N. Eskova, Candidate of Philology

I think many do not even suspect that there is such a "problem": they believe in the simplicity of their soul that Tolstoy's novel is about war and the absence of war. Some even dare to admit that they read "the world" more willingly.

Recently, however, a version has emerged that such an understanding simplifies the meaning of the great epic, that everything is much deeper, that the author by the word "world" meant the people, society and even the universe. This version did not arise entirely from scratch (one of its "sources" will be discussed further).

In our time, with his desire to revise everything and all this version has even become "fashionable". No, no, yes, and you will come across in the periodicals a statement in favor of a "deeper" understanding of Tolstoy's novel. Let me give you two examples.

In an article dedicated to the new production of Prokofiev's opera "War and Peace" at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, the author notes among other things: "... remember that peace in the title of the novel is not at all the antonym of war, but society and wider, the Universe" ( "Literary Gazette"). So it is said: "remember"!

And here's an interesting confession. "When I learned (probably by a student) about the meaning that Tolstoy put into the title" War and Peace "and was lost due to the new spelling, I was kind of wounded, it was so customary to perceive it as an alternation of war and not war." (S. Borovikov. In the Russian genre. Over the pages of "War and Peace" // "New World", 1999, No. 9.) The author of this statement would get rid of the feeling of woundedness if at least once in his life he "held in his hands" a pre-revolutionary edition of the novel!

We have come to what will be discussed further. It is well known that two homonymous words, now spelled the same, differed in pre-revolutionary spelling: spelling mir - from and (the so-called "octal") conveyed a word meaning "absence of quarrel, enmity, disagreement, war; harmony, harmony, unanimity, affection, friendship, goodwill; silence, peace, tranquility" (see Explanatory Dictionary of V. I. Dal ). Writing mir - from i ("decimal") corresponded to the meanings "the universe, the globe, the human race."

It would seem that the question of what "world" appears in the title of Tolstoy's novel should not even arise: it is enough to find out how this title was printed in the pre-revolutionary editions of the novel!

But an incident happened, which I want to talk about, not skimping on details, in order to end the "problem" forever.

Back in 1982 (when the TV show "What? Where? When?" Was not yet an "intellectual casino" with millions of stakes), the "connoisseurs" were asked a question related to the great novel. The first page of the first volume appeared on the screen, at the top of which was the title: "WAR and MIR". It was proposed to answer how the meaning of the second word in the title of the novel should be understood. The answer was that, judging by the spelling mirTolstoy did not mean "the absence of war," as naive readers believe. The stern voice-over of the presenter V. Ya. Voroshilov summed up that until now many did not deeply understand the philosophical meaning of the great work.

In a word, everything was explained "exactly the opposite." The title of the novel, according to the old spelling, was written with and (mir). A well-known "incident" with the title of Mayakovsky's poem "War and Peace", which he had the opportunity to oppose orthographically the title of Tolstoy's novel. After the spelling reform of 1917-1918, this has to be reported in a note.

Let's return, however, to what was said above: on the TV screen, millions of viewers saw the spelling "WAR and MIR". What kind of edition of the novel was shown? There was no answer to this question of mine from television, but the commentary to the novel in the 90-volume complete collected works contains an indication of this edition of 1913 edited by P.I.Biryukov - the only one in which the title was printed with i (see vol. . 16, 1955, pp. 101-102).

Turning to this edition, I found that writing mir is presented in it only once, despite the fact that in four volumes the title is reproduced eight times: on the title page and on the first page of each volume. The mir was printed seven times and only once - on the first page of the first volume - mir (see illustration). It was this page shown on the television screen that was called upon to revolutionize the understanding of the meaning of the great novel!

My attempt at that time to expose the error of the "experts" on the pages of Literaturnaya Gazeta failed. And on December 23, 2000, in the program dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the "intellectual club" "What? Where? When?", There was a question designated as "retro". The same page appeared on the screen with the words "WAR and MIR", the same question was repeated and the same answer was given.

The TV viewer who sent this page to the "experts" might not know that the title of the same volume contains the world! But experts did not bother to check the question. And with an interval of twenty years the same mistake was repeated.

In conclusion, I will make one suggestion. In the popular book by S. G. Bocharov, "The novel by L. Tolstoy," War and Peace "(Moscow, 1987), there is a saying:" The title of Tolstoy's future book was as if predicted in the words of the Pushkin chronicler:

Describe, without further ado,
Everything that you will witness in life:
War and peace, rule of sovereigns,
Holy miracles of pleasures ... "
(P. 146, footnote.)

Perhaps these words of the great poet suggested to Tolstoy the name of his great epic?

Lev Nikolaevich's novel was called "War and Peace". When the commies arrived, they simplified the language by removing the "superfluous" letter from the alphabet in their proletarian view - here the "mirror of the Russian revolution" turned around, because the meaning of the name changed. But still - what was he like in Tolstoy?
Somehow long ago I heard the version that the word "peace" meant "society" as opposed to "peace" - the absence of war. This means that Leo Tolstoy's novel describes the behavior of Russian society during the war with Napoleon, and not the difference in life during war and in peace. The emphasis has shifted, although there is a large coverage of the time - before, during the war and after, so the "new" name seems appropriate.
But today in M. Zadornov's blog () I read: "... When Tolstoy wrote "War and Peace", then in the word "peace" (this is not enough, who now knows), instead of our "and" there was the letter "i", which is still in Belarusian and Ukrainian. "Mir" meant roughly what the word "Cosmos" means today. What has always existed. Universe. ... When the Bolsheviks carried out the reform and replaced the "i" with our "and", the title of the novel "War and Peace" became simpler. Because the word "peace" in contrast to "peace" meant a signed treaty of friendship between peoples after the war. And the greatest literary work, which meant war and the Universe, (if translated into today's flatter language), turned into just a war and a truce.“He does not explain at the same time what secret meaning is hidden in the novel with such an interpretation.
I went online. I find on the website of the Leo Tolstoy School () confirmation of the words of Mikhail Zadorny:
World
Universe; our Earth, the globe; the whole world, all people, the whole human race; community - a society of peasants, their gathering,
Examples: Mir is a golden mountain, Death is red to the world. Live in the world (in light, in vanity). In the world that is in the sea. Peace, God help!
World
Lack of quarrels, enmity, disagreement, war; harmony, harmony, unanimity, affection, friendship, silence, peace, tranquility.
Examples: Peace to your house. Accept in peace. Peace of mind. Peaceful conversation. Conclude a peace treaty, etc.
Still, the word "world" has the meaning of "community". And what the secular (secular), in contrast to the religious, means for us what is happening in society. I look further and find a sample of a school essay on this particular topic (), where it is written: " The fact is that, unlike the modern Russian language, in which the word "mir" is a homonymous pair and means, firstly, the state of society opposite to war, and, secondly, human society in general, in the Russian language of the 19th century there were two spellings of the word "peace": "peace" - a state of absence of war and "peace" - human society, community. The title of the novel in the old spelling included precisely the form “world”. From this one could conclude that the novel is devoted primarily to the problem, which is formulated as follows: “War and Russian society”.
And then what I did not know about: "However, as it was established by the researchers of Tolstoy's work, the title of the novel did not get into the press from the text written by Tolstoy himself. However, the fact that Tolstoy did not correct the spelling that was inconsistent with him suggests that both versions of the name of the writer were fine."
The final part kind of reconciles the two points of view:
"And finally," world "for Tolstoy is a synonym for the word" universe ", and it is no coincidence that the novel contains a large amount of reasoning of a general philosophical plan. Thus, the concepts of" world "and" world "in the novel merge together. That is why the word" world " in the novel takes on an almost symbolic meaning. "
This is the kind of riddle the classic put to us in a three-letter word ...

P.S. religious people exclude a compromise in the interpretation of these words (): "... It is also no coincidence that the words" peace "and" peace "were written differently before the post-revolutionary reform. Now this spelling has survived only in Church Slavonic. radically opposite: “The world” is the very sea of \u200b\u200blife on which the ship of salvation - the Church - sails. And "peace" is the peace of Christ, the Kingdom of God ... "

During his last visit to China in September this year, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev puzzled a student at the Dalian Institute of Foreign Languages, immersed in Leo Tolstoy's epic novel War and Peace. “It's very interesting, but voluminous. There are four volumes, ”the Russian leader warned her.

Without a doubt, the nearly 1900 pages of War and Peace are somewhat straining in their volume, like a guard at the entrance to a disco.

If in Russia this work is compulsory for studying in secondary school, then in Spain it is read at best until the middle. Perhaps this is one of the best novels of all time. "When you read Tolstoy, you read because you cannot leave the book," said Vladimir Nabokov, convinced that the volume of the work should not at all conflict with its attractiveness

In connection with the centenary of the death of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, celebrated this year in Spain, his immortal novel (publishing house "El Aleph", translation by Lydia Cooper), which many rightly consider the Bible of literature, has been republished. It is a veritable encyclopedia of nineteenth-century Russian life, exploring the innermost depths of the human soul.

“War and Peace” captures us because it explores the age-old philosophical problems that worry people: what love means and what evil is. These questions arise before Bezukhov when he thinks about why evil people unite so quickly, but good people do not, ”said in an interview with the newspaper El Mundo a specialist in the art of Tolstoy, professor of literature at Moscow State University. Lomonosova Irina Petrovitskaya.

Ten years ago, Petrovitskaya was in Barcelona, \u200b\u200bwhere she suffered an allergy attack, as a result of which she experienced a state of clinical death and ended up in one of the hospitals in Tarragona. “When I was there, I was struck by the Spanish doctors. When they learned that I was a teacher at Moscow University, they, fighting for my life, said: “Tolstoy, War and Peace, Dostoevsky… It was very touching,” she recalls.

While in a hospital bed, she experienced the same experience that Prince Andrei Bolkonsky experienced when he lay wounded on the battlefield after the battle of Austerlitz, gaze at the sky and Napoleon approaching him. Then he suddenly realized the secret of the height, the infinite height of the firmament and the short stature of the French emperor ("Bonaparte seemed to him a small and insignificant creature compared to what was happening in his soul and the high and endless sky through which the clouds floated").

"War and Peace" is an electroshock for the soul. The pages of this novel are replete with hundreds of advices (“Rejoice in these moments of happiness, try to be loved, love others! There is no greater truth in the world than this”), reflections, reflections (“I know only two real evils in life: torment and illness ”, Says Andrey), as well as live dialogues about death.

War and Peace is not only an excellent textbook on the history of the Napoleonic wars (in 1867, Tolstoy personally visited the Borodino field to get acquainted with the place where the battle took place), but perhaps the most useful advice ever written, which always ready to come to your aid.

"Who am I? Why do I live? Why was he born? These questions about the meaning of life were asked by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, explains Irina Petrovitskaya, returning to Tolstoy's thought (reflected in War and Peace) about a person's sense of responsibility for the fate of the world. This is one of the characteristic features of the Russian soul, to which many classical works are dedicated, in particular Anna Karenina, another of Tolstoy's masterpieces.

“They do not strive only for personal well-being in this world, but want to understand what they can do for all mankind, for the world,” Petrovitskaya stresses.

His characters

Endowing his heroes with eternal life, Tolstoy completes his miracle like the creator, the “Creator God” of literature. Because the heroes of his works leave the pages and merge into our lives with each new reading of the novel. Life energy gushes out of them when they love, think, fight in duels, hunt hares or dance at secular balls; they radiate life when they fight to death with the French on the Borodino field, when they gaze in amazement at the vision of Tsar Alexander I (“My God! How happy I would be if he ordered me to throw myself into the fire right now,” thinks Nikolai Rostov), \u200b\u200bor when they think about love or glory (“I will never confess this to anyone, but, my God, what can I do if I do not want anything but the glory and love of people?”, Prince Andrey asks himself).

“In War and Peace, Tolstoy tells us that there are two levels of existence, two levels of understanding life: war and peace, understood not only as the absence of war, but also as mutual understanding between people. Either we are opposed to ourselves, people and the world, or we are in reconciliation with it. And in this case, the person feels happy. It seems to me that this should attract any reader of any country, ”says Irina Petrovitskaya, adding that she envies those who have not yet enjoyed this work of such Russian spirit.

The heroes of War and Peace, who are constantly in search of themselves, always see life in their eyes (Tolstoy's favorite trick). Even when their eyelids are closed, as, for example, with Field Marshal Kutuzov, who appears before us as an ordinary person, falling asleep during the presentation of the plans for the battle of Austerlitz. However, in Tolstoy's epic novel, not everything boils down to questions of being and tragedy.

Humor

Humor hovers over the pages of War and Peace, like smoke over a battlefield. It is impossible to refrain from smiling when we see the father of Prince Andrei, who has fallen into senile dementia and every evening changes the position of his bed, or when we read the following paragraph: “They said that [the French] took all state institutions with them from Moscow, and [.. .] if only for this, Moscow should be grateful to Napoleon. "

“In the 21st century, this book should be regarded as a cult book, as a touching bestseller, because first of all it is a book about love, about love between such a memorable heroine as Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky, and then Pierre Bezukhov. This woman who loves her husband, her family. These are concepts that no one can live without. The novel is filled with tenderness, love, everything earthly, love for people, for each of us, "the writer Nina Nikitina, head of the Yasnaya Polyana House-Museum, where Leo Tolstoy was born, lived, worked and was buried, with enthusiasm, explains. year in the house of the head of the Astapovo railway station.

According to Nikitina, all four volumes of War and Peace radiate optimism, because “this novel was written in the happy years of Tolstoy's life, when he felt like a writer with all the forces of his soul, as he himself argued, thanks to the help of his family, above all his wife Sophia, who constantly rewrote the drafts of his works ”.

World work

Why is War and Peace considered such a worldwide work? How did it become possible for a handful of Russian counts, princes and princesses of the 19th century to still dominate the souls and hearts of the 21st century readership? “My 22-23 year old students are most interested in the issues of love and family. Yes, in our time it is possible to create a family, and this is one of the thoughts inherent in the work of Tolstoy, ”sums up Petrovitskaya.

“Never marry, never, my friend; I advise you. Do not marry until you can tell yourself that you have done everything to stop loving the woman you have chosen [...] ”, says Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, the prototype of the Russian hero, Pierre Bezukhov, a diametrically opposite character, awkward and melancholy ( his glasses all the time move out, on the battlefield he constantly stumbles upon the dead). He was played by Henry Fonda in the cinematic adaptation of the 1956 novel. The conversation between them takes place in one of the Moscow secular salons shortly before the Napoleonic invasion of Russia in 1812, but if you strain your ears, you can still hear it today on the bus on the way to work.

War, peace ... and some details. On the eve of the start of online readings of the great novel by Leo Tolstoy, we decided to recall some details

Text: Mikhail Vizel / GodLiterature.RF
Collage: watercolor by N. N. Karazin; portrait of L. N. Tolstoy. 1873, I. N. Kramskoy (State Tretyakov Gallery)

1. The volume of the novel "War and Peace" is 1300 pages of the usual book format. It is not the largest novel in world literature, but one of the largest in the canon of 19th century European literature. Initially, in the first two publications, it was not divided into four parts, as we are used to, but into six. It was only in 1873, when the novel was being prepared for publication for the third time as part of The Works of Leo Tolstoy, that the author changed the distribution of the text into volumes and assigned him exactly half of the 8-volume collection.

2. We confidently call "War and Peace" a "novel", but the author himself categorically objected to such a genre definition. In an article timed to coincide with the first separate edition, he wrote: “ This is not a novel, even less poem, even less historical chronicle. “War and Peace” is what the author wanted and could express in the form in which it was expressed. ... History since time not only provides many examples of such a deviation from the European form, but does not even give a single example of the opposite. Starting from "Dead Souls" by Gogol and up to "The Dead House" by Dostoevsky, in the new period of Russian literature there is not a single fictional work of prose, slightly emerging from mediocrity, which would fit into the form of a novel, poem or story.". Nevertheless, now "War and Peace" is undoubtedly considered one of the pinnacles of world novelism.

3.
Initially, in 1856, Tolstoy was going to write a novel not about the Napoleonic wars, but about the old one, which finally, thirty years later, was allowed to return from Siberia. But he quickly realized that he would not be able to reveal the motives of the hero's participation in the December uprising, if he did not describe his youthful participation in the Napoleonic wars. In addition, he could not help but take into account that when describing the events of December 14, 1825, he would have problems with the censorship. In the 1890s, Tolstoy would not have paid any attention to this, but in the 1860s, for the author, who had not yet reached his fortieth birthday, it mattered. This is how the idea of \u200b\u200bthe "tale of the Decembrist" was transformed into "an epic novel about the Napoleonic wars in Russia."

4.
For censorship reasons, as well as at the insistent request of his wife, Tolstoy cut out rather frank descriptions of Pierre and Helene's wedding night. Sofya Andreevna managed to convince her husband that the church censorship department would not let them through. The most scandalous plot twist is connected with Helen Bezukhova, who obviously acted for Tolstoy as the bearer of the "dark sexual principle". Helene, a blooming young woman, dies suddenly in 1812, unleashing Pierre's hands to marry Natasha Rostova. Russian schoolchildren, studying the novel at the age of 15, perceive this unexpected death as a convention necessary for the development of the plot. And only those of them who re-read the novel as adults understand, to their embarrassment, at the dull hints of Tolstoy, that Helen is dying ... from the consequences of an unsuccessful pharmacological abortion, which she went for, entangled between two alleged husbands, a Russian nobleman and a foreign prince - for one of them, she intended to marry, having received a divorce from Pierre.

5. The Russian word "mir" means "absence of war" and "society". Until the reform of the Russian spelling in 1918, this difference was also fixed graphically: "the absence of war" was written "mir", and "society" - "mir". Tolstoy, of course, had this ambiguity in mind when he gave the title to the novel, but, contrary to the common misconception, he named the novel “War and Peace” - which is clearly visible on the covers of all lifetime editions. But Mayakovsky called his 1916 poem just "War and Peace", in opposition to Lev Nikolaevich, and this difference has now become invisible.

6. The novel was written in 1863–69. Tolstoy himself admitted that this

« an essay on which I have been entrusted with five years of incessant and exceptional labor, under the best living conditions».

A year before the start of this work, 34-year-old Tolstoy got married, and his wife, 18-year-old Sonia Bers, took over, in particular, the duties of a secretary. In the course of work on the novel, Sofya Andreevna rewrote the text completely from beginning to end at least eight times. Some episodes were rewritten up to 26 times. During this time, she gave birth to the first four children (out of thirteen).

7. In the same article, Tolstoy assured that the names of the characters - Drubetskoy, Kuragin - resemble real Russian aristocratic surnames - Volkonsky, Trubetskoy, Kurakin - only because it was more convenient for him to fit his characters into the historical context and "allow" them to talk with real Rostopchin and Kutuzov. In reality, this is not entirely true: when describing the Rostov and Bolkonsky families, Tolstoy described his own ancestors rather closely. In particular, Nikolai Rostov is to a large extent his own father, Nikolai Tolstoy (1794-1837), the hero of the war of 1812 and lieutenant colonel of the Pavlograd (!) Regiment, and Marya Bolkonskaya is his mother, Marya Nikolaevna, nee Princess Volkonskaya (1790– 1830). The circumstances of their wedding are also described quite closely, and Bald Mountains are similar to Yasnaya Polyana. Immediately after the release of the novel, in the absence of the Internet and "gossip" in the modern sense, only people close to Tolstoy could guess about this. But everyone recognized the three characters at once: Vaska Denisova, Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova and Ivan Dolokhov. Under these transparent pseudonyms famous then people are designated: the poet and hussar Denis Vasilyevich Davydov, the eccentric Moscow lady Nastasya Dmitrievna Ofrosimova. As for Dolokhov, it turned out more difficult with him: it seems that General Ivan Dorokhov (1762-1815), the hero of the Napoleonic wars, is meant, but in fact Tolstoy quite accurately described his son with the strange name Rufin (1801-1852), hussar and breeder, repeatedly demoted into soldiers for his riot and again with the courage of seeking the officer's epaulettes. Tolstoy will meet Rufin Dorokhov in his youth in the Caucasus.

8.
The protagonist of War and Peace has no exact prototype. At the same time, it is easy to point to the prototype of his father, Catherine's grandee, who recognized the illegitimate son only before his death - this is one of the richest and most influential people in Russia in the 18th century, Chancellor Alexander Bezborodko. But Pierre's character combines the youthful features of Tolstoy himself and the collective "thinking youth" from the nobility of the early 19th century - in particular, Prince Peter Vyazemsky, the future poet and close friend

9.
The largest modern French Slavist Georges Nivat, fluent in Russian, confirms that the French language of War and Peace is not a conventional “international French” like modern “international English”, but a real aristocratic French language of the 19th century. True, it is still closer to the middle of the century, when the novel was written, and not the beginning, when the action takes place. Tolstoy himself compares the French blotches with "shadows in the picture", giving sharpness and bulge to faces. It's easier to put it this way: refined French allows you to convey the flavor of an era when all of Europe spoke French. It is better to read these phrases out loud, even if you do not quite understand their meaning, and not read the translation. The narrative is structured in such a way that at its key moments all the heroes, even the French, switch to Russian.

10. To date, "War and Peace" has served as the basis for ten cinematic and television, including the grandiose four-part epic by Sergei Bondarchuk (1965), for which a special cavalry regiment was created in the Soviet army. However, by the end of the year, the 11th project will be added to this list - the 8-episode TV series BBC one. And, probably, it will not spoil the reputation of the "historical British series", which has now become a global brand.

War and Peace

War and Peace
War and Peace
Literary album. "War and Peace", novel by gr. L. N. Tolstoy. Painting by P.O.Kovalsky, engraving. Schuebler.
Genre:	epic novel
Original language:
Year of writing:
Publication:
Wikisource has the full text of this work.

"War and Peace" - an epic novel by Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, describing the events of the wars against Napoleon: 1805 and the Russian one in 1812.

The history of the development of the novel

The novel War and Peace was a great success. An excerpt from the novel entitled “Year 1805” appeared in the “Russian Bulletin”; three parts of it were published in the city, followed by the other two (four volumes in total).

Recognized by the critics of the whole world as the greatest epic work of new European literature, "War and Peace" amazes from a purely technical point of view by the size of its fictional canvas. Only in painting can one find some parallel in the huge paintings of Paolo Veronese in the Venetian Palace of the Doges, where hundreds of faces are also painted with surprising clarity and individual expression. All classes of society are represented in Tolstoy's novel, from emperors and kings to the last soldier, all ages, all temperaments and in the space of the whole reign of Alexander I. What further elevates his dignity as an epic is the psychology of the Russian people given to him. With striking penetration, Tolstoy portrayed the mood of the crowd, both high and the most base and brutal (for example, in the famous scene of the murder of Vereshchagin).

Everywhere Tolstoy tries to grasp the spontaneous, unconscious beginning of human life. The whole philosophy of the novel boils down to the fact that success and failure in historical life does not depend on the will and talents of individuals, but on how they reflect in their activities the spontaneous background of historical events. Hence his loving attitude towards Kutuzov, who was strong not by strategic knowledge and not by heroism, but by the fact that he understood that purely Russian, not spectacular and not bright, but the only true way by which it was possible to cope with Napoleon. Hence Tolstoy's dislike for Napoleon, who so highly valued his personal talents; hence, finally, the elevation to the rank of the greatest sage of the humblest soldier Platon Karataev for the fact that he recognizes himself exclusively as a part of the whole, without the slightest claim to individual significance. Tolstoy's philosophical or, rather, historiosophical thought for the most part penetrates his great novel - and that is why it is great - not in the form of reasoning, but in brilliantly captured details and integral pictures, the true meaning of which is easy to understand for any thoughtful reader.

The first edition of War and Peace contained a long series of purely theoretical pages that interfered with the integrity of the artistic impression; in later editions these arguments were highlighted and made up a special part. Nevertheless, in War and Peace, Tolstoy the thinker reflected by no means all and not his most characteristic aspects. There is nothing here that runs like a red thread through all of Tolstoy's works, both those written before War and Peace, and those later — there is no deeply pessimistic mood. And in "War and Peace" there are horrors and death, but here they are kind of, so to speak, normal. The death of Prince Bolkonsky, for example, belongs to the most amazing pages of world literature, but there is nothing disappointing and belittling in it; this is not like the death of the hussar in Kholstomer or the death of Ivan Ilyich. After War and Peace, the reader wants to live, because even an ordinary, average, dull existence is illuminated by that bright, joyful light that illuminated the author's personal existence in the era of the creation of the great novel.

In the later works of Tolstoy, the transformation of the graceful, gracefully flirtatious, charming Natasha into a blurry, slovenly dressed landowner who was completely absorbed in caring for her home and children would make a sad impression; but in the era of his enjoyment of family happiness, Tolstoy elevated all this into a pearl of creation.

Later, Tolstoy was skeptical of his novels. In January 1871, Tolstoy sent a letter to Fet: "How happy I am ... that I will never write verbose nonsense like War."

December 6, 1908, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: "People love me for those trifles -" War and Peace ", etc., which they think are very important"

In the summer of 1909, one of the visitors to Yasnaya Polyana expressed his delight and gratitude for the creation of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". Tolstoy replied: "It's like someone came to Edison and said: 'I really respect you for dancing the mazurka well." I attribute meaning to my very different books. "

Central characters of the book and their prototypes

Rostov

• Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov.
• Countess Natalya Rostova (nee Shinshina) is the wife of Ilya Rostov.
• Count Nikolai Ilyich Rostov is the eldest son of Ilya and Natalia Rostov.
• Vera Ilinichna Rostova is the eldest daughter of Ilya and Natalia Rostov.
• Count Pyotr Ilyich Rostov is the youngest son of Ilya and Natalia Rostov.
• Natasha Rostova (Natalie) - the youngest daughter of Ilya and Natalya Rostov, married Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's second wife.
• Sonya is the niece of Count Rostov.
• Andryusha Rostov is the son of Nikolai Rostov.

Bolkonsky

• Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky is an old prince, according to the plot - a prominent figure of the Catherine's era. The prototype is Leo Tolstoy's maternal grandfather, a representative of the ancient Volkonsky family
• Prince Andrei Nikolaevich Bolkonsky is the son of the old prince.
• Princess Maria Nikolaevna (Marie) - daughter of the old prince, sister of Prince Andrei, married princess Rostov. The prototype can be called Maria Nikolaevna Volkonskaya (married Tolstaya), the mother of L.N. Tolstoy
• Liza is the wife of Prince Andrei Bolkonsky.
• Young Prince Nikolai Andreevich Bolkonsky is the son of Prince Andrei.

Ryzhova Maria Andreevna

Bezukhov

• Count Kirill Vladimirovich Bezukhov is Pierre's father.
• Count Pierre (Pyotr Kirillovich) Bezukhov is an illegitimate son.

Other characters

• Princess Anna Mikhailovna Drubetskaya and her son Boris Drubetskoy.
• Platon Karataev is a soldier of the Apsheron regiment who met Pierre Bezukhov in captivity.
• Captain Tushin is the captain of the artillery corps who distinguished himself during the Shengraben battle. The artillery staff captain Ya. I. Sudakov served as its prototype.
• Dolokhov - at the beginning of the novel - a hussar - the ringleader, later one of the leaders of the partisan movement. The prototype was Ivan Dorokhov.
• Vasily Dmitrievich Denisov is a friend of Nikolai Rostov. Denisov's prototype was Denis Davydov.
• Maria Dmitrievna Akhrosimova is a friend of the Rostov family. The prototype of Akhrosimova was Nastasya Dmitrievna, the widow of Major General Ofrosimov. A. S. Griboyedov portrayed her almost in portrait in his comedy Woe from Wit.

Name disputes

Cover of the 1873 edition

In modern Russian, the word "peace" has two different meanings, "peace" is the antonym of the word "war" and "peace" - in the sense of a planet, a community, a society, the surrounding world, a place of habitation. (cf. "In peace and death is red"). Before the spelling reform of -1918, these two concepts had different spellings: in the first meaning "mir" was written, in the second - "mir". There is a legend that Tolstoy allegedly used the word "mir" (Universe, society) in the title. However, all the lifetime editions of Tolstoy's novel were published under the title War and Peace, and he himself wrote the title of the novel in French as "La guerre et la paix"... There are various versions of the origin of this legend.

It should be noted that the title of "almost the same name" of Mayakovsky's poem "War and Peace" () deliberately uses a play on words, which was possible before the spelling reform, but is not caught by today's reader. The legend was supported in the city, when in the popular TV program “What? Where? When? "A question was asked on this topic and the" wrong "answer was given. On December 23, 2000, in the 25th anniversary game, the same retro question was repeated again. And again experts gave the wrong answer - none of the organizers bothered to check the question on the merits. See also: , .

Notes

Links

• The text of the novel in the Komarov Library

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy
Novels:	"War and Peace" · "Anna Karenina" · "Family Happiness" · "Resurrection"
Stories:	(Trilogy) "Childhood" · "Adolescence" · "Youth" "Cossacks" · "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" · "Two Hussars" · "Hadji Murat" · "Morning of the Landowner" · "