Study On The Disease Writing In Leo Tolstoy’s Novels

Лев Николаевич Толстой(1828-1910)was a great Russian critical realist writer in the mid-19 th century.His artistic creation had an important inheritance value for the literary tradition of Russian realism.Out of the conscience of aristocratic intellectuals,out of a sense of the guilt of the ruling class of Russian society itself,Tolstoy’s thought was always full of fierce conflicts,which came from the complex history and social reality at that time.After turning his eyes on the repressed majority of the society,the writer realized that the suffering Russian people,encountered their physical and spiritual pathology,and deeply felt the pathology of the whole society.The pain expression of life is sublimated into a grand theme of social criticism,and the disease writing thus constitutes an important realistic aspect of Tolstoy’s novel creation.Through the close reading of Tolstoy’s novels,we can find that the writer’s understanding and expression of diseases are multi-level,multifaceted and multi angle.The disease writing of his novels can be divided into three types: individual physiological diseases,individual mental diseases and social psychological diseases.Individual physiological diseases are mainly shown as lung disease and fever in war novels.Lung disease is the representative of "poverty disease" in the lower society,and fever is a death disease closely related to war.Individual mental illness is mainly neurosis.In Lacan’s view,neurosis can be divided into hysteria and obsessive-compulsive disorder,which are psychosis caused by the depression of the father’s signifier.Social psychological diseases are mainly manifested in vanity as a "moral disease" and sexually transmitted diseases as an "aesthetic disease".Tolstoy believes that vanity is a typical moral disease of his era,and the moral and aesthetic significance of sexually transmitted diseases exposes the morbid psychology of the whole society.Therefore,the writer uses vanity and sexually transmitted diseases to grasp the cultural psychological diseases of the social groups in his era.As a survival experience that every individual can not escape and avoid,the meaning of disease has multiple directions.The writing of disease in Tolstoy’s novels also has complex metaphorical connotation.By revealing the power gene hidden in the disease,the writer expressed the grand theme of political criticism;By highly symbolizing and functionalizing female diseases,the writer exposed the female imagination under the male gaze;By asking the irrational fear of life facing death from disease,the writer found the significance of faith for individual existence.Due to the close connection between disease and healing,the theme of salvation is particularly prominent in disease writing in literature.The overall attention to the disease writing of Tolstoy’s novels can find that the writer refuses to identify with the interest structure and realistic position confirmed by his class position,and moves towards the oppressed and deprived majority to identify with and share the interests of the vulnerable groups,which is a noble betrayal.The disease writing of Tolstoy’s novels is the most profound physical and spiritual suffering of the bottom Russian people,and always shows the realistic dimension of the Russian cultural spirit.At the same time,cannot be ignored is that Tolstoy novel disease writing in the expression of great ethical enthusiasm at the same time,also cannot get rid of the cultural position and class position inherent limitations,the writer of female conservative cultural prejudice and rejection of realistic change,greatly weakened the novel disease writing healing value and realistic significance.