About the author:
Irina B. Pavlova, DSc in Philology, Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.
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Abstract:
The article is devoted to the lexico-stylistic analysis of the scene of Prince Andrei’s premortal dream, which includes a number of complex ontological, existential, psychological problems. The rhythmic organization of the episode, the key images-symbols: “it” / death, a door, a dream, a mirror, white colour associated with the concept of Tolstoy’s death, and their functioning in other works of Russian classical literature are analyzed in detail. The author of the article pays special attention to the works of V.V. Vinogradov, A. Pothebnya. Implemented observations carried out expand the ideas about the artist’s ambivalent thanatological views, which echoed both Christian and ancient, Buddhist, Taoist ideas with the ideas of Schopenhauer, and allow one to penetrate deeper into Tolstoy’s interpretation of the fate of one of the central heroes of “War and Peace”. The scene of Prince Andrei’s premortal dream prepares the reader to the dream of his son in which he appears in the otherworld, without image and form.