『전쟁과 평화』에 나타난 ‘눈’ 모티프

Abstract

One of the most distinguished features of Tolstoy’s style, which is everywhere apparent, is repetition. Many varieties of repetition are encountered in prose fiction. The repetition aids the memory as well as facilitates reading. In War and Peace there is another variety of repetition, which is characteristically Tolstoyan, is the constant reiteration of some external detail designed to characterize an individual. Tolstoyan character is distilled into a mannerism, a gesture, a physical feature, an outward and visible sign which recurs continually and is the permanent property of that character. Tolstoy repeats the same words because he wants to repeat the same ideas, which can only be repeated exactly by using again the form in which they originally occurred. As well as suggesting what is most significant about his characters, Tolstoy tries to evoke in the reader at the same time a positive or negative response to them. Repetition, then, is the most characteristic single feature of Tolstoy’s style. The eye plays an important role to characterize for the meaning figures regardless of their social standings. What is significant for the author of War and Peace is through it to distinguish the honest people from the false. The characters who have only externally handsome eyes act negatively, as we have seen in the case of Anatoly Kuragin, for instance. The author emphasizes that a man of decent appearance does not always mean a man of truth. The repeated reference of eyes, such as Prince Andrey’s half-closed, Pierre’s near sighted, Kutuzov’s one eyed, Princess Maria’s radiant, is a combination of the assertion of a permanent, individualizing feature with the expression of a moral judgment.