Lev Tolstoy

To examine dream ambiguity in fiction, I reflect on Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s Othello, and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina – three classical works of literature that are representative of three different periods (ancient, renaissance, and modern) and three different genres (epic, drama, and psychological novel). Literary scholars have offered more or less convincing readings of the dreams in these three works. As usual, however, no interpretation gives ultimate answers to the questions that make us re-read and re-re-read great literature. Thus I approach dream ambiguity not as an obstacle to be overcome in the process of thorough reading of these three masterpieces but as a phenomenon to be understood. In other words, rather than puzzling out dreams, I explore how dream puzzles contribute to fiction’s appeal.

In: Dreams, Phantasms and Memories. Edited by W. Owczarski and Z. Ziemann. Gdansk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego, 2015. ISBN: 978-83-7865-312-7.

Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoj è conosciuto nel mondo come uno dei più grandi romanzieri russi. Pochi però sono a conoscenza di quello che viene spesso definito il “secondo Tolstoj”, e cioè il Tolstoj filosofo che cominciò la sua attività alla soglia dei cinquant’anni dopo una profonda crisi esistenziale e spirituale. Questo momento di conversione sarà un momento fondamentale poiché, con la sua attività, Tolstoj contribuirà a segnare la storia dei movimenti non violenti e pacifisti a livello internazionale e contribuirà con i suoi scritti ad influenzare molti attivisti e politici. Questo lavoro si pone l’obiettivo di esaminare, appunto, l’influenza che con il suo pensiero Tolstoj ha avuto a partire dalla conversione. Nel primo capitolo sarà presentata, soffermandosi in particolare sugli anni della conversione, una breve biografia, che consente di capire meglio il contesto in cui ha maturato il suo pensiero filosofico; nello stesso capitolo verrà poi esaminato il pensiero di Tolstoj e la sua teoria della non violenza e della non resistenza al male, attraverso le principali opere scritte a partire dagli anni ’80, in particolare attraverso l’opera Il Regno di Dio è in voi. Verranno in particolare presentate le polemiche contro le chiese e contro lo stato. Queste consentiranno di esaminare, nel secondo capitolo, l’influenza che Tolstoj ha avuto: in una prima parte saranno presi in considerazione il movimento anarchico cristiano e il movimento tolstoiano; nella seconda parte si esaminerà, in relazione a tutto ciò che è stato scritto nei capitoli precedenti, dell’influenza che il romanziere-filosofo russo ha avuto su uno dei più importanti non violenti della storia, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, attraverso la lettura di vari saggi e in particolare attraverso il carteggio tra Gandhi e Tolstoj.

It would not be an exaggeration to claim that Tolstoy is one of the most outstanding artists whose ideas on art are widely studied. People who read his book, encounter an unlike critic from his manner to style that he uses to judge relation of reason-result. Russian writer is relentless during criticism. In so much that he does not hold off shaking reader’s viewpoint about some artists and artworks which are supposed that have a privileged position in art history. Tolstoy is one of the first critics who pioneered in Social Realism and who studied the role art played in the field of education in detail.

In his article "The Megarian and Aristotelian Concept of Possibility" ("Der Megarische und der Aristotelische Möglichkeitsbegriff," 1937), Nicolai Hartmann attempts to revive an interpretation of the conception of possibility of the Megarians that stood in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of possibility and thus in opposition to the Aristotelian conception of modality in general. In this introduction, I attempt to situate Hartmann's article in its historical context. Did Hartmann come to adopt this thesis through his study of ancient Greek philosophy? Or did he already have a predilection for the Megarian conception of possibility prior to this? If so, how did this predilection come about? Was there an influence from his friend Vasily Sesemann, who published an article discussing the Megarians the previous year? Or were both Hartmann and Sesemann influenced early on by their mutual Russian teacher Nikolai Lossky, or even by a general tendency pervading Russian thought — itself grounded in the fatalism typical of the Russian collective unconscious — as we find it expressed in the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, Lev Tolstoy, and other Russian thinkers?

Можно ли примирить постулировавшуюся русскими авангардистами установку на письмо с чистого листа и их пристрастие к сюжетам с убиением Пушкина и Толстого? Как показано в этой статье, нельзя. Символическая казнь литературных «отцов», осуществленная сначала в художественных произведениях и манифестах Маяковского и Хлебникова, а затем в «СНЕ двух черномазых ДАМ» Хармса, – яркое свидетельство учета всеми тремя авангардистами  существующей традиции. Более того, сюжетом об убиении они меняли баланс сил в свою пользу: принижение и осмеяние Пушкина, Толстого и других бросаемых с парохода современности авторов должно было обеспечить авангардистам те доминантные позиции, которые по праву занимали побиваемые классики.
 
Ключевые слова: авангард, Хлебников, Маяковский, Хармс, кубофутуристские манифесты, Пушкин, Лев Толстой, символическое убиение отцовской фигуры

Журнальный PDF статьи - здесь http://elibrary.ru/contents.asp?issueid=1817307 .
 
In their manifestoes, Russian avant-gardists claimed to be writing with a clean slate while in their works they repeatedly played with the motif of murdering Alexander Pushkin and Leo Tolstoy. But are the two topoi compatible? The answer is no. Symbolic execution of literary father figures practiсed first by Vladimir Mayakovsky and Velimir Khlebnikov and then by Daniil Kharms in his "Dream of Two Swarthy Ladies" is clear evidence of the avant-gardists’ taking into account the existing literary tradition. Moreover, by means of this ‘murderous plot’ they tried to change the balance of literary power to their advantage. Humiliating and ridiculing Pushkin, Tolstoy and "throwing [them] into [the abyss] from the steamship of modernity" was the avant-gardists' way of appropriating the classics’ key positions in the field of literature.
 
Key words: avant-garde, Velimir Khlebnikov, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Daniil Kharms, Cubo-futurist manifestoes, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, symbolic murder of father figure

Ricredetevi! Di nuovo la guerra. Di nuovo sofferenze che non servono a nessuno, causate per niente, di nuovo menzogne, di nuovo la stupidità generale, la brutalità della gente. Di cosa si tratta? È sogno o è realtà? Si sta facendo qualcosa che non si deve, che non può essere-si vorrebbe credere che è un sogno e svegliarsi. Invece non è un sogno, è la terribile realtà.

Il presente lavoro si prefigge di analizzare la ricezione dell' “uchod” di Tolstoj nella letteratura italiana, prestando particolare attenzione all'aspetto linguistico del termine. Verranno presi in esame sia gli studi russi che quelli italiani dedicati agli ultimi giorni del grande scrittore, nonché le opere, i diari e le lettere dello stesso Tolstoj, dove compare il motivo della "partenza / fuga", i quali saranno messi in costante confronto con le loro traduzioni italiane.

The cinematic works of two popular contemporary directors-Luc Besson and Quentin Tarantino-are taken as case studies of popular culture, which are illuminated through the aesthetic and ethical criteria of Tolstoy's model of good and bad art, supported by Bakhtin's semiotic model of the monologic and dialogic text. The results of the analysis show that the popular culture texts of the two directors are endowed, above all, with interestingness and 'poeticality'; they are also imitative (they recycle existing images and artistic devices) and they do not reflect the "religious consciousness of the age", defined in terms of the "highest values of brotherhood" and "equality", envisage by Tolstoy. They therefore do not pass Tolstoy's test of good art. They have an entertainment value, which is escapist, just like the 'bourgeois art' of the 19 th century deplored by Tolstoy. Their 'infectiousness' is pure seduction (grounded in what Tolstoy termed 'voluptuous art') and does not unite the sender and the recipient of the work of art in an act of creating meaning that would reflect the highest values of their age. This is because these work are not embedded structures; they are, in Bakhtin's terms, monologic texts, which lack a unifying point of view on the highest hierarchical level of the Abstract/Implied Author, on which interpretation (as transference) can take place. KEY WORDS interestingness, kitsch, Tolstoy's art of the future, brotherhood of all men, mass culture , Bakhtin's dialogic and monologic texts

In the spring of 1863, Lev Tolstoi, newly married and soon to be a father, began to conceive of the work that would eventually become War And Peace. That same spring he also took up beekeeping. While in practical terms his “bee passion” proved relatively short-lived, it was an exceptionally intense engagement with a miniaturized and uniquely observable biological and social universe. In this article, Thomas Newlin explores how Tolstoi's dual enmeshment in “swarm life”—that is, in the biologically fraught realms of marriage and beekeeping—influenced both the unconventional form of War and Peace and its equally unconventional ideas (in particular Tolstoi's linked conceptions of the nature of history and of consciousness). The implications of a “swarm” model of history ultimately troubled Tolstoi, however; his doubts about the imperatives of biology do not play themselves out fully in War and Peace but instead lurk just beneath its surface.

"Tolstoy’un Kreutzer Sonat’ında bu etkiyi görmek mümkün. İsmi, Beethoven’in aynı isimli eserinden mülhem romanın fikri alt yapısı Schopenhauer’ın Aşkın Metafiziği eserinden izler taşıyor. Yayınlandığı dönem büyük yankılar uyandırmış, bazı ülkelerde sansüre uğramış, Çehov gibi birçok yazarın eleştirilerine uğramış kitap; en çok da Tolstoy’un eşi Sonya’da yıkıcı etkiler bırakır. Bu yıkıcı tahribatın en belirgin örneği olarak birçok kaynak, Kreutzer Sonat’tan sonra eşinin Tolstoy’a olan tüm saygısının bittiğini ve hatta kitapta yazılanlara nazire olacak şekilde evliliklerinin korkunç hikâyesinin kaleme aldığından bahseder. Sonya, yine de kitaba uygulanan sansüre razı gelmeyerek Çar’ın huzuruna çıkıp sansür engelini kaldırmasını rica eder. Kaynaklarda Kreutzer Sonat’ın pahalı ve ciltli edisyonun yeniden basım süreci bu şekilde izah ediliyor."

19. yüzyıl Rus edebiyatının önde gelen yazarlarından L. N. Tolstoy “Savaş ve Barış” adlı yapıtında doğa betimlemelerine sık sık yer verir. Ancak söz konusu yapıtta Tolstoy sadece doğayı betimlemez, aynı zamanda doğayla ilgili görüşlerini de doğa betimlemeleri aracılığıyla yansıtır. Bu çalışmada da yapıtın iki ana karakteri Andrey Bolkonski ve Piyer Bezuhov’un hayatın anlamını arayışları sırasında ortaya çıkan doğa Tolstoy’un doğa anlayışı bağlamında ele alınmaktadır. Bu doğrultuda ilk olarak insan ve doğa ilişkisi, filozofların doğaya yaklaşımları, daha sonra da doğa kavramının Rus edebiyatındaki gelişim süreci ele alınmaktadır. Devamında ise doğayı yaşayan ve gelişen bir organizma, insanı ise bu organizmanın bir parçası olarak gören Tolstoy’un doğa anlayışından hareketle Andrey ve Piyer’in hayatın anlamını arayışları değerlendirilmektedir. Bu çalışma sonunda söz konusu karakterlerin hayatın anlamını ararken yaşadıkları ruhsal, düşünsel ve ahlaksal kriz anlarında ortaya çıkan doğanın onlara yol gösterdiği, onların duygu ve düşüncelerini harekete geçirerek olaylara farklı açılardan bakmalarını sağladığı, onların ruhsal, düşünsel ve ahlaksal gelişimlerine yardımcı olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmaktadır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: İnsan ve doğa ilişkisi, L. N. Tolstoy’un doğa anlayışı, Savaş ve Barış, Andrey Bolkonski, Piyer Bezuhov

Abstract
L. N Tolstoy, who is one of the pioneer writers of the 19th century Russian literature, often describes nature in his work “War and Peace”. However, in the mentioned work Tolstoy not only describes nature, but also reflects his thoughts concerning the nature through the description of the nature. In this work, the nature is evaluated in the context of Tolstoy’s sense of nature, that appears during two main characters of the work, Andrei Bolkonsky and Pierre Bezukhov’s search for the meaning of the life. In this direction, first of all, the man-nature relationship, philosophers’ approach to the nature and the development process of the concept of the nature in Russian literature are examined. Afterwards, moving from Tolstoy’s sense of nature, that sees the nature as a living and developing organism, the man as a part of this organism, Andrei and Pierre’s search of the meaning of the life is evaluated. At the end of this work, it comes to the conclusion that the nature appearing in the moments of spiritual, intellectual and moral crisis Andrei and Pierre have experienced while searching for the meaning of the life leads to them, enables them to look at the events from the different point of view by activating their feelings and thoughts and helps them for their spiritual, intellectual and moral developments.
Keywords: Man-nature relationship, L. N. Tolstoy’s sense of nature, War and Peace, Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov