The image of L. N. Tolstoy in the biographies of his contemporaries

The relevance of the article is due to the relentless interest of researchers in the study of Leo Tolstoy life path. Of particular interest are the biographies of the great Russian writer, written in the late XIX-early XX century. The subject of the research is the following biographies of Leo Tolstoy: "Biography of L. N. Tolstoy in 4 volumes" by Pavel Ivanovich Biryukov, "L. N. Tolstoy".Tolstoy and Dostoevsky" by Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky, "An Essay on the Life of Leo Tolstoy" by George Ivanovich Lebedev," The Life of Leo Tolstoy" by May Alden Ward. All these works were written by contemporaries of L. Tolstoy. Each biography presents a special understanding of the spiritual development of the hero, his life path. The writers saw the crisis and turning points of Tolstoy's life in their own way and chose their own narrative concept accordingly, so the purpose of this article is to consider the concept of each author. An important part of the study of biographers is not only the external life of the writer, but also as an integral part of it - the spiritual component. It is worth noting that quite often biographers consider the life of a writer under the prism of his works. Thus, D. S. Merezhkovsky builds a description of the life of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky on the principle of reflecting the spiritual and life path in their relationship with the works. The author begins the chapter "The Life of Leo Tolstoy and Dostoevsky" with the words that the path of the writer is somehow reflected in his work. G. I. Lebedev and M. O. Ward turn to the works of the writer to show his spiritual questmore reliably. Biryukov wonders whether it is necessary to focus special attention on the literary work of the hero, because the creative life as such is not a biography, and therefore is not the center of description in this work. According to the biographer, this direction of the writer's life is rather the subject of discussion by critics than biographers. In the course of the study, comparative-historical and typological methods were used. Further study of the biographies of Leo Tolstoy is extremely promising, as it helps to look at the personality of the great writer through the prism of various interpretations.

L. Tolstoy, writer, biography, author, concept, work, crisis, liberation, archival materials, sources, genre

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