Year: 1978
Type: article
Abstract: The Unity of Tolstoi's Early Works War is the harshest subjugation of man's freedom to the laws of God.-War and Peacel 1The importance of Tolstoi's psychology for his fiction is evident and has been an accepted theme of criticism from his day to our own-2 To the writer himself this psychology was from the very beginning a means to a moral end.His first writings, uncompleted philosophical essays in which he attempts a description of the human psyche (I, 226-36), are part of a project for selfimprovement.As early as 1851 he declares moral improvement to be the goal of his fiction as well (I, 246).The attainment of this moral perfection, however, would not require the overthrow or transformation of human nature as the young psychologist understood it.In his first surviving attempt at belleslettres, the so-called "History of Yesterday," Tolstoi writes that happiness and goodness coincide in the uncorrupted human soul (I, 291).This belief, which Tolstoi never relinquished, must be taken into account when assessing the merciless analysis to which he subjected himself and others in diaries and works throughout his life.The writings of Tolstoi's early period grow from his related concerns with psychological analysis and the possibility of moral perfection.During his early years Tolstoi writes in two styles: the autobiographical and the epic.Works of this first kind include Adolescence (1852-54) and "Notes of a Billiard Marker" (1853), as well as the unfinished "Holy Night" (1853) and Novel of a Russian Landowner (1852-54).Those of the second are "The Raid" (1852), "The Woodfelling" (1853-55), "The Demoted Officer" (1853-3.In "Four Epochs of Development," the unfinished project from which the autobiographical trilogy emerged, Tolstoi says that relations among children are the same as those among adults "with only this difference, that everything is done unself-consciously and therefore more nobly" (I, 137).
Source: Canadian-American Slavic Studies
Author: DONNA ORWIN
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2084775978