Did Pushkin's daughter repeat the fate of Anna Karenina? Maria Pushkina-Hartung. The poet's eldest daughter and the prototype of Anna Karenina
PROTOTYPE
ANNA KARENINA
WAS PUSHKIN'S DAUGHTER
On March 29, 1873, the famous Russian writer Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy began work on the novel Anna Karenina.
| The prototype of Anna Karenina was the eldest daughter of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, Maria Hartung. Extraordinary sophistication of manners, wit, charm and beauty distinguished Pushkin’s eldest daughter from other women of that time. Maria Alexandrovna's husband was Major General Leonid Hartung, manager of the Imperial Stud. True, Pushkin’s daughter, who served as Tolstoy’s prototype, did not throw herself under any train. She outlived Tolstoy by almost a decade and died in Moscow on March 7, 1919 at the age of 86. She met Tolstoy in Tula in 1868, and immediately became the object of his harassment. However, having received a turn from the gate, Tolstoy prepared an unhappy fate for the heroine written off from her, and when in 1872, in the vicinity of Yasnaya Polyana, a certain Anna Pirogova threw herself under a train because of unhappy love, Tolstoy decided that the hour had struck. |  Pushkin's daughter Maria Hartung, who became the prototype of Anna Karenina |
Tolstoy’s wife Sofya Andreevna and his son Sergei Lvovich recalled that on the morning when Tolstoy began working on Anna Karenina, he accidentally looked into Pushkin’s volume and read the unfinished passage “Guests were arriving at the dacha...”. "This is how to write!" - exclaimed Tolstoy. That same day in the evening, the writer brought his wife a handwritten piece of paper, on which there was a now textbook phrase: “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonsky house.” Although in the final version of the novel it became second, not first, giving way to “all happy families", as is known, similar friend on a friend...
By that time, the writer had long been nurturing the idea of composing a novel about a sinner rejected by society. Tolstoy completed his work in April 1877. In the same year, it began to be published in the Russian Bulletin magazine in monthly portions - all of reading Russia was burning with impatience, waiting for the continuation.
The surname Karenin has literary source. “Where does the surname Karenin come from? - writes Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy. - Lev Nikolaevich began to study the Greek language in December 1870 and soon became so comfortable with it that he could admire Homer in the original... He once told me: “Carenon - Homer has a head. From this word I got the name Karenin.”
According to the plot of the novel, Anna Karenina, realizing how difficult and hopeless her life is, how senseless her cohabitation with her lover Count Vronsky is, rushes after Vronsky, hoping to explain and prove something else to him. At the station, where she was supposed to board the train to go to the Vronskys, Anna remembers her first meeting with him, also at the station, and how on that distant day some lineman fell under the train and was crushed to death. Immediately the thought occurs to Anna Karenina that there is a very simple way out of her situation that will help her wash away the shame and untie everyone’s hands. And at the same time it will be great way To take revenge on Vronsky, Anna Karenina throws herself under a train. 
Could this happen tragic event in fact, in the very place that Tolstoy describes in his novel? Zheleznodorozhnaya station (in 1877, a IV class station) small town with the same name, 23 kilometers from Moscow (until 1939 - Obiralovka). It was in this place that the terrible tragedy described in the novel Anna Karenina occurred.
In Tolstoy’s novel, the scene of Anna Karenina’s suicide is described as follows: “...she did not take her eyes off the wheels of the passing second carriage. And exactly at that moment, when the middle between the wheels caught up with her, she threw back the red bag and, pressing her head into her shoulders, fell under the carriage on her hands and with a slight movement, as if preparing to immediately stand up, she sank to her knees.”
In reality, Karenina could not have done this the way Tolstoy described it. A person cannot end up under a train when falling into full height. In accordance with the trajectory of the fall: while falling, the figure rests its head against the casing of the carriage. The only way left is to kneel in front of the rails and quickly stick your head under the train. But it is unlikely that a woman like Anna Karenina would do this.
Despite the dubious (without touching, of course, on the artistic side) suicide scene, the writer nevertheless chose Obiralovka not by chance. The Nizhny Novgorod road was one of the main industrial routes: heavily loaded freight trains often ran here. 
The station was one of the largest. In the 19th century, these lands belonged to one of the relatives of Count Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky. According to the directory of the Moscow province for 1829, in Obiralovka there were 6 households with 23 peasant souls. In 1862, a railway line was laid here from the Nizhny Novgorod station that existed at that time, which stood at the intersection of Nizhegorodskaya Street and Rogozhsky Val. In Obiralovka itself, the length of sidings and sidings was 584.5 fathoms, there were 4 switches, a passenger and residential building. 9 thousand people used the station annually, or an average of 25 people per day. The station village appeared in 1877, when the novel Anna Karenina itself was published. Now there is nothing left of the former Obiralovka on the current Zhelezka.
Could you have guessed that main character famous novel L.N. Did Tolstoy have African roots? Meanwhile, the description of Anna Karenina’s appearance signals precisely this. And the writer himself never hid the amazing origin of his heroine, whose prototype was Maria Aleksandrovna Hartung, née Pushkin. No, not a random namesake, but the own daughter of the great poet.
Eldest daughter“the sun of Russian poetry” was born on May 19, 1832 in the glorious city of St. Petersburg. Exists folk sign, according to which everyone born in May “suffers” all their lives. One can be skeptical about this statement, but in the case of Maria Pushkina everything turned out exactly like this: she was destined for an extremely difficult fate.
Little Masha was incredibly similar to her great father. This is what Pushkin himself jokingly wrote to Princess Vera Vyazemskaya about her newborn daughter:
Maria Pushkina in her youthImagine that my wife had the embarrassment to resolve herself with a small lithograph of my person. I am in despair, despite all my self-importance.
As we see, Alexander Sergeevich was convinced that his first heiress would not grow up to be a beauty. However, this did not stop the poet from loving the eldest Mashenka more than all his other offspring, who were born a little later. The family idyll did not last long: Pushkin died in a fatal duel when Maria was only five years old. The girl practically did not remember her father. Alexander Sergeevich lived in her mind only as a legendary, sublime genius. There were no everyday details associated with her dad left in her memory, but Maria reverently loved and honored her father until her old age.
After the death of the poet, his wife, Natalya Nikolaevna, moved with her children to the Kaluga region, to the parental estate Polotnyany Zavod, away from the icy gaze of representatives high society, their gossip and rumors.
Despite the terrible blow that befell Pushkin’s daughter at the age of five, the subsequent years of Maria’s childhood and adolescence passed in peace and tranquility. The girl was always in great relationship with her mother, and also got along well with her second husband, cavalry general Pyotr Lansky. Masha, like all noble girls of that era, received an excellent education at home: she studied music, spoke fluently in several foreign languages, did handicrafts and rode horses with ease. Then Maria graduated from the prestigious Catherine Institute and still ended up in high society, who once destroyed her brilliant father.
There are few memories of Maria Alexandrovna. All memoirists emphasized that the woman’s manners were unusually refined, her posture was straight, like stretched string, and proud. However, all contemporaries also wrote that in communication Maria was completely simple, always friendly, capable of making a witty but good-natured joke in any situation. Separately, acquaintances of Pushkin’s daughter emphasized that the girl’s appearance was truly amazing:
The rare beauty of her mother was mixed in her with the exoticism of her father, although her facial features were perhaps somewhat large for a woman.
Maria at 28 years old Leo Tolstoy saw Maria Alexandrovna just like this - non-standard, and therefore even more beautiful. He met the heiress of the great poet at one of the many social dinners. Witnesses fateful meeting they recalled that Maria interested the prose writer in the very first moments. He began to carefully ask his neighbors at the table who this lady with interesting appearance and a mischievous look. When Tolstoy was informed in a whisper that in front of him was Maria Alexandrovna, the daughter of Pushkin himself, the writer said:
Yes, now I understand where she got those pedigreed curls on the back of her head!
When Lev Nikolaevich began working on the novel “Anna Karenina”, he imagined Maria Pushkina. The writer wanted his heroine to look the same as the heiress of Alexander Sergeevich. The resemblance was amazing. The description of Anna’s appearance coincides exactly with how contemporaries described Mary’s appearance:
On her head, in her black hair, without any admixture, there was a small garland of pansies and the same on the black ribbon of the belt between the white laces. Her hairstyle was invisible. Only noticeable, decorating her, were these willful short rings of curly hair, always sticking out at the back of her head and temples. There was a string of pearls on the chiseled, strong neck.
Tolstoy chose Maria Alexandrovna only as a prototype of Anna’s appearance. He borrowed the character and fate of his heroine from other women. However, Maria Pushkina’s life, although not as tragic as Karenina’s, was still quite difficult.
Everything started out great: Maria was appointed maid of honor to the wife of Alexander II. The girl always bathed in male attention, but by those standards she got married very late - at 28 years old. The husband of Pushkin’s eldest daughter was Leonid Hartung, a major general who managed the Imperial stud farms in Moscow and Tula. Their marriage lasted almost two decades and ended in a terrible tragedy: Maria Alexandrovna’s husband shot himself in the forehead after he was unfairly accused of stealing securities. He was insanely afraid of shame and public censure, and therefore chose death over life. A note with the following content was found in the presence of her inconsolable wife:
I swear to the almighty gods that I have not stolen anything and forgive my enemies.
Maria Pushkina in old age Maria and Leonid had no children, and the widow did not marry a second time: she could not betray the memory of her husband. She lived to the age of 86 in all alone and died in poverty, ruined Soviet power. It is worth noting that the Bolsheviks were still going to assign Maria Alexandrovna a meager pension, but the elderly woman died before they could do this. Despite the revolution, hunger and cold, the dry old woman last days in her life she visited a place that was sacred to her - the monument to Pushkin on Tverskoy Boulevard.
10/2/12, 12:20 pm
On the day of memory of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin
Anna was not in purple...
...On her head, in her black hair, without any admixture, there was a small garland of pansies and the same on the black ribbon of the belt between the white laces. Her hairstyle was invisible. The only thing noticeable, decorating her, were these willful short ringlets of curly hair, always sticking out at the back of her head and temples. There was a string of pearls on the chiseled, strong neck.
L.N. Tolstoy “Anna Karenina”
M.A. Hartung. Artist I.K. Makarov, 1860
.
This portrait of Maria Alexandrovna
was in Yasnaya Polyana at Tolstoy's.
After the revolution, she first lived in St. Petersburg, and then moved to Moscow, where she came to Tverskoy Boulevard to see her father’s monument almost every day.
Many Muscovites paid attention to the lonely old woman, all in black, sitting for hours on a bench near the monument...
At the end of the difficult and especially hungry year of 1918, Lunacharsky ordered that the daughters of the great poet be provided with financial support. A worker from the People's Commissariat for Social Security came to her to examine the “degree of her need” and<...>People's Commissariat for Social Security, “taking into account the merits of the poet Pushkin to the Russian fiction“, awarded her a pension, but the first pension went towards the funeral of the poet’s daughter.
Her grave is located in the Donskoy Monastery cemetery.
/ZhZL. Maria Pushkina-Hartung/
At the beginning of 1868, Maria Alexandrovna met L.N. Tolstoy in the house of General A. Tulubiev in Tula. Their meeting was described by Tolstoy’s sister-in-law T. Kuzminskaya:
“The door from the hall opened and an unfamiliar lady in black came in. lace dress. Her light gait easily carried her rather plump, but straight and graceful figure. I was introduced to her. Lev Nikolaevich was still sitting at the table. I saw how he looked at her intently.
- Who is this? - he asked, approaching me.
- Mme Hartung, daughter of the poet Pushkin.
“Yes,” he drawled, “now I understand... Look at the Arabic curls on the back of her head.” Amazingly purebred.
When Lev Nikolaevich was introduced to Maria Alexandrovna, he sat down at tea table around her; I don’t know their conversation, but I know that she served him as an Anna Karenina type, not in character, not in life, but in appearance. He himself admitted this."
It is no secret that it was the eldest daughter A.S. Pushkin's Maria Hartung became the prototype of Anna Karenina. It is worth noting that Maria Alexandrovna was noticeably different from other women of that time with her extraordinary wit, beauty, charm and sophistication of manners. Her husband was Major General L. Hartung.
Of course, unlike Anna Karenina, Maria Alexandrovna did not throw herself under a train and outlived Tolstoy himself by almost 10 years. The eldest daughter of the great poet passed away at the age of 86 on March 7, 1919 in Moscow. Maria Hartung met Tolstoy in Tula (1869). Famous writer I couldn’t pass by such a woman and began to show her many signs of attention, to which the poet’s daughter refused.
Maybe that’s why the main character, based on Maria Alexandrovna, was destined for such hard fate. In 1872, not far from Yasnaya Polyana, a certain Anna Pirogova threw herself under a train because of unhappy love. It is quite possible that it was this news that pushed Tolstoy to the idea of ending Anna Karenina’s life under the wheels of a train.
From the memoirs of Tolstoy’s wife and their son, it follows that a volume of Pushkin was in the writer’s hands that morning when he began working on Anna Karenina. In it, Tolstoy ran his eyes over the poet’s passage “The guests were arriving at the dacha...”. It was at this moment that the writer exclaimed: “This is how you should write!”
That same day, the writer’s wife was already holding a handwritten sheet of paper in her hands, where it was written to everyone famous phrase: “Everything was mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house.” True, later this very phrase became the second. In the final version, the work began with the words: “all happy families...”.
At that time, Tolstoy had more than once had the idea of writing a novel about a sinner who would be rejected by society. The work was completed by the writer in April 1877. In the same year, it began to be published in parts in the Russian Bulletin, which was published every month.
Many were interested in the question of the origin of the Karenina surname. The history of this surname is quite interesting. Lev Nikolaevich at one time became interested in studying Greek language. He succeeded so much in this that he was soon reading Homer in the original. And one day he told his son that Homer's Karenon is his head. It was from this word that the surname of the main character with an unfortunate fate came about.
Based on the storyline of the novel, Anna Karenina was fully aware of how dark and difficult her life was. She was burdened by the very thought of cohabitation with her lover Vronsky. She rushes after the count in the hope of conveying something to him.
Once at the station, Anna Karenina plunges into memories. She remembers both her first meeting with the count and the day when one lineman was crushed by a train. It was then that the thought arises in her head that the way out of her difficult situation still there is.
In this way, according to the heroine, you can not only wash away the shame from yourself, but also give everyone else a free hand. Such an exit, according to Anna Karenina, is also an excellent opportunity to take revenge on Vronsky. With these thoughts, she throws herself under the train.
Some wonder whether such a tragic event could actually happen in the place that the author himself describes? 23 km from the capital there was the Zheleznodorozhnaya station, which was located in the city of the same name. It was here that the terrible tragedy that took place in Tolstoy’s novel occurred.
The writer describes in detail the suicide of Anna Karenina. The heroine, according to the author, “fell under the carriage on her hands...sank to her knees.” But in reality, being under the wheels of a train, falling at full height, is simply impossible.
The trajectory of the fall in in this case would be completely different. When falling, the figure must have rested its head against the skin of one of the cars. There is only one way left - to kneel right in front of the rails and quickly lower your head under the moving train. Most likely, a woman like Anna Karenina would not do this.
As we can see, the details of the heroine’s suicide scene are questionable, which cannot be said about the artistic side of the description. But it should be noted that Obdiralovka (this is the name the Railway Town had until 1939) was not chosen by Tolstoy by chance. At that time, the railway was considered one of the main industrial routes. This is where heavy freight trains passed through.
The station described was one of the largest in those days. In the 19th century these lands were in the possession of Count Rumyantsev-Zadunaisky. In 1862, a railway line was laid here from the Nizhny Novgorod station.
As for Obdiralovka itself, the entire length of sidings and sidings there was a little more than 584 fathoms. About 9 thousand people used this station every year (about 25 people daily). The village itself at the station began its existence in 1877, when the novel “Anna Karenina” was published. Nowadays, in those places there is nothing reminiscent of the old Obdiralovka of that time.
Additional material (about prototypes of the novel)
Tolstoy wrote the novel “Anna Karenina” in Yasnaya Polyana. His loved ones recognized familiar pictures, familiar people, and even themselves in the book. The writer’s son, Sergei Lvovich Tolstoy, recalled: “My father took the material for it (for Anna Karenina) from the life around him. I knew many people and many of the episodes described there. But in “Anna Karenina” characters not exactly those who actually lived. They just look like them. The episodes are combined differently than in life.”
Each of Tolstoy's heroes has something of his worldview. For example, Levin’s lyrical mood, in which Tolstoy’s living features are discerned, covers the landscape of Moscow (part one, chapter IX) In the image of Levin, in general, a lot comes from the author: appearance features, life collisions, experiences, and reflections.
The surname Levin itself is derived from Tolstoy: “ Lev Nikolaevich” (as he was called in his home circle). The surname Levin was perceived precisely in this transcription. However, neither Tolstoy nor his relatives insisted on this particular reading.
The story of Levin and Kitty embodies Tolstoy's memories of his family life. Levin writes on the card table the initial letters of the words he wanted to say to Kitty, and she guesses their meaning. Tolstoy’s explanation with his fiancee, and then his wife, happened in approximately the same way (part four, chapter XIII). S. A. Tolstaya (nee Bers) writes about this in detail in her notes (“The Marriage of L. N. Tolstoy” in the book “L. N. Tolstoy in the Memoirs of Contemporaries”, M., 1955).
V. G. Korolenko noted the closeness of the way of thinking of Tolstoy’s heroes and the writer himself: “Pierre’s doubts and mental discord, Levin’s reflections, his falls, mistakes, more and more new quests are his own, dear, organically inherent in the soul of Tolstoy himself.”
Anna Karenina, according to T. A. Kuzminskaya, resembles Maria Alexandrovna Hartung (1832-1919), Pushkin’s daughter, but “not in character, not in life, but in appearance.” Tolstoy met M.A. Hartung while visiting General Tulubiev in Tula. Kuzminskaya says: “Her light gait easily carried her rather plump, but straight and graceful figure. I was introduced to her. Lev Nikolaevich was still sitting at the table. I saw how he looked at her intently. "Who is this?" - he asked, approaching me. - M-me Hartung, daughter of the poet Pushkin. “Yes,” he drawled, “now I understand... Look at the Arabic curls on the back of her head. Amazingly thoroughbred.”
In the diary of S. A. Tolstoy there is a reference to another prototype of Tolstoy’s heroine. S. A. Tolstaya talks about tragic fate Anna Stepanovna Pirogova, whose unhappy love led to death. She left home “with a bundle in her hand”, “returned to the nearest station - Yasenki, where she threw herself onto the rails under a freight train.” All this happened near Yasnaya Polyana in 1872. Tolstoy went to the railway barracks to see the unfortunate woman. In the novel, both the motivation for actions and the nature of events were changed.
The prototype of Karenin was the “reasonable” Mikhail Sergeevich Sukhotin, chamberlain, adviser to the Moscow palace office. In 1868, his wife, Maria Alekseevna, obtained a divorce and married S. A. Ladyzhensky. Tolstoy was friends with Maria Alekseevna’s brother and knew about this family history.
The surname Karenin has a literary source. Sergei Tolstoy recalled how his father told him: “Carenon - Homer has a head. From this word I got the name Karenin.” Apparently, Karenin is a “head” person; his reason prevails over his feelings.
The prototype of Oblonsky is Vasily Stepanovich Perfilyev, the district leader of the nobility, and then the Moscow governor, married to L. N. Tolstoy’s second cousin.
In the character of Nikolai Levin, Tolstoy reproduced many of the traits of his nature sibling- Dmitry. “I think that it was not so much the bad, unhealthy life that he led for several months in Moscow, but the internal struggle of remorse that immediately destroyed his powerful body,” Tolstoy recalled.
Some features of the artist Mikhailov, whose studio Anna and Vronsky visit in Rome, resemble, according to S. L. Tolstoy, the artist I. N. Kramskoy. In the fall of 1873, Kramskoy painted a portrait of L.N. Tolstoy in Yasnaya Polyana. Their conversations about worldview and creativity, about old masters gave Tolstoy the idea of introducing scenes into the novel with the participation of a “new artist” brought up “in the concepts of disbelief, denial and materialism.”
Real facts reality entered the novel transformed, submitting to Tolstoy’s creative concept. Therefore, it is impossible to completely identify the heroes of “Anna Karenina” with their real prototypes. “You need to observe many similar people to create one specific type,” says Tolstoy.
Homework.
1. Determine the features of the genre and composition of the novel;
2. Find arguments in favor of the fact that Tolstoy’s novel, following Pushkin, can be called “free”;
3. Find connections between the images of Anna Karenina and Tatyana Larina (anticipatory).
Lesson 2. Features of the genre, plot and composition of the novel
The purpose of the lesson: determine the features of the genre and composition of the novel; identify its main storylines.
Methodical techniques: teacher lecture; conversation on issues.
Lesson equipment: portrait of L. N. Tolstoy by Kramskoy; publication of the novel "Anna Karenina".
During the classes
I. The teacher's word
Tolstoy called his novel “broad, free.” This definition is based on Pushkin’s term “free novel.” There is an undeniable connection between Pushkin’s novel “Eugene Onegin” and Tolstoy’s novel “Anna Karenina”, which is manifested in the genre, plot, and composition. Tolstoy continued Pushkin's traditions of updating the form of the novel and expanding its artistic possibilities.
The genre of the free novel developed, overcoming literary patterns and conventions. In Tolstoy's novel there is no absolute plot completeness of the provisions on which the traditional novel plot was built. The choice of material and the free development of storylines are determined only by the writer’s concept. Tolstoy himself wrote about it this way: “I cannot and do not know how to put known boundaries on the persons I have imagined - such as marriage or death. I couldn’t help but imagine that the death of one person only aroused interest in other people, and marriage seemed for the most part the beginning, not the ending of interest” (vol. 13, p. 55).
Tolstoy destroyed the traditional “known boundaries” of the novel genre, which presupposes the death of a hero or a wedding as the completion of the plot, a point in the history of the heroes.
Prove that Tolstoy’s novel does not correspond to the traditional ideas about the novel of his time. Compare “Anna Karenina” with Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”.
(Tolstoy’s novel continues after the wedding of Levin and Kitty, even after the death of Anna. The author’s creative concept - the embodiment of “family thought” - dictates the free development of the plot, makes it vital, truthful, reliable. In Pushkin’s novel, it also seems like there is no beginning and end, no completeness of the plot lines. The novel begins unconventionally - with the thoughts of Onegin on the way to the village to see his dying uncle, the novel continues after the death of one of the main characters - Lensky, and after the marriage of the main character - Tatyana. There is no traditional ending in Eugene Onegin. After the explanation The author simply abandons Onegin and Tatiana “at a moment that was evil for him.” Pushkin’s novel is like a piece of life snatched by the author, which allowed him to express his ideas, pose pressing questions not only for his time, and show the material and spiritual life of society.)
Teacher. Modern critics Tolstoy was reproached for the dissonance of the plot, for the fact that the plot lines are independent of each other, that there is no unity in the novel. Tolstoy emphasized that the unity of his novel is based not on external plot structures, but on the “internal connection” determined general idea. For Tolstoy, what is important is the inner content, clarity and certainty of attitude to life, which permeate the entire work.
IN free romance there is not only freedom, but also necessity, not only breadth, but also unity.
In many scenes, characters, positions of Tolstoy’s novel, artistic unity and unity are strictly maintained author's attitude. “In the field of knowledge there is a center,” writes Tolstoy, “and there are countless radii from it. The whole task is to determine the length of these radii and their distance from each other.” The concept of “one-centeredness” was the most important for Tolstoy in his philosophy of life, which was reflected in the novel “Anna Karenina”. It is built like this: there are two main circles in it - Levin’s circle and Anna’s circle. Moreover, Levin's circle is wider: Levin's story begins earlier than Anna's story and continues after her death. And the novel does not end in disaster railway(part seven), but by Levin’s moral quest and his attempts to create a “positive program” for the renewal of private and common life(part eight).
Anna's circle, which can be called the circle of life of “exceptions,” is constantly shrinking, leading the heroine to despair, and then to death. Levin circle - circle “ real life" It expands and has no clear external boundaries, like life itself. There is an inescapable logic to this historical development, which, as it were, predetermines the denouement and resolution of the conflict, and the relationship of all parts in which there is nothing superfluous. This is a sign of classical clarity and simplicity in art.
II. Working with the class.
Exercise. Try to graphically depict the most general ideas about life path the main characters of Tolstoy’s novel in accordance with the author’s concept of “single-centricity”.
Let us remember Tolstoy’s famous “formula”: “And there is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth” (“War and Peace”). The novel “Anna Karenina” corresponds to this formula.
In Tolstoy’s reasoning there is another formula: “There is different degrees knowledge. Complete knowledge is that which illuminates the entire subject from all sides. Clarification of consciousness is accomplished in concentric circles.” The composition “Anna Karenina” can serve ideal model for this Tolstoy formula, which assumes the presence of a homogeneous structure of characters and the natural development of a “favorite dream.”
The many circles of events in the novel, which have a common center, testify to the artistic unity of Tolstoy’s epic plan.
What is the basis for the development of the plot of the novel? What do you think is the author’s “favorite dream”?
(The internal basis of the developed plot in the novel “Anna Karenina” is the gradual liberation of a person from class prejudices, from the confusion of concepts, from the “painful untruth” of separation and enmity. Life's quest Anna's story ended in disaster, but Levin, through doubt and despair, takes the road to goodness, to truth, to the people. He doesn't think about economic or political revolution, but about a spiritual revolution, which, in his opinion, should reconcile interests and create “harmony and connection” between people. This is the author’s “favorite dream,” and Levin is its exponent.)
Teacher. Let's try to expand a little on the plot and composition of the novel. We will try to briefly define the content of parts of the novel and trace how the author's intention is gradually revealed.
Name the main events of the parts of the novel. Find key images.
(In the first part key image- an image of general discord, confusion. The novel opens with an insoluble conflict in the Oblonskys' house. One of the first phrases of the novel: “Everything is mixed up in the Oblonskys’ house” is key. Levin receives Kitty's refusal. Anna loses peace, has a presentiment future catastrophe. Vronsky leaves Moscow. The meeting of the heroes at the blizzard station foreshadows the tragedy of their relationship. Levin, just like his brother Nikolai, wants to “get away from all the abomination, confusion, both someone else’s and his own.” But there's nowhere to go.
In the second part, the heroes seem to be scattered by the wind of events. Levin is isolated in his estate alone, Kitty wanders around the resort towns of Germany. Vronsky and Anna were connected by “confusion” with each other. Vronsky triumphs that his “charming dream of happiness” has come true, and does not notice that Anna says: “It’s all over.” At the races in Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky unexpectedly suffers a “shameful, unforgivable” defeat, a harbinger of life’s collapse. Karenin is experiencing a crisis: “He experienced a feeling similar to that what a person would experience if he calmly walked across a bridge over an abyss and suddenly saw that the bridge had been dismantled and that there was an abyss there. This abyss was life itself, the bridge was that artificial life that Alexey Alexandrovich lived.”
The position of the heroes in the third part is characterized by uncertainty. Anna stays at Karenin's house. Vronsky serves in the regiment. Levin lives in Pokrovsky. They are forced to make decisions that do not coincide with their desires. And life turns out to be entangled in a “web of lies.” Anna feels this especially acutely. She says about Karenin: “I know him! I know that he, like a fish in water, swims and enjoys lies. But no, I will not give him this pleasure, I will break this web of lies of his in which he wants to entangle me; let it be what will be. Anything is better than lies and deceit!”
In the fourth part of the novel, relationships are established between people already divided by deep enmity that break the “web of lies.” It tells about the relationships between Anna and Karenin, Karenin and Vronsky, Levin and Kitty, who finally met in Moscow. The heroes experience the influence of two opposing forces: moral law goodness, compassion and forgiveness and the powerful law public opinion. This law operates constantly and inevitably, and the law of compassion and goodness appears only occasionally, like an epiphany, when suddenly Anna took pity on Karenin, when Vronsky saw him “not evil, not false, not funny, but kind, simple and majestic.”
The leading theme of the fifth part is the theme of choosing the path. Anna left with Vronsky for Italy. Levin married Kitty and took her to Pokrovskoye. There is a complete break with past life. In confession, Levin draws attention to the words of the priest: “You are entering a time in life when you must choose a path and stick to it.” The choice of Anna and Vronsky is illuminated by the artist Mikhailov’s painting “Christ before the Court of Pilate,” which was artistic expression problems of choice between the “force of evil” and the “law of good”. Karenin, deprived of a choice, accepts his fate, “throwing himself into the hands of those who took care of his affairs with such pleasure.”
“Family Thought” is outlined with different sides in the sixth part. Levin's family lives in Pokrovsky. Vronsky’s illegitimate family is in Vozdvizhenskoye. Oblonsky's house in Ergushov is being destroyed. Tolstoy depicts pictures of life in a “correct” and “incorrect” family, life “in law” and “outside the law.” Social law is considered by Tolstoy in conjunction with the law of “good and truth.”
In the seventh part, the heroes enter the final stage spiritual crisis. Happening here major events: the birth of Levin's son, the death of Anna Karenina. Birth and death seem to complete one of the circles of life.
The eighth part of the novel is the search for a “positive program” that was supposed to help the transition from the personal to the general, to “people's truth.” Let us remember that Tolstoy came to this idea in his novel War and Peace. The plot center of this part is the “law of good”. Levin comes to the firm realization that “the achievement of the common good is possible only with the strict implementation of the law of good that is open to every person.”)
Homework.
Select and analyze episodes that reveal the “family thought” of L. N. Tolstoy.