War and Peace is a great work. What is the story of the epic novel? Leonid Tolstoy himself repeatedly wondered why life happens this way and not otherwise ... Indeed, why, for what and how did the creative process of creating the greatest work of all time and peoples proceed? After all, it took seven long years to write it ...
The story of the creation of the novel "War and Peace": the first evidence of the beginning of work
In September 1863, a letter comes from Yasnaya Polyana from the father of Sofia Tolstoy, A.E. Bersa. He writes that the day before he and Lev Nikolayevich had a long conversation about the people's war against Napoleon and about that era as a whole - the count intends to start writing a novel dedicated to those great and memorable events in the history of Russia. The mention of this letter is not accidental, since it is considered the "first accurate evidence" of the beginning of the work of the great Russian writer on the novel "War and Peace." This is also confirmed by another document, dated the same year a month later: Lev Nikolayevich writes to a relative about his new idea. He has already joined the work on the epic novel about the events of the beginning of the century and up to the 50s. How much moral strength, energy, he needs to carry out his plans, he says, and how much he already possesses, he already writes and thinks everything in the way he “has never written and never thought about”.
First idea
The history of the creation of Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” indicates that the writer's initial intention was to create a book about the difficult fate of the Decembrist who returned in 1865 (the time of the abolition of serfdom) to his native land after many years of exile in Siberia. However, soon Leo Nikolaevich revised his idea and turned to the historical events of 1825 - the time of the Decembrist uprising. As a result, this idea was rejected: the youth of the protagonist took place against the backdrop of the Patriotic War of 1912, a formidable and glorious time for the whole Russian people, which, in turn, was another link in an inextricable chain of events of 1805. Tolstoy decided to start telling from the very sources - the beginning of the 19th century - and revived the half-century history of the Russian state with the help of not just one protagonist, but many bright images.
The story of the creation of the novel "War and Peace" or "Three Pores"
Continuing ... Undoubtedly, a vivid idea of ​​the writer’s work on the novel is given by his creation story (War and Peace). So, the time and place of action of the novel are defined. The author takes the main characters - the Decembrists, through three historically significant periods of time, hence the original name of the work “Three Pores”.
The first part covers a period of time from the beginning of the 19th century until 1812, when the youth of the heroes coincided with the war between Russia and Napoleonic France. The second is the 20s, not without the inclusion of the most important thing - the Decembrist uprising in 1825. And, finally, the third, final part - the 50s - the time of the return of the rebels from exile under the amnesty granted by the emperor against such tragic pages of Russian history as the inglorious defeat in the Crimean War and the death of Nicholas I.
Well, the novel in its design and scope promised to be global and required a different art form, and it was found. According to Lev Nikolaevich himself, “War and Peace” is not historical chronicles, and not a poem, or even just a novel, but a new genre in fiction - an epic novel, where the fates of many people and the whole people are associated with grandiose historical events .
Torment
Work on the work was very difficult. The history of creation (“War and Peace”) suggests that Leo Nikolayevich took his first steps many times and immediately quit writing. In the writer's archive, there are fifteen versions of the first chapters of the work. What got in the way? What haunted the Russian genius? The desire to fully express their thoughts, their religious and philosophical ideas, research, their vision of history, to give their assessments of the socio-political processes, the huge role of not emperors, not leaders, but the whole people in the history of the country. This required a tremendous strain of all mental forces. More than once he lost and regained the hope of fulfilling his plan to the end. Hence the idea of ​​the novel, and the names of the early editions: “Three Pores”, “Everything is Good, which Ends Well”, “1805”. Apparently, they changed more than once.
Patriotic War of 1812
Thus, the author’s long creative throwings ended with a narrowing of the time frame — Tolstoy focused all his attention on 1812, the war of Russia against the “Great Army” of the French Emperor Napoleon, and only in the epilogue touched on the origin of the Decembrist movement.
The smells and sounds of war ... To transmit them, it was necessary to study a huge amount of material. This is fiction of that time, and historical documents, memoirs and letters of contemporaries of those events, battle plans, orders and orders of military commanders ... The writer spared neither time nor energy. From the very beginning, he rejected all those historical chronicles that sought to portray the war as a battlefield of two emperors, extolling one or the other. The writer did not diminish their merits and their significance, but put people, his spirit at the forefront.
As you can see, the work has an incredibly interesting creation story. War and Peace boasts another interesting fact. Between the manuscripts, another small, but nonetheless important document is preserved - a sheet with notes by the writer himself, made during his stay on the Borodino field. On it, he captured the skyline, indicating exactly where which villages were located. Here you can see the line of movement of the sun during the battle itself. All this, one might say, bare sketches, sketches of what was later destined under the pen of genius to turn into a real picture depicting the great battle of Borodino, full of movement, life, unusual colors and sounds. Incomprehensible and surprising, isn't it?
Chance and genius
L. Tolstoy on the pages of his novel talked a lot about the laws of history. His conclusions are applicable to life, they fit a lot with regard to the great work, in particular the history of creation. “War and Peace” went through many stages to become a real masterpiece.
Science says that chance and genius are to blame for everything: chance suggested using artistic means to capture the half-century history of Russia, and the genius - Leo Tolstoy - took advantage of it. But this raises new questions about what this case is, what genius is. On the one hand, these are just words designed to explain what is inexplicable in fact, and on the other hand, it is impossible to deny their suitability and usefulness, at least they mean "a certain degree of understanding of things."
Where and how the idea and history of the creation of the novel “War and Peace” appeared - it is impossible to find out to the end, only bare facts are available, therefore we say “chance”. Further - more: we read the novel and cannot imagine that power, that human spirit or, rather, superhuman, which managed to clothe the deepest philosophical thoughts and ideas in an amazing form - that's why we say “genius”.
The longer the series of “cases” that rises before us, the more the author’s genius shines, the closer it seems to us to discover the mystery of the genius of L. Tolstoy and some incomprehensible truth contained in the work. But this is an illusion. What to do? Lev Nikolaevich believed in the only possible understanding of the world order - renunciation of knowledge of the ultimate goal. If we recognize that the ultimate goal of creating a novel is inaccessible to us, we will renounce all the reasons, visible and invisible, that prompted the writer to start writing a work, we will comprehend or at least admire and enjoy in full its infinite depth, designed to serve common goals, not always accessible to human understanding. As the writer himself said while working on the novel, the artist’s ultimate goal is not to solve the issues undeniably, but to bring the reader to the side and love life in all its innumerable manifestations, so that he cries and laughs along with the main characters.