Leo Tolstoy’s novel "War and Peace" in diaries and letters (to 150 anniversary beginning the work on the novel)

Abstract

The article «Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace” in diaries and letters» subjects to a detailed analysis the letters by L.N. Tolstoy, A.A. Fet, A.I. Ertel, diaries of L.N. Tolstoy and his wife S.A. Tolstoya, as well as letters of A.A Fet, I.S. Turgenev and others, to a greater or lesser extent on the novel «War and Peace». The most significant in number and in content - letter by L.N. Tolstoy, A.A. Fet and writing responses by A.A. Fet. The article stresses that it is from A.A. Fet, as a friend and colleague writers, Tolstoy shared his innermost thoughts, doubts, plans, letters to him talking about numerous overtime novel text and took notes with gratitude the poet. Letters by I.S. Turgenev differed greatly often unjustified, criticism of the novel «War and Peace», although later Turgenev would call this work «a wonderful book.» In this article, through the prism of letters and diaries, it is analyzed the questions of the history of the novel, publications on chapters and parts, recreating historical events and facts that shaped the system works also reflected variant titles of the novel «1805», «All is well that ends well», «War and peace». The subject of many scientific studies was to determine the relation of historical facts and fictitious people, that is given special attention in this article.

Keywords

• diaries
• letters
• writers’ dialogue
• plot
• character
• historical fact
• fiction
• character