About the author:
Inga Yu. Matveeva — PhD in Philology, Associate Professor, Department of literature and art, Russian State Institute of performing arts, 33–35 Mokhovaya st., 191028 St. Petersburg, Russia.
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Abstract:
The аrticle is devoted to the organization of the objective, material world in the novel “Resurrection” by L.N. Tolstoy, which is in inseparable connection with the writer’s ideas about the two levels of life, where material and earthly life is rigidly opposed to the true spiritual life. The writer presents the human world as a world of things and objects, a world from which its spiritual content is withdrawn, so that human life becomes “animal”, unnatural and criminal, and earthly reality contradicts the basic laws of God. The article examines the scene of the court session, which became the starting point for the development of events in the novel, and also determined the development of the main motifs and images of the work. The scene was carefully redrawn and for the first time in all its plot elements appeared in the first completed version of the novel. The article offers a comparative analysis of a number of fragments of the court scene in the original editions of the novel and in the final text of the work. The article shows how as the writer works on the text and how the description of the courtroom space and the characters images become more detailed, filled with material characteristics and elements. The scene of the court session implements the idea of material as an absurd, “inverted” reality, where criminals are judges, and the desire for justice turns into a crime.