Наследие Л. Н. Толстого в парадигмах современной гуманитарной науки

91 Ю. В. Архангельская LEO TOLSTOY AND EDVARD MUNCH: AMAZING CONVERGENCES OF ARTISTIC WORLDS OF THE TWO GREAT CONTEMPORARIES Leo Tolstoy and Edvard Munch. One would wonder what can these two that much different artists share? Leo Tolstoy is a great Russian writer, a brilliant repre- sentative of the 19th century (so called «Gold Age») of Russian literature, a univer- sally recognized classic of realistic school in art. Edvard Munch is a great Norwegian expressionist whose art represents the achievements rather of the 20th than the 19th century in the field of art. However, a closer look at the creative work of these two great artists allows us to see, at first glance, amazing, in many respects common traits not only in terms of chronology (both lived in the same epoch: Munch is a junior contemporary of Leo Tolstoy), biography (many of the key identity forming factors are surprisingly alike), subject-matter (main themes of creative work are the same), but also in stylistics (!) of their works. This article will concentrate on the so called art movements in which the artists worked. We will focus on the wide cultural context at the turn of the 19th – 20th cen- turies, on the themes, which were important to these two great artists, and on the fea- tures of realization of these themes. It is important that we do not mean the immedi- ate influence or prototypes (compare well-known research works on E. Munch and F. Dostoevsky, E. Munch and A. Strindberg, E. Munch and Ch.Krohg). The aim of this article is to analyze how the great artists (contemporaries) of different nationality, origin and education, depict different concepts of the epoch: «Life», «Death», «Love», «Fear», «Faith» («God»), «Woman» etc. In this work we analyze rather some coincidences in the means of realization of these concepts in the works of con- temporaries. Both artists enjoyed early public recognition. In 1852 (Tolstoy is 24) – in the 9th issue of the Russian magazine «Sovremennik» the first novel «Childhood» appeared, which was given the different name by the editors – «The Story of My Childhood», the novel which immediately drew attention to the author of both critics and readers [14, p. 75–82]. 1889 (Munch is 26) – the first personal exhibition in the capital of Norway Christiania (Oslo) [8, p. 124]. Scholars note the significance of autobiographical basis in the works of both art- ists. Inspiration has often been sourced from the events of their own lives [8, p. 39; 9]. Both Tolstoy and Munch became orphans at an early age: Leo Tolstoy lost his mother at the age of 1.5 years, and his father - when he was 9 [10, p. 9]. Munch's mother died, when the boy was 5. A few years later his elder sister Sofi and brother Andreas died of tuberculosis. Tolstoy's beloved elder brother Nikolay also died of tu- berculosis at a very young age [17, p. 144–147]. All biographers agree that these tragic events had an impact on the ideology of the future writer and artist.