Bibliographic list

1. Burova E.G., Kasatkin L.L. Chukhloma Akanya // Dialectological studies in the Russian language. - M., 1977.

2. Gerd A.S. On the history of dialectal boundaries around Lake Onega // History of the Russian word: problems of nomination and semantics: Interuniversity collection of scientific papers. - Vologda, 1991.

3. Grekhova L.P. On the history of akanya in the Kostroma dialects // Uch. app. MOPI them. N.K.Krupskaya. T. 148. Russian language, vol. 10. - M., 1964.

4. Demidova K.I. Forms of linguistic manifestation of the Russian mentality in the Ural territory // Lexical atlas of Russian folk dialects (Materials and research) 1999. - SPb., 2002.

5. Materials for geography and statistics of Russia, collected by officers of the General Staff. Kostroma province / Comp. J. Krzhivoblotsky. - SPb., 1861.

6. Melnichenko G.G. Linguistic maps: an appendix to the book “Some lexical groups in modern dialects on the territory of the Vladi-Miro-Suzdal principality XII - early. XIII centuries (territorial distribution, semantics and word formation) ”. - Yaroslavl, 1974.

7. Nerekhotskiy N. Words used by residents of the city of Chukhloma and its district // Tr. Society of lovers of Russian literature at the im-

Operator's Moscow University. Part 20. Chronicles of society. Year 5. - M., 1820.

8. Experience of the dialectological map of the Russian language in Europe with the application of an outline of Russian dialectology // Tr. Moscow Dialectological Commission / Comp .: N.N., Durnovo, N.N. Sokolov, D.N. Ushakov. Issue 5. - M., 1915.

9. Pokrovsky F.I. On the folk dialects of the northwestern part of the Kostroma province // Living antiquity: periodical edition. ethnography of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society / ed. presiding in the Department. ethnography V.I. Lamansky. The seventh year. Issue PYU - SPb., 1897.

10. Pokrovsky F.I. On the folk dialect of the Chukhloma district of the Kostroma region // Living antiquity: a periodical edition. ethnography Imp. Russian Geographical Society / Ed. Chairman of the Department of Ethnography V.I. Lamansky. Year nine. Issue Sh. - SPb., 1899.

11. Tenishev V.N. Russian peasants. A life. Gen. Morals. Materials of the ethnographic bureau. T. 1. Kostroma and Tver provinces. - SPb., 2004.

12. Shaitanova G.V. Expansion of the territory of Akanya in the Kostroma dialects // Materials and research on Russian dialectology. New series. T. 3. - M., 1962.

E.L. Muratkina

THE PROBLEM OF LIFE AND DEATH IN THE WORKS OF L.N. TOLSTOY AND CH. DICKENS

The spiritual image of the little sweeper Joe from Dickens's novel "Cold House", driven out, unwashed, ignorant, lost in huge London, is painted with restraint unusual for a writer - large colors and without any half-tones. "The name is Joe ... No father, no mother, no friends." Joe knows that he is "a real beggar" and that "a broom is a broom"; and he doesn't know anything else and frankly expresses his underdevelopment: "I don't know anything." The limit of his understanding of moral problems is exhausted by the formula "it is not good to lie", and he does not know "not a single short prayer." Even dying, he cannot pray himself - it is not the priest who releases his soul, but one of the cute characters in the novel, who is nearby:

“- Joe, can you repeat what I say?

Whatever you say, sir, I know it's good.

Our Father.

Our Father! .. yes, that's a very good word, sir.

Like you are in heaven ...

Izhg you in heaven ... will it be light soon, sir?

Very soon. Hallowed be thy name ...

Hallowed ... yours ...

Light shone on a dark dark path. Died!

Died, your majesty. Died, my lords and gentlemen. He died, you reverend and unliken servants of all cults. Died, you people; and you were given compassion by heaven. And so they die around us every day. "

The deliberate, melodramatic reading of Our Father on his deathbed produces a strange

Bulletin of KSU named after ON THE. Nekrasov ♦ No. 9, 2006

Original Russian Text © E.L. Muratkina, 2006

sensation - and leads the writer to a strange conclusion: the idea of ​​death for some reason is not combined with Christianity.

Something similar was recorded in his diary by Tolstoy, who was on March 25 / April 6, 1857, a witness to the public death penalty in Paris: "I kissed the Gospel and then death, what nonsense!" (X ^ / n, 121).

"The subject to which Tolstoy's soul was invariably directed was death, not as a metaphysical, albeit inevitable end of life (as in Pushkin), but as its completion and its denial, as a riddle, which is a mystery of life itself" - this is how he defined this the cross-cutting theme of Tolstoy's artistic reflections of P.M. Bitsilli 1. In the early work of the writer, she turned out to be directly related to Dickens.

Soon after reading "Bleak House" by Dickens and traveling abroad, Tolstoy wrote a short story "Three Deaths" (1858) - a kind of triptych about the death of a lady, a coachman and a tree. The problem of death and the problem of the meaning of death did not cease to torment Tolstoy after Sevastopol, after Paris. How, on what basis, can one be reconciled with inevitable death? And what theories of progress can help in this matter? Who are the best and "happiest" in death? A young and rich lady dies hard and painfully, clinging convulsively to life, to Christian consolations, dying in despair, crying, murmuring at fate. A peasant in a cramped hut simply and calmly dies from the same painful illness; both he himself and all those around him simply and calmly look at this death. A tree in the forest dies beautifully and dutifully, falling under the blows of an ax on the dewy grass. The remaining living trees "flaunted more joyfully in the new space"; the rising sun illuminated eternal life in the forest, "and the branches of living trees slowly, majestically stirred over the dead, drooping tree." This is the ideal of death, death devoid of all false consolations, death on the breast of nature and in unity with it. The best and happiest in death is the one who departs from life simply, calmly, humbly, dignified, beautifully. For the living, the eternal pagan wisdom remains for edification: "Sleep in the coffin peacefully sleep, use life who lives!"

But even here, among the living, what is the difference between the “using life” husband of a dying lady, who, sighing hypocritically, after

vomits a sandwich, unconsciously rejoicing that it is not him, but his wife dying! .. What is the difference between this man, who supposedly "uses life", and the eternal trembling of the life of trees over his dead brother! "The best and happiest" both life and death are only on the bosom of nature, in eternal unity with her. This is the deep meaning of this story by Tolstoy, which is also directed with its edge against the spiritual results of "civilization" and progress, against a culture that leads man away from nature.

But there is also another side to this story, which Tolstoy himself speaks of in a letter to A.A. Tolstoy: this is the opposition of the Christian to the pagan. The ethical principle is Christianity, the aesthetic principle is paganism: do we reconcile them? And How? and why? Here is what Tolstoy himself said about this story of his:

“My thought was: three creatures died - a lady, a man and a tree. - The lady is pathetic and disgusting, because she lied all her life and lies before her death. Christianity, as she understands it, does not solve the question of life and death for her. Why die when you want to live? Both believe in the promises of the future of Christianity with imagination and intelligence, and her whole being rears up, and there is no other comfort (except for false Christianity), but the place is taken. “She is nasty and pathetic. The peasant dies peacefully, precisely because he is not a Christian. His religion is different, although he performed Christian rites according to custom; his religion is the nature he lived with. He himself chopped down trees, sowed rye and mowed it, killed rams, and rams were born to him, and children were born, and old people died, and he knows this law firmly, from which he never turned away, like a lady, and straight, just looks into his eyes.<.. .>The tree dies calmly, honestly and beautifully. Beautiful - because he does not lie, does not break, is not afraid, does not regret. Here is my thought, with which you, of course, do not agree, but which cannot be disputed - it is in my soul and in yours.<... >I have, and to a great extent, a Christian feeling; but it is there, and it is very dear to me. This is a feeling of truth and beauty, and that is a personal feeling - of love, tranquility. How it connects - I do not know and cannot explain; but sitting a cat and a dog in the same closet is positive ”(LX, 265-266).

M.M. Bakhtin, in his analysis of this Tolstoyan story, drew attention to the fact that all three "deaths" depicted by him were "internally closed

you ”and are connected with one another only at a purely plot level. Tolstoy considers certain moments of being as moral given; to give them an assessment is an exclusively author's business ... .2 The death of the lady is disfigured by the activity of her mind - just like the death of Ivan Ilyich in the later story. Opposition reason - nature will since then become the most important for Tolstoy's thinking in general.

Three years after the story "Three Deaths", when Tolstoy was finishing and finishing his "Cossacks" sketched back in 1852 for printing, he returned to the same series of thoughts and feelings: in Olenin we see the combination of "Christian feeling" with feeling nature, with the philosophy of the "great pagan" Uncle Eroshka. But in the same place we saw the complete failure of such a combination of "cat and dog in the same closet": civilization and progress lead a person away from nature and put his morality in conflict with his feelings. So it is in the story "Three Deaths": happiness and beauty, harmony with the whole world are all the more inaccessible, the further a person (and a living being in general) moves away from this world of primordial nature.

Once upon a time, Tolstoy passed from faith in a good God to faith in the beneficial progress of mankind. Here he passed on to faith in life itself, to faith in man. This faith Tolstoy lived in the era of the creation of his two greatest works - "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina". Life is God - that is the whole philosophical meaning of the great epic.

But, putting non-resistance and meekness at the forefront, Tolstoy remained a "rebel". Taking up arms against the Church and culture, he did not stop at the most harsh expressions, which sometimes sounded like gross blasphemy. And these are far from all the contradictions that tormented him. The "Confession", completed by him in 1881, is an invaluable human document. In it he, like Blessed Augustine and J.J. Rousseau, shared with the reader his attempt to comprehend his own life path, the path to what he considered to be true. However, everything previously created by the writer was also a kind of confession. The experiences of the hero of Childhood, Adolescence, Youth, Cossacks, the drama revealed in Family Happiness, the spiritual quest of Pierre, Prince Andrei, Levin - what is this if not a refraction of the author's innermost life? Especially Levin looks almost like Tolstoy's double, and his story in the romance already contains an immediate prelude

to "Confession". The initial prerequisites for the creation of the "Confession" refute the popular belief that a person thinks about eternal questions only under the influence of difficulties and adversities. The crisis overtook Leo Tolstoy during the period of a chorus of grateful readers ... And suddenly a cold, deadly question emerges: “Why? Well, then? " The obvious meaninglessness of life in the absence of an inner core in it strikes a fifty-year-old writer like a blow. "My life has stopped." This is not just a numbness in front of the horror of nothingness that Tolstoy experienced in Arzamas, but a constant background of his existence in the seemingly happy 1870s.

Tolstoy began his "Confession" with the assertion that, having lost faith in his youth, since then he has lived without it for many years. Is he fair to himself? Hardly. There was faith. Even if not always conscious, but it was, Young Tolstoy believed in the perfection and beauty of Nature, in the happiness and peace that a person finds in unity with her. There was something of both Rousseau and a spontaneous feeling of kinship with the entire universe. Tolstovsky Olenin from "Cossacks" strove for this dissolution in Being, and his friend Uncle Eroshka was already completely dissolved in it. He lives like an animal or a bird. Death does not bother him "I will die - the grass will grow." Andrei Bolkonsky dreams of the same peace of dissolution when he looks at an old oak ...

But this vague feeling was not enough. The voice of conscience sounded, suggesting that in Nature alone you will not find a source for moral strength. Perhaps science knows what is the meaning of life? But for science, life is just a process, a natural process, and nothing else. And if so, then life is meaningless. After all, death triumphs in the end. This is the last and most reliable truth. Whatever happens on Earth, everything will be engulfed in darkness. And here - the end of the meaning. Tolstoy sought confirmation of his pessimism in both ancient and new wisdom: in the biblical Book of Ecclesiastes, in the sayings of the Buddha, in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. Everything converged either to an escape into thoughtlessness, or to a radical denial of life. If she's just a hoax, she must be dealt with as soon as possible.

“My question,” writes Tolstoy, “the one that led me to commit suicide at the age of fifty, was the simplest question lying in the soul of every person, from a stupid child to the wisest old man.

possible, as I have experienced in practice. The question is: "What will come out of what I do today, what will I do tomorrow - what will come out of my whole life?" Otherwise expressed, the question will be: "Why should I live, why desire something, why do something?" Another way to express the question is: "Is there a meaning in my life that would not be destroyed by the inevitable death that awaits me?" "(XXIII, 16).

The problem of death faced Tolstoy from early youth: he witnessed many deaths of people close to him and loved by him. On September 20, 1860, his elder brother Nikolai died of tuberculosis in Gier. A man who was "adored" by all those around him3 died in his arms. The death of his brother shocked him primarily in a metaphysical sense.

“Why bother, try,” he wrote to A.A. Fet, - if from what was N.N. Tolstoy, there is nothing left for him. He did not say that he felt the approach of death, but I know that he followed her every step and knew exactly what was left. How many minutes before his death he dozed off and suddenly woke up and said with horror: "But what is this?" This he saw her, this absorption of himself into nothing. And if he didn’t find anything to grab hold of, what would I find? Even less "(LX, 223)

If, however, death were only the “absorption” of the personality “into nothingness,” if nothing was truly nothing, then death would only be disgusting, but far from so mysterious. Why is death at the same time also some kind of enlightenment? The soldier, wounded in a clash with the highlanders, “seemed to have grown thin and aged for several years, and there was something new, special in the expression of his eyes and the fold of his lips. The thought of the nearness of death has already succeeded in laying on this simple face its beautiful, calmly majestic features "(" How Russian soldiers die ", 1858; V, 234).

At the end of his life, arguing with the official religion, Tolstoy solved the problem of death and immortality of a person in a special way: “The life I see, my earthly life, is only a small part of my whole life from both ends of it - before birth and after death - undoubtedly existing, but hiding from my present knowledge ”(XLV, 118). Tolstoy considers fear of death to be the voice of the animal I of man, an indication that he is living a false life. For people who have found the joy of life in spiritual love for the world, there is no fear of death. Spiritual being

a person is immortal and eternal, it does not die after the cessation of bodily existence. Everything that I live with has developed from the life of my ancestors. The spiritual self of a person is rooted in the age-old past, collects in itself and transfers to others the spiritual essence of those people who lived before him. And the more a person gives himself to others, the more fully his spiritual self enters the common life of people and remains in it forever.

Man's paths to true life are concretized in the doctrine of moral self-improvement of man, which includes the five commandments of Jesus Christ from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew. The cornerstone of the self-help program is the commandment not to resist evil by violence. Evil cannot destroy evil, the only means of combating violence is abstinence from violence: only good, meeting with evil, but not becoming infected with it, is capable of defeating it in an active spiritual opposition to evil. Tolstoy admits that the egregious fact of violence or murder can force a person to respond with violence. But this situation is a special case. Violence should not be proclaimed as a principle of life, as its law.

Tolstoy sees the evil of modern public morality in the fact that the government party, on the one hand, and the revolutionary party, on the other, want to justify violence on reasonable grounds. On deviations from moral norms one cannot assert the rules of life, one cannot formulate its laws. From the standpoint of these eternal moral truths, Tolstoy deployed a merciless criticism of contemporary social institutions: church, state, property and family.

Most often, Tolstoy perceived death not as a metaphysically accidental, albeit inevitable, end of life, but as its completion and its denial, as a riddle, which is a mystery of life itself. Dickens also considered the phenomenon of death in the same plan - primarily in his historical novel A Tale of Two Cities (1859) - a novel that appeared in the circle of Tolstoy's reading also on the eve of work on War and Peace.

Both in "War and Peace" and in "Tale." before the reader, a bygone era was restored in living "domestic" images. For Dickens, this is the era of the Great French Revolution and the years immediately preceding it.

“It was the most beautiful time, it was the most terrible time - an age of wisdom, an age of madness, days of faith, days of unbelief, a time of light, a time of darkness, a spring of hope, a chill of despair<.>- in a word, this time was very similar to the present one, and even then its most vociferous representatives demanded that they - whether in a good or in a bad sense - speak of it only in an excellent degree. "

Already from the first pages, as soon as the plot knot begins to be tied, the theme of life and death that interests us comes to light in "A Tale of Two Cities". One of the passengers of the stagecoach, a certain Mr. Jarvis Lorrie, receives a dispatch on the way and, having familiarized himself with it, utters the enigmatic phrase: "Brought back to life." We are talking about a prisoner of the Bastille with the number "105. North Tower ". Once his name was Dr. Manette, he was a famous young doctor, and in the fortress for eighteen years he turned into a miserable creature with no memory. And here he is - a ghost "brought back to life":

“- Have you been buried long ago?

Almost eighteen years ago.

I think you want to live?

I don’t know, I can’t say. ”

The question asked to a man “buried” in a fortress for eighteen years is whether he wants to live? - only at first glance seems to be an "idle" question. Life, in the minds of most people, is an absolute value. But Death is also a kind of value: in any case, it is it that is compared with Life.

The value of Death is enshrined in the slogan chanted near the Paris guillotine:

“Every day, carts full of condemned to death rumbled on the pavement. Pretty girls, beautiful women, black-haired, blond, gray-haired; young men, men of prime age, old people; nobles and commoners - all this was a spicy drink for the guillotine, red wine, which from day to day was pulled out of the darkness of the terrible prison cellars and carried through the streets in order to quench her insatiable thirst. Freedom, Equality, Brotherhood or Death! You, without stint, spare the last one, O Guillotine! "

To the well-known slogan of the Great French Revolution, Dickens simply adds a necessary, but directly arising from the essence of the revolutionary events he depicted, an alternative that puts everything in its place.

For the layman, Death generally adds some kind of "interestingness" in a person. Here in the same novel in "peaceful" London, a crowd of people rushes to the court, which should sentence the defendant to quartering:

“The interest with which the excited spectators gasped at this man was by no means sublime. If the defendant was threatened by a not such a terrible sentence, if at least one of the brutal tortures had disappeared from the upcoming execution, he would have lost his attractiveness to some extent. Everyone reveled in the sight of this body, doomed to be torn apart in public, this creature with an immortal soul, which is about to be hacked and torn to pieces in front of everyone's eyes. " The antinomy of a torn body and an immortal soul receives a philosophical fullness, again leading to the problem of the relationship between Life and Death.

Finally, in the final chapters of the novel, this problem is solved from a strictly Christian point of view. Before them, the formal protagonist was Charles Darney (aka Charles Evremond), the husband of Lucy Manette. As a French aristocrat (although he formally renounced his property in favor of the people), he is imprisoned and sentenced to death by guillotine. But here the real hero comes into play - the drunkard and lazy lawyer Sydney Carton. Taking advantage of the external resemblance to Darnay, he replaces him in a prison cell - and dies on the guillotine in his place. He considered himself still a lost person, mired in drunkenness and debauchery, and he considers his generous death for the sake of his beloved Lucy and her husband (his rival!) As redemption, as a rebirth to a true spiritual life on the edge of a bodily grave.

“The world of Dickens's last novels with his self-denial, redemption, resurrection,” writes E. Wilson, “is similar to the world of Tolstoy's later works, to Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, to the world of Dmitry and Ivan Karamazov. Before us is the world of the Christian New Testament - true, with breakthroughs into the transcendental. Sydney Carton, who truly sacrifices his life, should be preaching the very Christian idea. To a certain extent, he preaches it. When the condemned are being taken to execution, the little seamstress tells him: "If it were not for you, dear stranger, would I have been so calm ... could I have ascended with my heart to the One who laid down His life?

for us, so that we believe and hope? "- and when the girl's head flies off her shoulders under the knife of the guillotine, and the knitters count" Twenty-two ", someone's voice (either Sydney Cardboard, or the author's one) comments:" I am the resurrection and life - said the Lord - if anyone who believes in Me dies, he will come to life, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will not die forever! "And this Christian note is woven into the main idea of ​​the book, showing how both social regimes in France are the old system of the Marquis of Evremond and the new Jacobin system of De-Fargei - they base the personal ethics of Christianity, placing their class interests and abstract principles over it ”4.

Meanwhile, other English researchers (for example, John Gross) believe that Dickens, who spoke in this novel with openly "Christian" positions and repeatedly quoted the Gospel texts, is hardly a Christian. After all, the self-sacrifice of Sydney Carton was dictated not by his sudden "Christian" enlightenment, but by a simple human love for Lucy. And the feat of self-sacrifice in the name of love is a pagan feat that has been sung many times since antiquity. “In this context, Christ has absolutely nothing to do with the matter, and references to him may seem blasphemy to the believing reader. On the same page, which is dedicated to the death of Cardboard, Cardboard and the little seamstress suddenly find themselves "children of the Great Mother." But another thing is important - that the novel unambiguously suggests looking for protection from world evil in personal relationships ”5.

As noted above, Dickens was very "not direct" about the Christian religion and the Church of England. “He nourished,” writes G.K. Chesterton, - aversion to accepted dogmas, that is, in other words, preferred dogmas taken on faith. In his soul lived a vague conviction that the entire past of mankind is full of angry conservatives. In short, he was endowed with that radical ignorance,

which goes hand in hand with sharpness of mind and civic courage. But almost all radicals, obeying this spirit, did not like the Church of England ... "Dickens was repulsed primarily by" religious excessiveness, whether in Protestantism or Catholicism ": he, like Leo Tolstoy," loved a simple and artless faith. "

It was guided by this “artless” faith far from the dogma of the official church that both Dickens and Tolstoy posed in their works the problems of personality transformation, spiritual rebirth, redemption, and self-denial. Already the characters of "Little Dorrit" have to actively intervene in life (like Arthur Clennham or even Little Dorrit herself, who is the living embodiment of the gospel principle "blessed are the meek"). Pip from Great Expectations can only redeem snobbery by giving up worldly goods. Bella Wilfer from "Our Mutual Friend" will have to go through the crucible of temptations and trials, and Eugene Rayburn from the same novel - will look into the eyes of death, purify his soul, and only after that will deserve marriage with Lizzie.

All Tolstoy's heroes follow this path of moral revival - undoubtedly under the influence of Dickens's latest novels. Both writers did not think of the very possibility of posing these problems otherwise than on the broadest humanistic platform, which included many very different components.

Notes (edit)

1 Bitsilli P.M. The problem of life and death in the work of Tolstoy // Leo Tolstoy: pro et contra. -FROM. 473.

2 Bakhtin M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics. - M., 1972 .-- S. 118-124.

3 See, for example: Fet A. My memoirs. - M., 1890.Vol. 1. - S. 217, 331-333.

4 Wilson E. The World of Charles Dickens. - S. 270-271.

5 Ibid. - S. 271.

6 Chesterton G.K. Charles Dickens. - p. 139, 141.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is an outstanding writer in Russian literature, as well as a teacher, public figure and publicist. It is impossible to describe in two lines what his work is, because each work is strikingly large-scale and reflects the personality of the writer. Lev Nikolaevich's worldview is very contradictory, and throughout his life it undergoes serious changes, which, naturally, will be reflected in all works.

The thought that all people are spiritually connected with the surrounding world will not leave him until the end of his life.

Tolstoy's works carry a moral problematics, where the objects of cognition are the inner worlds and spiritual components of people. Undoubtedly, everyone will be amazed at how realistic the events, actions, behavior of people, as well as how detailed and accurate the analysis of everything described is. The special emphasis of the writer in his work is the disclosure of the inner formation of different personalities, and one of the cardinal ideas is, of course, moral improvement. An important component of the works of the great writer is also the "dialectic of the soul", that is, a literary description of the inner world of the heroes with a detailed description of development and movement. This principle accurately reflects Tolstoy's realism in many works: "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth", as well as in more voluminous ones, such as "Anna Karenina", "War and Peace", "Sunday". Those heroes who are loved by the writer will be depicted in constant spiritual development, which cannot be said about the unloved.

It is worth noting Leo Tolstoy's particular sensitivity to the movement of history. In "Sevastopol Stories" and "War and Peace" it should be noted that the writer manifests a patriotic consciousness. "War and Peace" is not only a novel, it is a historical chronicle, a reflection of the reality of that era in all colors. "Historical epic" is the closest genre that researchers have identified. This epic contains a description of not only the entire people, but also its movement in time, in history. It is here that one more side of Tolstoy's work is revealed to us: "people's thought" Many people understand that people are something ordinary, but for a writer these are people as bearers of moral and socially significant qualities. These are peasants, peasants, nobles, and officers. Specifically in the novel "War and Peace" "people's thought" is directly related to the writer's ideas about the meaning of existence.

Leo Tolstoy's imprint in Russian literature is very significant. Such works as "War and Peace", "Anna Karenina", "Resurrection" were well received by the public and many critics of the 19th-20th centuries. To this day, they remain our most valuable treasures and heritage of literature.

Nevertheless, there were those who could not understand the content of the outstanding writer. Probably because the questions and problems touched upon in the works are too serious and large-scale for each of us, and therefore in order to realize the significance of each line of Tolstoy it takes time, a lot of time.

Ministry of Education and Science of Russia

Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Professional Education

Tula State University

Internet Institute

Test

in philosophy

on the topic: “The problem of the meaning of life in the work of L.N. Tolstoy "

Student Zhukov M.V.

Head Sokolova S.N.

Introduction

A sense of freedom and necessity

What is hidden behind the question of the meaning of life

Five commandments of Christianity

Non-resistance as a manifestation of the law of love. Non-resistance is the law

L.N. Tolstoy and his non-ecclesiastical Christianity

Conclusion

Bibliographic list

Introduction

The study of the problematics of the meaning of life in the work of L.N. Tolstoy has a special role to play. This problem runs as a central line throughout the multifaceted work of the writer. L.N. Tolstoy did not just reflect on the meaning of life, he created a holistic and detailed teaching about the meaning of life. In this test, the task is to show that the problem of the meaning of life was a cross-cutting theme of L.N. Tolstoy.

It is to Tolstoy that we owe a deep penetration into the spiritual world of a person, showing that a person experiences great difficulties in the social and personal sphere, that he is often helpless in front of the issues of human existence, the problem of good and evil, despite any successes of scientific knowledge and technical mastery of the world ...

All his work is permeated primarily with moral problems. The concept of "progress" - in the technical sense - has no meaning for him, he saw the future differently - as the progress of morality and goodness.

The question of the meaning of life is not only vital for each person individually, but also an eternal question for philosophy.

1. The meaning of freedom and necessity

In Tolstoy's reflections, they found one or another, predominantly idealistic, solution to philosophical (both anthological and epistemological) problems, his sympathies and antipathies, his attitude to various currents of social political, philosophical sociological thought, aesthetic and ethical teachings were revealed. In his worldview there are rational judgments that have not lost their significance in our days. At the same time, the views of the genius writer and famous thinker, the spokesman for the moods and aspirations of the multimillion-dollar patriarchal peasantry are permeated with screaming contradictions, a deep analysis of which was given by V.I. Lenin in his articles about Tolstoy.

On the one hand, L.N. Tolstoy dealt a heavy blow to the dogmas of the Orthodox Church. On the other hand, he is looking for ways to renew religion, expressing explicit idealistic statements. At the same time, for L.N. Tolstoy is characterized by a realistic perception of nature and social life; he has materialistic judgments.

Proceeding from the position of metaphysics in solving a number of issues, admitting, for example, the existence of eternal and unchanging truths, L.N. At the same time, Tolstoy reflects in his artistic creations the dialectic of the material and the spiritual. Masterful depiction of Tolstoy dialectics of the soul , the mobility and dynamics of the views of numerous heroes of his novels, novellas, short stories is in clear contradiction with his metaphysical prejudices, statements, with his inherent vagueness in the question of the relationship between the material and the ideal.

In the field of sociology, especially in the interpretation of the laws of social and historical development, Lev Nikolaevich asserts a number of very important and scientifically valuable truths. Using the materials of Russian and world history, the writer in an artistically visual form shows the driving forces and determining factors of the socio-historical objective development of human society. In his work Philosophy of history L.N. Tolstoy considered the movement of humanity. He believed that this movement is continuous, and therefore the comprehension of the laws of this movement is the goal of history. But, in order to comprehend the laws of continuous movement - the sum of all the arbitrariness of people, the human mind allows arbitrary, continuous units. This is accomplished in two ways. The first method consists in taking an arbitrary series of continuous events, to consider it separately from others, while it cannot be the beginning of any event, since it continuously follows from another. The second is to consider the actions of one person (the king) as the sum of the arbitrariness of people, while the sum of the arbitrariness of people is never expressed in the activities of one person.

But to study the laws of history, it is necessary to completely change the observation of the subject, leave the kings and commanders alone, and study the homogeneous, infinitely small elements that lead the masses. The subject of history has always been the life of peoples and mankind. But historians were divided into old (ancient) and new. Questions about the will of people and how it was governed were resolved. For the ancients, these questions were resolved by faith in the direct participation of the deity in the affairs of mankind. New history rejected this. She rejected theory, but followed it in practice. Instead of the previous goals of the peoples pleasing to the deity: the Greek, the Roman, which seemed to be the goals of the movement of mankind, the new history set as its goal the good of the French, German, English and, in the highest abstraction, the goal of the benefit of civilization of all mankind, by which is meant ordinary the western corner of the large mainland. New history rejected the beliefs of the ancients, but came to them in a different way:

) That nations are led by single people;

) That there is a certain goal towards which peoples and humanity are moving.

But Tolstoy believes that it is impossible to connect these two stories. But if you combine both stories together, as modern historians do, then it will be the history of monarchs and writers, and not the history of the life of nations.

According to Tolstoy, freedom and necessity play the most important role in history. These are philosophical categories that express the relationship between human activities and the objective laws of nature and society. Freedom is the ability of a person to act in accordance with his interests and goals, based on the recognition of an objective necessity. Necessity is something that cannot but happen under these conditions, which must happen. It is also the development of phenomena, which inevitably follows from the internal essential interconnections, relationships and interactions of these phenomena. The relationship between freedom and necessity is always changing, that is, religion, common sense, humanity, the science of law and history itself equally understand this relationship between necessity and freedom. Without exception, all cases in which our idea of ​​freedom and necessity increases or decreases have only 3 grounds:

) The attitude of the person who committed the act to the outside world. If we consider one person, and some objects act on him, then freedom decreases, and the need increases.

) In time. This is the reason for which the life and activities of people who lived centuries ago, associated with me in time, cannot seem to me as free as modern life, the consequences of which are not yet known to me. Reasoning about freedom of action becomes doubtful, the further memory is carried over and forward judgments. The freedom of people becomes doubtful, and the law of necessity is obvious.

) To the reasons for the act. The ideas of freedom and necessity increase or decrease depending on the reasons, but no matter how they lengthen and shorten the period of time, no matter how understandable or incomprehensible the reasons would be for us, we can never imagine incomplete freedom, incomplete necessity.

) It is impossible to imagine a person free, outside of space;

) In order to represent its movement as free, it is necessary to present it on the verge of the present, past and future, i.e. out of time, and this is impossible;

) You cannot commit an act without a reason, since the fact that I want to commit an act without a reason is the reason for my act.

In the same way, we cannot imagine a person, his actions without the participation of freedom and subject only to the law of necessity, since there is still a share of freedom.

All this leads to two foundations of the world outlook of man - to reason and consciousness. Reason expresses the laws of necessity, and consciousness expresses the essence of freedom. Freedom, unlimited by nothing, is the essence of life in the consciousness of man. Only when freedom and necessity are combined is there a clear idea of ​​human life. Tolstoy believes that in finding the causes, history should set itself the task of finding laws, since despite certain elements of fatalism, Tolstoy correctly decides the question of the role of the masses in history, in the creation of material wealth and spiritual values ​​by them, rightly criticizes the point of view of those historians and sociologists , which portray the individual with power as something defining in historical action.

In general, Tolstoy tried to comprehend man and nature in its unity with man. Tolstoy unscrews new culture secular style of thinking, but calls not to traditional, but to his churches. Tolstoy is a theorist of unity. He revolts against the disintegration into components, to which modern science, society, and culture are subject. He calls people to the only natural unity. The significance of Tolstoy's work for the development of Russian thought is very great and ambiguous. He overcame the secularism of Russian thought. Secularization is the liberation of the public and the individual from the influence of religion. He showed the intelligentsia a different path, but he himself did not take them. He was not understood by either followers or contemporaries.

2. What is hidden behind the question of the meaning of life

According to Tolstoy, a person is at odds, at odds with himself. It is as if two people live in it - internal and external, of whom the first is dissatisfied with what the second does, and the second does not do what the first wants. This inconsistency, self-destruction is found in different people with varying degrees of acuteness, but it is inherent in all of them. Contradictory in himself, torn apart by mutually denying aspirations, a person is doomed to suffer, to be dissatisfied with himself. A person constantly strives to overcome himself, to become different.

However, it is not enough to say that it is human nature to suffer and be dissatisfied. Moreover, a person knows that he is suffering, and is dissatisfied with himself, he does not accept his suffering situation. His discontent and suffering are doubled: to the very suffering and discontent is added the consciousness that it is bad. A person does not just strive to become different, to eliminate everything that gives rise to suffering and feelings of discontent; he strives to become free from suffering. A person does not just live, he also wants his life to have meaning.

People associate the realization of their desires with civilization, changes in external forms of life, natural and social environment. It is assumed that a person can free himself from a suffering situation with the help of science, the arts, economic growth, the development of technology, the creation of a comfortable life, etc. Such a line of thought, mainly characteristic of the privileged and educated strata of society, was borrowed by L.N. Tolstoy and was guided by them during the first half of his adult life. However, it was just personal experience and observations of people in his circle that convinced him that this path was false. The higher a person rises in his worldly pursuits and hobbies, the more wealth, deeper knowledge, the stronger the emotional anxiety, discontent and suffering from which he wanted to free himself in these occupations. You might think that if activity and progress multiply suffering, then inactivity will help reduce it. This assumption is incorrect. The cause of suffering is not progress in itself, but the expectations that are associated with it, that completely unjustified hope that by increasing the speed of trains, increasing the yield of fields, something else can be achieved beyond the fact that a person will move faster and eat better. From this point of view, it makes little difference whether the emphasis is on activity and progress or inactivity. The very installation to give meaning to human life by changing its external forms is erroneous. This attitude is based on the belief that the inner person depends on the outer, that the state of the soul and consciousness of a person is a consequence of his position in the world and among people. But if this were so, then there would be no conflict between them from the very beginning.

In short, material and cultural progress means what they mean: material and cultural progress. They do not affect the suffering of the soul. Tolstoy sees unconditional proof of this in the fact that progress becomes meaningless if we consider it in the perspective of a person's death. Why money, power, etc., why try in general, why achieve something, if everything inevitably ends in death and oblivion. You can only live as long as you are drunk with life; and as soon as you sober up, you cannot help but see that all this is only a deception, and a stupid deception! ... The tragedy of human existence, according to Tolstoy, is well conveyed by the eastern (ancient Indian) fable about a traveler caught in the steppe by an angry beast. Fleeing from the beast, the traveler jumps into a waterless well, but at the bottom of the well he sees a dragon, opening its mouth to devour it. And the unfortunate man, not daring to crawl out, so as not to die from the enraged beast, not daring to jump to the bottom of the well so as not to be devoured by the dragon, grasps the branches of a wild bush growing in the crevices of the well and clings to it. His hands are weakening, and he feels that soon he will have to surrender to destruction on both sides waiting for him, but he keeps holding on, and while he holds on, he looks around and sees that two mice, one black, the other white, evenly bypassing the trunk of the bush on which it hangs, undermine it. The bush is about to break off and break off, and it will fall into the dragon's mouth. The traveler sees this and knows that he will inevitably perish; but while he hangs, he looks around him and finds drops of honey on the leaves of the bush, pulls them out with his tongue and licks them ... White and black mice, day and night, inevitably lead a person to death - and not a person in general, but each of us, and not somewhere and once, but here and now, and this is not a fable, but this is a true, indisputable and everyone understandable truth ... And nothing will save you from this - neither huge riches, nor exquisite taste, nor extensive knowledge.

The conclusion about the meaninglessness of life, to which experience seems to lead and which is confirmed by philosophical wisdom, is, from the point of view of Tolstoy, clearly contradictory logically, so that one can agree with it. How can reason justify the meaninglessness of life if it is itself a product of life? He has no basis for such a justification. Therefore, the very statement about the meaninglessness of life contains his own refutation: a person who came to such a conclusion should first of all take his own accounts with life, and then he could not talk about its meaninglessness, if he talks about meaninglessness life and thus continues to live a life that is worse than death, which means that in reality it is not as meaningless and bad as they say. Further, the conclusion about the meaninglessness of life means that a person is able to set goals that he cannot achieve, and formulate questions that he cannot answer. But aren't these goals and questions posed by the same person? And if he does not have the strength to realize them, then where did he get the strength to put them? No less convincing is Tolstoy's objection: if life is meaningless, then how did millions and millions of people, all of humanity, live and live? And since they live, enjoy life and continue to live, then they find some important meaning in it? Which one?

Not satisfied with the negative solution to the question of the meaning of life, L.N. Tolstoy turned to the spiritual experience of ordinary people living by their own labor, the experience of the people.

Ordinary people are well acquainted with the question of the meaning of life, in which for them there is no difficulty, no mystery. They know that they must live according to God's law and live so as not to destroy their soul. They know about their material insignificance, but it does not frighten them, for the soul remains connected with God. The lack of education of these people, their lack of philosophical and scientific knowledge does not hinder the understanding of the truth of life, rather, on the contrary, it helps. In a strange way, it turned out that ignorant, prejudiced peasants are aware of the depth of the question about the meaning of life, they understand that they are being asked about the eternal, undying meaning of their life and whether they are not afraid of the impending death.

Listening to the words of ordinary people, peering into their lives, Tolstoy came to the conclusion that the truth was speaking through their lips. They understood the question of the meaning of life deeper, more precisely, than all the greatest thinkers and philosophers.

The question of the meaning of life is the question of the relationship between the finite and the infinite in it, that is, does finite life have an eternal, indestructible meaning, and if so, what does it consist of? Is there anything immortal in her? If the finite life of a person contained its meaning in itself, then this question itself would not exist. To solve this question, it is equally insufficient to equate the finite with the finite and the infinite with the infinite. , it is necessary to identify the relationship of one to the other. Consequently, the question of the meaning of life is wider than the scope of logical knowledge, it requires going beyond the scope of the area that is subject to reason. It was impossible to search in reasonable knowledge for the answer to my question - writes Tolstoy. I had to admit that all living humanity still has some other knowledge, unreasonable - faith, which makes it possible to live.

Observations of the life experience of ordinary people, who are characterized by a meaningful attitude to their own life with a clear understanding of its insignificance, and the correctly understood logic of the very question of the meaning of life, lead Tolstoy to the same conclusion that the question of the meaning of life is a matter of faith, and not knowledge. In Tolstoy's philosophy, the concept of faith has a special content that does not coincide with the traditional one. It is not the fulfillment of the expected and confidence in the invisible. Faith is the consciousness of a person of his position in the world, which obliges him to certain actions. . Faith is knowledge of the meaning of human life, as a result of which a person does not destroy himself, but lives. Faith is the power of life ... From these definitions it becomes clear that for Tolstoy a life that has meaning and a life based on faith are one and the same.

The concept of faith in Tolstoy's understanding is completely unconnected with incomprehensible mysteries, incredibly miraculous transformations and other prejudices. Moreover, it does not at all mean that human knowledge has any other toolkit besides reason, based on experience and subject to strict laws of logic. Describing the peculiarity of the knowledge of faith, Tolstoy writes: I will not seek an explanation for everything. I know that the explanation of everything must be hidden, like the beginning of everything, in infinity. But I want to understand in such a way as to be reduced to the inevitably inexplicable, I want everything that is inexplicable to be so not because the requirements of my mind are wrong (they are correct, and outside of them I cannot understand anything), but because that I see the limits of my mind. I want to understand in such a way that any inexplicable situation appears to me as a necessity of reason, and not as an obligation to believe ... Tolstoy did not recognize unsubstantiated knowledge. He didn’t take anything for granted but faith itself. Faith as a force of life goes beyond the competence of reason. In this sense, the concept of faith is a manifestation of the honesty of reason, which does not want to take on more than it can.

From this understanding of faith, it follows that doubt and confusion are hidden behind the question of the meaning of life. The meaning of life becomes a question when life loses its meaning. I realized, - writes Tolstoy, - that in order to understand the meaning of life, it is necessary, first of all, that life is not meaningless and evil, and only then - the mind in order to understand it ... A confused questioning about what to live for is a sure sign that life is wrong. One conclusion follows from the works written by Tolstoy: the meaning of life cannot be that it dies with the death of a person. This means: he cannot be contained in life for himself, as well as in life for other people, for they die, as well as in life for humanity, because it is not eternal either. Life for oneself cannot have any meaning ... To live reasonably, one must live in such a way that death cannot destroy life.

Leo Tolstoy meaning life

3. Five commandments of Christianity

According to L.N. Tolstoy, the essence of the moral ideal is most fully expressed in the teachings of Jesus Christ. At the same time, for Tolstoy, Jesus Christ is not God or the son of God, he considers him a reformer, destroying the old and giving new foundations of life. Tolstoy, further, sees a fundamental difference between the true views of Jesus set forth in the Gospels and their perversion in the dogmas of Orthodoxy and other Christian churches.

“The fact that love is a necessary and good condition for human life was recognized by all religious teachings of antiquity. In all teachings: Egyptian sages, Brahmins, Stoics, Buddhists, Taoists, etc., friendliness, pity, mercy, charity and love in general were recognized as one of the main virtues. " However, only Christ raised love to the level of the fundamental, highest law of life.

As the highest, fundamental law of life, love is the only moral law. The law of love is not a commandment, but an expression of the very essence of Christianity. This is an eternal ideal to which people will endlessly strive. Jesus Christ is not limited to the proclamation of the ideal. Along with this, he gives commandments.

There are five such commandments in Tolstoy's interpretation. Here they are:

) Do not be angry;

) Do not leave your wife;

) Do not ever swear to anyone or anything;

) Do not resist the evil force;

) Do not consider people of other nations as your enemies.

Christ's commandments are “all negative and show only what, at a certain stage of human development, people can no longer do. These commandments are like notes on the endless path of perfection ... ". They cannot but be negative, since we are talking about the awareness of the degree of imperfection. They are nothing more than a step, a step on the path to perfection. They, these commandments, make up in the aggregate such truths that, as truths, do not give rise to doubts, but have not yet been mastered in practice, that is, truths in relation to which the freedom of modern man is revealed. For a modern person, they are already truths, but they have not yet become an everyday habit. Man already dares to think so, but is not yet capable of doing so. Therefore, they, these truths proclaimed by Jesus Christ, are a test of human freedom.

4. Non-resistance as a manifestation of the law of love. Non-resistance is the law

According to Tolstoy, the main of the five commandments is the fourth: "Do not resist evil", which imposes a ban on violence. The ancient law, which condemned evil and violence in general, admitted that in certain cases they can be used for good - as just retribution according to the "eye for an eye" formula. Jesus Christ abolishes this law. He believes that violence can never be a blessing, under any circumstances. The prohibition on violence is absolute. Not only good must be answered with good. And evil must be answered with good.

Violence is the opposite of love. Tolstoy has at least three related definitions of violence. First, he equates violence with murder or the threat of murder. The need to use bayonets, prisons, gallows and other means of physical destruction arises when there is a task of external coercion of a person to something. Hence - the second definition of violence as an external influence. The need for external influence, in turn, appears when there is no internal agreement between people. This brings us to the third, most important definition of violence: "To rape means to do what the one over whom the violence is being committed does not want." In this understanding, violence coincides with evil and it is directly opposite to love. To love means to do as the other wants, to subordinate one's will to the will of another. To rape means to subordinate someone else's will to your own.

Non-resistance is more than a rejection of the law of violence. "The recognition of the life of every person as sacred is the first and only foundation of all morality." Non-resistance to evil just means the recognition of the original, unconditional holiness of human life.

Through non-resistance, a person recognizes that the issues of life and death are beyond his competence. At the same time, he generally refuses to be a judge in relation to another. It is not given to a person to judge a person. In those cases, when we seem to judge other people, calling some good, others evil, then we either deceive ourselves and those around us, Man has power only over himself. "Everything that is not your soul, all this is not your business," says Tolstoy. By calling someone a criminal and subjecting him to violence, we take away this human right from him. Refusing to resist evil with violence, a person recognizes this truth, he refuses to judge another, because he does not consider himself better than him. It is not other people who need to be corrected, but oneself.

Man plays his own role only when he fights evil in himself. Setting himself the task of fighting evil in others, he enters into an area that is beyond his control. Violent people tend to hide it. They hide both from others and from themselves. This is especially true of state violence, which is organized in such a way that “people, committing the most terrible deeds, do not see their responsibility for them ... Some demanded, others decided, others confirmed, fourth proposed, fifth reported, sixth ordered, seventh fulfilled ". And no one is to blame. The blurring of guilt in such cases is not simply the result of a deliberate tendency to hide the ends. It reflects the very essence of the matter: violence is objectively an area of ​​unfree and irresponsible behavior. Through a complex system of external obligations, people become accomplices in crimes that none of them would commit if these crimes depended only on his individual will. Non-resistance differs from violence in that it is an area of ​​individually responsible behavior. No matter how difficult the struggle with evil in oneself, it depends only on the person himself. There are no forces that could prevent someone who has decided to resist.

Tolstoy takes a close look at common arguments against non-resistance. Three of them are the most common.

The first argument is that Christ's teaching is beautiful but difficult to fulfill. Objection to him, Tolstoy asks: is it really easy to seize property and protect it? Is it easy to plow the land? In fact, we are not talking about the difficulty of fulfillment, but about a false faith, according to which the straightening of human life depends not on the people themselves, their reason and conscience, but on Christ on the clouds with a trumpet voice or the historical law. "It's human nature to do what's best." There is no objective predetermination of human existence, but there are people who make decisions. Therefore, to assert about a teaching that relates to human choice concerns the determination of the spirit, and not physical capabilities, to assert about such a teaching that it is good for people, but impracticable, is to contradict oneself.

The second argument is that "one person cannot go against the whole world." What if, for example, I alone will be as meek as the teaching requires, and everyone else will continue to live according to the old laws, then I will be ridiculed, beaten, shot, and I will ruin my life in vain. The teaching of Christ is the way of salvation for those who follow it. Therefore, the one who says that he would be glad to follow this teaching, but it is a pity for him to ruin his life, at least does not understand what is at stake. It is as if a drowning man, who was thrown a rope to escape, would object that he would gladly use the rope, but fears that others will not do the same.

The third argument is a continuation of the previous two and calls into question the fulfillment of Christ's teachings due to the fact that it involves great suffering. In general, human life cannot be without suffering. The whole question is when there is more suffering, whether when a person lives in the name of God, or when he lives in the name of peace. Tolstoy's answer is unequivocal: when he lives in the name of peace. Considered from the point of view of poverty and wealth, illness and health, the inevitability of death, the life of a Christian is no better than the life of a pagan, but it has the advantage over the latter that it is not completely absorbed in the empty occupation of the imaginary provision of life, the pursuit of power, wealth, health. There is less suffering in the life of the adherents of Christ's teachings, if only for the reason that they are free from suffering associated with envy, disappointment from failure in struggle, and rivalry. Experience, Tolstoy says, also confirms that people suffer mainly not because of their Christian forgiveness, but because of their worldly selfishness. The teaching of Christ is not only more moral, but it is also more reasonable. It warns people against doing stupid things.

Thus, common arguments against non-resistance are nothing more than prejudice. With their help, people seek to deceive themselves, find a cover and justification for their immoral and disastrous way of life, and get away from personal responsibility for how they live.

The commandment of non-resistance unites the teaching of Christ into a whole only if it is understood not as a saying, but as a law - a rule that knows no exceptions and is obligatory for execution. To allow exceptions to the law of love is to recognize that there may be cases of morally justified use of violence. If we assume that someone, or in some circumstances, can resist by violence what he considers evil, then anyone else can do the same. After all, all the peculiarity of the situation lies in the fact that people cannot come to an agreement on the issue of good and evil. If we admit at least one case of "justified" murder, then we open their endless succession. To use violence, it is necessary to find such a sinless person who can infallibly judge good and evil, and such people do not exist.

Tolstoy also considered untenable the argument for violence, according to which violence is justified when it suppresses more violence. When we kill a person who has raised a knife over his victim, we can never know with complete certainty whether he would have put his intention into action or not, whether something would have changed in his mind at the last moment. When we execute a criminal, then again we cannot be one hundred percent sure that the criminal will not change, will not repent, and that our execution will not turn out to be useless cruelty. But even assuming that we are talking about an inveterate criminal who would never change, the execution cannot be justified, because executions so affect those around them, especially those close to the executed people, that they give rise to enemies twice as many and twice as angry as those who were killed and buried in the ground. Violence tends to be reproduced on an expanding scale. Therefore, the very idea of ​​limited violence and limiting violence by violence is false. It was this very idea that was abolished by the law of non-resistance. Violence is easy to commit. But it cannot be justified. Tolstoy is talking about whether there can be a right to violence, to murder. His conclusion is categorical - there is no such right. If we accept Christian values ​​and believe that people are equal before God, then it is impossible to justify the violence of a person against a person without violating the laws of reason and logic. That is why Tolstoy considered the death penalty a form of murder, which is much worse than just murder out of passion or for other personal reasons. It is quite possible to understand that a person in a momentary anger or irritation commits murder in order to protect himself or a loved one, it can be understood that he, succumbing to collective suggestion, participates in collective murder in the war. But it is impossible to understand how people can commit murder calmly, deliberately, how they can consider killing necessary. This was beyond Tolstoy's understanding. "The death penalty," writes Tolstoy in his "Memoirs of the Trial of a Soldier," "as it was, remains for me one of those human actions, information about the commission of which does not really destroy in me the consciousness of the impossibility of committing them."

5. L.N. Tolstoy and his non-ecclesiastical Christianity

Tolstoy is a great master of artistic words and a great thinker. His whole life, his heart and mind were occupied with one burning question, which to one degree or another left its painful imprint on all his works. We feel his darkening presence in The Story of My Childhood, in War and Peace, in Anna Karenina, until he finally absorbed him in the last years of his life, when such works as My Faith were created, " What is my faith? "," What to do? "," On life "and" The Kreutzer Sonata ". The same question burns in the hearts of many people, especially among the Theosophists; it is truly a matter of life itself. "What is the meaning, the purpose of human life? What is the final outcome of the unnatural, perverse and deceitful life of our civilization, such as is imposed on each of us individually? What should we do to be happy, constantly happy? How can we avoid the nightmare of inevitable death?" " Tolstoy did not give an answer to these eternally standing questions in his early writings, because he himself did not find it. But he could not stop fighting, as millions of other, weaker or cowardly natures did, without giving an answer that would at least satisfy his own heart and mind; and the five above-mentioned works contain such an answer. This is an answer that, in fact, cannot be satisfied with the Theosophist in the form in which Leo Tolstoy gives it, but in his main, fundamental, vital thought we can find new light, fresh hope and strong consolation. However, in order to understand it, we must briefly trace the path by which Tolstoy reached the world that he found; for until we can feel as well as understand the internal processes that led him to this, his solution, like any other solution to a life problem, will remain a dead letter, a purely intellectual verbal concept, in which life force is completely absent; simple speculation, devoid of living truth and enthusiasm.

Like all thinking men and women of our time, L.N. Tolstoy lost faith in religion as a child; for such a loss of childlike faith - inevitable in the life of every person - is not, as a rule, the result of deep reflection; it is rather a natural consequence of our culture and our shared life experiences. He himself says that his faith has disappeared, and he does not know how. But his youthful striving for ethical improvement continued to persist for about ten years, gradually being forgotten, and finally completely disappeared. Seeing around him triumphant ambition, love of power, selfishness and sensuality; Seeing contempt and a mocking attitude towards everything that is called virtue, kindness, purity and altruism, and unable to have either a feeling of inner happiness and fulfillment, or external success, Tolstoy followed the path that the world moves, acting as he sees it others, taking part in all the vicious and base deeds of the "decent world." Then he turns to literature, becomes a great master of words, the most successful writer, trying, as he himself says, to hide his own ignorance from himself, teaching others. Over the course of several years, he continued to perform such suppression of his inner dissatisfaction, but more and more often, more and more painfully, this question arose before him: Why am I living? What do I know? And every day he saw more and more clearly that he could not give an answer to it. He was fifty years old when his despair reached its climax. Being at the pinnacle of his fame, a happy husband and father, the author of many wonderful works filled with the deepest knowledge of people and wisdom in life, Tolstoy realizes the impossibility of further continuing life. "A person cannot imagine life without a desire for well-being. To desire and bring this well-being is what life is. A man examines in life only what he can improve in it." Our science, on the contrary, studies only the shadows of things, and not their true essence; and being in the delusion that this secondary and unimportant is essential, science distorts the idea of ​​life and forgets its true purpose, which is to penetrate precisely into this secret, and not to study what is revealed today, and tomorrow it is forgotten.

Philosophy tells us: "You are part of humanity, therefore you must participate in the development of humanity and in the realization of its ideals; the purpose of your life coincides with the purpose of life of all other people." But how can this help me to know that I live for the same, for which the whole of humanity lives, if I have not been told what it is, for what should humanity live? Why does the world exist? What is the result of the fact that the world exists and will exist? Philosophy gives no answer.

Skepticism, nihilism, despair - such thoughts of a thinking person are taken in this direction if he is looking for the last word of Wisdom in the science and philosophy of various schools. This is also the real, internal, mental state in which many people find themselves both inside and outside the Theosophical Society.

In relation to this problem of life, Tolstoy divides people in general into four classes:

Some, with weak and immature intellect, live happily in their ignorance - for them the problem of life as such does not exist.

Others are sufficiently aware and understand this problem, but deliberately turn away from it, supported by favorable external circumstances that allow them to go through life as if in a state of intoxication.

The third group consists of those people who know that death is better than a life passed in delusion and ignorance; but they continue to live because they do not have sufficient strength to bring an abrupt end to this deception - life.

Finally, there are strong and persistent natures who realize all the idiocy of this farce, which is played out with them, and put an end to this stupid game with one blow.

“I couldn't do anything,” he says, “just think, think about the terrible situation in which I was ... My inner state at this time, which brought me close to suicide, was such that everything what I did until then, everything that I could still do seemed stupid and bad to me.Even what was most dear to me in this life, what took and distracted me from the cruel reality for so long - my family and my work - even this has lost all value for me. "

He finally got out of this chasm of despair. “Life is everything,” he concluded, “I, my very mind is the creation of this universal life. But at the same time, Reason is the creator and the last judge of human life, inherent in it. How then can reason deny meaning the latter, without denying myself and not calling myself devoid of meaning? Consequently, I can call life meaningless only because I did not know its meaning. " Convinced that Life has a meaning, Tolstoy seeks it among those who really live - among people. But here he is again met with disappointment, the bitterest of all, for it was here that his last hope was. For among people he found the only solution to the problem of life, which rested on the concept of the universe, opposite to reason, and based on blind faith, which he had so long thrown aside.

“I subjected,” he says, “to an additional test of the representation of my mind and found that the Mind does not sufficiently answer my questions, since it does not consider the concept of the Infinite (Uncaused, Timeless and Extradimensional), because it explains my life passing through time, space and causation, again in terms of time, space and causality: such an explanation is actually logically correct, but only in terms of the same components, that is, leaving the original and final basis of life - the only thing that we are worried and interested - unexplained. Religion, on the contrary, does the opposite: it does not recognize logic, but knows the concept of the Infinite, with which it correlates everything and, to some extent, gives the correct answers. Religion says: You must live according to the law of God; the result of your life will be either eternal torment, or eternal bliss; the meaning of your life, which will not be destroyed is awakened after death, consists in union with the Infinite Deity .... The concept of the Infinite Deity, the divinity of the Soul, the dependence of human actions on God - these are the ideas that originated in the innermost depths of human thought, and without which there would be no life, and I also could not exist. "

"But what is God? What sequence of thoughts is the belief in his existence and in man's dependence on him based on? If I exist," LN argues. Tolstoy, - "then there must be a meaning of my being, and a meaning for such a foundation, and a certain primary meaning, and this is God. I feel calm; my doubts and the consciousness of my orphanhood in life have disappeared. But when I ask myself: what is God? What should I do in relation to him? - I find only banal answers that again destroy my faith ... But I have in me the concept of God, the very fact and necessity of such a concept - and no one can deprive me of this. However, where does this concept come from? Where does its need come from? This need is God himself. And I feel joy again. Everything around me lives and has its own meaning. The idea of ​​God is truly not God himself; but the need to create this concept, the aspiration to the knowledge of God, thanks to the knowledge of which I live, - this is God, the living and life-giving God ... Living in this thought, you act as a manifestation of God, and then your life will testify to the existence of God. "

Tolstoy regained faith, "the evidence of invisible things," and his religious faith was expressed during the three years of his life in full accordance with the strictest precepts of the Orthodox Church. But in the end, finding that the church and the entire Christian society as a whole is doing exactly the opposite of his main ideas about true Religion, he broke away from Orthodoxy and wanted to understand what Truth in Religion meant for him by studying the New Testament.

But before discussing the conclusions he arrived at, let us first consider the fundamental position of Tolstoy from a theosophical point of view. His argument about the existence of the Infinite God as a necessary "primordial foundation" of human reason, completely coincides with the arguments of theosophists about the existence of a Cosmic or Universal Reason, and as an argument, he does not prove anything beyond that. Infected by the Western habit of sensuality, he ascribes anthropomorphic features to the Universal Reason that the latter cannot possess, and thus sows the seeds of unnaturalness and leads to conclusions about those practical actions to which he later came. In the main, he is right; but in an attempt to satisfy the demands of his emotional nature, he falls into quasi-anthropomorphism. However, it is more important for us to pay attention to the bitter picture on which he paints the mental suffering that torments every honest and sincere thinker today, and to the fact that he indicates the path, the only path on which salvation is possible. For, proceeding from its basic concept, we come, with careful and attentive reasoning, to the fundamental concepts of theosophical teaching, as we will see later.

Conclusion

Tolstoy is often accused of abstract moralism. That he, for purely moral reasons, denied all violence and considered all physical coercion as violence and that for this reason he closed his way to understanding the complexity and depth of life relationships. However, this assumption is incorrect.

The idea of ​​non-resistance cannot be understood as if Tolstoy was against joint actions, socially significant actions, in general against the direct moral obligations of a person in relation to other people. Quite the opposite. Non-resistance, according to Tolstoy, is the application of the teachings of Christ to public life, a concrete path that transforms relations of enmity between people into relations of cooperation between them.

Rejecting the idea of ​​the existence of man exclusively as a biological being, completely subordinate to the dictates of instincts, the writer did not completely deny the power of "nature" over man, and also did not place all hopes for the improvement of human existence on the activity of his mind. On the contrary, the writer has repeatedly stressed that the excessive rationalization of a person's existence will in no way bring him closer to comprehending the meaning of life. Only the ability of a person to rise above his nature and relying on it as a necessary condition for existence, to assert reasonable, truly human foundations of being, according to L.N. Tolstoy, there is the only criterion for the meaningfulness of her life.

The meaninglessness of the idea of ​​life, which occurs as a result of the complete enslavement of man by "flesh", serves, according to L.N. Tolstoy, the main obstacle to his comprehension of the meaning of his life, while liberation from her power again returns him to himself as a spiritual and moral, human being - Homo moralis. This is the discovery of man in himself of the infinity of his essence, which becomes the only real basis for the infinity of his existence, and is, as the writer argued, the highest meaning of life that can become available to every person.

It should also not be considered that Tolstoy called for a refusal to oppose evil. On the contrary, he believed that it is possible and necessary to resist evil, only not by violence, but by other non-violent methods. Moreover, only then can you really resist violence when you refuse to respond in kind. "The defenders of the social understanding of life objectively try to confuse the concept of power, that is, violence, with the concept of spiritual influence, but this confusion is absolutely impossible." Tolstoy himself did not develop the tactics of collective nonviolent resistance, but his teaching allows such tactics. He understands non-resistance as a positive force of love and truth, in addition, he directly names such forms of resistance as conviction, dispute, protest, which are designed to separate a person who commits evil from evil itself, call to his conscience, the spiritual principle in him, which cancel the previous evil in the sense that it ceases to be an obstacle to subsequent cooperation. Tolstoy called his method revolutionary. And one cannot but agree with this. It is even more revolutionary than conventional revolutions. Ordinary revolutions make a revolution in the external position of people in terms of power and property. Tolstoy's revolution is aimed at a radical change in the spiritual foundations of life.

L.N. Tolstoy saw the meaning of life not in living, knowing “that life is a stupid joke played on me, and yet to live, wash, dress, dine, talk and even write books. It was disgusting for me ... ”- he wrote. Tolstoy could not recognize the absurdity of life, just as he could not see its meaning only in personal good, when “a person lives and acts only so that it is good for him alone, that all people and even creatures live and act only so that he alone it was good ... "To live like this, not caring about the common good, according to Tolstoy, can only be an" animal personality "that does not obey the dictates of reason.

Tolstoy's ideas are still relevant today, they have a tremendous impact on the moral world of a person, not how he decides for himself the issues of death and immortality. It is no coincidence that representatives of different philosophical systems and trends, including materialistic ones, turn to them so often these days.

Real philosophical humanism provides such an ideal that determines the meaning of human life in its individual, personal and universal, social parameters. At the same time, this ideal affirms the dialectical relationship between the natural-biological and the social, the finite and the infinite, the death and immortality of a person who receives their complete forms in the fact that the unity corresponds to his essence in the material and spiritual culture of a person. It is on this, in the final analysis, that the regulating role of morality is based both in the individual life of a person and in his attitude towards death. And this allows us to assert that only in the immortality of reason and humanity of man is the immortality of mankind. This is the global purpose of man and humanity, their responsibility for the preservation of life and reason on our planet, without which it is impossible to overcome all the threats posed by unreasonableness and anti-humanism.

Bibliographic list

1.Abramovich N. Ya. Religion of Tolstoy. - M., 1914. - S. 140

2.Introduction to Philosophy: In 2 volumes. M., 2000

.Guseinov A.A. Great moralists. M., Republic, 1995

4.Zhdanov V.A. Love in the life of L. Tolstoy. M., 1928.-S.58.- 151

5.Rosenthal Ì. M. Philosophical Dictionary. M., Publishing house of political literature, 2005

Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. M., 1998

L.N. Tolstoy. Confession. Op. in 32 volumes. T. 16.

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The writing

Tolstoy's work is a great legacy left to us from the pre-revolutionary era, for “... in his inheritance there is something that has not gone into the past, that belongs to the future. The Russian proletariat takes this inheritance and is working on this inheritance. " In Tolstoy's work, critical realism took a new step forward and reached an extraordinary acuteness. For the first time in the world, Tolstoy created a grandiose canvas on which the life of individual people is revealed against the background of major historical events, organically intertwining with them. From under his pen came a new form of the historical novel - the epic. The posing of a number of moral and philosophical problems, the originality and depth of the methods of psychological analysis and artistic skill make Tolstoy an unsurpassed artist, and the whole world could not fail to recognize this. The novel War and Peace, the first work that made Tolstoy world-famous, was translated into French in 1879. The novel made a strong impression. "I felt carried away by the flow of a calm river, the bottom of which I could not reach," wrote one famous French critic. Flaubert joined him. "What an artist and what a psychologist!" he exclaimed enthusiastically after reading the first two volumes of the novel. So even in the last third of the 19th century. the influence of Tolstoy's creativity manifested itself in various ways among foreign writers of a democratic, realistic direction.

The influence of the writer became much more noticeable and widespread at the turn of the century, when Tolstoy entered world literature not only as the creator of War and Peace, Anna Karenina, novellas and short stories, but also as the author of Resurrection. Tolstoy's last book with particular power revealed to the whole world the true essence of capitalism. Tolstoy the artist had a beneficial effect on the best masters of Western critical realism of the 20th century, who appeared in the pre-October era: on Anatole France, Bernard Shaw, Theodor Dreiser, Heinrich Mann, Romain Rolland, etc. All of these writers saw Tolstoy as an inspiring example of literary truthfulness , sincerity, courage and fearlessness. Theodor Dreiser tells about the impression that Tolstoy's books made on him in his youth:

* I started reading again ... Tolstoy was dearer to me then, as the author of the novellas "The Kreutzer Sonata" and "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" ... I was so delighted and shocked by the vitality of the pictures that opened to me in them that I was. Suddenly a thought struck, as if completely new to me: how wonderful it would be to become a writer. If you could write like Tolstoy, make the whole world listen! "

In his youth, Tolstoy Fucik read a lot and eagerly. The notes he made about the impression made on him by "Anna Karenina" and "Kreutzer Sonata" have survived. In his student essay "On Happiness", written by Fucik at the age of sixteen, it is said: "I come to the conclusion that Tolstoy is right: in work, only in work is true happiness!" The English writer John Galsworthy states: “If it were necessary to name a novel that would fit the definition so dear to the hearts of the compilers of literary questionnaires:“ the greatest novel in the world ”, I would choose“ War and Peace ”. Anatole France wrote in 1910 in an article dedicated to the memory of Tolstoy: “As an epic writer, Tolstoy is our common teacher; he teaches us to observe a person both in external manifestations, expressing his nature, and in the hidden movements of his soul ... Tolstoy also gives us an example of unsurpassed intellectual nobility, courage and generosity. With heroic calmness, with severe kindness, he exposed the crimes of society, all the laws of which pursue only one goal - the sanctification of his injustice, his arbitrariness. And in this Tolstoy is the best among the best. "

The centenary of Tolstoy in 1928, solemnly celebrated in Europe, further expanded and confirmed Tolstoy's popularity here. Numerous articles appearing in magazines and newspapers unanimously recognized that War and Peace is the greatest novel in the world, and Tolstoy is the greatest of all novelists, standing "a cut above all other writers." But not only the novel "War and Peace" excited and excites the readers of the whole world. Tolstoy was often deeply mistaken, but he always made me think and worry. Some admired him, others protested against his teachings. But it was impossible to pass by him calmly: he raised questions that worried all of humanity.

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. A writer spoke in Russia who not only brilliantly continued the glorious traditions of his native realistic literature, but also brought a lot of new things into the development of the genres of story and drama. A smile, in most cases external, learned, secularly amiable. But Scherer mentioned his sons in a conversation. This was Prince Vasily's sore spot. Scherer's words provoked Kuragin's remark, accompanied by a smile of a different character: “Ippolit is at least a deceased fool, and Anatol is restless. Here is one difference, "he said, smiling more naturally and animatedly than usual, and at the same time especially sharply showing something unexpectedly rough and unpleasant in the wrinkles around his mouth." And then he was silent, "expressing with a gesture his obedience to a cruel fate." So the smiles, gestures and speech of Prince Kuragin in her intonations reveal his posturing and acting. It is not for nothing that Tolstoy repeatedly compares him to an actor. Tolstoy's favorite heroes, on the other hand, reveal the properties of their souls better than words with their looks, smiles, gestures and facial expressions. Saying, for example, that Natasha's letters to Andrei Bolkonsky "seemed to her a boring and false duty" and did not bring her consolation, Tolstoy explains this as follows: "She could not write, because she could not comprehend the possibility of truthfully expressing at least one thousandth of that that she is used to expressing with her voice, smile and look. "

Representatives of various strata of the nobility are given: on the one hand, the highest bureaucratic and court nobility (Kuraginy, Sherer and others), on the other hand, the ruinous Moscow nobility (Rostovs), and finally, an independent, opposition-minded aristocracy (old Bolkonsky, Bezukhov). A special group is constituted by the "nest of influential staff members." Tolstoy paints all these layers of the nobility in different light, depending on how close they are to the people - to their spirit and worldview. People like Vasily Kuragin are especially disliked in Tolstoy. A secular man, a careerist and an egoist, Prince Kuragin strives to become one of the heirs of a dying rich nobleman - Count Bezukhov, and when he fails, he catches a rich heir - Pierre - and marries him to his daughter, a soulless coquette Helene. Having arranged this wedding, he dreams of something else: to marry his "restless fool" Anatole to the rich princess Bolkonskaya. Kuragin has no firm convictions, solid moral principles. Tolstoy shows this surprisingly aptly and vividly in the behavior and statements of Prince Vasily in the Scherer salon, when it came to the possibility of appointing Kutuzov as commander-in-chief. Predation, heartlessness, lack of principle, mental limitation, or rather, meager mind are the characteristic features of the Kuragin - father and children.

Shchedrin emphasized the irresistible power of Tolstoy's denunciation of high society nobles: "But our so-called high society was dashingly captured by Count (Tolstoy)." The satirical coverage also includes the regulars of the salon, the ladies-in-waiting of Scherer, headed by the hostess herself. Intrigue, court gossip, career and wealth - these are their interests, this is how they all live. Everything in this salon is disgusting to Tolstoy, as written through and through with lies, falsehood, hypocrisy, heartlessness, acting. In this circle of secular people there is nothing truthful, simple, natural, immediate. Their speech, gestures, facial expressions and actions are determined by the conventional rules of secular behavior. Tolstoy emphasizes this prudent posturing of people of the secular environment by comparing Scherer's cloak with a spinning workshop, with a machine that mechanically performs its work: "Anna Pavlovna ... with one word or movement, she again started a uniform decent talking machine." Or again: “Anna Pavlovna's evening was started. The spindles from different sides evenly and incessantly made noise. "

This category of secular people includes such careerists as Boris Drubetskoy and Berg, whose purpose in life is to be in sight, to be able to get a “warm place”, a rich wife, to create a prominent career for themselves, to get to the “top”. Tolstoy is merciless towards administrators like Rostopchin, who were alien to the people, despised the people and were despised by the people. Touching upon the representatives of power - both civil and military - Tolstoy shows the anti-nationality of this power, the bureaucracy and careerism of the overwhelming majority of its carriers. Such is, for example, Arakcheev - the right hand of Alexander I, this "faithful executor and guardian of order and bodyguard of the sovereign ... serviceable, cruel and unable to express his devotion otherwise than by cruelty."

The writer portrays the local nobility represented in the novel by Rostov and Akhrosimova differently. Without hiding the mismanagement and carelessness of Ilya Andreevich Rostov, which led the family to ruin, Tolstoy with great force emphasizes the positive family qualities of the members of this family: simplicity, cheerfulness, cordiality, hospitality, a good attitude towards servants and peasants, love and affection for each other, honesty, lack of narrowly egoistic interests. The wastefulness and mismanagement of the old count disappear from his children.

Introduction

The concepts of good and evil, morality, ethics and the solution of moral problems are some of the most important moments in human life.

The brilliant writer and great moralist L.N. Tolstoy wrote: “We are all accustomed to thinking that moral teaching is the most vulgar and boring thing, in which there can be nothing new and interesting; and yet all human life, with all such complex and varied activities that seem independent of morality - state, scientific, artistic, and commercial - has no other goal than a greater and greater understanding, approval, simplification and general availability of moral truth " Tolstoy L.N... So what should we do? // Collected cit .: In 22 volumes - M., 1983 .-- T. 16. - S. 209 ..

Russian literature has always been closely linked with the moral quest of our people. The best writers in their works constantly raised the problems of our time, tried to solve the issues of good and evil, conscience, human dignity, justice and others.

Moral education is aimed, first of all, at developing an active life position of the individual, which is characterized by a consciousness of high responsibility to society. In the formation of a personality with a high moral potential, fiction is invaluable.

The literature of the second half of the 19th century is the literature of critical realism. Among the imperfect world, with the injustice prevailing in it, writers are looking for those eternal, bright and just principles that will save humanity. The human personality and its spiritual content is the main link in this chain, from the formation of its self-consciousness, according to many thinkers, the path to a harmonious society begins.

The topic of my essay is “Moral searches in the works of the great Russian writers L.N. Tolstoy and F.M. Dostoevsky ". I consider this topic relevant, since the issues of morality and ethics worried a person at all times.

In my work, I will try to consider the views of F.M. Dostoevsky and L.N. Tolstoy, on the morality and spiritual world of man, on good and evil, in order to form an idea of ​​the perception of morality and ethics through the work of these great Russian moralist writers.

Creativity of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy

The spiritual world of heroes in the works of L.N. Tolstoy

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy is one of the most widely known Russian writers and thinkers. Member of the defense of Sevastopol. Educator, publicist, religious thinker. He began his literary career in the winter of 1850-1851. from the writing of the work "Childhood". In March 1851 he wrote The History of Yesterday.

The most characteristic feature of Lev Nikolaevich's work is the image of a person's spiritual growth. It can be traced throughout his entire work. The more society influences a person, the poorer his inner world.

In the novel "Sunday", for example, the main character, the young Dmitry Ivanovich Nekhlyudov, is characterized by Tolstoy as honest, selfless young men, ready to give himself up for any good deed. In his youth, Nekhlyudov, dreaming of making all people happy, thinks, reads, talks about God, truth, wealth, poverty; considers it necessary to moderate his needs; dreams of a woman only as a wife and sees the highest spiritual pleasure in sacrifice in the name of moral requirements. He is concerned about spiritual growth and inner spiritual content. Such a worldview and actions of Nekhlyudov are recognized by the people around him as strangeness and boastful originality. When, having reached adulthood, he gives the peasants the estate inherited from his father, because he considers the ownership of the land to be unfair, this act terrifies his mother and relatives, and becomes a constant subject of reproach and mockery of all his relatives. At first Nekhlyudov tries to fight, but it turns out to be too difficult to fight and, unable to withstand the struggle, he surrenders, becoming what others want him to see, completely drowning out the voice that demands something else from him. Then, Nekhlyudov enters the military service, which, according to Tolstoy, "corrupts people." And now, already such a person, on the way to the regiment, he calls into the village to his aunts, where he seduces Katyusha who is in love with him and, on the last day before leaving, shoves her a hundred-ruble piece of paper, consoling himself that "everyone does this. ... After leaving the army with the rank of the guards lieutenant, Nekhlyudov settles in Moscow, where he leads an idle life. This novel shows the influence of society on the inner world of a person. How can one make a mentally rich young man an egoist who loves only his own pleasure. The spiritual death of Nekhlyudov is associated with the abandonment of himself, of the inner feeling of shame, conscience and dissolution with the generally accepted in the circle of the nobility: “But what to do? Uncle Grisha, so it was with my father ... And if everyone does this, then, therefore, it should be. "

In the early works of Tolstoy, the trilogy "Childhood", "Adolescence", "Youth", the story of a young and young nobleman is also told. There are many biographical features here, but this is not the entire biography of the author. This is the story of the formation of the inner appearance of a person. The hero of the trilogy, Nikolenka Irteniev, has a rich spiritual world, because he is able to see numerous phenomena of life, analyze them and at a certain moment reassess values.

Like all the works of L. N. Tolstoy, the trilogy “Childhood. Adolescence. Youth ”was, in fact, the embodiment of a large number of ideas and undertakings. The main goal of L.N. Tolstoy is to show the development of a person as a person during his childhood, adolescence and youth, that is, in those periods of life when a person most fully feels himself in the world, and then, when he begins to separate himself from the world and comprehend the environment. his environment. Individual stories make up a trilogy, but the action in them takes place according to the idea, first in the Irtenevs' estate ("Childhood"), then the world expands significantly ("Adolescence"). In the story "Youth" the theme of family, at home sounds many times more muted, giving way to the theme of Nikolenka's relationship with the outside world. It is no coincidence that with the death of the mother, in the first part, the harmony of relations in the family is destroyed, in the second, the grandmother dies, taking with her enormous moral strength, and in the third, the dad marries a woman for the second time, whose even smile is always the same. The return of the previous family happiness becomes completely impossible. There is a logical connection between the stories, justified, first of all, by the logic of the writer: although the formation of a person is divided into certain stages, it is actually continuous. LN Tolstoy shows his heroes in those conditions and in those circumstances where their personality can manifest itself most vividly. The trilogy is built on a constant comparison of the inner and outer world of a person. The main goal of the writer, of course, was the analysis of what constitutes the essence of each person.

Each person, no matter what essence he possesses, no matter how closed or lonely he is, in a certain way affects the life of others, just as other people's actions affect his fate.

The fate of the main character of the story "After the Ball" - Ivan Vasilyevich - changed dramatically after the events of just one morning. In his youth, during his years of study at the university, Ivan Vasilyevich was "a very cheerful and lively fellow, and even rich." His life was devoid of any major problems. He seemed to be enjoying his reckless youth: he rode his pacer, danced with his comrades, danced at balls.

Returning home, the agitated young man could not sleep and went to meet the morning on the street. Everything seemed "especially sweet" to him. However, the serene happiness of the young man was suddenly dispelled by the terrible picture of the punishment of a Tatar passing through an endless line of soldiers armed with sticks. This cruel beating was commanded by none other than Varenka's father. He made sure that each of the soldiers left their mark on the back of the unfortunate. The picture he saw shocked Ivan Vasilyevich. He did not understand how the colonel could play such a terrible role: “Obviously, he knows something that I do not know ... If I knew what he knows, I would understand what I saw, and it wouldn't torment me. "

Ivan Vasilyevich remembered the terrible picture for the rest of his life. He looked with different eyes at the people around him - and at himself too. Unable to change or stop evil, the young man refused his participation in it. A protest raged within him. Despite all the excuses, he could no longer dream of a military career and did not become one afterwards, even for some reason his feeling for Varenka cooled.

Outwardly agreeing and reconciling with the actions of the colonel, with the orders of that time, Ivan Vasilyevich could not forget it and forgive. Each person's conscience tells him what to do. In the image of the main character, Tolstoy showed the awakening of conscience in a man, his rich spiritual peace and humanity, a sense of responsibility for his neighbor.

This image and features of the hero can be traced in other works of the author. According to Tolstoy, not only an educated person, but also a simple soldier can have a rich spiritual world. In the story "Cossacks" Tolstoy shows that a person, if he possesses positive qualities, becomes himself only in merging with nature. Only a person with the ability to think and feel can experience the pleasure of communicating with nature. In "Cossacks" the idea is already quite clearly manifested that the searches of the best people lead them to the depths of the people to the source of the purest and noblest motives. This idea is vividly shown in War and Peace.