What is a book fair without Pavel Basinski? So winter non-fiction could not do without his new book. Very recently, Pavel Valerievich published another book on one of Tolstoy’s most popular texts. The previous one, “The True Story of Anna Karenina,” brought Basinsky the “Big Book.”
In “The True Story of Konstantin Levin” the writer continues to examine Tolstoy’s novel, his drafts and diaries, and tries to find answers to the questions. Why is Konstantin Levin needed in Anna Karenina? Why does Tolstoy give her half of his novel? Is Tolstoy himself the prototype of Levin, or is it not so simple? To find the answers to all the questions, you will have to read the book, but you can still find out something in the Gostiny Dvor amphitheater, where Basinsky spoke about the new product under the sensitive moderation of Ekaterina Pisareva, editor-in-chief of the magazine. liters group of companies.
“When they tell me that I am a popularizer of Tolstoy, I feel a little embarrassed,” Pavel Valerievich admitted. “Why popularize Tolstoy? It is not necessary to popularize him; another thing is that many people start reading him and do not understand him.” anything. <…> Tolstoy is not so easy to approach. It just so happened that I came to him through the back door.”
He immediately developed this intriguing statement: “At first I was interested in his story about leaving Yasnaya Polyana, and this is a familiar story. He tried to leave more than once, and the topic of departure always worried him <…> It’s not “I understood Tolstoy, it is impossible to understand him, but he became close to me.”
Of course, they also spoke directly about the new book: “This is not research, this is not interpretation, this is not literary criticism. <…> Tolstoy writes that the main task of a writer is to infect the reader. And this word is contagious… These two books are simply a confession of love for this novel.”
The listeners also received an answer to one of their passionate questions: indeed, Levin is Tolstoy’s alter ego. “When they told him that he was Tolstoy, the writer still got angry. But don’t be angry, there are obvious parallels between the story of Levin and Kitty and the story of Tolstoy and Sofia… Sofia Andreevna herself said that “Levin is Tolstoy without talent,” and saw in this character the worst traits of its author, including “the savagery of the Tolstoyan race.”
Levin was for Tolstoy a kind of diary of the novel, Basinsky believes; Through it, Tolstoy analyzed himself.
It’s interesting that Levin didn’t appear in the original drafts; he did not intend for this character to become such an important part of the novel. But later Tolstoy wrote to Levin and Kitty “between the lines, and even throughout the manuscript.” “At first he wanted to simply write a novel about his wife’s betrayal of her husband,” but then he realized that this was not enough for him and presented the second part, without which it is simply impossible to imagine this text today. . “Filmmakers [часто] They discard Levin’s verse, but it cannot be eliminated from the novel,” Basinsky is sure. “This novel won’t work.”
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