Tolstoy"s Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (ebook)

Argumento de Tolstoy"s Art and Thought, 1847-1880 (ebook)

"My aim is to present Tolstoy's work as he may have understood it himself," writes Donna Orwin. Reconstructing the intellectual and psychic struggles behind the masterpieces of his early and middle age, this major study covers the period during which he wrote The Cossacks, War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. Orwin uses the tools of biography, intellectual and literary history, and textual analysis to explain how Tolstoy's tormented search for moral certainty unfolded, creating fundamental differences among the great novels of the "pre-crisis" period.

Distinguished by its historical emphasis, this book demonstrates that the great novelist, who had once seen a fundamental harmony between human conscience and nature's vitality, began eventually to believe in a dangerous rift between the two: during the years discussed here, Tolstoy moved gradually from a celebration of life to instruction about its moral dimensions. Paying special attention to Tolstoy's reading of Rousseau, Goethe, Schopenhauer, and the Russian thinker N. N. Strakhov, Orwin also explores numerous other influences on his thought. In so doing, she shows how his philosophical and emotional conflicts changed form but continued unabated--until, with his religious conversion of 1880, he surrendered his long attempt to make sense of life through art alone.

One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 1993

"Instead of following the obvious route of demonstrating how philosophical obsessions inhabit the texts, she pursues the more difficult, but ultimately more rewarding path of tracing the ways in which Tolstoy's thought animates his art. In so doing, she has made a major contribution to Tolstoy scholarship and literary studies."--Slavic and East European Journal0Acknowledgments Note on Documentation Introduction 3 Pt. 1 The 1850s 1 Analysis and Synthesis 15 The Hegelian Atmosphere of the 1850s 15 Chernyshevsky 16 The Contemporary Reception of Tolstoy's Work 18 Tolstoy and Chernyshevshy 19 Subjective Reality for the Early Tolstoy 22 Tolstoy's Goethean Realism 26 2 The Young Tolstoy's Understanding of the Human Soul 31 Tolstoy, the Psychological Analyst 31 Synthesis and the Influence of Rousseau 36 3 The First Synthesis: Nature and the Young Tolstoy 50 Tolstoy's Understanding of Nature in the Early 1850s 52 A Maturing Philosophy of Nature (Tolstoy and Fet) 53 Botkin and the Exploration of the Feelings 58 Sterne 62 N. V. Stankevich 64 Nature, Reason, and the Feelings ("Lucerne") 68 Objective and Subjective Poetry 73 The Metaphysics of Opposites and Goethe Again 76 Pt. 2 The 1860s 4 Nature and Civilization in The Cossacks 85 Natural Necessity in The Cossacks 85 The Morality of Self-Sacrifice in the Stag's Lair 86 The Cossack as Savage Man 93 5 The Unity of Man and Nature in War and Peace 99 Nature and History in War and Peace 100 Circular versus Faustian Reason in War and Peace 107 The Morality of Nature in War and Peace 109 The Importance of Spirit in Wartime 117 Reason, Morality, and Nature in the Human Soul 121 The Rostovs and "Living Life" 123 The Bolkonskys 126 Pierre 129 "Lyrical Daring" in War and Peace 132 Pt. 3 The 1870s 6 From Nature to Culture in the 1870s 143 Schopenhauer 150 Schopenhauer and Arzamas 154 Nature after Schopenhauer 157 Linking Happiness and Morality in Anna Karenina 164 7 Drama in Anna Karenina 171 The Symposium in the Restaurant 171 Anna as Heroine of a Novel 179 Anna's Radical Individualism 180 To Judge or Not Judge Anna 183 8 Science, Philosophy and Synthesis in the 1870s 188 The Enduring Importance of Unity for Tolstoy 188 Atomism 189 Kantian Epistemology 192 The Attack on the Individual 195 The Denigration of the "Personality" 196 The Morally Free Individual in Anna Karenina 200 Synthesis and Lyrical Daring Once Again 204 Conclusion 208 Notes 219 Works Cited 253 Index 263