“A Family Thought” (based on the novel “Anna Karenina”). Service department Family thought in the novel L

The purpose of the lesson: determine the meaning of “family thought” in the novel; develop the ability to analyze text.

Methodical methods: teacher's lecture; questions conversation.

Lesson equipment:

During the classes

I. Teacher's word

In the center of Leo Tolstoy's novel is the life of several families, their history. The question arises: why, after the epic novel "War and Peace", dedicated to the study of the history of the people, their struggle, movement, Tolstoy turns to the study of private, family life?

Finishing "War and Peace", Tolstoy once quoted an old French proverb: "Happy peoples have no history." In "Anna Karenina" the family story - "what happened after the marriage" - is filled with struggle, movement, dramatic tension.

As for happiness, it, as a special, exceptional state, "has no history." And marriage, family, life are not only happiness, but, as Tolstoy believed, “the wisest thing in the world”, “the most difficult and most important thing in life”, which also has its own history.

“Family thought” thus turns out to be connected in Tolstoy with “folk thought”.

Before talking about the embodiment of “family thought” in Tolstoy’s novel, let us turn again to Pushkin’s novel and try to find the origins of this thought.

II. Class work.

Let us recall how Belinsky explained the actions and characters of Pushkin's heroes in the light of their relationship to the family.

(About Eugene Onegin, Belinsky writes: “If he could still be interested in the poetry of passion, then the poetry of marriage not only did not interest him, but was disgusting to him.” This largely explains the sermon that Onegin read to Tatyana in love: “No matter how much I loved If I get used to you, I’ll fall out of love immediately". As for Tatyana, in her character Belinsky was most struck by loyalty and attachment to the "family circle". A sense of family, a sense of duty, loyalty to this word do not allow Tatyana to respond to Onegin's awakened feelings, despite that she still loves him.)

Teacher. Tolstoy recalled an incident that happened to Pushkin. Once he said to one of his friends: “Imagine what a thing my Tatiana did to me! She got married. I didn't expect that from her." Tolstoy could say about the same about his heroine: “In general, my heroes and heroines sometimes do things that I would not want: they do what they have to do in real life and as it happens in real life, and not what I I want to".

Tolstoy in his novel gave full scope to both the "poetry of passion" and the "poetry of marriage", connecting them with his "family thought". He seemed to be thinking about what would have become of Pushkin's Tatyana if she had violated her duty. The fulfillment of the most passionate desires, requiring so many sacrifices, such a decisive disregard for the opinions of others, does not bring happiness to either Anna or Vronsky.

In Anna Karenina, in contrast to the idyllic idea of “family happiness”, Tolstoy explores the phenomenon of family unhappiness. In one of the drafts, he wrote: “We like to imagine misfortune as something concentrated, an accomplished fact, while misfortune is never an event; and misfortune is life, a long, unhappy life, that is, a life in which the atmosphere of happiness remains, but happiness, the meaning of life, is lost.

How do you understand this idea of Tolstoy? Do you agree with her? What examples illustrate Tolstoy's idea of discord, of family unhappiness?

(The motive of general discord sounds throughout Tolstoy’s novel. This is especially noticeable precisely in a narrow, domestic, family circle. The novel opens with two phrases that can be considered as brief introductions. The first phrase: “All happy families are alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in their own way" - a philosophical introduction, the second: "Everything was mixed up in the Oblonskys' house" - an eventful one.

Misfortune, discord reigns in the Oblonskys' house: "All family members and household members felt that there was no point in their cohabitation and that at every inn people who accidentally came together were more connected to each other than they, family members and Oblonsky households." Anna is unhappy in the house of Karenin, who has entangled her in a "web of lies." She does not find happiness in life with Vronsky, the search for happiness, disappointment, despair lead her to tragedy, to death. Even in Levin's estate, in a seemingly happy family, a shadow of misunderstanding, discord, doubts glides, separating loved ones. The “family thought” takes on a special poignancy and becomes an alarming factor of the times.)

One of the early drafts of the novel was called Two Marriages. This theme remains in the novel.

How does Tolstoy portray the families of Karenin and Levin?

(It seems that the family stories of Anna and Levin are built in contrast: the unhappy Karenin is opposed to the happily married Levin. On the other hand, there is something in common between these heroes. Both of them are supporters of the indissolubility of marriage. But the Karenin family is being destroyed, despite his efforts to maintain at least the appearance prosperous family. Karenin bitterly realizes that love is no more. Tolstoy even writes sympathetically about him, considering his view of the family to be true. However, Karenin is helpless before the new trends of the times, before living life.

For Levin, "duties to the land, to the family" constitute something whole. But he, too, feels vague anxiety, is tormented by doubts, and realizes that the established course of life has been disrupted. Kitty plays the leading role in Levin's family history. She understands Levin, even guesses his thoughts (remember the scene of the explanation). They seem to be meant for each other. But Kitty is too selfish, and in accordance with this, life in Pokrovsky suits her. She considers Levin's feelings, his inner life a matter of his conscience and does not try to delve into it. She keeps family happiness in her own way, not noticing that it gradually loses its inner content, the meaning of life is lost. Levin was increasingly captured by the idea of simplification, renunciation of property, a break with the nobility, "life according to conscience", and relations with his wife inevitably become more complicated.)

Teacher. The fate of the characters is dependent on family traditions. Karenin, Anna, Vronsky, who grew up practically outside the family (Karenin "grew up an orphan", Anna too; Vronsky was brought up in the Corps of Pages), could not create or maintain a real family. The Oblonsky family, although "unhappy", is held together thanks to Dolly. Dolly, like her sister Kitty, grew up in a "real" family, which helps Kitty build a family with Levin. Tolstoy emphasizes the leading position of a woman as the keeper of the hearth.

Karenin is unsuccessful in the role of the head of the family, Levin - in the "science of the economy." Just as Levin was looking for “simplification” in family life, so in the affairs of the household he comes to the idea of renunciation: “It was a renunciation of his old life, of his useless knowledge.” The writer looked for the pledge and origins of the revival of the family principle in the life of the patriarchal peasantry. Levin, as it were, repeats the path of Tolstoy. Thus the “folk thought” in Anna Karenina grows out of the seed of “family thought”.

Homework.

Select and analyze episodes related to the image of Konstantin Levin.

Lesson 4

The image of Lenin in the novel by L. N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina"

The purpose of the lesson: determine the meaning of the image of Lenin in the novel.

Methodical methods: questions conversation.

Lesson equipment: portrait of L. N. Tolstoy by Kramskoy; publication of the novel "Anna Karenina".

During the classes

I. Checking homework

What is the place of the image of Lenin in the overall structure of the novel?

(The image of Levin occupies one of the leading places in the novel. He appears on the pages of the novel earlier than Anna Karenina, and the novel ends with Levin's thoughts about the meaning of life.

In "Anna Karenina", unlike "War and Peace", there are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic digressions. In this novel, Levin is most often the spokesman for the author's position.)

What do we learn about the character when he first appears in the novel? What is the purpose of Levin's visit to Moscow?

(Levin first appears on the pages of the novel in the fifth chapter of the first part. Lenin comes to the service of his old friend Steve Oblonsky. We get the first impression of him from the mouth of the watchman, who did not let Levin into the hall of presence until the end of the meeting: “Some. .. climbed in without asking, as soon as I turned away. ”And in fact, Levin seems to be a man of the people: broad-shouldered, with a curly beard, without removing his sheepskin hat, quickly and easily ran upstairs ... "

We learn that Stiva Oblonsky and Levin loved each other, "despite the difference in characters and tastes, as friends who met in their first youth love each other." These two characters are immediately opposed by the author in everything from appearance to outlook on life. Levin lives in the country, he is a landowner. Oblonsky was born among those people "who were and have become the mighty of this world", and takes the place of the head of one of the offices in Moscow. Oblonsky laughed at his friend's way of life. “In the same way, Levin in his heart despised both the urban lifestyle of his friend and his service, which he considered trifles, and laughed at it.”

Oblonsky introduces Levin to his colleagues: "A zemstvo activist, a new zemstvo man, a gymnast who lifts five pounds with one hand, a cattle breeder and a hunter, and my friend Konstantin Dmitritch Levin." For Levin, an indifferent attitude to the matter is impossible. Having ceased to believe in the effectiveness and necessity of zemstvo meetings, he ceases to engage in zemstvo activities. In the future, we see the hero in constant search, in doubt, at a crossroads in life.

In addition, we become aware of the reason for Levin's arrival in Moscow: he decided to propose to Kitty Shcherbatskaya, sister-in-law of Stiva Oblonsky. Lenin is refused: Kitty thinks she is in love with Vronsky, who is already infatuated with Anna Karenina. So the fates of the main characters are intertwined.)

How does Levin perceive Kitty's refusal?

(It seems to Levin that he is not worthy of this girl. He sees the reason for the refusal in his imperfection: “Yes, there is something in me that is disgusting, repulsive ... Who am I? And what am I? necessary". Levin is prone to introspection, he is constantly in doubt, in search of a life path.)

II. Transition to the topic of the lesson.

Teacher. Tolstoy's heroes always follow uncharted paths, but the point of Tolstoy's psychological analysis is to choose the only solutions from a multitude of options. The only possible way turns out to be the most characteristic.

What ways, what opportunities did Levin see for himself to change his life?

(Levin has his own temptations. He is ready to change his life dramatically. And then he thinks about various possibilities: “Have a wife? Have a job and the need for work? Leave Pokrovskoye? Buy land? Join society? Marry a peasant woman? - he asked himself again and could not find an answer.

Teacher. In his "Confession" Tolstoy said "I lived badly." He meant that, living “like everyone else”, not thinking about the “common good”, he cared about “improving his life”, was immersed in the familiar world of landowner life on the estate. And suddenly the historical and moral injustice of this life was revealed to him. The injustice of "excess" in comparison with the "poverty of the people."

And then he had a desire to get rid of life "in the exceptional conditions of epicureanism", "satisfaction of lust and passions." “I tried with all my might to get away from life,” writes Tolstoy in Confession. “The thought of suicide came to me as naturally as thoughts of improving my life came.”

How are these experiences of Tolstoy reflected in the novel Anna Karenina?

(Tolstoy's hero, Levin, experiences a similar anxiety: "And a happy family man, a healthy man, Levin was so close to suicide several times that he hid the string so as not to hang himself on it, and was afraid to walk with a gun so as not to shoot himself." This phrase seems paradoxical. A happy family life is after all a life, and not an exceptional state of happiness. The wedding that Levin dreamed of does not end the line of this hero, it receives a new, more complex development.)

What place does the description of Levin's marriage take in the novel?

(Describing the matchmaking, Levin’s preparations for the wedding, Tolstoy shows just that very exceptional state of happiness. The hero is “in a state of madness, in which it seemed to him that he and his happiness constitute the main and only goal of everything that exists.” Levin has no plans and goals for the future life, he leaves the decision to others, "knowing that everything will be fine" (Part Five, Chapter I).

Let us recall that Karenin's condition in misfortune was about the same - he "could not decide anything himself, did not know himself what he wanted now, and, having given himself into the hands of those who dealt with his affairs with such pleasure, he answered with consent to everything." Of course, the states of Levin and Karenin are polar: happiness-unhappiness, but the similarity lies in the "lack of independence" that is inherent in a person in exceptional situations.

In the scene of Levin's fasting (Part Five, Ch. I), Tolstoy expresses his doubts about God: “My main sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and for the most part I am in doubt.” Here the key idea about the choice of path is expressed, which is so important for Levin. The priest says: "You are entering a time of life when you have to choose a path and stick to it."

In the next, second chapter, views on marriage and the family are expressed by Levin's friends, convinced bachelors. The extreme thoughts on this matter belong to Katavasov: “People who cannot do anything should do people, and the rest should contribute to their enlightenment and happiness.”

During the wedding, Levin is struck by the words of the priest about God's help. “How did they guess that help, exactly help? Levin thinks. - What do I know? What can I do in this terrible business ... without help? I need help right now."

The feeling of unclouded happiness leaves Levin, he thinks that "it was all childishness and that this is something that he did not understand until now and now understands even less."

The guests gathered in the church remember their young years, full of hopes for happiness, and everyone thinks about their disappointments and the collapse of hopes.

The first five chapters of the fifth part are contrasted with the description of the beginning of the joint life of Anna Karenina and Vronsky that follows them.)

How and under the influence of what do Levin's views change at the end of the novel?

(It sometimes seems to Levin that “it depends on him to change that so painful, idle, artificial and personal life that he lived, to this working, clean and general charming life.” Levin was sure that the change depended on him. But life decreed otherwise .

In the last part of the novel, Tolstoy talks about Levin's meeting with the simple peasant Fyodor during the harvest. “It was the most hasty working time, when such an extraordinary tension of self-sacrifice in labor is manifested in the whole people, which does not appear in any other conditions of life and which would be highly appreciated if people who display these qualities would themselves appreciate them, if it would not be repeated every year, and if the consequences of this tension were not so simple.

“The extraordinary tension of self-sacrifice,” which Levin saw and felt in the people, completely changed the way he thought)

Teacher. About the same thing Tolstoy writes about himself in his “Confession”: “The simple working people around me were the Russian people, and I turned to them and to the meaning that they give to life.”

Levin's dream of simplification merges with the ideal of a "working and lovely life." “Levin often admired this life, often experienced a feeling of envy for people living this life.”

How did Lenin see the future of the people?

(Levin came to the idea of the need for change, and in this he saw the meaning of life: “You just need to persevere towards your goal, and I will achieve my goal,” thought Levin, “and there is something to work and work for. This is not my personal business. "and here is the question of the common good. The whole economy, the main thing is the condition of the whole people, must completely change. Instead of poverty - general wealth, contentment; instead of enmity - harmony and connection of interests. In a word, a revolution, a bloodless, but the greatest revolution, first in a small circle of our county, then the province, Russia, the whole world. Because a just thought cannot but be fruitful.")

What metaphor is used by Tolstoy to express the search for truth?

(“Now he was, as if against his will, deeper and deeper into the ground, like a plow, so that he could no longer get out without opening the furrow,” Tolstoy writes about Levin.

Comparison of the search for truth with the eternal plowing of the soil is a deep definition of the main idea of the novel. This metaphor is the core of the social, moral and artistic meaning of Anna Karenina.)

Introduction………………………………………………………3

I. The creative concept of the novel

1. History of creation……………………………………….5

2. Predecessors of work……………………………..11

1. The concept of "family" in the works of Tolstoy……………..16

2. Development of the theme of family and home in the novel…….……….....18

III. The meaning of the novel………………………………………31

Conclusion……………………………………………….33

References……………………………………….35

Annex 1 ……………………………………………….37

Introduction

The purpose of this study:reveal the reflection of "family thought" in the novel by L. N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina".

To achieve the goal of the work, it is necessary to solve tasks:

Study critical literature on the novel;

Consider the artistic originality of the novel "Anna Karenina"

Identify the manifestation of the hypothesis of "family thought".

During the study, the works and articles of famous writers studying the life and work of L.N. Tolstoy were studied: N.N. Naumov, E.G. Babaev, K.N. Lomunov, V. Gornoy and others.

So in the article by V. Gornaya “Observations on the novel “Anna Karenina””, in connection with the analysis of the work, an attempt is made to show adherence to Pushkin's traditions in the novel.

In the works of Babaev E.G. the originality of the novel, its plot and compositional line are analyzed.

Bychkov S.P. writes about the controversy in the literary environment of that time, caused by the publication of Leo Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina".

The work consists of an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a list of references, an appendix.

In 1878, the article "Karenina and Levin" was published in the journal M. M. Stasyulevich "Bulletin of Europe". The author of this hundredThi was A. V. Stankevich, brother of the famous philosopher and poet N. V. Stankevich. He argued that Tolstoy wrote instead of foot or two novels. As a "man of the forties", Stankevich frankly adhered to the old Testament concepts of the "rulenom" genre. He ironically called "Anna Karenina" a novel "a novel of wide breathing", comparing it with medieval multi-volume narratives that did notwhen they found "numerous and grateful readers." Since then, the philosophical and literary taste has been "purified" so much that "indisputable norms" have been created, the violation of which is not in vain for the writer.

Anna's rebellion against the false morality of the world turns out to be fruitless. She becomes a victim not only of her conflict with society, but also of what is in her from this very society (“the spirit of lies and deceit”) and with which her own moral sense cannot reconcile. The tragic feeling of guilt does not leave her. Reflecting on her relationship with Vronsky, Anna clearly and frankly formulates the very essence of the contradiction, the tragic insolubility of which predetermines the whole unbearability of her situation: “If I could be anything but a mistress passionately loving only his caresses; but I cannot and do not want to be anything else.

The origins of Anna's tragedy are not only in external obstacles, but also in herself, in the nature of her passion, in the impossibility of escaping the pangs of conscience. The central problem for the novel is considered on the example of several married couples: Anna Karenin, Dolly Oblonsky, Kitty Levin.

Anna Karenina, a novel that enslaved the minds of an entire generation, provided topics for controversy and reflected a social era.

I. Creative Intention

1. History of creation

Happy is he who is happy at home

L.N. Tolstoy

The largest social novel by L.N. Tolstoy in the history of classicalRussian and world literature"Anna Karenina" has in the most essential, namely, in ideasnom enrichment of the original idea, a creative history typical of the great works of the great writer.

The novel was begun under the direct influence of Pushkin, and in particular his unfinished art work.excerpt “Guests came to the dacha”, locatedpublished in the V volume of Pushkin's works in the edition of P. Annenkov. "I somehow after work, wrote Tolstoy in an unsent letter to N. Strakhov, I took this volume of Pushkin and, as always (it seems to be the 7th time), re-read everything, unable to tear myself away, and as if reading it again. But more than that, he seemed to have resolved all my doubts. Not only Pushkin before, but I don't think I've ever admired anything so much. Shot, Egyptian nights, Captain's daughter. And there is an excerpt "The guests were going to the dacha." I involuntarily, inadvertently, not knowing why and what will happen, forthought of faces and events, began to continue, then, oncemaybe I changed it, and suddenly it started so beautifully and abruptly that a novel came out, which I have now finished in rough outline, a very lively, hot and finished novel, which I am very pleased with and which will be ready, if God grants healthblood, in 2 weeks and which has nothing to do with everything that I have been struggling with for a whole year. If I finish it, I will print it as a separate book.

An excited and enthusiastic interest in Pushkin and his brilliant creations in prose was preserved by the writer in the future. He told S. A. Tolstoy: “I learn a lot from Pushkin, he is my father, and I have to learn from him.”With the Belkin Tale in mind, Tolstoy wrote in somecorrected letter to P. D. Golokhvastov: "The writer must never stop studying this treasure." And later, in a letter to the same addressee, he talked about the “goodactive influence" of Pushkin, whose reading "ifarouses to work, then unmistakably. Thus, the numerous confessions of Tolstoy are clearlytestify that Pushkin was a force for himthe greatest stimulus to creative work.

What exactly attracted Tolstoy's attention in Pushkin's passage "Guests came to the dacha" can be judged from his words: "This is how to write, said Tolstoy. ¡ Pushkin gets right down to business. Another would begin to describe the guests, the rooms, but he puts it into action right away.So, not the interior, not the portraits of the guests and not the traditionaldetailed descriptions in which the situation of the action was drawn, and the action itself, the direct development of the plot all this attracted the author of Anna Karenina.

The creation of those chapters of the novel, which describe the congress of guests at Betsy Tverskaya after the theater, is connected with Pushkin's passage "Guests came to the dacha". This is how the novel was supposed to begin. The plot-compositional closeness of these chapters and Pushkin's passage, as well as the similarity of the situations in which the popegiven by Pushkin's Zinaida Volskaya and Tolstoy's Anna are obvious. But even the beginning of the novel in the latest edition is devoid of any "introductory" descriptions; if you do not have in mind the moralistic maxim, it immediately, in Pushkin'sski plunges the reader into the thick of things at the Oblon housesky. “Everything is mixed up in the Oblonsky house” what is mixed elk, the reader does not know, he will find out later, but this shi a famous phrase coolly ties the knot of events, whichwhich will be developed later. Thus, the beginning of "Anna Karenina" is written in the artistic manner of Pushkin, and the whole novel was created in an atmosphere of deepthe greatest interest in Pushkin and Pushkin's prose. And it is hardly by chance that the writer chose as a protolike his heroine, the daughter of the poet Maria Alexandrovna Gartung, capturing the expressive features of her appearance in the guise of Anna.

"Anna Karenina" occupied the creative mind of the writer for more than four years. In the process of artistic implementation, its original design has undergone fundamental changes. From a novel about an "unfaithful wife", which at first bore the names "Two Marriages", "Two Fours", "Anna Karenina" turned into a major social novel, reflecting an entire era in the life of Russia in vivid typical images.

As early as the beginning of 1870, Tolstoy's creative mind outlined a story about a married woman "from high society, but who lost herself," and she was supposed to look "only pathetic and not guilty." Numerous ideas and plans that occupied the writer then, all the time distracted him from this plot. Only after writing "The Prisoner of the Caucasus", publishing the "Azbuka" and the final decision to refuse to continue the "Peter's novel", Tolstoy returned to the family plot that arose more than three years ago.

It is clear from the letters that Tolstoy himself imagined his new work to be rough-finished already in the spring of 1873. In fact, however, the work on the novel turned out to be much longer. New heroes, new episodes, events, themes and motives were introduced. The image of the title character underwent processing and rethinking, the individual characteristics of other characters were deepened and the emphasis in the author's assessment was shifted. This greatly complicated the plot and composition, led to a modification of the genre nature of the novel. As a result, the work stretched out for a whole four years - until the middle of 1877. During this time, twelve editions of the novel were formed. From January 1875, the publication of Anna Karenina began in the journal Russkiy Vestnik, and in 1878 the novel was published as a separate edition.

Initially, the work was conceived as a family-household novel. In a letter to N. Strakhov, Tolstoy says that this is his first novel of this kind. The statement is not accurate: Tolstoy's first experience in the genre of a family novel, as you know, was Family Happiness. The main, basic thought that Tolstoy loved and strove to embody artistically in his new novel was "family thought". It arose and took shape at an early stage in the creation of Anna Karenina. This thought determined the theme and content of the novel, the relationship between the characters and the essence of the novel conflict, the dramatic intensity of the action, the main plot line and the genre form of the work. The atmosphere surrounding the characters was of an intimate chamber character. The social space of the novel looked extremely narrow.

Tolstoy soon felt that within the framework of the family plot he was cramped. And, continuing to develop the same plot situation - about a "woman who has lost herself", Tolstoy gave the story about the intimate experiences of the characters a deep socio-philosophical meaning, an important topical social sound.

Tolstoy always responded to the demands of modernity with extraordinary sensitivity. In the previous epic novel, there was only "the secret presence of modernity"; the novel "Anna Karenina" is burningly modern in terms of material, problems and the entire artistic conception. As the novel's plot unfolds with increasing tension, Tolstoy "captures" and introduces into the narrative many questions that worried both the author himself and his contemporaries. This is not only family relations, but also social, economic, civil, and generally human. All the most important aspects and phenomena of modernity in their real complexity, intricacy and mutual cohesion are fully and vividly reflected in Anna Karenina. Each of those families that are depicted in the novel is naturally and organically included in the life of society, in the movement of the era: the private life of people appears in close connection with historical reality and in its causation.

In its final form, "Anna Karenina" became a socio-psychological novel, retaining, however, all the qualities and genre features of a family novel. Being a multi-problem work, the novel "Anna Karenina" acquired the features of a modern epic a comprehensive story about the fate of the people as a whole, about the state of Russian society in a difficult, critical period of existence for it, about the future of the country, nation, Russia.

The time of action in "Anna Karenina" is synchronous with the time of the creation of the novel. This is the post-reform era, more precisely: the 70s of the 19th century with an excursion into the previous decade. This is a period of greatly shaken and "turned over" Russian social reality, when the end of the patriarchal immobility of Russia came.

Tolstoy expressively and aptly defined the essence of the radical changes that have taken place and are taking place in the words of Konstantin Levin: “... now that all this has turned upside down and is only just getting in place, the question of how these conditions will fit in, there is only one important question in Russia ... ".

Tolstoy's heroes live and act at the very beginning of this period, when life put before them "all the most complex and insoluble questions." What answer would be given to them, neither the writer himself, nor his double Levin, nor the other heroes of Anna Karenina had any clear idea. There was a lot of obscure, incomprehensible and therefore disturbing. One thing was visible: everything had moved from its place, and everything was in motion, on the road, on the way. And the image of the train that appears more than once in the novel, as it were, symbolizes the historical movement of the era. In the running and roar of the train - the noise, roar and rapid run of time, epoch. And no one knew whether the direction of this movement was determined correctly, whether the destination station was chosen correctly.

The crisis, turning point post-reform era appears in Tolstoy's novel not only as a historical and social background, against which graphically clearly "drawn" characters rich in realistic colors appear, frames of a dramatic narrative run and a tragic denouement of the main conflict takes place, but it is that living, objective a given reality in which the heroes are constantly immersed and which surrounds them everywhere and everywhere. And since they all breathe the air of their era and feel its "tremors", each shows a characteristic imprint of the "shaken" time - anxiety and anxiety, self-doubt and distrust of people, a premonition of a possible catastrophe.

The era was reflected more in the emotions of the heroes of the novel than in their minds. Tolstoy, in all complexity, completeness and artistic truth, recreated the social, moral and family atmosphere, saturated with lightning charges, which, either explicitly and directly, or most often indirectly and covertly, affects the state of mind of his characters, their subjective world, psyche and stock. thoughts, on the general moral character of people. Hence the intensity of experiences and the intensity of human passions that the most significant heroes of Anna Karenina live by, their sharp reaction - positive or negative - to what is happening in life, the intricacies of their relationship.

2. Predecessors of the work.

Tolstoy's literary activity after "War and Peace" is characterized mainly by two trends: the expansion of sociality and the deepening of psychologism. The social scope of phenomena has expanded significantly and become more diverse, and the psychological analysis of human nature has deepened. This process was interdependent.

While writing the last pages of the epic novel, Tolstoy, despite the fact that he had been working to the point of exhaustion for more than six years, felt the need to turn to new themes and images. Already in the autumn of 1869, when the last point had not yet been put in the manuscript of "War and Peace" and the chapters of the epilogue were being printed, Tolstoy had the idea to write a "folk novel". To the creative imagination of the writer, this novel was generally presented as an epic narrative based on the material, motives and images of oral folk art, in particular on epics. The protagonists of the novel Tolstoy was going to make epic Russian heroes, among whom Ilya Muromets was seen as the main character, only significantly updated and mentally transferred to the present: this is a Russian intelligent person of the middle of the century, widely educated, well aware of modern philosophical systems, currents and schools and at the same time closely connected with the folk origins of life.

However, the idea of a "folk novel" was soon superseded by another - a historical novel from the Petrine era. Tolstoy began writing a novel about Peter I and the people of his time at the very beginning of 1870 and, sometimes briefly breaking away for new urgent literary and social affairs, continued to work for almost three years. But this novel, too, had to be shelved. The writer himself explained the reason for this as follows: "... I found it difficult for me to penetrate the souls of the people of that time, before they are not like us." There was, apparently, another important reason: the deeper Tolstoy penetrated into the personality of Peter I, comprehended the originality of his moral character and the essence of his practical deeds, the more he felt antipathy for the tsar as a person and a statesman. He was repelled in Peter by cruelty and buffoonery. Later, Tolstoy will unequivocally say: "Tsar Peter was very far from me." Be that as it may, the novel about Peter remained unwritten; Numerous sketches of individual chapters have been preserved, including over thirty variants of the beginnings of the novel.

When the first sketches of the future "Peter's" novel were being made, Tolstoy gradually began to think over the plan of a book for children's reading and elementary education of children, and at the same time began the preliminary collection of materials. The educational book conceived by Tolstoy, called the ABC, went out of print at the end of 1872. Three years later, Tolstoy, having significantly altered the ABC, updated and supplemented its content and, dividing it into two halves, published two separate books - The New ABC and Russian Books for Reading (1875). In the midst of work on the ABC, Tolstoy wrote to one of his friends: “My proud dreams about this alphabet are as follows: only two generations of Russians, all children from royal to peasant, will learn from this alphabet, and they will get their first poetic impressions from it, and that By writing this ABC, I can die in peace."

"ABC" was an educational and pedagogical book: it is both a school manual for primary school students, and a kind of collection of literary texts and popular science articles, that is, something like an anthology. The ABC is divided into four books, each of which in turn consists of four sections: first comes the material for reading exercises, then the texts in Church Slavonic, then the initial information on arithmetic and the natural sciences, and finally the methodological instructions for teachers . Author's advice and instructions addressed to teachers and containing an originally developed methodology for teaching writing and counting, and numerous article-stories on physics, astronomy and natural science, and works of art proper - everything in this book was written or radically reworked by Tolstoy himself. Considering that the "ABC" contains about eight hundred pages, it is easy to imagine what a colossal work the writer spent on its creation.

The purpose of the "ABC", intended mainly for peasant children and the broad masses of the people, who are just joining the primary education, determined the characteristic features of the artistic form of the literary works included in it. They, as a rule, are small in volume and are built on an entertaining and instructive plot, they are distinguished by the utmost conciseness of the narration, clear composition, clarity and simplicity of the author's language and dialogic speech. In the "alphabetic" stories there is neither that in-depth Tolstoyan psychologism, which is called the "dialectic of the soul", nor the syntactically complex construction of the phrase, nor the complicated vocabulary. Poetics, style, language - everything in the "ABC" is new compared to what and how Tolstoy wrote in the previous twenty years. But to his confession, he decisively changed the former "methods of his writing and language." Speaking about new methods of writing and deliberately polemically sharpening his thoughts, Tolstoy declared at the beginning of 1872 that he now did not write and would never again write such "long-winded rubbish" as "War and Peace". Now he strictly demands that in a literary work "everything should be beautiful, short, simple and, most importantly, clear." As for his own "alphabetic" stories, Tolstoy sees their artistic merit "in the simplicity and clarity of drawing and stroke, that is, language."

It was these qualities - the simplicity, conciseness and dynamism of the narrative - that Tolstoy at that time discovered in Russian folklore, and in Pushkin's prose, and in ancient literature. "... Songs, fairy tales, epics," Tolstoy wrote in March 1872, "everything simple will be read as long as there is a Russian language." And further: "... the language that the people speak and in which there are sounds to express everything that a poet can wish to say, is dear to me<...>I just love the definite, clear and beautiful and moderate, and I find all this in folk poetry and language and life, and the opposite in ours ". According to the testimony of the writer's wife, Lev Nikolayevich was carried away by the dream "of a work as pure, elegant, where there would be nothing superfluous, like all ancient Greek literature, like Greek art. "It is known that Tolstoy knew ancient literature and ancient art perfectly, and in order to read the works of ancient authors in the original, from the end of 1870 he began to independently study the Greek language and within three months mastered them to perfection.

The model of those "techniques and language" that Tolstoy at that time began to apply in his work and also intended to use in the future when writing works not only for children, but also "for adults", the writer himself recognized the story "Prisoner of the Caucasus" ( 1872). The story was written specifically for the "ABC". Executed in a new stylistic manner, this work was an outstanding artistic creation of Tolstoy in the early 70s. With the story "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" and the cycle of stories in the "ABC" Tolstoy laid the foundation for realistic prose for children in Russian literature.

Simultaneously with the writing of the "ABC" Tolstoy gave a lot of strength and talent to the cause of public education and school-pedagogical activity, which he resumed after a ten-year break. Tolstoy considered it his duty as a writer and a man to provide energetic practical assistance to make the entire population of Russia literate, to introduce the entire people - and, above all, of course, the peasantry - to education and culture. He was convinced that in Russia the cause of educating the masses of the people could and should "be put on a footing on which it does not stand and has never stood anywhere in Europe." Tolstoy devoted his article "On Public Education" (1874) to this vitally important problem, which was published in Nekrasov's "Notes of the Fatherland". The article sparked a lively discussion. In the Yasnaya Polyana estate, Tolstoy opened a school in January 1872. Classes with students were conducted by the whole family - both Lev Nikolayevich himself and his children Seryozha, Tanya, Ilya.

Tolstoy was alarmed by the abnormal situation in which, due to poverty and widespread illiteracy, undoubtedly talented people are dying among the Russian people! They need to be saved as soon as possible, in every possible way to help him show his natural abilities. At the end of 1874, Tolstoy wrote: “I don’t reason, but when I enter a school and see this crowd of ragged, dirty, thin children, with their bright eyes and so often angelic expressions, anxiety, horror, like the one that I would feel at the sight of drowning people. Ah, fathers, how to pull it out, and who before, whom it was hard to pull out. And here the most precious thing is drowning, precisely that spiritual that is so obviously evident in children. I want education for the people only for that to save those Pushkins, Ostrogradskys, Filarets, Lomonosovs drowning there. And they are teeming in every school." These thoughts and moods, which did not give the writer a single day of rest, permeated his greatest work of art of the 70s - the novel "Anna Karenina".

II. "Family Thought" in the novel

1. The concept of "family" in the work of Tolstoy

The family has always been and will be the "ontological" center of any social and personal upheavals and cataclysms: wars, revolutions, betrayals, quarrels, enmity, as well as peace, love, goodness, joy, and the like. Tolstoy himself called his "family experience" "subjective-universal". He considered the family model of human relations as a universal, generally significant basis of brotherhood, love, forgiveness.etc., since it is our relatives who we tend to forgive first of all, endure insults from them, forget the evil they have caused and pity them for this evil, for the very relationship, the very life together turns their "evil" into their "weakness" , the inability to be kind, makes us, as it were, "accomplices" of this "evil", since a morally normal person simply cannot but feel guilty that a person close to him, dear to him, is "bad".

And at the same time, only within the framework of family life, family ties can there be obvious deviations from the "law of love", flagrant violations of the principles of humanity and morality, which in other situations do not look so shocking (for example, the envy of a son for his father, from which Tolstoy suffered, the wife's hatred for her husband, etc.), when with good reason it can be said that "the enemies of a man are his household." And Tolstoy deeply experienced all these situations, knowing both aggressiveness, and cunning, and the variety of such evil. Remaining in the family until the last days of his life, Tolstoy acted consistently and on principle. His life in conditions of contrast between luxury and poverty, slavery and freedom, "hatred" and "love" proceeded in the most tense, central space of a person's moral existence. Neither war, nor exile, nor social disasters, etc. could not give him as much experience of contact with the vices of life as "family war", "family exile" and "family trouble" gave.

In the family, a person is born and dies; his whole life passes in it. Here, for the first time, he encounters the requirements of the "general", goes through the first school of relations with people and learns with complete obviousness to irrefutable certainty that his happiness is inseparable from the happiness of others and that others are himself.

Tolstoy was convinced that "the human race develops only in the family." Consequently, its destruction in his eyes was fraught with the most terrible consequences for all mankind. The family is the basis, the source of both the genus and the personality. It is necessary for the existence of both "general" and "personal". If the "general" - the human race, the people, society, the state - cannot do without the family, then the individual, according to Tolstoy, lives a full, serious life only in the family. A general need in the form of a deep personal need. And the writer's contemporaries lost the proper understanding of the family, its deepest significance in the life of an individual and society.

2. Development of the theme of family and home in the novel

Tolstoy's "family thought" is revealed in a complex combination of all episodes, events, descriptions of heroes, but still its core is formed by two storylines: Anna - Vronsky, Kitty Levin. It should not be forgotten that, although the novel is named after one heroine, her story takes up only about a third of the entire volume of the work. Levin, who has no direct relation to the fate of Anna, is given no less attention than she is.

The stories of the characters, obviously, develop in parallel and in different directions: Kitty and Levin from disappointment, hard feelings come to lasting and calm family happiness. Anna and Vronsky are steadily and inevitably moving towards tragedy. The relationship between Kitty and Levin is life, the relationship between Anna and Vronsky develops under the sign of death. “How happy it turned out for Kitty then that Anna came,” said Dolly, “and how unfortunate for her. Quite the contrary,” she added, struck by her thought. “Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty considered herself unhappy. vice versa!" . On the contrary, why? On the contrary, the ideas of happiness and good that prevail in society. The reason for the opposite fate of the heroes is their different attitude towards family and marriage. These views do not collide in the public arena of disputes and disputes, and therefore it is impossible, fundamentally impossible, for an eventual, plot connection between the two lines. But the essence of the views of the heroes is fully revealed by their life, their fate. Here Tolstoy follows the philosophical traditions of the Russian realistic novel: Pushkin, Lermontov, Goncharov, Turgenev. Just like his predecessors and contemporaries, the author of "Anna Karenina" shows the impact of the environment on a person, using the same methods of arranging positive and negative principles: exploring how good, honest, just people violate the moral law.

The marriage of Anna and Karenin - this is quite obvious - was almost accidental for her and involuntary for her husband, and for both of them, one of those marriages that are rarely lasting and do not give people happiness, because they are made without the active participation of the heart. without mutual love. About such marriages, Anna herself would later hear frequent conversations in the salon of Betsy Tverskaya. The envoy's wife expressed a view widespread in secular society: feelings, passions are not needed for a happy marriage, love is not needed. "I know happy marriages only by reason," said the envoy's wife. Vronsky, who participated in the dispute, objected to this: “Yes, but how often the happiness of marriages according to reason scatters like dust precisely because that same passion appears that was not recognized ...”. This is exactly what happened in the Karenin family.

Anna and Alexei Karenin lived together for eight years, but very little is said about their married life in the novel, and the first years of their marriage are not mentioned at all. It is not known, for example, how long Anna was "governor" in the provinces and when she and her husband moved to St. Petersburg. Having settled in the capital, Anna freely and easily entered the highest aristocratic society. She was given access to three different circles of selected persons of the St. Petersburg world, where, according to the author, she "had friends and close ties" . One consisted of high-ranking government officials who were closely associated with Karenin and therefore often visited his house, but this "service, official circle of her husband" was rather boring, and Anna avoided him whenever possible. With much greater willingness, Anna appeared in that circle, the center of which was Countess Lidia Ivanovna; Anna usually came there accompanied by her husband, who highly valued the countess. Anna was especially closely connected with the people of the "croquet party" - with the circle of Princess Betsy Tverskoy. Anna was introduced to this salon, which united the cream of Petersburg society, by its mistress, Princess Betsy, who was a distant relative of Anna - the wife of her cousin - and was Vronsky's cousin. Anna willingly and often visited this salon, which later became the place of her meetings with Vronsky.

Obviously, Anna, in marriage, indulged in the usual secular entertainments and pleasures, for which she had a lot of free time. But she did not resemble the young ladies and ladies of St. Petersburg society in that she was distinguished by her modesty of behavior and unconditional marital fidelity. Although something "false in the whole warehouse of their family life" was noticeable, however, outwardly, Anna's life with Karenin looked quite prosperous, monotonously calm, as they say, without storms and upheavals. Anna had a child, and she sincerely took up the upbringing of her Seryozha, whom she loved very much. She was strict about the duties and duties of her wife, and Karenin had no reason or reason for distrusting her, for jealousy and family scenes. In the part of the novel that deals with Anna before her betrayal of her husband, there is not even a mention of clashes between them, quarrels, mutual reproaches and insults, and even more so, hatred for each other. It is not clear that Karenin was faithful to her during the years of their marriage. In a word, for the time being, Anna decisively did not express any dissatisfaction with her family life with Karenin, her fate and her position in secular society.

Karenin is far from being an ideal husband, and he was not a match for her. But still, one should not forget that harsh, pejorative and annihilating judgments came to Anna's mind after her betrayal of Karenin and that her words were dictated by hatred for him, which was born of a flared passion for Vronsky. Accusing her husband that he does not know what love is, does not know at all whether it exists in the world, Anna is silent about the fact that she herself, honestly and conscientiously fulfilling marital duties, also had no concept of love for a long time, until Vronsky awakened this feeling in her.

And just at this time - at the moment of sharp upheavals of her soul and the subsequent abrupt change in her behavior, views and lifestyle - Anna appears before the reader in all her proud beauty and female charm.

Often in critical literature one can find an opinion about Vronsky as a person unworthy of Anna's high love, which they see as the main reason for the death of the heroine. But Tolstoy, without idealizing Vronsky in the least, nevertheless writes that he was a man "with a very kind heart." Charm, beauty, justice, Anna's spiritual and intellectual originality are beyond any doubt. From here, thought most often follows a stable path: all the best perishes and must perish in this accursed world of bourgeois hypocrisy and lies. Indeed, how many novels do we know that tell about obstacles in the way of lovers suffering from broken hopes. In Anna Karenina, the tragic situation develops after and as a result of the fulfillment of the wishes of the characters. The center of gravity is shifted from courtship, rivalry, the expectation of love to the depiction of the life of lovers.

If, for example, in Turgenev's novels the hero is tested by love, by the ability to take one decisive step toward an explanation with his beloved, then in Tolstoy the essence of the hero is revealed in family life, in the process, and not in the moment. In the works that tell about the hero's desire for love, happiness is presented as the fulfillment of desire, and the rest of life, as it were, is deprived of value and meaning. Tolstoy polemically rejected such a view as distorting the essence of a person's life path. According to the author of Anna Karenina, the life time of a person, so beloved by novelists, is not yet life, but only the threshold of it. For the writer, the most responsible and serious period begins when the lovers, united, lead a life together, it is then that a person is revealed and the true price of his ideals and beliefs is revealed.

Undoubtedly, society is to blame for the tragedy of the heroine, but not in the hypocritical condemnation of Anna's connection with Vronsky, but in the actual encouragement of her. As in the novels of Russian writers, Anna Karenina analyzes the impact of social ideals on a person and his fate. Tolstoy's personality has several levels, and the true essence, its core, determining actions and deeds, is not fully realized by the hero. The ideals of the heroes do not become the subject of reflection, discussion, and disputes. They are not theoretical, but organic in nature and are perceived by the heroes as something indisputable, true and poetic, which is recognized by all advanced, real people.

"Vronsky never knew family life" - this is how the chapter tells about his attitude towards Kitty. The phrase is key to the image of the hero, defining and explaining the love story of Vronsky and Anna. It is here that we must look for the origins of the tragedy of these heroes.

Vronsky did not receive a true and although elementary, but most necessary, according to Tolstoy, education in the family. That education that introduces a person to the spiritual foundationslife, not with the help of books, educational institutions, but through direct communication with mother, father, brothers. He did not go through the primary school of human education, where the foundation of personality is laid. “Marriage for him never seemed a possibility. He not only did not like family life, but in the family, and especially in his husband, according to the general view of the bachelor world in which he lived, he imagined something alien, hostile, and most of all - funny."

Tolstoy, following the precepts of the Russian realistic novel, spoke about the upbringing of the hero, which formed the core of his personality, which is made up of sympathies, antipathies, and most importantly, what he loves. Only the upbringing of two heroes - Levin and Vronsky - is reported in the novel, which indicates their special significance for revealing and understanding the tragedy of the main character. The contrast of the beginnings in which Levin and Vronsky were brought up determines the different directions of their life paths.

Tolstoy does not tell in detail how they were brought up, what books they read, who were their teachers and tutors. He reports only one thing, the most important and essential - about the family atmosphere and about the attitude of Levin and Vronsky to their parents, and above all to their mothers. Vronsky "in his soul did not respect his mother and, without giving himself an account of this, did not love her ...". For Levin, the concept of a mother was "a sacred memory, and his future wife should have been in his imagination a repetition of that lovely, holy ideal of a woman, which was for him a mother." The line connecting the image of the mother with the wife was drawn by Tolstoy clearly and definitely. Maternal love, which has fallen to the lot of a child, forms a true, deep and serious attitude towards a woman. "Love for a woman he (Levin)not only could he not imagine without marriage, but he first imagined a family, and then the woman who would give him a family ". And if the general, theoretical views of the heroes of the novel change easily and sometimes even imperceptibly for themselves, then the feelings endured from childhood, constitute a solid foundation of personality.By their very nature, theoretical views must change, develop, and Tolstoy lived just in the era when the emergence and development of ideas in Russia made a qualitative leap, when the abundance, inconsistency and their rapid change became a new phenomenon in Russian public life. And in understanding the family as an institution invariably necessary for humanity, a person should be guided by a reliable, in the eyes of the writer, means - a feeling acquired in life experience. After all, Tolstoy was convinced: "A person knows something completely only by his life.. This is the highest or, rather, the deepest knowledge ".

Vronsky was deprived of that positive experience of a happy life in a family that Levin had. Vronsky's mother blamed Karenina for her son's misfortunes, but in reality the blame lay more on her own. "His mother (Vronsky)was in her youth a brilliant secular woman who, during her marriage, and especially after, had many novels known to the whole world. "The image of the mother, the feeling of the family received by Levin in childhood, guided him in life. Why was he so sure that happiness was achievable "Because he already had it. What should a family be like, how to build relationships between a husband, wife, children? Levin knew the exhaustive answers to these questions - the way his mother and father built them. Seriously ill, homeless, wandering around hotels Nikolai conjures his brother: "Yes, look, do not change anything in the house, but rather get married and start the same thing again that was."

The "deepest knowledge" acquired by the heroes in childhood largely predetermined their fate, gave rise to a special system of feelings in each. Tolstoy shows how something that was embedded in the feelings of the characters unfolds into fate.

Levin and Vronsky - each in his own way experiences, feels his love. These are, as it were, two different, mutually exclusive kinds of love that do not understand and are completely closed to each other.

Vronsky's love closes him in on himself, separating him from people and the outside world, and, in fact, impoverishes him. If before he "amazed and excited people he did not know with his appearance of unshakable calmness, now ... he seemed even more proud and self-sufficient. He looked at people as if they were things.<...>Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt like a king, not because he believed that he had made an impression on Anna - he still did not believe this - but because the impression that she made on him gave him happiness and pride.

Tolstoy, even speaking about the feelings of the hero, not only conveys them, but carefully analyzes them. It shows the strength, the attractiveness of Vronsky's feelings and at the same time reveals their egoistic essence, although it does not have anything repulsive or sinister in its real form. Tolstoy's main subject of depiction and research is human relationships, which puts an ethical assessment at the center of his artistic world. And it is present even in the description of the love feelings of the characters, in an implicit, hidden form. Let us note the stressed, ethical meaning of the words from the above passage: "proud, self-sufficient", "looked at people as if they were things", "saw nothing and no one", "felt like a king". In Tolstoy's world, a person, remaining alone with himself, experiencing the most personal, deeply intimate feeling, reveals himself in relation to all people.

The ethical attitude of the author of "Anna Karenina" in the analysis of Vronsky's love experiences is fully clarified by comparing them with the feelings of Levin, who was in a special state of mind after declaring his love to Kitty. “It was remarkable for Levin that they (the people around him) were all visible to him now, and by small, previously imperceptible signs, he recognized the soul of everyone, and clearly saw that they were all kind.” True love makes a person wiser. Levin is not in a state of enthusiasm, intoxication, when the illusion of a beautiful world arises, but in a state of insight, revealing what was hidden from him before. In Vronsky, who fell in love with Anna, interest in people and the world around him decreases, the world seems to disappear for him, and he is completely absorbed by a sense of contentment and pride in himself.

In parallel to the tragic fate of Anna with her unhappy family life, Tolstoy draws the happy family life of Levin and Kitty. This is where the various plot lines of the novel are brought together.

The image of Kitty belongs to the best female images of Russian literature. The meek, truthful eyes, in which the childish clarity and kindness of her soul were expressed, gave her a special charm. Kitty longed for love as a reward for her beauty and attractiveness, she was completely seized by young girlish dreams, the hope of happiness. But Vronsky's betrayal undermined her faith in people, she was now inclined to see only one bad thing in all their actions.

On the waters, Kitty meets Varenka and perceives her at first as the embodiment of moral perfection, as the ideal of a girl living some other, hitherto unfamiliar life. She learns from Varenka that, in addition to "instinctive life," there is a "spiritual life" based on religion, but not an official religion connected with rituals, but a religion of lofty feelings, a religion of self-sacrifice in the name of love for others; and Kitty became attached to her new friend with all her heart, she, like Varenka, helped the unfortunate, looked after the sick, read the gospel to them.

Here Tolstoy sought to poeticize the religion of "universal" love and moral self-improvement. He tries to show that only on the path of turning to the gospel can one save oneself, get rid of the power of the "instincts" of the body and move on to a higher life, "spiritual". Varenka lives such a life. But this "creature without youth", deprived of the "restrained fire of life", was like "a beautiful ... but already faded, odorless flower" . Both the even attitude towards people, and outward calmness, and her "tired smile" testified that Varenka was deprived of strong vital passions: she did not even know how to laugh, but only "limp" with laughter. "She's all spiritual," says Kitty about Varenka. Rationality suppressed in her all normal human feelings. Levin contemptuously calls Varenka a "holy man." And indeed, all her "love" for her neighbors was artificial and concealed the absence in her of a vocation for real, earthly human love.

Kitty, of course, did not and could not become a second Varenka, she was too devoted to life and quickly felt the "pretense" of all these "virtuous" Vareneks and Madame Stahl with their "fictitious" love for their neighbors: "All this is not that, not that !..” She says to Varenka: “I can’t live otherwise than according to my heart, and you live by the rules. I fell in love with you simply, and you, it’s true, only to save me, teach me!”. Thus Kitty condemned the deadness and unnaturalness of Varenka, who at first seemed to her ideal. She was cured of her moral illness and again felt all the charm of real life, not driven into any artificial "rules".

In subsequent episodes of the novel (an unexpected meeting of the carriage in which Kitty was riding, Kitty's meeting with Levin at Stiva's, an explanation, a new proposal, a wedding), the writer reveals the full power of his heroine's spiritual charm. The chapter devoted to the wedding is imbued with Tolstoy's deep sympathy for the girl's fate and the girl's dreams of happiness, which life often smashed so ruthlessly. The women present in the church recalled their weddings, were sad that the hopes for happiness for many of them did not come true. Dolly thought of herself, remembered Anna, who also nine years ago "was clean in orange flowers and a veil. And now what?" In the remark of a simple woman: "Whatever you say, I feel sorry for our sister," the mournful thoughts of millions of women are expressed, who, in a privately owned society, could not find true happiness.

In the very first days of her family life, Kitty took up housekeeping, "merrily making her future nest." Levin mentally reproached her that "she has no serious interests. Neither interest in my business, in the household, in the peasants, nor in music, in which she is quite strong, nor in reading. She does nothing and is completely satisfied" ( 19.55). Tolstoy, however, defends his heroine from these reproaches and "condemns" Levin, who did not yet understand that she was preparing for an important and responsible period of her life, when "she will be at the same time the wife of her husband, the mistress of the house, will wear, feed and educate children. And in view of this "terrible work" ahead of her, she had the right to moments of carelessness and the happiness of love.

After Kitty's birth - "the greatest event in a woman's life" - Levin, barely holding back his sobs, knelt and kissed his wife's hand, he was immensely happy. The whole world of women, which received for him a new meaning unknown to him after he got married, now rose so high in his concepts thathe could not embrace it with his imagination."

The cult of the woman-mother underlies the image of Darya Aleksandrovna Oblonskaya. Dolly in her youth was as attractive and beautiful as her sister Kitty. But the years of marriage have changed her beyond recognition. She sacrificed all her physical and mental strength for the love of her husband and children. Steve's betrayal shook her to the core, she could no longer love him as before, all the interests of her life now focused on children. Dolly was "happy" with her children and "proud of them", here she saw the source of her "glory" and her "greatness". The tenderness and pride of a mother for her children, her touching concern for their health, her sincere grief when they committed bad deeds - that is what determined Dolly's spiritual life.

But one day, quiet, modest and loving Dolly, exhausted by many children, household chores, her husband's infidelity, thought about her life, about the future of her children, and for a moment envied Anna and other women who, as it seemed to her, did not know any torment, but enjoyed life. She thought that she could live like these childless women, not knowing the bitterness of life; but already the confession of the young woman at the inn, who said that she was glad of the death of her child - "God unleashed" - seemed to her "disgusting". And when Anna declared that she did not want to have children, Dolly "with an expression of disgust on her face" answered her: "This is not good." She was horrified by the immorality of her judgments and felt her deep alienation from Anna. Dolly realized that she had lived correctly, and her whole past life appeared before her "in a new radiance." So this "very prosaic", according to Vronsky's concepts, woman revealed her moral superiority over the "poetic" world of Vronsky - Anna.

Such Tolstoy heroines as Natasha Rostova, Marya Bolkonskaya, Dolly, Kitty carry a lot of charm, they captivate with their true femininity, fidelity to marital duty, they are good mothers - and this is the positive content of the best female images of Tolstoy.

So, we see two forces, completely different and, moreover, opposing: the brute force of public opinion and the internal moral law. It is the latter that is personified in God, and for the violation of his person, an inevitable punishment befalls, which is expressed in the epigraph to the novel: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." Whether we mean by "az" a person who has broken the law and punishes himself for it, or God punishing the criminal, both will be true. The point is not that Anna cannot be subject to human judgment, since people are weak and sinful, but that their judgment is an insufficient and unreliable legal authority. Social ideals change, have a historical character, and therefore cannot guide a person in what, according to Tolstoy, bears the stamp of eternity.

The society depicted in the novel is hostile to the spiritual and moral nature of man; it did not condemn, but loved adultery. No one in their hearts condemned either Anna or Vronsky, or sympathized with Karenin. The lawyer, to whom Karenin turned for advice on a divorce, could not hide his joy. The lawyer's gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they jumped with uncontrollable joy, and Alexei Alexandrovich saw that there was more than one joy of a man receiving a profitable order - there was triumph and delight, there was a glint similar to that ominous gleam that he seen in the eyes of his wife. The feeling of a lawyer who has learned about the misfortune of a client is involuntary, it comes from the very depths of his being, it is real. And this joy is universal. Karenin noticed "in all these acquaintances a hard-to-concealed joy of something." Everyone rejoices at Karenin's misfortune and hates him because he is unhappy. "He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was tormented, they would be merciless towards him. He felt that people would destroy him, as dogs would strangle a tormented dog squealing in pain." The protection of the family, which for thousands of years has been the source of life and the school of mankind, cannot be entrusted to transient state institutions or public opinion. The family is preserved by a more powerful and completely inevitable force - the inner nature of man, the absolutized form of which is God.

III. Meaning of the novel

"Family Thought" is not only the theme of "Anna Karenina", but also an edification. An edification about what a family should be, and since the family is connected with the house, this is also an edification about the house. Let's read the famous beginning of the novel. In the very first phrase, the word "family" will meet. The next noun is "house". Next come "wife" and "husband". And the vengeance of the epigraph hovers over these main characters.

The "thought of the people" in "War and Peace" was revealed as patience, fortitude, non-violence. Revenge is out of the question both from the point of view of Karataev and from the point of view of Kutuzov and Bolkonsky. "Do not think that people have made grief. People are His instrument," Princess Marya says in War and Peace. "We have no right to punish."

According to M.S. Sukhotin, Tolstoy himself defined the meaning of the epigraph to the novel "Anna Karenina" as follows: "... I chose this epigraph ... to express the idea that the bad that a person does has as its consequence all that bitter that does not come from people, but from God, and what Anna Karenina also experienced.

"War and Peace" is a doctrine of non-violence, and the novel "Anna Karenina" is a work of fiction about modernity, which does not pretend to be a comprehensive doctrine of life, but is instructive in one matter - home and family. However, in these two works, the common idea is that he who raises the sword brings misfortune first of all on himself. In "War and Peace" it is Napoleon. In "Anna Karenina" - the main character. And the sword she raised- it is her unwillingness to endure, her challenge to fate. She put her passion above everything else. For which she paid.

Tolstoy appeared in Anna Karenina, as in the epic novel, as a brilliant realist artist. Tolstoy called his creative method, which he used to recreate reality in Anna Karenina, "bright realism" (62, p. 139). The realism of images, in the system of which the truth about a person and an era is captured, life authenticity, genuine psychological depth and a variety of uniquely vivid characters, the dynamism of action and the sharpness of conflict situations, the social richness of the content, the philosophical intensity of reflections on modernity and life in general - this is what distinguishes Tolstoy's novel and makes him an outstanding phenomenon of Russian and world realistic art.

The novel "Anna Karenina", according to Dostoevsky, is "perfection as a work of art<...>with which nothing similar from European literature in the present era can be compared. "In the creator of this novel, Dostoevsky saw the "extraordinary height of the artist" equal to which cannot be found in modern literature. Of exceptional importance in the spiritual enrichment and development of the self-consciousness of Russian society and all of humanity have those social, philosophical, moral and ethical ideas that Tolstoy pursues with such passion and artistic persuasiveness in his novel: “People like the author of Anna Karenina are the essence of society’s teachers, our teachers, and we are only their students .. .", wrote Dostoevsky.

Conclusion

Tolstoy called "Anna Karenina" a "broad, free novel." Based on this definition Pushkin's term "free novel". There are no lyrical, philosophical or journalistic digressions in Anna Karenina. But there is an undoubted connection between Pushkin's novel and Tolstoy's novel, which manifests itself in the genre, in the plot and in the composition. Not the plot completeness of the provisions, but the "creative concept" determines in "Anna Karenina's choice of material and opens up scope for the development of jet lines.

The genre of the free novel arose and developed on the basis of overcoming literary schemes and conventions. On the plot behindthe perfection of the provisions was built plot in a traditional familynovel, for example, by Dickens. It was this tradition that Tolstoy abandoned, although he loved Dickens very much as a writer. "I involuntarily imagined Tolstoy writes, that death is a certain person only aroused interest in other persons, and marriage seemed for the most part an outburst, and not a denouement of interest.

Tolstoy's innovation was perceived as a deviation from the normWe. It was like that in essence, but it did not serve to destroy the genre, but to expand its laws. Balzac in "Letters on Litas"rature” very accurately defined the characteristic features of traditionaltional novel: “No matter how great the number of accessoriesmoat and many images, the modern novelist must, like Walter Scott, the Homer of this genre, group them according to their meaning, subordinate them to the sun of his system intrigue or hero and guide them like a shining constellation in a certain order. But in Anna Karenina, as well as in War and Mire", Tolstoy could not put his heroes "known boundaries". And his romance continued after Levin's marriage and even after Anna's death. The sun of Tolstoy's romantic system isThus, it is not a hero or an intrigue, but a “folk thought” or “family thought”, which leads many of his images, “like a sparkling constellation, in a certain order”.

The post-reform era was reflected more in the emotions of the heroes of the novel than in their minds. Tolstoy, in all complexity, completeness and artistic truth, recreated the social, moral and family atmosphere, saturated with lightning charges, which, either explicitly and directly, or most often indirectly and covertly, affects the state of mind of his characters, their subjective world, psyche and stock. thoughts, on the general moral character of people. Hence the intensity of experiences and the intensity of human passions that the most significant heroes of Anna Karenina live by, their sharp reaction - positive or negative - to what is happening in life, the intricacies of their relationship.

"Anna Karenina" is the greatest social and at the same time family-psychological novel of the 19th century. The writer's contemporaries read to them, following through magazine publications the ever-increasing tension of the human drama in which the characters are involved. Time has not erased the amazing freshness of the pictures of the past life, brilliantly drawn by Tolstoy.

Thus, the tasks and goals that we faced at the beginning of the work were achieved and implemented.

List of used literature

1. Artyomov V. M. Freedom and morality in pedagogy L.N. Tolstoy. // Social. - humanite. knowledge. [text] - 2001. - № 3.- S. 133 - 142.

2. Babaev E.G. "Anna Karenina" L.N. Tolstoy. [text] - M., 1978.

3. Bursov B.I. Leo Tolstoy and the Russian novel. [text] - M.-L.: Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1963. - 152 p.

4. Bilinkis Ya.S. "Anna Karenina" L.N. Tolstoy and Russian Literature of the 1870s. (Lecture). [text] L., 1970. 72 p.

5. Dostoevsky F. M.About art. [text] - M.: Art, 1973 - 632 p.

6. Ermilov V.V. Roman L.N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina". [text] M.: Khudozh. lit., 1963. 136 p.

7. Zhdanov V.A. From "Anna Karenina" to "Resurrection". [text] - M., 1967.

8. Kuleshov F.I. L.N. Tolstoy: From lectures on Russian literature of the 19th century. [text] - Minsk, 1978. - 288 p.

9. Linkov V.L. The world of man in the works of L. Tolstoy and I. Bunin. [text] - M.: Publishing House of Moscow State University, 1989. - 172 p.

10. Meleshko E. D. Christian ethics of L. N. Tolstoy: [monograph]. - M.: Nauka, 2006. - 308 p.

11. Rosenblum, L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: ways of rapprochement // Questions of Literature. [text] - 2006. - No. 6. - S. 169 - 197.

12. Tolstoy L.N. Full composition of writings. - Reprint. playback ed. 1928 - 1958 [text] - M.: Ed. Center "Terra", 1992. - V. 18, 19, 20. Anna Karenina: a novel.

13. Tolstoy L.N. Full composition of writings. - Reprint. playback ed. 1928 - 1958 [text] - M.: Ed. Center "Terra", 1992. - V. 61. Letters. - 421 p.

14. Tolstoy L.N. Full composition of writings. - Reprint. playback ed. 1928 - 1958 [text] - M.: Ed. Center "Terra", 1992. - V. 62. Letters. - 573 p.

15. L.N. Tolstoy in the memoirs of contemporaries. [text] - M.: Goslitizdat, 1955. - T. 2. - 559 p.

16. Tunimanov V.A. Dostoevsky, Strakhov, Tolstoy (the labyrinth of links) // Russian Literature. [text] - 2006. - No. 3. - S. 38 96

17. Merezhkovsky D.S.L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky / Ed. E.A. Andryushchenko. [text] - M., 2000.

18. L.N. Tolstoy in Russian criticism: Sat. Art. [text] -- 3rd ed. - M., 1960.

19. Popov P., Yunovich M. Tolstoy L.N. // Literary encyclopedia. - T. 11. [text] - Page. 301--345, -- M., 1939.

20. http://www.portal-slovo.ru [Email] resource] 20:40 25.12.14// “Roman L.N. Tolstoy "Anna Karenina": the idea, the meaning of the epigraph and the author's position"

Annex 1 .

In conclusion, I would like to attach an essay by Ekaterina Yakimenko, a student of grade 11 "A" of MBOU secondary school No. 2, this essay won the competition among 20 schools. I think it has the right to be in my term paper.

He said that his task was to make
this woman only pathetic, and not guilty.
S. Tolstaya

After finishing work on the novel “War and Peace”, Lev Nikolayevich “carried away” with the problems of family and marriage. The reality surrounding him gave a lot of material about family life, and Tolstoy began work on a new novel, Anna Karenina.

The theme of the family, put forward at the beginning, turned out to be interconnected with public, social, philosophical issues the work gradually grew into a major social novel, in which the writer reflected his contemporary life. The plot is simple, even banal. A married woman, the mother of an eight-year-old child, is infatuated with a brilliant officer. But everything is simple only at first glance. Anna suddenly realized that I cannot deceive herself, she dreams of love, that love and life are synonymous for her. At this decisive moment, she thinks of no one but Alexei Vronsky. The inability to deceive, the sincerity and truthfulness of the heroine involve her in a serious conflict with her husband and the society in which she lives.
Anna compares her husband to a soulless mechanism, calling him an “evil machine”. Karenin checks all feelings by the norms established by the state and the church. He suffers from his wife's infidelity, but in a very peculiar way, he wants to "shake off the dirt that she splashed on him in her fall, and continue on her path of an active, honest and useful life." He lives with the mind, not with the heart. It is his rationality that prompts the path of cruel revenge on Anna. Alexey Aleksandrovich Karenin separates Anna from her beloved son Seryozha. The heroine has to choose, and she takes a “step” towards Vronsky, but this is a disastrous path, it leads to the abyss. Anna did not want to change anything in her life, it was fate that turned everything around. She follows the path prepared for her, suffering and tormented. Love for the abandoned son, passion for Vronsky, protest against the false morality of society were woven into a single knot of contradictions. Anna is unable to solve these problems. She wants to get away from them. Just live happily: love and be loved. But how unattainable for her is simple human happiness!

Talking to her brother's wife, Anna confesses: “You understand that I love, it seems, equally, but both more than myself, two creatures Seryozha and Alexei. Only these two beings do I love, and one excludes the other. I can't connect them, and this is the only thing I need. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't matter. Everything, anyway...”

Anna realizes with horror that passionate love alone is not enough for Vronsky. He is a man of "society". He wants to be useful, to achieve ranks and a prominent position. A quiet family life is not for him. For the sake of this man and his ambitious plans, she sacrificed everything: peace, position in society, her son ... Anna understands that she has driven herself into a dead end.

The writer, even in the epigraph: “Vengeance is mine and I will repay,” said that his heroine should not be judged by secular hypocrites, but by the Creator. This idea is repeatedly confirmed in the novel. Anna's old aunt says in a conversation with Dolly: "God will judge them, not us." Koznyshev, in a conversation with Vronsky's mother, states: "It is not for us to judge, Countess." Thus, Tolstoy contrasted state and religious legality and secular morality, which affirmed “evil, lies and deceit”, the wisdom of the biblical saying taken for the epigraph.

Initially, the author wanted to portray a woman who lost herself, but not guilty. Gradually, the novel grew into a wide accusatory canvas showing the life of post-reform Russia in all its diversity. The novel presents all strata of society, all classes and estates in the new socio-economic conditions, after the abolition of serfdom.
Speaking about Anna Karenina, Tolstoy showed that she was concerned only with purely personal problems: love, family, marriage. Not finding a worthy way out of this situation, Anna decides to die. She throws herself under a train, as life in her current position has become unbearable.
Unwittingly, Tolstoy passed a harsh sentence on society with its deceitful hypocritical morality, which drove Anna to suicide. In this society, there is no place for sincere feelings, but only established rules that can be circumvented, but hiding, deceiving everyone and yourself. A sincere, loving person is rejected by society like a foreign body. Tolstoy condemns such a society and the laws established by it.

The novel "Anna Karenina" was conceived and written in a critical era, in 1873-1875, when Russian life was changing before our eyes. And Tolstoy, as an artist and a person, was inseparable from this dramatic era, which was reflected in his novel in relief and distinctly. The novel began to be published in the Russky Vestnik magazine in January 1875 and immediately caused a storm of controversy in society and Russian criticism, opposing opinions and reviews from reverent admiration to disappointment, discontent and even indignation.

"Anna Karenina" is a novel about a general break, some kind of general divorce in all spheres of life. Here everyone is lonely and cannot understand each other, because the key of love has been lost, without which there is no family life. The loveless family appears in the novel as a generalized image of the entire loveless life of mankind. Criticizing through the eyes of the family the entire social system contemporary to him, Tolstoy does not go beyond the framework of the family theme; he expands these limits, expands this theme to the whole life of mankind.

The image of the main character of the novel was not immediately formed by the author. In the process of work, Tolstoy consistently elevated Anna's appearance, endowing her not only with remarkable physical beauty, but also with a rich inner world, an extraordinary mind, and the ability for merciless introspection. This is one of the relatively rare cases in the artistic practice of Tolstoy, when in the image of the heroine there is no contradiction between the appearance and the inner essence. The moral purity and moral decency of Anna, who did not want to adapt, deceive herself and others in accordance with the "norms" of secular life, served as the main reason for her bold decision - to openly leave her unloved husband for Vronsky, which became the source and cause of her sharp conflict with the environment. an environment that takes revenge on Anna precisely for her honesty, independence, disregard for the hypocritical foundations of a basically false secular society. The opposition of Anna's love of life to the lifelessness of Karenin in the novel is carried out consistently with a sharpness, characteristic of Tolstoy's artistic thinking, on the irreconcilability of the contradiction. When Aleksey Alexandrovich was faced with the idea that his wife was capable of cheating on him, he felt that he was “face to face with something illogical and stupid. He stood face to face with the possibility of love in his wife for anyone but him before life. And every time he confronted life itself, he pulled away from it."

Real life for Tolstoy is the passionate desire and ability of a person to exist as the life of all people, the common life and each individual human life. Only such a life for Anna Karenina seems real. Anna is endowed with the most valuable, from Tolstoy's point of view, human gift: the gift of communication, openness to everyone, understanding everyone and the ability to share feelings with other people. This creates the poetic world of the heroine. The novel contrasts Anna's vitality with Karenin's lifelessness. The love that flared up in Anna is life itself as it is, with all its confusion, confusion, which does not fit into any schemes. Karenin, on the other hand, wanted to distance himself from his wife's love for another person, to pretend that this simply did not exist. Aleksey Alexandrovich's attitude towards Anna embodies the essence of his relationship with life itself: ignoring living complexity, replacing it with an artificial harmony of external logic. Their family relations were violence against life - slow, everyday, constant oppression, with all the mildness and even hidden kindness of Alexei Alexandrovich.

The theme of loneliness in love permeates the entire novel. The whole history of the relationship between Anna and Vronsky is also dedicated to her. The love of Anna and Vronsky is doomed in the novel from the very beginning, and this is preceded by a bad omen - the death of a man under the wheels of a train, a prototype of the death of the heroine, the death of love. So the very acquaintance of Anna with Vronsky is colored by the thought of death. And the love story turns out to be a death story. The closeness established between Vronsky and Anna is portrayed by Tolstoy as a murder. Anna's love inevitably had to come to its negation, transformation into its opposite. Love, which essentially means the most complete unity of people, turns into the most complete separation. From the very moment Anna begins to love, she comes into irresolvable conflict with all forms of social relations. It turns out that it is precisely the humanity of Anna's love in itself that inevitably leads the heroine to isolation from everyone and everything, except for her beloved, and ultimately from him. Already shortly before her death, Anna herself begins to realize that it is precisely the depth of her feelings for Vronsky that separates her from him as well. For Anna, an affair with Vronsky is the romance of her whole life, but it was not created for the love that she expects from life. The reason for the death of love lies in love itself, in this inevitable concentration only on itself. This gives rise to "causeless" irritation, outbreaks of "causeless" hatred. Even the very talk of love begins to irritate Vronsky. Anna's rebellion against the false morality of the world turns out to be fruitless. She becomes a victim not only of her conflict with society, but also of what is in her from this very society (“the spirit of lies and deceit”) and with which her own moral sense cannot reconcile.

It is not the persons representing the society who are to blame for Anna's death. The very structure of society is to blame for Anna's death. Lifeless society, lifeless reality kills love by depriving it of its content: life. But the origins of Anna's tragedy are not only in external obstacles, but also in herself, in the nature of her passion, in the impossibility of escaping the pangs of conscience.

The writer's intention to show a woman who has lost herself, but not guilty, is emphasized by the epigraph to the novel: "Vengeance is mine and I will repay." The meaning of the epigraph is that God can judge a person, his life and actions, but not people. It is not for secular hypocrites to judge Anna. The idea of the epigraph is heard several times in the words of the characters in the novel. Anna's old aunt says to Dolly: "God will judge them, not us." Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev, meeting with Vronsky's mother, in response to Anna's condemnation, says: "It is not for us to judge, Countess." Tolstoy contrasted the biblical saying, taken for the epigraph, with state and religious legality and secular morality, who asserted "Evil, lies and deceit" "... all this turned upside down and only fits in." Anna's tragic life path takes place in the post-reform era. Tolstoy considers complex questions about marriage, love for the family in connection with the most diverse aspects of contemporary reality, when new, bourgeois ones replaced the political and moral foundations of the feudal system. St. Petersburg dignitaries, military and palace circles, Moscow and local nobility are represented in the novel; zemstvo figures; lawyers and other officials; teachers serving in noble families, doctors, estate managers, clerks, bourgeois businessmen, servants, village peasants - in a word, all classes and estates in the new socio-economic conditions, after the abolition of serfdom. The originality of the Anna Karenina genre lies in the fact that this novel combines features characteristic of several types of novelistic creativity. It contains in itself, first of all, the features that characterize the family romance. Non-family history, family relationships and conflicts are brought to the fore here. It is no coincidence that Tolstoy emphasized that when creating Anna Karenina, he was dominated by family thought, while, while working on War and Peace, he wanted to embody the people's thought. But at the same time, Anna Karenina is not only a family novel, but also a social, psychological novel, a work in which the history of family relations is closely connected with the depiction of complex social processes, and the depiction of the fate of the characters is inseparable from the deep disclosure of their inner world. Showing the movement of time, characterizing the formation of a new social order, the lifestyle and psychology of various strata of society, Tolstoy gave his novel the features of an epic.

"Family Thought" in the novel in L. Tolstoy's novel "Anna Karenina"

Plan

I. The creative concept of the novel

1. History of creation

2. Predecessors of work

II. "Family Thought" in the novel

1. Tolstoy's views on the family

2. The development of the theme in the novel

III. Meaning of the novel

I. Creative Intention

1. History of creation

Happy is he who is happy at home

L.N. Tolstoy

As early as the beginning of 1870, Tolstoy's creative mind began to outline a story about a married woman "from high society, but who lost herself," and she was supposed to look "only pathetic and not guilty." Numerous ideas and plans that then occupied the writer, all the time distracted him from this plot. Only after writing "The Prisoner of the Caucasus", publishing the "ABC" and the final decision to refuse to continue the "Peter's novel" Tolstoy returned to the family plot that arose more than three years ago.

Initially, the work was conceived as a family-household novel. In a letter to N. Strakhov, Tolstoy says that this is his first novel of this kind. The statement is not accurate: Tolstoy's first experience in the genre of a family novel, as you know, was Family Happiness. The main, basic idea that Tolstoy loved and sought to embody artistically in his new novel was "a family thought." It arose and took shape at an early stage in the creation of Anna Karenina. This thought determined the theme and content of the novel, the relationship between the characters and the essence of the novel conflict, the dramatic intensity of the action, the main plot line and the genre form of the work. The atmosphere surrounding the characters was of an intimate chamber character. The social space of the novel looked extremely narrow.

Tolstoy always responded to the demands of modernity with extraordinary sensitivity. In the previous epic novel, there was only "the secret presence of modernity"; the novel "Anna Karenina" is burningly modern in terms of material, problems and the whole artistic conception. As the novel's plot unfolds with increasing tension, Tolstoy "captures" and introduces into the narrative many questions that worried both the author himself and his contemporaries. This is not only family relations, but also social, economic, civil, and generally human. All the most important aspects and phenomena of modernity in their real complexity, intricacy and mutual cohesion are fully and vividly reflected in Anna Karenina. Each of those families that are depicted in the novel is naturally and organically included in the life of society, in the movement of the era: the private life of people appears in close connection with historical reality and in causation by it.

In its final form, "Anna Karenina" became a socio-psychological novel, retaining, however, all the qualities and genre features of a family novel. Being a multi-problem work, the novel "Anna Karenina" acquired the features of a modern epic - a comprehensive narrative about the fate of the people as a whole, about the state of Russian society in a difficult, critical period of existence for it, about the future of the country, nation, Russia.

The time of action in "Anna Karenina" is synchronous with the time of the creation of the novel. This is the post-reform era, more precisely: the 70s of the XIX century with an excursion into the previous decade. This is a period of greatly shaken and "turned over" Russian social reality, when the patriarchal immobility of Russia came to an end.

Tolstoy's heroes live and act at the very beginning of this period, when life put before them "all the most complex and insoluble questions." What answer would be given to them, neither the writer himself, nor his double Levin, nor the other heroes of Anna Karenina had any clear idea. There was a lot of obscure, incomprehensible and therefore disturbing. One thing was visible: everything had moved from its place, and everything was in motion, on the road, on the way. And the image of the train that appears more than once in the novel, as it were, symbolizes the historical movement of the era. In the running and roar of the train - the noise, roar and rapid run of time, era. And no one knew whether the direction of this movement was determined correctly, whether the destination station was chosen correctly.

The crisis, turning point of the post-reform era appears in Tolstoy's novel not only as a historical and social background, against which graphically clearly "drawn" characters rich in realistic colors appear, frames of a dramatic narrative run and the tragic denouement of the main conflict takes place, but this is that living, objective a given reality in which the heroes are constantly immersed and which surrounds them everywhere and everywhere. And since they all breathe the air of their era and feel its "tremors", each shows a characteristic imprint of the "shattered" time - anxiety and anxiety, self-doubt and distrust of people, a premonition of a possible catastrophe.

2. Predecessors of work

While writing the last pages of the epic novel, Tolstoy, despite the fact that he had been working to the point of exhaustion for more than six years, felt the need to turn to new themes and images. Already in the autumn of 1869, when the last point had not yet been put in the manuscript of "War and Peace" and the chapters of the epilogue were being printed, Tolstoy had the idea of writing a "folk novel". To the creative imagination of the writer, this novel was generally presented as an epic narrative based on the material, motives and images of oral folk art, in particular on epics. The protagonists of the novel Tolstoy was going to make epic Russian heroes, among whom Ilya Muromets was seen as the main character, only significantly updated and mentally transferred to the present: this is a Russian intelligent person of the middle of the century, widely educated, well aware of modern philosophical systems, currents and schools and at the same time closely connected with the folk origins of life.

After finishing work on the novel "War and Peace", Lev Nikolayevich "carried away" the problems of family and marriage. The reality surrounding him gave a lot of material about family life, and Tolstoy began work on a new novel, Anna Karenina.

The theme of the family, put forward at the beginning, turned out to be interconnected with public, social, philosophical issues - the work gradually grew into a major social novel, in which the writer reflected his contemporary life. The plot is simple, even banal. A married woman, the mother of an eight-year-old child, is infatuated with a brilliant officer. But everything is simple only at first glance. Anna suddenly realized that she cannot deceive herself, she dreams of love, that love and life are synonymous for her. At this decisive moment, she thinks of no one but Alexei Vronsky. The inability to deceive, the sincerity and truthfulness of the heroine involve her in a serious conflict with her husband and the society in which she lives.

Anna compares her husband to a soulless mechanism, calling him an "evil machine". Karenin checks all feelings by the norms established by the state and the church. He suffers from his wife's infidelity, but in a very peculiar way, he wants to "shake off the dirt that she splashed on him in her fall, and continue on her path of an active, honest and useful life." He lives with the mind, not with the heart. It is his rationality that prompts the path of cruel revenge on Anna. Alexey Aleksandrovich Karenin separates Anna from her beloved son Seryozha. The heroine has to choose, and she takes a “step” towards Vronsky, but this is a disastrous path, it leads to the abyss. Anna did not want to change anything in her life, it was fate that turned everything around. She follows the path prepared for her, suffering and tormented. Love for the abandoned son, passion for Vronsky, protest against the false morality of society were woven into a single knot of contradictions. Anna is unable to solve these problems. She wants to get away from them. Just live happily: love and be loved. But how unattainable for her is simple human happiness!

Talking to her brother's wife, Anna admits: “You understand that I love, it seems, equally, but both are more than myself, two creatures - Seryozha and Alexei. Only these two beings do I love, and one excludes the other. I can't connect them, and this is the only thing I need. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't matter. All the same…”

The writer, even in the epigraph: “Vengeance is mine and I will repay,” said that his heroine should not be judged by secular hypocrites, but by the Creator. This idea is repeatedly confirmed in the novel. Anna's old aunt says in a conversation with Dolly: "God will judge them, not us." Koznyshev, in a conversation with Vronsky's mother, states: "It is not for us to judge, Countess." Thus, Tolstoy contrasted state and religious legality and secular morality, which affirmed "evil, lies and deceit", the wisdom of the biblical saying taken for the epigraph.

Speaking about Anna Karenina, Tolstoy showed that she was concerned only with purely personal problems: love, family, marriage. Not finding a worthy way out of this situation, Anna decides to die. She throws herself under a train, as life in her current position has become unbearable.

Unwittingly, Tolstoy passed a harsh sentence on society with its deceitful hypocritical morality, which drove Anna to suicide. In this society, there is no place for sincere feelings, but only established rules that can be circumvented, but hiding, deceiving everyone and yourself. A sincere, loving person is rejected by society like a foreign body. Tolstoy condemns such a society and the laws established by it.

Tolstoy gives a number of views on the family in the novel. Yashvin and Katavasov are episodic heroes, but with their own definite and characteristic views on marriage. Both look at the family as a hindrance to something more important: one - playing cards, the other - science. For Serpukhovsky, a young, prosperous general, "marriage is the only means with convenience without interference to love and do one's job." And finally, the attitude towards family life of secular youth, to which Vronsky belongs, is most fully developed. He and his friends see in it something base, prosaically boring, the lot of gray and ordinary people. Tolstoy showed in the novel many very different people: Oblonsky, Yashvin, Katavasov, Serpukhovskaya, Vronsky, Petritsky, who treat the family as a secondary matter. Moreover, their views on the family are not theoretical, but purely practical. The heroes are guided by them in life, so their beliefs are real, although incorrect, from the point of view of the author. They create a spiritual atmosphere pointing to the deep troubles of modern society, which was tragically expressed most clearly in the fate of Anna Karenina. Tolstoy's "family thought" is revealed in a complex combination of all episodes, events, descriptions of heroes, but still its core is formed by two storylines: Anna - Vronsky, Kitty - Levin. It should not be forgotten that, although the novel is named after one heroine, her story takes up only about a third of the entire volume of the work. Levin, who has no direct relation to the fate of Anna, is given no less attention than she is. The stories of the characters, obviously, develop in parallel and in different directions: Kitty and Levin from disappointment, hard feelings come to lasting and calm family happiness. Anna and Vronsky are steadily and inevitably moving towards tragedy. The relationship between Kitty and Levin is life, the relationship between Anna and Vronsky develops under the sign of death. “How happy it turned out for Kitty then that Anna came,” said Dolly, “and how unfortunate for her. Quite the contrary,” she added, struck by her thought. “Then Anna was so happy, and Kitty considered herself unhappy. vice versa!" . On the contrary, why? On the contrary, the ideas of happiness and good that prevail in society. The reason for the opposite fate of the heroes is their different attitude towards family and marriage. These views do not collide in the public arena of disputes and disputes, and therefore it is impossible, fundamentally impossible, for an eventual, plot connection between the two lines. But the essence of the views of the heroes is fully revealed by their life, their fate. Here Tolstoy follows the philosophical traditions of the Russian realistic novel: Pushkin, Lermontov, Goncharov, Turgenev. Just like his predecessors and contemporaries, the author of "Anna Karenina" shows the impact of the environment on a person, using the same methods of arranging positive and negative principles: exploring how good, honest, just people violate the moral law. The marriage of Anna and Karenin - this is quite obvious - was almost accidental for her and involuntary for her husband, and for both of them, one of those marriages that are rarely lasting and do not give people happiness, because they are made without the active participation of the heart. without mutual love. About such marriages, Anna herself would later hear frequent conversations in the salon of Betsy Tverskaya. The envoy's wife expressed a view widespread in secular society: feelings, passions are not needed for a happy marriage, love is not needed. "I know happy marriages only by reason," said the envoy's wife. Vronsky, who participated in the dispute, objected to this: “Yes, but how often the happiness of marriages according to reason scatters like dust precisely because that same passion appears that was not recognized ...”. This is exactly what happened in the Karenin family. Anna and Alexei Karenin lived together for eight years, but very little is said about their married life in the novel, and the first years of their marriage are not mentioned at all. It is not known, for example, how long Anna was "governor" in the provinces and when she and her husband moved to St. Petersburg. Having settled in the capital, Anna freely and easily entered the highest aristocratic society. She was given access to three different circles of selected persons of the St. Petersburg world, where, according to the author, she "had friends and close ties" . One consisted of high-ranking government officials who were closely associated with Karenin and therefore often visited his house, but this "service, official circle of her husband" was rather boring, and Anna avoided him whenever possible. With much greater willingness, Anna appeared in that circle, the center of which was Countess Lidia Ivanovna; Anna usually came there accompanied by her husband, who highly valued the countess. Anna was especially closely connected with the people of the "croquet party" - with the circle of Princess Betsy Tverskoy. Anna was introduced to this salon, which united the cream of Petersburg society, by its mistress, Princess Betsy, who was a distant relative of Anna - the wife of her cousin - and was Vronsky's cousin. Anna willingly and often visited this salon, which later became the place of her meetings with Vronsky. Obviously, Anna, in marriage, indulged in the usual secular entertainments and pleasures, for which she had a lot of free time. But she did not resemble the young ladies and ladies of St. Petersburg society in that she was distinguished by her modesty of behavior and unconditional marital fidelity. Although something "false in the whole warehouse of their family life" was noticeable, however, outwardly, Anna's life with Karenin looked quite prosperous, monotonously calm, as they say, without storms and upheavals. Anna had a child, and she sincerely took up the upbringing of her Seryozha, whom she loved very much. She was strict about the duties and duties of her wife, and Karenin had no reason or reason for distrusting her, for jealousy and family scenes. In the part of the novel that deals with Anna before her betrayal of her husband, there is not even a mention of clashes between them, quarrels, mutual reproaches and insults, and even more so, hatred for each other. It is not clear that Karenin was faithful to her during the years of their marriage. In a word, for the time being, Anna decisively did not express any dissatisfaction with her family life with Karenin, her fate and her position in secular society. Karenin is far from being an ideal husband, and he was not a match for her. But still, one should not forget that harsh, pejorative and annihilating judgments came to Anna's mind after her betrayal of Karenin and that her words were dictated by hatred for him, which was born of a flared passion for Vronsky. Accusing her husband that he does not know what love is, does not know at all whether it exists in the world, Anna is silent about the fact that she herself, honestly and conscientiously fulfilling marital duties, also had no concept of love for a long time, until Vronsky awakened this feeling in her. And just at this time - at the moment of sharp upheavals of her soul and the subsequent abrupt change in her behavior, views and lifestyle - Anna appears before the reader in all her proud beauty and female charm. Often in critical literature one can find an opinion about Vronsky as a person unworthy of Anna's high love, which they see as the main reason for the death of the heroine. But Tolstoy, without idealizing Vronsky in the least, nevertheless writes that he was a man "with a very kind heart." Charm, beauty, justice, Anna's spiritual and intellectual originality are beyond any doubt. From here, thought most often follows a stable path: all the best perishes and must perish in this accursed world of bourgeois hypocrisy and lies. Indeed, how many novels do we know that tell about obstacles in the way of lovers suffering from broken hopes. In Anna Karenina, the tragic situation develops after and as a result of the fulfillment of the wishes of the characters. The center of gravity is shifted from courtship, rivalry, the expectation of love to the depiction of the life of lovers. If, for example, in Turgenev's novels the hero is tested by love, by the ability to take one decisive step toward an explanation with his beloved, then in Tolstoy the essence of the hero is revealed in family life, in the process, and not in the moment. In the works that tell about the hero's desire for love, happiness is presented as the fulfillment of desire, and the rest of life, as it were, is deprived of value and meaning. Tolstoy polemically rejected such a view as distorting the essence of a person's life path. According to the author of Anna Karenina, the life time of a person, so beloved by novelists, is not yet life, but only the threshold of it. For the writer, the most responsible and serious period begins when the lovers, united, lead a life together, it is then that a person is revealed and the true price of his ideals and beliefs is revealed. Undoubtedly, society is to blame for the tragedy of the heroine, but not in the hypocritical condemnation of Anna's connection with Vronsky, but in the actual encouragement of her. As in the novels of Russian writers, Anna Karenina analyzes the impact of social ideals on a person and his fate. Tolstoy's personality has several levels, and the true essence, its core, determining actions and deeds, is not fully realized by the hero. The ideals of the heroes do not become the subject of reflection, discussion, and disputes. They are not theoretical, but organic in nature and are perceived by the heroes as something indisputable, true and poetic, which is recognized by all advanced, real people. "Vronsky never knew family life" - this is how the chapter tells about his attitude towards Kitty. The phrase is key to the image of the hero, defining and explaining the love story of Vronsky and Anna. It is here that we must look for the origins of the tragedy of these heroes. Vronsky did not receive a true and although elementary, but most necessary, according to Tolstoy, education in the family. That education that introduces a person to the spiritual foundations of life, not with the help of books, educational institutions, but through direct communication with his mother, father, brothers. He did not go through the primary school of human education, where the foundation of personality is laid. "Marriage was never an option for him. He not only did not like family life, but in the family, and especially in her husband, according to the general view of the bachelor world in which he lived, he imagined something alien, hostile, and most of all - funny ". Tolstoy, following the precepts of the Russian realistic novel, spoke about the upbringing of the hero, which formed the core of his personality, which is made up of sympathies, antipathies and, most importantly, what he loves.Only the upbringing of two heroes - Levin and Vronsky - is reported in the novel, which indicates their special significance for disclosure and understanding of the tragedy of the main character. The contrast of the beginnings in which Levin and Vronsky were brought up determines the different directions of their life paths. Tolstoy does not tell in detail how they were brought up, what books they read, who their teachers and tutors were. He reports only one, the most important and essential - about the family atmosphere and about the attitude of Levin and Vronsky to parents, and above all to mothers. Vronsky "in his soul did not respect his mother and, without letting himself couple, did not love her ... ". For Levin, the concept of a mother was "a sacred memory, and his future wife should have been in his imagination a repetition of that lovely, holy ideal of a woman, which was for him a mother." The line connecting the image of the mother with the wife was drawn by Tolstoy clearly and definitely. Maternal love, which has fallen to the lot of a child, forms a true, deep and serious attitude towards a woman. "He (Levin) not only could not imagine love for a woman without marriage, but he first imagined a family, and then the woman who would give him a family" And if the general, theoretical views of the heroes of the novel change easily and sometimes even imperceptibly for themselves, then the feelings carried over from childhood constitute a solid foundation of personality. By their very nature, theoretical views must change, develop, and Tolstoy lived just in the era when the emergence and development of ideas in Russia made a qualitative leap, when the abundance, inconsistency and their rapid change became a new phenomenon in Russian public life. And in understanding the family as an institution invariably necessary for humanity, a person had to be guided by a reliable, in the eyes of the writer, means - a feeling acquired in life experience. After all, Tolstoy was convinced: "A person fully knows something only by his life ... This is the highest or, rather, the deepest knowledge." Vronsky was deprived of that positive experience of a happy life in a family that Levin had. Vronsky's mother blamed Karenina for her son's misfortunes, but in reality the blame lay more on her own. "His mother (Vronsky) in her youth was a brilliant secular woman who, during her marriage, and especially after, had many novels known to the whole world." The image of the mother, the feeling of the family received by Levin in childhood, guided him in life. Why was he so sure that happiness was achievable? Because he already had it. What should be the family, how to build relationships between husband, wife, children? Levin knew the exhaustive answers to these questions - the way his mother and father built them. Seriously ill, homeless, wandering around the hotels, Nikolai conjures his brother: “Yes, look, don’t change anything in the house, but rather get married and start the same thing again” “The deepest knowledge” acquired by the heroes in childhood largely determined their fate , gave rise to each a special system of feelings. Tolstoy shows how something that was embedded in the feelings of the characters unfolds into fate. Levin and Vronsky - each in his own way experiences, feels his love. These are, as it were, two different, mutually exclusive kinds of love that do not understand and are completely closed to each other. Vronsky's love closes him in on himself, separating him from people and the outside world, and, in fact, impoverishes him. If before he "amazed and excited people he did not know with his appearance of unshakable calmness, now ... he seemed even more proud and self-sufficient. He looked at people as if they were things.<...> Vronsky saw nothing and no one. He felt like a king, not because he believed that he had made an impression on Anna - he still did not believe this - but because the impression she made on him gave him happiness and pride "Tolstoy, even speaking about the feelings of the hero ", not only conveys them, but carefully analyzes them. He shows the strength, the attractiveness of Vronsky's feelings and at the same time exposes their egoistic essence, although it does not have anything repulsive or sinister in itself in its real form. The main subject of the image and research in Tolstoy - human relationships, which puts an ethical assessment at the center of his artistic world. And it is present even in the description of the love feelings of the characters, in an implicit, hidden form. looked at people as if they were things", "saw nothing and no one", "felt like a king". In the world of Tolstoy, a person, remaining alone with himself, experiencing the most personal, deeply intimate feeling, p is revealed in relation to all people. The ethical attitude of the author of "Anna Karenina" in the analysis of Vronsky's love experiences is fully clarified by comparing them with the feelings of Levin, who was in a special state of mind after declaring his love to Kitty. “It was remarkable for Levin that they (the people around him) were all visible to him now, and by small, previously imperceptible signs, he recognized the soul of everyone, and clearly saw that they were all kind.” True love makes a person wiser. Levin is not in a state of enthusiasm, intoxication, when the illusion of a beautiful world arises, but in a state of insight, revealing what was hidden from him before. In Vronsky, who fell in love with Anna, interest in people and the world around him decreases, the world seems to disappear for him, and he is completely absorbed by a sense of contentment and pride in himself. In parallel to the tragic fate of Anna with her unhappy family life, Tolstoy draws the happy family life of Levin and Kitty. This is where the various plot lines of the novel are brought together. The image of Kitty belongs to the best female images of Russian literature. The meek, truthful eyes, in which the childish clarity and kindness of her soul were expressed, gave her a special charm. Kitty longed for love as a reward for her beauty and attractiveness, she was completely seized by young girlish dreams, the hope of happiness. But Vronsky's betrayal undermined her faith in people, she was now inclined to see only one bad thing in all their actions. On the waters, Kitty meets Varenka and perceives her at first as the embodiment of moral perfection, as the ideal of a girl living some other, hitherto unfamiliar life. She learns from Varenka that, in addition to "instinctive life," there is a "spiritual life" based on religion, but not an official religion connected with rituals, but a religion of lofty feelings, a religion of self-sacrifice in the name of love for others; and Kitty became attached to her new friend with all her heart, she, like Varenka, helped the unfortunate, looked after the sick, read the gospel to them. Here Tolstoy sought to poeticize the religion of "universal" love and moral self-improvement. He tries to show that only on the path of turning to the gospel can one save oneself, get rid of the power of the "instincts" of the body and move on to a higher life, "spiritual". Varenka lives such a life. But this "creature without youth", devoid of the "restrained fire of life", was like "a beautiful ... but already faded, odorless flower." Both the even attitude towards people, and outward calmness, and her "tired smile" testified that Varenka was deprived of strong vital passions: she did not even know how to laugh, but only "limp" with laughter. "She's all spiritual," Kitty says of Varenka. Rationality suppressed in her all normal human feelings. Levin contemptuously calls Varenka a "holy man." And indeed, all her "love" for her neighbors was artificial and concealed the absence in her of a vocation for real, earthly human love. Kitty, of course, did not and could not become a second Varenka, she was too devoted to life and quickly felt the "pretense" of all these "virtuous" Vareneks and Madame Stahl with their "fictitious" love for their neighbors: "All this is not that, not that !..” She says to Varenka: “I can’t live otherwise than according to my heart, and you live by the rules. I fell in love with you simply, and you, it’s true, only to save me, teach me!”. Thus Kitty condemned the deadness and unnaturalness of Varenka, who at first seemed to her ideal. She was cured of her moral illness and again felt all the charm of real life, not driven into any artificial "rules". In subsequent episodes of the novel (an unexpected meeting of the carriage in which Kitty was riding, Kitty's meeting with Levin at Stiva's, an explanation, a new proposal, a wedding), the writer reveals the full power of his heroine's spiritual charm. The chapter devoted to the wedding is imbued with Tolstoy's deep sympathy for the girl's fate and the girl's dreams of happiness, which life often smashed so ruthlessly. The women present in the church recalled their weddings, were sad that the hopes for happiness for many of them did not come true. Dolly thought of herself, remembered Anna, who also nine years ago "was clean in orange flowers and a veil. And now what?" In the remark of a simple woman: "Whatever you say, I feel sorry for our sister," the mournful thoughts of millions of women are expressed, who, in a privately owned society, could not find true happiness. In the very first days of her family life, Kitty took up housekeeping, "merrily making her future nest." Levin mentally reproached her that "she has no serious interests. Neither interest in my business, in the household, in the peasants, nor in music, in which she is quite strong, nor in reading. She does nothing and is completely satisfied." Tolstoy, however, defends his heroine from these reproaches and "condemns" Levin, who did not yet understand that she was preparing for an important and responsible period of her life, when "she will be at the same time the wife of her husband, the mistress of the house, will wear, feed and educate children. And in view of this "terrible work" ahead of her, she had the right to moments of carelessness and the happiness of love. After Kitty's birth - "the greatest event in a woman's life" - Levin, barely holding back sobs, knelt down and kissed his wife's hand, he was immensely happy "The whole world is female, which received for him a new, unknown meaning to him after he got married, now he rose so high in his concepts that he could not embrace him with his imagination. "The cult of the woman-mother underlies the image of Darya Aleksandrovna Oblonskaya. Dolly in her youth was as attractive and beautiful as her sister Kitty. But the years of marriage have changed her beyond recognition. She sacrificed all her physical and mental strength for the love of her husband and children. Steve's betrayal shook her to the core, she could no longer love him as before, all the interests of her life now focused on children. Dolly was "happy" with her children and "proud of them", here she saw the source of her "glory" and her "greatness". The tenderness and pride of a mother for her children, her touching concern for their health, her sincere grief when they committed bad deeds - that is what determined Dolly's spiritual life. But one day, quiet, modest and loving Dolly, exhausted by many children, household chores, her husband's infidelity, thought about her life, about the future of her children, and for a moment envied Anna and other women who, as it seemed to her, did not know any torment, but enjoyed life. She thought that she could live like these childless women, not knowing the bitterness of life; but already the confession of the young woman at the inn, who said that she was glad of the death of her child - "God unleashed" - seemed to her "disgusting". And when Anna declared that she did not want to have children, Dolly "with an expression of disgust on her face" answered her: "This is not good." She was horrified by the immorality of her judgments and felt her deep alienation from Anna. Dolly realized that she had lived correctly, and her whole past life appeared before her "in a new radiance." So this "very prosaic", according to Vronsky's concepts, woman revealed her moral superiority over the "poetic" world of Vronsky - Anna. Such Tolstoy heroines as Natasha Rostova, Marya Bolkonskaya, Dolly, Kitty carry a lot of charm, they captivate with their true femininity, fidelity to marital duty, they are good mothers - and this is the positive content of the best female images of Tolstoy. So, we see two forces, completely different and, moreover, opposing: the brute force of public opinion and the internal moral law. It is the latter that is personified in God, and for the violation of his person, an inevitable punishment befalls, which is expressed in the epigraph to the novel: "Vengeance is mine, and I will repay." Whether we mean by "az" a person who has broken the law and punishes himself for it, or God punishing the criminal, both will be true. The point is not that Anna cannot be subject to human judgment, since people are weak and sinful, but that their judgment is an insufficient and unreliable legal authority. Social ideals change, have a historical character, and therefore cannot guide a person in what, according to Tolstoy, bears the stamp of eternity. The society depicted in the novel is hostile to the spiritual and moral nature of man; it did not condemn, but loved adultery. No one in their hearts condemned either Anna or Vronsky, or sympathized with Karenin. The lawyer, to whom Karenin turned for advice on a divorce, could not hide his joy. The lawyer's gray eyes tried not to laugh, but they jumped with uncontrollable joy, and Alexei Alexandrovich saw that there was more than one joy of a man receiving a profitable order - there was triumph and delight, there was a glint similar to that ominous gleam that he seen in the eyes of his wife. The feeling of a lawyer who has learned about the misfortune of a client is involuntary, it comes from the very depths of his being, it is real. And this joy is universal. Karenin noticed "in all these acquaintances a hard-to-concealed joy of something." Everyone rejoices at Karenin's misfortune and hates him because he is unhappy. "He knew that for this, for the very fact that his heart was tormented, they would be merciless towards him. He felt that people would destroy him, as dogs would strangle a tormented dog squealing in pain." The protection of the family, which for thousands of years has been the source of life and the school of mankind, cannot be entrusted to transient state institutions or public opinion. The family is preserved by a more powerful and completely inevitable force - the inner nature of man, the absolutized form of which is God. III. The meaning of the novel "A Family Thought" is not only the theme of "Anna Karenina", but also an edification. An edification about what a family should be, and since the family is connected with the house, this is also an edification about the house. Let's read the famous beginning of the novel. In the very first phrase, the word "family" will meet. The next noun is "house". Next come "wife" and "husband". And the vengeance of the epigraph hovers over these main characters. The "thought of the people" in "War and Peace" was revealed as patience, fortitude, non-violence. Revenge is out of the question both from the point of view of Karataev and from the point of view of Kutuzov and Bolkonsky. "Do not think that people have made grief. People are His instrument," Princess Marya says in War and Peace. "We have no right to punish." According to M.S. Sukhotin, Tolstoy himself defined the meaning of the epigraph to the novel "Anna Karenina" as follows: "... I chose this epigraph ... to express the idea that the bad that a person does has as its consequence all that bitter that does not come from people, but from God, and what Anna Karenina also experienced. "War and Peace" is a doctrine of non-violence, and the novel "Anna Karenina" is a work of fiction about modernity, which does not pretend to be a comprehensive doctrine of life, but is instructive in one matter - home and family. However, in these two works, the common idea is that he who raises the sword brings misfortune first of all on himself. In "War and Peace" it is Napoleon. In "Anna Karenina" - the main character. And the sword she raised is her unwillingness to endure, her challenge to fate. She put her passion above everything else. For which she paid. Tolstoy appeared in Anna Karenina, as in the epic novel, as a brilliant realist artist. Tolstoy called his creative method, which he used to recreate reality in Anna Karenina, "bright realism" (62, p. 139). The realism of images, in the system of which the truth about a person and an era is captured, life authenticity, genuine psychological depth and a variety of uniquely vivid characters, the dynamism of action and the sharpness of conflict situations, the social richness of the content, the philosophical intensity of reflections on modernity and life in general - this is what distinguishes Tolstoy's novel and makes him an outstanding phenomenon of Russian and world realistic art.

Features of the dramaturgy of A. P. Chekhov ("Uncle Vanya", "The Seagull", "Three Sisters")
Chekhov's plays captivate the viewer and reader with their philosophical nature. There is no particular sharpness of action in them, the pictures drawn by the author seem simple and familiar. A great writer and artist, Chekhov notices the subtlest shades of human feelings and shows them in his plays. For all their seeming simplicity, Chekhov's plays are very serious. The reader and viewer immediately understand how many different, truly tragic moments there are in life. Chekhov's plays do not accept a superficial glance. In this case, the true meaning of the work slips away, leaving only individual scenes or actions in memory. There is nothing accidental in Chekhov's plays. In the context of the whole action, each, even the most insignificant episode, is of great importance. There are no small things in them. They said that in Chekhov's plays there is a so-called undercurrent, in other words, subtext. Chekhov draws the most ordinary manifestations of human nature. It is especially noteworthy that, at first glance, all the characters are quite typical and simple. For example, Natalya from the play Three Sisters is an ordinary bourgeois woman, in whose image there is nothing out of the ordinary. But the author himself compares her with the cruel villainess Lady Macbeth. Of course, Natasha has nothing in common with the bloody Shakespearean heroine. Nevertheless, she personifies vulgarity, meanness, lack of nobility. In other words, the author tells the viewer and the reader that there is no evil, small and large. Evil is always the same, no matter who it is directed at. Natasha's sisters do not have the strength to resist evil in the person of their own sister. Their weak character is the reason for the permissiveness that Natasha revels in. On the one hand, the sisters personify Christian non-resistance to evil and humility. On the other hand, their position allows the villainess to consider herself right and, therefore, not to yield to anyone. It can be said that the author emphasizes that all his characters in the depths of their souls are aware of their inferiority. And this makes them even more cruel and sophisticated to take revenge on those who are different from them. The heroine of the play Seagull Nina Zarechnaya has lofty aspirations. She is surprisingly dreamy, has a warm, sensitive nature. Real life is very cruel to her. Nina is abandoned by the man she loved to oblivion, her child dies. Loneliness becomes a companion of a poor woman who does not meet with the desired support. But Nina finds the strength to endure, not to break down from the many trials that have befallen her. She understands the simple wisdom of life, which requires mental fortitude and courage from a person. A woman understands that in our business it doesn’t matter whether we play on stage or write, the main thing is not glory, not brilliance, not what I dreamed of, but the ability to endure. Learn to bear your cross and believe. I believe, and it does not hurt me so much, and when I think about my calling, I am not afraid of life. Nina personifies the image of a person who had to go through severe trials of life. But she did not lose hope, faith, inherent in her from the beginning. It is through suffering that the purification of the human soul takes place, and this contributes to the formation of a stronger, more enduring character. Nina is a prime example. In The Seagull, the author pays a lot of attention to love as a unique feature of human relationships. All the characters are connected in one way or another. It is thanks to these intricacies that a sense of the reality of what is happening is created. The viewer or reader begins to feel ownership of everything that happens in the play.