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Image and theme of the war in Tolstoy’s “Sevastopol Stories”
In the military stories (“Raid”, “Forest Cutting”, “Sevastopol in December 1854, in May and August 1855”) Tolstoy dwells on the question of how legitimate war, demanding so many bloody victims, is legitimate . This idea is particularly clear in his “Sevastopol Tales” (see their analysis), which describe the famous defense of Sevastopol during the Crimean War.
Battles and wars were depicted many times in Russian and foreign literature … – Almost always, these pictures are different, “poetizatsii”, elevated tone, a kind of “militarism, glorifying the exploits of warriors and leaders … Continue reading
The value of “Hunter’s notes” in Russian literature
The artistic significance of Turgenev’s Hunter’s Notes is very great: there are many beautiful descriptions of the “endless” nature of the middle part of Russia – the nature whose beauty was first appreciated by Pushkin — a long series of types that are characteristic, purely folk, well-worn Russian life, and , at the same time, often marked by the features of “universal”. In the descriptions of nature, Turgenev was able to identify the most diverse moods, because the content of the story, usually, he responds and mood, the nature of the landscape, against which one or the other, a scene from human life. Continue reading
Dante “Hell”
In the two greatest creations of Dante Alighieri – “New Life” and in the “Divine Comedy” (see its summary) – the same idea has been carried out. Both are bound by the thought that pure love ennobles human nature, and the knowledge of the frailty of sensual bliss brings a person closer to God. But “New Life” is only a series of lyrical poems, and “Divine Comedy” represents a whole poem in three parts, containing up to one hundred songs, each of which contains about one hundred and forty verses. Continue reading
