

In a free romance there is not only freedom, but also necessity, not only breadth, but also unity. The poetics of this genre is very peculiar. Pushkin also pointed out the lack of "amusement of incidents" in Eugene Onegin: "Those who would look for amusement of incidents in them," said Pushkin, publishing new chapters of the novel, "can be sure that they have less action than all preceding ".

When Anna Karenina appeared in print, critics immediately noticed the same flaw in the new work. “In the so-called novel“ Konstantin Levin ”, - said A. Stankevich, - there is no developing event, incident”. Tolstoy moved towards a new understanding of the novelistic plot, discarding, following Pushkin's example, the literary convention of fictional incidents and schematically developed intrigue. In the novels of Pushkin and Tolstoy there is a "supreme amusement" of understanding life, comprehending its inner meaning and its historical forms.

In Anna Karenina everything is commonplace, every day, and at the same time everything is significant. Fet said this very well: “Here people serve, curry favor, serve, intrigue, beg, write projects, argue in meetings, swagger, splurge, do good things, preach, in a word, do what people have always done or what they do influenced by the latest fashion. And over all these actions, like a barely noticeable morning fog, there is a slight irony of the author, which is completely invisible for the majority. "

This way of unfolding the plot is characteristic not only of Tolstoy, but also of the Russian novel in general. And even not only for the novel, but also for the drama. “Let everything on stage be as complicated and at the same time as simple as in life,” Chekhov said. “People are having lunch, just having dinner, and at this time their happiness is formed and their lives are broken”.

To be convinced of the validity of these words in relation to Tolstoy's novel, it suffices to recall the scene of the Moscow meal of Oblonsky and Levin. Oblonsky is located in the novel with the lordly latitude. One of his dinners stretched over two chapters. It was at the same time a real "feast", "symposium", where friends remember Plato and talk about two types of love - earthly and heavenly. And behind these conversations Levin's happiness is formed and Oblonsky's life is broken. Although neither one nor the other seems to feel this.

Tolstoy's novel was a pioneering phenomenon in European fiction... In 1877, Tolstoy read an article by F. I. Buslaev "On the Meaning of a Modern Novel" and remarked in one of his letters: "I really like Buslaev's article" (62, 351). In this article he could find the rationale for many of his innovations in the construction of the plot and composition of Anna Karenina.

According to Buslaev, the reader can no longer be content with unrealizable fairy tales, which until recently were passed off as novels, "with a mysterious plot and the adventures of incredible heroes in a fantastic unprecedented setting." Mature realism modern literature requires a critical reflection on modernity. "Now we are interested in the reality around us in the novel," writes Buslaev, "the current life in the family and in society, as it is, in its active fermentation of unsettled elements of the old and new, obsolete and emerging, elements excited by the great upheavals and reforms of our century." ...

The Russian novel, as a new and important phenomenon in world literature, was also noticed by Western critics. The French writer Delpy writes in one of his articles: "While French writers did not leave a purely literary path, in Russia the novel became political and social."

The German critic Tsapel spoke precisely about the originality and identity of the Russian realistic school. Tolstoy's realism "does not have anything imitating other people's models, but arose completely independently from the cultural characteristics of Russian life."

Criticism has long established the opinion that in the novel "Anna Karenina" two independent plot lines develop in parallel, which are not connected with each other. This concept originates from A. Stankevich's article "Karenina and Levin", in which he argued that Tolstoy "promised us one novel in his work, and gave us two."

The idea of \u200b\u200bparallelism of plot lines, if it is sustained to the end, inevitably leads to the conclusion that there is no unity in the novel, that the story of Anna Karenina is in no way connected with the story of Konstantin Levin, although they are the main characters of the same work.

Many contemporary authors also speak about the parallelism of the plot lines of Anna Karenina. With the greatest directness and logical consistency, this idea was expressed by prof. V.V. Rozhdestvensky: “Turning to the plot of Anna Karenina,” writes B.V. Rozhdestvensky, “we must first of all note the principle of decentralization, sharply carried out by the artist in this aspect of the novel ... In Anna Karenina, not one, but two leading hero: Anna and Levin. Accordingly, two main storylines run through the entire novel ... This construction of the novel gave rise to one of the critics - Stankevich - to reproach the author for the fact that Anna Karenina is devoid of internal unity. " “Stankevich's point of view may seem more or less justified,” adds prof. B.V. Rozhdestvensky.

But Tolstoy, as an artist, treasured exactly what constitutes the inner unity of the work. In one of his articles, he said: “People who are not sensitive to art often think that a work of art is one whole, because the same persons act in it, because everything is built on one tie or the life of one person is described. This is unfair ”(30, 18).

It was on this "injustice" that A. Stankevich's article was built, which gave a number of modifications in his criticism of Tolstoy. The result of the injustice towards Anna Karenina was, in essence, a disregard not only for the form of this novel, but also for its content.

And the whole is comprehended as a system of organically connected with each other characters, positions, circumstances, forming a natural chain of causes and effects. "The cement, which binds any work of art into one whole and therefore produces the illusion of a reflection of life, is not a unity of persons and positions, but a unity of the author's original moral attitude to an object" (30, 19).

The fallacy of A. Stankevich's concept is easy to see if we pay attention to the generality of collisions in which the action of the novel unfolds. For all the isolation of the content, these plots represent peculiar circles with a common center. Tolstoy's novel is a pivotal work with a vital and artistic unity.

“There is a center in the field of knowledge,” Tolstoy said, “and there are countless radii from it. The whole task is to determine the length of these radii and their distance from each other. " This statement, if applied to the plot of Anna Karenina, to the concept of “law” underlying it, explains the principle of concentric arrangement of large and small circles in the novel.

It should be noted here that the very concept of "one-centeredness" was for Tolstoy an important definition of the most essential ideas of his philosophy. “There are different degrees of knowledge,” Tolstoy reasoned. - Complete knowledge is that which illuminates the whole subject from all sides. Clarification of consciousness is accomplished in concentric circles ”(53, 45).

The composition of "Anna Karenina" can serve as an ideal model of this formula of Tolstoy, which assumes the presence in the novel of a certain homogeneous structure of characters. This homogeneity of characters also reflects the author's original, in this case, moral outlook on life.

Anna's story unfolds primarily in the field of family relations. Her drive for freedom was unsuccessful. It seems to her that her whole life is subject to those cruel laws that the player Yashvin once explained to her, a person not only without rules, but also with immoral rules. “Yashvin says: he wants to leave me shirtless, and I him! This is true! " - thinks Anna.

Yashvin's words express the law that governs a life based on separation and enmity. This is the “power of evil” with which Levin fought and from which Anna suffered. "Aren't we all thrown into the world only to hate each other and therefore torment ourselves and others?" was her question, in which her despair was the strongest.

Anna Karenina appears in the novel almost as a symbol or personification of love. And she leaves life with terrible melancholy and confidence that all people were thrown into the world only to hate each other. What an amazing transformation of feelings, a whole phenomenology of passions turning into their opposite!

Anna dreamed of getting rid of what was painfully troubling her. She chose the path of voluntary sacrifice. And Levin dreamed of ending his "dependence on evil." But what seemed to Anna "true" was for him "a painful lie." He could not stop at the fact that the power of evil owns everyone. He needed "an undeniable sense of good", which can change life, give it a moral justification.

This was one of the most important ideas of the novel, constituting its "center". And in order to give her more strength, Tolstoy made Levin's circle wider than Anna's. Levin's story begins earlier than Anna's and ends after her death. The novel ends not with the death of Anna (VII part), but with Levin's moral quest and his attempts to create a "positive program" of private and public life (VIII part).

The concentricity of circles is generally characteristic of Tolstoy's novel. Through the circle of relations between Anna and Vronsky, the novel of Baroness Shilton and Petritsky shines through. The story of Ivan Parmenov and his wife becomes for Levin the ideal embodiment of peace and happiness. Both of these stories are as concentric, or, as Tolstoy liked to say, one-centered, like the big circles of Anna and Levin.

“Law” in the historical, social and moral sense was for Tolstoy not some abstract concept that he applies to the novel, but his own, original view of life. Therefore, studying the novel, we in one way or another delve into the way of thinking of Tolstoy himself.

He also had his own original idea of \u200b\u200bthe artistic nature of romantic thinking. "The integrity of a work of art," insisted and repeated Tolstoy, "does not lie in the unity of design, not in the treatment of the characters, etc., but in the clarity and definiteness of the attitude of the author himself to life, which permeates all of his work." This recognition of him also applies to the artistic nature of Anna Karenina.

The peculiarity of a broad and free novel lies in the fact that the plot loses here its organizing influence on the material. The scene at the railway station ends the tragic story of Anna Karenina. Refusing to publish the eighth part of Anna Karenina, Katkov informed the readers that "with the death of the heroine, in fact, the novel ended." But the romance continued.

The death of the hero is the end of the novel. The fabulous completeness of the work was a common feature of the genre. This is how, for example, the works of Turgenev are constructed. But Tolstoy sought to remove the limitations of the closed development of the plot within the framework of the conventionally completed plot.

Critics were wrong several times in predicting how Anna Karenina would end. It was believed, for example, that the last scene would be the reconciliation of Karenin and Vronsky at the bedside of the dying Anna. Such an assumption indicated that Anna Karenina was being judged on the basis of familiar patterns of a family romance. Such an ending would have been quite in the spirit of "Polinka Sachs" by A. V. Druzhinin, who, by the way, once made a strong impression on Tolstoy.

In full, Tolstoy's book became available to readers only three years after the publication began. During this time, many assumptions were made about the possibility of the development of the plot. The well-known critic AM Skabichevsky in one of his feuilletons said that he had come up with "a brilliant idea: to suggest to Tolstoy never to end the novel."

They looked for a plot in the novel and did not find it. In Anna Karenina, the plot and the plot do not coincide, "that is, after the completion of the plot points, the novel continued."

Tolstoy with "Anna Karenina" found himself in exactly the same position as Pushkin, who published "Eugene Onegin" in separate issues, and most importantly, dared to offer readers something completely new. In an outline for 1835, Pushkin wrote:

In my autumn leisure,

In those days, as I like to write,

You advise me, friends,

Forgotten story to continue.

You speak rightly

Which is strange, even impolite

The novel does not end to interrupt,

Having already sent it to print,

What should your hero

Whatever it is to marry,

By at least kill,

And other faces are attached,

Giving them a friendly bow,

Get out of the labyrinth ...

And Tolstoy could now repeat these old verses of the poet.

Only at the beginning of the VII part did he introduce the main characters of the novel - Anna and Levin. But this meeting, which is important in terms of plot, did not change the plot course of events. He generally tried to discard the concept of a plot: “The connection between the building was made not on the basis of the plot, and not on the relationship (acquaintance) of persons, but on the internal connection” (62, 377).

The principle of out-of-story plotting is very characteristic of Russian literature. Chekhov, by the way, spoke of contemporary drama: "The plot must be new, but the plot may be absent."

The concentricity, the one-centeredness of the circles of events in the novel testifies to the artistic unity of Tolstoy's epic plan, to the unity of his romantic thought. What was important in his novel was not that Anna and Levin met, but that they could not help but meet. Without Levin, there would have been no novel as a whole.

The construction of Tolstoy's novel was highly original. It seemed to some critics that there was no definite "plan" in Anna Karenina.

In 1878 Professor SA Rachinsky wrote to Tolstoy about Anna Karenina: “The last part made a chilling impression, not because it was weaker than the others (on the contrary, it was full of depth and subtlety), but because of a fundamental flaw in the construction of the entire novel ... There is no architecture in it. "

No architecture! One could hardly say anything more hopeless to the master who adopted the Cyclopean work. Meanwhile, Rachinsky insisted on his assessment and developed his thought as a kind of proof: “In him (ie, in the novel) two themes develop side by side and are developing magnificently, which are not connected with each other. How glad I was to meet Levin and Anna Karenina. Agree that this is one of the best episodes of the novel. Here an opportunity presented itself to tie all the threads of the story and provide a holistic ending behind them. You did not want - God be with you. Anna Karenina is still the best modern novel, and you are the first modern writer. "

Tolstoy's response to Rachinsky's letter was a very important document in the controversy about the artistic nature of Tolstoy's novel.

“On the contrary, I am proud of the architecture,” Tolstoy said, “the vaults are brought together in such a way that one cannot even notice where the castle is. And about this I tried most of all ”(62, 377). “There is no architecture,” said the critic. “I am proud of architecture,” Tolstoy replied.

If in the novel "two themes are developed side by side," which are not related to each other, it means that there is no unity in the novel. This is the essence of Rachinsky's criticism. And this was, in Tolstoy's opinion, tantamount to denying the artistic value of the novel. "I am afraid that after running through the novel," he writes to Rachinsky, "you did not notice its inner content ..."

Thus, for Tolstoy, everything boiled down to the inner content, which also determines the originality of the novel's form itself. “If you really want to talk about the lack of communication, then I cannot but say - it’s true, you’re looking for it in the wrong place, or we understand the connection differently; but what I mean by connection is the very thing that made this matter significant - this connection is there - look - you will find ”(62, 377).

There is one in Tolstoy's letter special term - "vault lock". In architecture, a "vault lock" is a special structural detail - an acute-angled element on which the semicircles of the arch rest. Usually it is either decoratively highlighted, or carefully hidden so that the very height and slenderness of the vault remains mysterious to the viewer.

Such a "vault lock" can, of course, be a plot twist of a theme, for example, a "meeting" and "acquaintance" of heroes or an eventual outcome of a conflict, as is usually the case in traditional novels. The peculiarity of Tolstoy's novel is that it is not the meeting of Anna and Levin and not any other event that is a "connection", but the author's thought itself, which shines through from the depths of his creation and brings the vaults together as if by a template.

But that’s not the point. Tolstoy did not develop a rectilinear structure, but a closed system, where each point, in fact, is the "center", "beginning", and "end" of the artistic fabric. That is how he himself understood his creative task. Not only in art, but also in science, for example, in philosophy.

And since Anna Karenina is a philosophical novel, here his general idea of \u200b\u200bthe organic form of thinking found its natural embodiment. “Every (and therefore mine) philosophical view is a circle or a ball,” Tolstoy explained, “which has no end, middle and beginning, the most important and not the most important, but all the beginning, all the middle, everything is equally important or necessary, and ... the truth of this view depends on his inner harmony and harmony ”(62, 225).

But it would be a profound delusion to think that Tolstoy approached plotless or descriptive prose, or even prose of the Chekhovian style. His novel is structured as a panorama of action-packed episodes with unexpected and sharp turns. Tolstoy's paradoxical thinking could not but be plot-based.

In a broad romance sense, it was already plot that Anna, with her charm and beauty, became the personification of "discord", "involuntary evil" and "tragic guilt", and Karenin, with his "mechanicalness", "evil will" and "callousness "Suddenly appeared to be accessible to the highest impulses of kindness and forgiveness.

Tolstoy chose such plot positions where a person is left alone with a person and, above all differences, class, historical and social, the real word and real feeling breaks through, before which everyone is equal. For example, in War and Peace, a serf man who arrived shouted at the master for “missing” the wolf. Thus, in Anna Karenina, Levin listens to the peasant Fyodor's story about Platon Fokanych, forgetting himself and the whole abyss that separates him from the life of these people, realizing that they are the same people as he is.

The source of the plot structure and movement in the novel was not in the invention of any special positions and situations, but in the very thinking of Tolstoy, who everywhere saw a paradoxical discrepancy between goals and efforts, ideal and reality, discovering in this discrepancy the reasons for dramatic clashes of characters.

The poetics of Tolstoy's novel is based on the fact that "the sheer significance of situations" prevails here. In the strict sense of the word, there is no exposition in Anna Karenina. The aphorism “all happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way” is a philosophical introduction to the novel. The second (event-driven) introduction is concluded in a single phrase: "Everything is confused in the Oblonskys' house." Finally, the next phrase contains a tie and defines the conflict. The accident that revealed Oblonsky's infidelity entails a chain of necessary consequences that make up the plot line of the family drama.

In the first part, conflicts arise in the lives of the Oblonskys (chapters I – V), Levin (chapters VI – IX), Shtcherbatskys (chapters XII – XVI). The development of the action is determined by Anna Karenina's arrival in Moscow (chapters XVII – XXIII), Levin’s decision to go to the village (chapters XXIV – XXVIII) and Anna’s return to St. Petersburg, where Vronsky followed her.

These cycles, following one after another, gradually expand the sphere of action and form a complex interweaving of accidents, from which a logical and necessary picture as a whole is formed. In Tolstoy, each part of the novel is metaphorically deepened and has a strict internal system of correspondences and conventional signs. So the action is concentrated and does not go beyond the general idea underlying the narrative.

In the first part of the novel, all the fates of the heroes are shaped under the sign of "confusion". If before Anna's arrival in Moscow Dolly was unhappy, and Anna herself was calm and Kitty was happy, then after her arrival everything was confused. The reconciliation of the Oblonskys became possible, but Kitty broke with Vronsky, and Anna lost her calm ...

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b) discrete composition Not all diaries sought to subordinate the composition of records to the natural course of events. Comprehension of the facts, as well as the problems of the spiritual world, played an equally important role in understanding them in relation to the diary. Such authors have experienced double

Tolsky's narrative style in Anna Karenina is different from that in War and Peace. There he did not hide his views; on the contrary, he boldly rushed into battle, for example, with those judgments of historians that he considered false.

In the new novel, the writer's style is more restrained, his assessments of the events depicted, of certain characters are not expressed as directly and clearly as in the previous work. Even the behavior of the characters in Anna Karenina has become, as it were, more “independent”. One day a writer heard this opinion:

“They say you did a very cruel thing to Anna Karenina, forcing her to die under the carriage.

Tolstoy smiled and replied:

- This opinion reminds me of the incident with Pushkin. Once he said to one of his friends: "Imagine what kind of thing my Tatyana ran away with me! She got married! I did not expect this from her." I can say the same about Anna Karenina. In general, my heroes and heroines sometimes do things that I would not want; they do what they should do in real life and as happens in real life, and not what I want. "

This is a very deep and important thought. In realism literature, the character of the character has the ability to self-development. Of course, everything is created by the author, but he must strive to ensure that the internal logic of the character created by him is not violated. Thus, Tolstoy admitted that after an explanation with Karenin, Vronsky, quite unexpectedly for him, the author, began to shoot himself: "for what was to come, it was organically necessary."

From this, however, it does not at all follow that the writer "loses control" of his text. On the contrary, all the diverse episodes, motives, images of the novel are combined by Tolstoy into a single whole based on the development of the author's idea. This is directly reflected, for example, in the carefully thought-out composition of Anna Karenina.

Tolstoy's acquaintance, S. A. Rachinsky, noted that, in his opinion, the two plot lines of the novel (associated with the names of Anna and Levin) are not organically connected, therefore, the novel allegedly lacks architecture. Tolstoy replied: "On the contrary, I am proud of architecture ... I am afraid that after running through the novel, you did not notice its inner content."

The complexity of the structure of the work also required special means of artistic depiction, in particular, the use of poetic symbols. So, the motive has a symbolic meaning railroad (this is the place of birth of Anna Karenina's love and the place of her death. The image of the railway also appears in the epilogue). For Tolstoy, who was on the eve of the final transition to the position of the peasantry, the railway embodies something anti-humanistic, namely iron, some kind of evil hostile to man. (Remember Anna's dreams.) It is indicative in this respect that the impoverished aristocrat Steve Oblonsky is forced to seek "a place as a member of the commission of the joint agency of credit and mutual balance of the south railways and banking institutions." (The name is clearly meaningless. The author's sarcasm is expressed here quite clearly.)

Elements of the so-called "subtext", which are usually mentioned in connection with Chekhov, also appear in the novel. However, even before Chekhov, Tolstoy was able to tell not only what his characters say, but also what they think at the same time, in other words, what is not on the surface, but in the depths of their consciousness.

As an example, we recall the episode when Levin's brother, Sergei Ivanovich, did not manage to propose to Varenka, who, in fact, he really liked. Together they pick mushrooms, no one bothers them. Sergei Ivanovich already had the words “with which he wanted to express his proposal; but instead of these words, for some reason that suddenly came to him, he suddenly asked: Material from the site

- What is the difference between white and birch?

Varenka's lips trembled with excitement when she answered:

"There is no difference in the hat, but at the root."

They were not thinking about mushrooms, but about something completely different, about what could become the most important thing in their life - but it never happened.

A wide statement of problems of a universal human scale, artistic innovation, perfection of composition, bold destruction of the narrow genre framework of a family and everyday novel - all this conditioned the worldwide recognition that Anna Karenina received after War and Peace.

Dostoevsky wrote: "" Anna Karenina "is perfection as a work of art ... with which nothing similar from European literature in the present era can be compared ..."

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31. "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy. Genre and composition of the novel. Socio-psychological essence of Anna's tragedy.

Anna Karenina (1873-1877; journal publication 1875-1877; first book edition1878) - a novel by Leo Tolstoy about the tragic love of a married ladyAnna Karenina and the brilliant officer Vronsky against the backdrop of the happy family life of the nobles Konstantin Levin and Kitty Shtcherbatskaya. A large-scale picture of the customs and life of the noble environmentPetersburg and Moscow in the second half of the 19th century, combining the philosophical reflections of the author'salter ego Levin with advanced psychological sketches in Russian literature, as well as scenes from the life of peasants.

On February 24, 1870, T. conceived a novel about the private life and relations of his contemporaries, but he began to implement his plan only in February 1873. The novel was published in parts, the first of which was published in 1875 in RV. Gradually, the novel turned into a social fundamental work, which received enormous success. The continuation of the novel was eagerly awaited. The editor of the magazine refused to publish the epilogue because of the critical thought expressed in it, and finally the novel was completed on April 5, 1877. The entire novel was published in 1878.

If "VM" Tolstoy called "a book about the past", in which he described the beautiful and sublime "integral world", thenHe called Anna Karenina "a novel from modern life". But LN Tolstoy represented in Anna Karenina a “fragmented world” devoid of moral unity, in which chaos of good and evil reigns. F.M.Dostoevsky found in Tolstoy's new novel"A huge psychological development of the human soul".

The novel begins with two phrases that have long become textbooks: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Everything was confused in the Oblonskys' house.

Tolstoy called Anna Karenina “a wide and free novel,” using Pushkin's term “free novel”. This is a clear indication of the genre origins of the work.

Tolstoy's "Wide and Free Novel" is different from Pushkin's "Free Novel". In Anna Karenina, for example, there are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic digressions by the author. But between Pushkin's novel and Tolstoy's novel there is an undoubted successive connection, which manifests itself in the genre, and in the plot, and in the composition.

In Tolstoy's novel, just as in Pushkin's novel, the paramount importance belongs not to the plot completeness of the provisions, but to the “creative concept”, which determines the selection of material and in the spacious frame of the modern novel presents freedom for the development of plot lines.
"A wide and free novel" obeys the logic of life; one of his inner artistic goals is to overcome literary conventions.
Anna's storyline unfolds “within the law” (within the family) and “outside the law” (outside the family). Levin's storyline moves from being “in the law” (in the family) to the consciousness of the illegality of all social development (“we are outside the law”). Anna dreamed of getting rid of what “painfully bothered” her. She chose the path of voluntary sacrifice. And Levin dreamed of “ending his dependence on evil,” and he was tormented by the thought of suicide. But what Anna thought was "truth" was for Levin a "painful lie." He could not stop at the fact that evil owns society. He needed to find a "higher truth", that "undoubted meaning of good", which should change life and give it new moral laws: "instead of poverty, common wealth, contentment, instead of enmity - consent and connection of interests." The circles of events in both cases have a common center.
For all the isolation of the content, these plots represent concentric circles with a common center. Tolstoy's novel is a pivotal work with artistic unity. "In the field of knowledge there is a center, and from it there are countless radii, - said Tolstoy. - The whole task is to determine the length of these radii and their distance from each other." This statement, if applied to the plot of Anna Karenina, explains the principle of concentric arrangement of large and small circles of events in the novel.

The peculiarity of the "wide and free novel" lies in the fact that the plot loses here its organizing influence on the material. The scene at the railway station ends the tragic story of Anna's life (Chapter XXXI, part seven).
Tolstoy wrote not just a novel, but a "novel of life." The genre of the "wide and free novel" removes the limitations of the closed development of the plot within the framework of the finished plot. Life does not fit into the scheme. Plot circles in the novel are arranged in such a way that attention is focused on the moral and social core of the work.
The plot of “Anna Karenina” is “the history of the human soul”, which enters into a fatal duel with the prejudices and laws of its era; some do not withstand this struggle and perish (Anna), others “under the threat of despair” come to the consciousness of “people's truth” and ways to renew society (Levin).
The chapters of the novel are arranged in cycles, between which there is a close connection both in thematic and in plot relations. Each part of the novel has its own "idea node". The main points of the composition are the thematic centers, which successively replace each other.
In the first part of the novel, the cycles are formed in connection with the conflicts in the lives of the Oblonskys, Levin, Shtcherbatskys. The development of the action was determined "by the events caused by Anna Karenina's arrival in Moscow, Levin's decision to leave for the village and Anna's return to Petersburg, where Vronsky followed her.

These cycles, following one after another, gradually expand the scope of the novel, revealing patterns of development of conflicts. Tolstoy maintains the proportionality of the volume cycles. In the first part, each cycle takes five to six chapters with their own "content boundaries". This creates the rhythm of the sequence of episodes and scenes.

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The history of the creation of "Anna Karenina" testifies to the fact that not only during the years of his literary youth, but also during the period of his highest creative prosperity, Tolstoy fruitfully drew from the source of national literary traditions, developed and enriched these traditions. We tried to show how in the 70s, at a turning point in Tolstoy's work, Pushkin's experience contributed to the evolution of the writer's artistic method. Tolstoy relied on the traditions of Push-kin the prose writer, following the path of creating his new style, which is characterized, in particular, by a combination of deep psychologism with dramatic, purposeful development of action.

It is significant that in 1897, speaking about the folk literature of the future, Tolstoy asserted “all the same three Pushkin principles:“ clarity, simplicity and brevity ”, as the most important principles on which this literature should be based.

2.3. The originality of the genre

The peculiarity of the Anna Karenina genre lies in the fact that this novel combines features characteristic of several types of novelistic creativity. It contains primarily the features that characterize a family romance. The history of several families, family relationships and conflicts are highlighted here. It is no accident that Tolstoy emphasized that when creating Anna Karenina, he was dominated by family thought, while, while working on War and Peace, he wanted to embody popular thought. But at the same time, Anna Karenina is not only a family novel, but also a social, psycho-logical novel, a work in which the history of family relations is closely connected with the depiction of complex social processes, and the depiction of the fate of the heroes is inseparable from deep disclosure of their inner world. Showing the movement of time, characterizing the formation of a new social order, the way of life and the psychology of various strata of society, Tolstoy gave his novel features of an epic.

Tolstoy's brilliant skill in Anna Karenina evoked an enthusiastic appraisal of the writer's outstanding contemporaries. “Count Leo Tolstoy,” wrote V. Stasov, “has risen to such a high note that Russian literature has never taken. Even among Pushkin and Gogol themselves, love and passion were not expressed with such a depth and striking truth, as Tolstoy now does. V. Stasov noted that the writer knows how "with a wonderful sculptor's hand to sculpt such types and scenes that no one before him knew in our entire literature ..." Anna Karenina "will remain a bright, huge star forever and ever!" Dostoevsky, who viewed the novel from his ideological and creative positions, also highly appreciated Karenina. He wrote: "Anna Karenina" is perfection as a work of art ... and such, with which nothing similar from European literature in the present era can be compared. "

The novel was created as if at the turn of two eras in the life and work of Tolstoy. Even before the completion of Anna Karenina, the writer was carried away by new social and religious quests. They received a certain reflection in the moral philosophy of Konstantin Levin. However, all the complexity of the problems that occupied the writer in the new era, all the complexity of his ideological and life path are widely reflected in the journalistic and artistic works of the writer of the eighties - nineties.

Conclusion

Tolstoy called Anna Karenina “a broad, free novel.” This definition is based on Pushkin’s term “free novel”. There are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic digressions in Anna Karenina. But there is an undeniable connection between Pushkin's novel and Tolstoy's novel, which manifests itself in the genre, in the plot and in the composition. It is not the plot completion of the provisions, but the “creative concept” that determines the choice of material in Anna Karenina and opens up room for the development of plot lines.

The free novel genre arose and developed on the basis of overcoming literary schemes and conventions. The plot in a traditional family novel, for example, in Dickens's, was based on the plot completion of the provisions. It was this tradition that Tolstoy abandoned, although he was very fond of Dickens as a writer. “I could not help imagining,” writes Tolstoy, “that the death of one person only aroused interest in other persons, and marriage seemed mostly an outset, not a denouement of interest.”

Tolstoy's innovation was perceived as a deviation from the norm. It was essentially that way, but it served not to destroy the genre, but to expand its laws. Balzac in "Letters on Literature" very accurately defined characteristics traditional novel: “No matter how great the number of accessories and many images, the modern novelist should, like Walter Scott, Homer of this genre, group them according to their meaning, subject them to the sun of his system - intrigue or hero - and lead them, like a sparkling constellation, in a certain order ”27. But in Anna Karenina, as well as in War and Peace, Tolstoy could not set "certain boundaries" for his heroes. And his romance continued after Levin's marriage and even after Anna's death. Thus, the sun of Tolstoy's romantic system is not a hero or an intrigue, but a "popular thought" or "family thought", which leads many of his images, "like a sparkling constellation, in a certain order."

In 1878, the article "Karenina and Levin" was published in MM Stasyulevich's journal Vestnik Evropy. The author of this article was A. V. Stankevich, brother of the famous philosopher and poet N. V. Stankevich. He argued that Tolstoy wrote two novels instead of one. As a “man of the forties”, Stankevich openly adhered to the old Testament notions of the “correct” genre. He ironically called Anna Karenina a novel “a novel of wide breath”, comparing it with medieval multivolume narratives, which once found “numerous and grateful readers”. Since then, the philosophical and literary taste has been "purified" so much that "indisputable norms" have been created, the violation of which is not in vain for the writer.

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