Academic literature on the topic 'Lev Tolstói War and Peace'

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.Edmund BurkeSince its first appearance in 1971, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn'sAvgust Chetyrnadtsatogo(henceforth to be referred to asAugust 1914)has been compared to, and measured by the standards of, Lev Tolstoi'sWar and Peace.One might say that both the subject of the novel and the scope of the historical events described in it, as well as its numerous references to Tolstoi, made such comparisons inevitable. Even though virtually all critics were unanimous that Tolstoi was a predominant presence in Solzhenitsyn's mind when he was writing the first “knot” of the multivolume novel cycle, they disagreed about the precise nature of Solzhenitsyn's relationship to Tolstoi. While some critics have been more inclined to see Solzhenitsyn's novel as an emulation of Tolstoi's masterpiece, others have emphasized the antagonistic and polemic quality of Solzhenitsyn's attitudes toward his predecessor—whether Tolstoi the “historiosoph” ofWar and Peace(1865— 1869) or Tolstoi the moralist and aesthetician of the later period.

In the spring of 1863, Lev Tolstoi, newly married and soon to be a father, began to conceive of the work that would eventually become War And Peace. That same spring he also took up beekeeping. While in practical terms his “bee passion” proved relatively short-lived, it was an exceptionally intense engagement with a miniaturized and uniquely observable biological and social universe. In this article, Thomas Newlin explores how Tolstoi's dual enmeshment in “swarm life”—that is, in the biologically fraught realms of marriage and beekeeping—influenced both the unconventional form of War and Peace and its equally unconventional ideas (in particular Tolstoi's linked conceptions of the nature of history and of consciousness). The implications of a “swarm” model of history ultimately troubled Tolstoi, however; his doubts about the imperatives of biology do not play themselves out fully in War and Peace but instead lurk just beneath its surface.

In 1869, shortly after completing War and Peace and in seemingreaction to an intense spiritual crisis known as "the Arzamas terror," Lev NikoJaevich Tolstoi appears to have decided to abandon the narrative fiction at which he excelled. Within a decade he had begun to produce the religious and didactic writings which were to bring him equal fame as a Christian moralist and philosopher. By 1883, when he published What I Believe (V chem moia vera?), Tolstoi was counseling absolute nonresistance to evil. In subsequent years he quarreled with the Russian Orthodox Church, rejected the state and its coercive apparatus, and became a corrosive critic of his society.

La recreación de la experiencia bélica ha estado caracterizada durante buena parte de la historia por su adscripción a los modelos épicos y heroicos típicos de las literaturas clásicas. La cartuja de Parma (Stendhal), La roja insignia del valor (Stephen Crane) y Guerra y paz (Lev Tolstoi), tres obras del siglo XIX gestadas en diferentes contextos culturales, suponen un hito en la representación literaria de la guerra al trasgredir los modelos tradicionalmente utilizados y emplear nuevos recursos expresivos destinados a mostrar el caos y la capacidad de la destrucción de la experiencia bélica, incorporando así en ocasiones un mensaje de corte pacifista capaz de enfrentarse al oficial. El artículo repasa los principales ejemplos de literatura bélica de la historia universal de la Literatura y analiza las tres obras citadas, centrándose en su valor como “nuevo paradigma”. Traditionally, the literary recreation of the warlike experience has been linked with the epic and heroic typical models of the Classic Literature. The Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal), The Red Badge of Courage (Stepehn Crane) and War and Peace (Lev Tolstoi) changed the representation of the war in the 19th century. These novels used new expressive resources destined to show the chaos and the capacity of the destruction of the warlike experience. The article revises the principal examples of warlike literature of the universal history of the Literature and analyzes these novels, centring on its value as “new paradigm”.

The Vereshchagin episode, describing the execution of a young student during the fall of Moscow in 1812, occupies Chapters 24 and 25 of Part 3, Book 3 of Lev Tolstoi's Voina i mir (War and Peace). This dramatic scene, in which Mikhail Vereshchagin is cut down by a dragoon on the order of Count Fedor Rastopchin, has received little critical attention given the breadth of work on the novel as a whole. This is understandable on the grounds that the text does not constitute a large portion of Voina i mir and its characters are far from principal players. Yet investigating the episode reveals how Tolstoi deliberately added psychological, ideological, and theological subtexts to the early drafts, marking such subtexts by changes in narration, language, and direct allusions. Episodes such as this one are intricately structured to produce emotions, raise questions, and initiate a philosophical inquiry into the actions and thoughts of the characters concerned.

“War always interested me,” wrote the twenty-three-year-old Leo Tolstoy in “the raid” (1853), an early story inspired by his personal experience of a brutal border skirmish in the Caucasus. “Not war in the sense of maneuvers devised by great generals … but the reality of war, the actual killing” (1). The focus of Tolstoy's interest here remained absolute throughout his long and brilliantly inconsistent life. As a second lieutenant during the Crimean War in 1854–55, he wrote three “Sevastopol Stories” about that city under siege, which were so cannily constructed and voiced that the new tsar, Alexander II, deeply touched, decreed that they be translated into French so that Russian courage would reach a European audience—whereas other readers took these tales as critical of the imperial war effort, even as subversive. Tolstoy revealed his own chauvinist side in the mid-1860s while writing the final books of War and Peace. Napoléon was a caricature from the start, of course, but, in a rising arc of patriotic disdain, Tolstoy proceeded to ridicule almost every alien nation's soldiers, generals, and tacticians; only simple Russian peasants, partisans, Field Marshal Kutuzov, and the occasional clear-seeing field commander were exempt from the author's scorn. By the end of his life, Tolstoy professed radical Christian anarchism and pacifism, preaching nonviolent resistance to evil and urging young men to oppose the military draft. But he never lost his fascination with close-up “actual killing.” The greatest literary achievement of Tolstoy's final decade, the Caucasus novel Hadji Murad, ends with such graphic slaughter, so many grotesque hackings and mutilations, and even the beheading of the hero described at such epic leisure that it is difficult to believe Tolstoy ever doubted the veracity of languages of violence.

The article deals with the female characters in “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. The aim of the article is to advance a new view at Tolstoy’s heroines and to improve and extend the modern ideas of Tolstoy’s gender perceptions. The applied methods are the structural, semiotic and mythopoetics analyses. General opinion about Tolstoy’s gender perceptions is based on the character of Natasha Rostova. The usual approach to the study of Tolstoy’s matrimonial philosophy has passed into belief that Natasha Rostova is the main and the ideal female character in Tolstoy’s novel. So it is generally accepted that Leo Tolstoy gives recognition to the patriarchal family only (Bezukhov’s family in the epilogue of “War and Peace”). But to obtain a fuller understanding of Tolstoy’s gender perceptions it is necessary to introduce the analysis of other female characters. First of all, it is princess Mary. She became aware of the cruelty of war and overcame the tragedy of loneliness. She is a self-sacrificing daughter and aunt (her little nephew is an orphan). So her life is much more sorrowful than Natasha’s. However, her family in the epilogue of “War and Peace” is not patriarchal. Tolstoy represented two kinds of women and two types of families in the epilogue of his novel. According to the traditional view, Tolstoy confines a woman to her family circle, but the character of princess Mary is connected not only with the family problems, but with the problems of philosophy of history, folk confidence, non-resistance and the most profound spiritual achievements of Tolstoy’s as well. The image of Princess Mary Bolkonskaya in Tolstoy’s novel “War and peace” is a rare female image in the history of world literature that invites the reader to discuss a wide range of topical philosophical, religious, and socio-historical issues.

L. N. Tolstoy does not make any direct statements about the great French Revolution, although a probe into the writer’s attitude to this historical event allows us to understand his interpretation of phenomena contemporary to him. In this sense, the analysis of the early drafts of the novel War and Peace (1864) conducted in this article is of great interest. In these drafts, French politicians of the Directory period are called ‘rich upstarts’ and ‘yesterday’s bourgeois gentilhommes.’ Bonaparte himself is referred to as “a clever, cunning and evil successful bourgeois.” And in the outline of the preface to the novel Tolstoy repeats this comparison again: “funny and disgusting, like a Philistine in the nobility.” All of these formulas date back to the famous comedy by J. B. Moliere Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670). Although Napoleon Bonaparte was not a bourgeois by birth, his origins in the provincial Corsica led to a mention of him as a “bourgeois nobleman,” or parvenu in the drafts of War and Peace. This expression had a negative connotation due to the hereditary pride and prejudice of the aristocrat Tolstoy against the lower classes and his reaction to the novel by N. G. Chernyshevsky’s What Is to Be Done? (1863). In the final text of War and Peace, influenced by the news of the civil execution and exile of Chernyshevsky, Tolstoy removed these direct characteristics, although the overall negative assessment of Napoleon remained. Later Tolstoy repeatedly used images of this comedy, but did not attach negative connotations to them. Establishing the connection between the image of Napoleon and the “bourgeois gentilhommes” in the drafts for Tolstoy’s novel War and Peace allows us to more accurately determine the writer’s political views in the mid-1860s.

The article deals with the polemical discourse of A.S. Norov, who was the hero of the war 1812, which he leads with Leo Tolstoy from the point of view of the direct participant in the battles with Napoleon. Analyzing then description of the events of the Patriotic War of 1812 in the novel of Leo Tolstoy “War and Peace”, A.S. Norov opposes them to a description which was made by the hero Yermolov of the war of 1812. The authors speculate that the polemics of A.S. Norov with the Leo Tolstoys’ point of view to the driving forces in the war of 1812 would not be so acute if it is considered in the categories of literary criticism, as a polemical discourse of the work with artistic fiction (the novel by Leo Tolstoy) with a work of documentary where fiction is excluded (wroks by A.S. Norov).

Comparative analysis of A. Platonov’s wartime stories (1941–1945) and Leo Tolstoy’s Sevastopol Stories, War and Peace and Hadji Murat is performed. Items reviewed: 1) Both Red Army fighters in Platonov’s works and soldiers in Tolstoy’s works identify themselves not with an abstract “Fatherland,” but with their local “small motherland.” 2) Both for Tolstoy and Platonov, neither skilful strategy nor overpowering armaments become the war decisive factor but every single soldier’s courage. The battle often develops as an intersection of planned and unforeseen happenings, and everyone bears his own responsibility in it. 3) Platonov’s “truth,” like Tolstoy’s “providence,” is linked to the attacked side and serves as a moral justification of resistance to the aggressor. 4) Platonov, however, like Tolstoy (who speaks as a consistent pacifist in his later works), sees the danger of moral degradation as the result of war, and degradation signs had been notable before the war. Sacrifices (including, in this context, Platonov’s own son) are not in vain only if there is better life after the war.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo desenvolver uma análise comparada da representação de Napoleão Bonaparte por meio do estudo da obra de Lev Tolstói, Guerra e paz, e dos exemplares da Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro. Para tanto, foi realizado o mapeamento de tais escritos com a finalidade de identificar as referências à figura de Napoleão e o contexto em que estão inseridas. Desta maneira, foi possível identificar as aproximações e os afastamentos entre os dois tipos de representações de Napoleão e a dimensão do mito napoleônico no imaginário de russos e luso-brasileiros.
This work aims to develop a comparative analysis of Napoleon Bonaparte representation through the study of Lev Tolstoys work, War and Peace, and Gazeta do Rio de Janeiros issues. Therefore, the mapping of such writings was done in order to find references to Napoleons figure and the context in which they are inserted. Thus, it was possible to identify the approaches and departures between two types of Napoleons representations and the size of Napoleonic myth in the minds of Russians and Portuguese-Brazilians.

Tese de Doutoramento em Ciências da Literatura (área de especialização em Literatura Comparada).
O universo do imenso império dos czares constituiu durante longo tempo, e ainda hoje em parte permanece, uma espécie de um lugar misterioso para todo o ocidente. As relações entre os dois lados eram limitados e pouco frequentes. A situação geográfica portuguesa, no extremo ocidental da Europa, potenciou particularmente esta situação. Todavia, e curiosamente, começaram cedo as relações entre a Rússia e Portugal. Do longo e vasto caminho que percorremos e que apontámos, fazemos sobressair alguns nomes de entre muitos focados: o do ilustrado médico português Ribeiro Sanches, que entrou em vários segmentos na história da Rússia; o daquele que se assumiu sem peias como discípulo do grande Tolstói, o literato Jaime de Magalhães Lima; o do ensaísta e literato António Quadros; e o de um russo residente na Madeira de nome Vakcel. Quanto aos campos escolhidos para análise, demos relevância às memórias de viagens, à imprensa periódica e a um importante estudo escrito do século XIX, em português, sobre a literatura russa. Queremos percorrer um pouco destas relações para melhor entender a importância e os modos do que constitui o núcleo central do nosso percurso: por um lado, proceder à hermenêutica, situar, estabelecer fronteiras e entender os ecos recetivos da literatura russa em Portugal convergindo para o caso de um dos mais notáveis nomes da literatura mundial com incidência relevante numa das suas obras. Falamos do nome de Leão Tolstói e do seu romance-epopeia Guerra e paz; por outro, percorrer uma parte do universo das traduções para a língua portuguesa desta obra através de uma abordagem contrastiva com assento em teorias modelares no sentido de fazer sobressair o funcionamento e as vicissitudes dessas traduções no contexto português de chegada, quer na situação de traduções diretas quer de traduções mediadas através da língua francesa. Para o nosso estudo de caso de Guerra e paz partimos de uma perspetiva comunicativo-funcional que nos permitiu analisar os fatores comunicacionais envolvidos na comunicação intercultural de culturas e línguas muito diferentes e específicas. Desta forma, partimos, em primeiro lugar, da abordagem semiótica de Mikhail Bakhtin e Iúri Lotman, bem como da teoria de polissistemas de Itamar Evan-Zohar. Isso permitiu-nos analisar o comportamento das traduções no polissistema de chegada. Paralelamente, a teoria comunicativo-funcional permitiu-nos realizar a análise do processo comunicacional entre as duas culturas em foco. Estas duas vias eram as que, a nosso ver, mais adequadas se apresentavam para a realização do caminho escolhido, face às características poéticas da obra tolstoiana e às estratégias adotadas pelos tradutores portugueses na resolução dos problemas das traduções realizadas. O caráter inovador da literatura russa em geral, bem como a importância das obras tolstoianas em particular para a literatura e cultura portuguesas, fica claramente demonstrado através do múltiplo material recolhido e analisado ao longo do todo o trabalho. As abundantes traduções portuguesas das obras tolstoianas, mesmo sendo mais tardias do que nas outras línguas da Europa Ocidental, foram, de facto, indicadores evidentes da importância deste autor russo para o polissistema cultural e literário português.
To the West, the vast empire of the tsars has for a long time been, in part or in whole, a mysterious place. The relationship between Russia and Portugal was limited and sporadic. Portugal’s geoposition on the edge of Western Europe facilitated this situation. However, and interestingly, relations between the two countries began early. A few names among many possible ones that are emblematic of the relationship will be highlighted: that of the illustrious doctor Ribeiro Sanches, who appears at various times in Russian history; that of the confessed disciple of the great Tolstoy, Jaime de Magalhães Lima; that of António Quadros, man of letters; and that of a Russian living in Madeira by the name of Vakcel. Travel memoires, the press and an important nineteenth-century written study concerning Russian literature, in Portuguese, will be analysed. The objective of this thesis is to explore the aforementioned relations in order to better understand the importance and customs of the nuclei of this study; on the one hand, proceeding to the hermeneutics, to situate and establish boundaries and to perceive the reception of Russian literature in Portugal, concentrating on the case of one of the most notable names of world literature, namely Leo Tolstoy and his epic romance War and Peace. On the other hand, examining some of the translations into Portuguese of this work in a contrastive methodology based on modular theories, so as to highlight the workings and vicissitudes of the translations in the context of Portuguese as target language, whether in direct translations or translations via French. For the case study War and Peace a communicational-functional perspective was taken that allowed an analysis of the communicational factors involved in the inter-cultural communication of diverse cultures and languages. Thus, firstly we start from the semiotic analysis of Mikhail Bakhtin and Iúri Lotman, as well as the polisystems theory of Itmar Evan-Zohar. This enabled an analysis of the behavior of the translations in the receiving polisystem. In parallel, the theory of communicational-function allowed an analysis of the communicational process between the two cultures under study. These two approaches were considered to be the best suited to achieve the designated objective, given the poetical characteristics of Tolstoy’s work and the strategies adopted by Portuguese translators to overcome translation difficulties, for instance strategies of readability and adaptation. The innovative character of Russian literature in general, as well as the importance of Tolstoy’s work especially for Portuguese literature and culture, is clearly shown through the large amount of material collected and analysed throughout the thesis. The many Portuguese translations of Tolstoy, even if later than those of other Western European languages, were, in fact, evident indications of this Russian author’s importance to the Portuguese cultural and literary polisystem.

This dissertation examines Tolstoy’s reevaluation of his creative approaches to writing through the medium of his experimental pedagogical work with the peasant children on his estate. It is argued that Tolstoy’s pedagogical interlude forms an important bridge to the writer’s fiction and should not be viewed as a digression from his development as a writer, but as an integral part of it. This project explores how the educational essays Tolstoy wrote during this period facilitate his transition from championing the aesthetic theory of “pure art” in his formative years as a writer for The Contemporary to a more mature author of War and Peace, the major masterwork that is imbued with conclusions reached during his pedagogical interlude. Tolstoy’s evolution as a writer is examined in the context of his relationship to the aesthetic ideas of the 1850’s that became a springboard for Tolstoy’s later aesthetic concepts. A comprehensive textual analysis of Tolstoy’s lesser known early works such as Notes from Lucerne and “Albert” is undertaken in order to highlight some of their important stylistic peculiarities that provide a valuable insight into the authorial presence and the nature of Tolstoy’s aesthetic rhetoric. Further, it is demonstrated how the school at Yasnaya Polyana becomes the writer’s experimental workshop, a testing ground for Tolstoy’s pedagogical theories and his creative ideas, which he checks against his students’ perception. Finally, the study is concluded by examining Tolstoy’s most encompassing work, his epic novel War and Peace through the medium of his educational writings and ideas. By locating some of the main concepts of his pedagogical philosophy in the context of this monumental masterwork, we illuminate their meaning more clearly as filtered through the prism of Tolstoy’s creative thought in order to demonstrate to what extent Tolstoy’s educational ideas informed his creative writings. It is established that all the central principles of Tolstoy’s educational thought such as his pedagogy of freedom, his ideas of aesthetic education through reading, art and music, his religious and moral education found their reflections on the pages of War and Peace and commend a great deal to a modern educator.
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War and Peace and Anna Karenina are widely recognized as two of the greatest novels ever written. Their author, Leo Tolstoy, has been honoured as the father of the modern war story, and as an innovator in psychological prose and forerunner of stream of consciousness. Leo Tolstoy: A Very Short Introduction examines the life and work of Leo Tolstoy, exploring both his celebrated novels and non-fiction writings, addressing the eternal questions of love, death, war, peace, faith, and activism found in them. It also considers Tolstoy’s different roles as a writer, thinker, and activist, highlighting those aspects of his work that are still relevant today.

The dangers of political violence and the possibilities of non-violence were the central themes of three lives which changed the twentieth century—Leo Tolstoy, writer and aristocrat who turned against his class; Mohandas Gandhi, who corresponded with Tolstoy and considered him the most important person of the time; and Nelson Mandela, prisoner and statesman, who read War and Peace on Robben Island and who, despite having led a campaign of sabotage, saw himself as a successor to Gandhi. Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela tried to create transformed societies to replace the dying forms of colony and empire. They found the inequalities of Russia, India, and South Africa intolerable, yet they questioned the wisdom of seizing the power of the state, creating new kinds of political organization and imagination to replace the old promises of revolution. Their views, along with their ways of leading others, are closely connected, from their insistence on working with their own hands and reforming their individual selves to their acceptance of death. On three continents, in a century of mass mobilization and conflict, they promoted strains of nationalism devoid of antagonism, prepared to take part in a general peace. Looking at Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Mandela in sequence, taking into account their letters and conversations, as well as the institutions they created or subverted, placing at the centre their treatment of the primal fantasy of political violence, reveals a vital radical tradition which stands outside the conventional categories of twentieth-century history and politics.

Tolstoy is often hailed as the father of the modern war story. What makes Tolstoy’s writing on war so good—and so modern—is how he seems to tell the truth about war. As he drew on his first-hand experience of warfare in the Caucasus and Crimea, Tolstoy made it clear that he was not going to repeat old lies to the effect that ‘it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country’. ‘Tolstoy on war and on peace’ explains that Tolstoy went further in his truth-telling to reveal not just that war is hell, but that it violates the ‘law of love’ that the participants profess. It explores ‘The Raid’, the Sevastopol tales, War and Peace, and Hadji Murat.

Death was a fact of Tolstoy’s life from the start. He lost both of his parents during childhood and then, as a young man, Tolstoy witnessed and caused death at war. Death continued to haunt him. Whether he was writing about a war zone, a pastoral landscape, a slum, or a family estate, Tolstoy’s works are set in the ‘valley of the shadow of death’. One of Tolstoy’s missions as a writer was to remind readers of their own mortality and to make them think about how to live and love in the face of death. ‘Death’ discusses Tolstoy’s treatment of dying in Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; War and Peace; Anna Karenina; and ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’.

This chapter analyzes the Clausewitzian concept of war as reflected in Leo Tolstoy's novel War and Peace, which first appeared in five installments from 1865 to 1869. It is universally considered one of the masterpieces of world literature, not only because Tolstoy used elements from Clausewitz in preparation for writing the novel, but more specifically because the narrative echoes one of Clausewitz's most famous theses: that which concerns the “strategic superiority of defense over offense.” Tolstoy's new interpretation of this thesis goes back, in a certain sense, to the “source” of its elaboration in order to draw new philosophical consequences from it.

Tolstoy’s love life has been extensively documented and debated. Tolstoy himself addressed all this directly in letters, in diaries, and in frank conversation with memoirists; others involved, including his wife, also left their own accounts. ‘Love’ explains that Tolstoy’s major fiction, known for its autobiographical and ‘autopsychological’ elements, roughly follows the trajectory of Tolstoy’s life and loves. It documents Tolstoy’s views on love, sex, marriage, adultery, and family happiness in Childhood, Boyhood, Youth; War and Peace; Anna Karenina; ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’; and ‘Alyosha Pot’. Tolstoyan heroes are often haunted by the Ant Brothers’ dream of love and happiness for all. It may be an insurmountable obstacle on their course toward family happiness or sexual bliss.

The author of the article raises the question of the genetic relationship of the Russian novel of the second half of the 19th century with the epic, notes that it is precisely on the scale of the epic worldview that the global goal was set for themselves by Russian writers, when arguing about the need for universal coverage and understanding of life, of the insight of Divine laws. The article proves that one of the features of the epic novel included the turn to the popular worldview, but at the same time Russian writers were able to create an artistic world in which the importance of the personality is not diminished. The epic novel “War and Peace” opened up the opportunity for many of Leo Tolstoy’s contemporaries to create an epic novel based on the material of new and recent Russian history and contemporary life. The author analyses the features present in “War and Peace” and Leo Tolstoy’s epic novels “Anna Karenina” and “Resurrection” — the ratio of the personal and the common, the special integrity and totality of the artistic world, the objectivity of the narrative, the wide scope of events, the precedent picture of the world, etc. All the deeds of the heroes in the epic novel are evaluated not only from the position of a specific time, but from the position of eternity, from the point of view of religious consciousness.