Portrait characteristics of Natasha. Psychological portrait of natasha rostova

Natasha Rostova is the central female character in the epic novel "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy and his favorite heroine. The novel covers the period from 1805 to 1820, and during this time we follow how the image of Natasha develops.

For the first time we see Natasha as a thirteen-year-old teenager. She is still awkward and ugly, her hair is tied back with black curls, but she is sincere and at the same time beautiful in her spontaneity. The heroine is still an ugly duckling, but who is already ready to turn into a beautiful swan. She has extraordinary musical abilities, she is endowed with an amazing voice, spontaneous and responsive. At the same time, the heroine has a strong character, with an unbending moral core.

Natasha grows up in an atmosphere of happiness, love and gaiety, which is characteristic of the Rostov family.

The Rostovs' house in Moscow is always full of life, but the life of the family in Otradnoye is no less idyllic, where the heroine is surrounded by magnificent landscapes, she participates in Christmas games, fortune-telling. But it is known that the classics have always portrayed their favorite heroes in unity with nature and in direct connection with national traditions.

As the plot develops, the heroine turns into an attractive, lively, feeling girl. Natasha is capable of self-sacrifice, she is not alien to high emotional impulses. So, she decisively burns her hand, proving her friendship and love to Sonya, takes part in the fate of the wounded when she gives carts to take them out of burning Moscow. During the Patriotic War of 1812, Natasha took a responsible position. She is confident and courageous. She does not assess what is happening, but obeys her life principles, which are dictated to her by her sincere and pure character. It is the heroine who saves her mother from mental insanity after the death of Petya, she takes care of the seriously wounded Prince Andrei. However, Tolstoy does not idealize his heroine, selfish motives are often traced in her behavior, her actions are not always dictated by reason, according to the author, she "does not deign to be smart." However, this characteristic, unflattering in the modern sense, speaks of the main distinguishing feature of Natasha's image - emotionality and intuitive sensitivity. She strives to live life to the fullest, wants to love and be loved. But her emotionality, amorousness played a bad joke with her: being engaged to Andrei Bolkonsky, she is fond of Anatol Kuragin, clearly an unworthy object of her attention. Only when she wakes up from this obsession and meets the wounded Prince Andrey in Mytishchi, does she realize her guilt and grab the opportunity to redeem her. Caring for Prince Andrew revives her to life.

The role of wife and mother played by Natasha Rostova in the epilogue of the novel is not accidental. The heroine becomes the wife of Pierre Bezukhov, who is close to her in spirit, because it was he who, at the beginning of the novel, in a thirteen-year-old girl, saw a beautiful and sublime soul with a rich inner world.

In the epilogue of the novel, Natasha is completely immersed in family concerns, she shares her husband's interests and understands him. The author draws Natasha as, in his opinion, an ideal woman should be. "Natasha got married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 she already had three daughters and one son, whom she desired and now fed herself," writes Tolstoy, calling her heroine "a strong, beautiful and fertile female." But Natasha Rostova sees the meaning of her life in this. This characterization of the heroine, given in the epilogue, once again testifies to the fact that Natasha seems to be a part of nature, she even thinks not with her mind, "but with her whole being, that is, with her flesh." Natasha takes on the role of a willing and happy slave: "Natasha in her house put herself on the foot of her husband's slave." The heroine loves and is loved. And this is for her the true content of a fulfilling and happy life.

Updated: 2012-03-15

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The best quotes about Natasha Rostova from the novel "War and Peace" (volume 1 and volume 2) will be useful when writing essays dedicated to the main character of the work of L.N. Tolstoy. In the quotes, Natasha's appearance, her character traits are presented, a description of the main episodes of her life is given, incl. the relationship of Natasha Rostova with Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov and Anatol Kuragin.

Quotes from the 1st and 2nd volumes of the book "War and Peace" include: a description of the appearance and character of Natasha Rostova at the beginning of the novel (1805), the first meeting with Andrei Bolkonsky in Otradnoye in the spring of 1809, Natasha's first ball , an engagement to Bolkonsky, an episode on a hunt, Natasha's love for Anatol Dolokhov and her unsuccessful escape, a break in the engagement, Natasha's illness.

Volume 1 part 1

(Description of the appearance of Natasha Rostova in 1805, Natasha — lively and spontaneous girl)

The guest's daughter was already straightening her dress, looking inquiringly at her mother, when suddenly from the next room I heard several male and female legs running to the door, the rumble of a hooked and knocked down chair, and a thirteen-year-old girl ran into the room, wrapping something in her short muslin skirt, and stopped in the middle rooms. Obviously, she accidentally, from an uncalculated run, jumped so far.
<...>
Black-eyed, with a large mouth, ugly, but lively girl, with her childish open shoulders that jumped out of the bodice from a fast run, with her black curls knotted back, thin bare arms and small legs in lace knickers and open shoes, was at that sweet age when a girl is no longer a child, and a child is not a girl. Turning away from her father, she ran to her mother and, not paying any attention to her stern remark, hid her flushed face in the laces of her mother's mantilla and laughed. She was laughing at something, talking abruptly about the doll she took out from under her skirt.
- See? .. Doll ... Mimi ... See.
And Natasha could no longer speak (everything seemed funny to her). She fell on her mother and laughed so loudly and loudly that everyone, even the prim guest, laughed against her will.
- Well, go, go with your freak! - said the mother, feigning angrily pushing her daughter away. “This is my little one,” she said to her guest.
Natasha, tearing her face away from her mother's lace kerchief for a moment, looked at her from below through tears of laughter and again hid her face.

(Natasha Rostova sincerely rejoices at meeting her brother Nikolai and infects him with her love and fun)

Natasha put on one boot with a spur and climbed into the other. Sonya was spinning and was just about to inflate her dress and sit down when he came out. Both were in the same, brand new, blue dresses - fresh, ruddy, cheerful. Sonya ran away, and Natasha, taking her brother by the arm, led him into the sofa, and they began a conversation. They did not have time to ask each other and answer questions about thousands of little things that could be of interest only to them. Natasha laughed at every word that he said and that she said, not because what they said was funny, but because she was having fun and she could not restrain her joy, which was expressed in laughter.
- Oh, how good, great! - she condemned to everything. Rostov felt that under the influence of these hot rays of Natasha's love, for the first time after a year and a half, that childish and pure smile with which he had never smiled since he left home was blossoming on his soul and face.

Volume 2 part 1

(Natasha Rostova influences those around her with her unusual singing)

“Well, Sonya,” she said and went out to the very middle of the hall, where, in her opinion, the resonance was best. Raising her head, drooping her lifeless hands, as dancers do, Natasha, energetically stepping from heel to tiptoe, walked in the middle of the room and stopped.
"Here I am!" - she seemed to say, answering the enthusiastic look of Denisov, who was watching her.
“And what is she happy about! - thought Nikolay, looking at his sister. "And how bored and ashamed she is!" Natasha struck the first note, her throat widened, her chest straightened, her eyes took on a serious expression. She was not thinking about anyone, about anything at that moment, and sounds poured out into the smile of her folded mouth, those sounds that anyone can produce at the same intervals of time and at the same intervals, but which leave you cold a thousand times, for the thousand first time they make you shudder and cry.
This winter Natasha began to sing seriously for the first time, especially because Denisov was delighted with her singing. She sang now not like a child, there was no longer in her singing this comic, childish diligence that was in her before, but she sang not yet well, as all the expert judges who listened to her said. "Not processed, but a beautiful voice, it must be processed" - everyone said. But they usually said this much after her voice had ceased. At the same time, when this unprocessed voice sounded with irregular aspirations and with the effort of transitions, even the expert judges did not say anything and only enjoyed this unprocessed voice, and only wanted to hear it again. In her voice there was that virginity, virginity, that ignorance of her powers and that still unprocessed velvet, which were so combined with the shortcomings of the art of singing that, it seemed, it was impossible to change anything in this voice without spoiling it.
“What is this? - thought Nikolay, hearing her voice and widening his eyes. - What happened to her? How does she sing today? " He thought. And suddenly the whole world for him concentrated in anticipation of the next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world became divided into three tempos: “Oh mio crudele affetto ... One, two, three ... one, two ... three .. one time ... Oh mio crudele affetto ... one, two three ... times. Oh, our life is stupid! - thought Nikolay. - All this, and misfortune, and money, and Dolokhov, and malice, and honor - all this is nonsense ... but here it is - real ... Well, Natasha, well, dear! well, mother! .. How will she take this si ... Did she take it? Thank God. - And he, without noticing that he was singing in order to amplify this si, took the second in the third of the high note. - My God! how good! Did I take it? how happy! " He thought.

Volume 2 Part 3

(The first meeting of Natasha Rostova and Andrei Bolkonsky in Otradnoye in 1809)

For the guardianship of the Ryazan estate, Prince Andrey had to see the district leader. The leader was Count Ilya Andreyevich Rostov, and Prince Andrey went to see him in mid-May. It was already a hot period of spring. The forest was already all dressed up, there was dust and it was so hot that, driving past the water, I wanted to swim.
Prince Andrey, gloomy and preoccupied with considerations of what and what he needed to ask the leader about business, drove up the garden alley to the Rostovs' house in Otradno. To the right, from behind the trees, he heard a woman's cheerful cry and saw a crowd of girls running across his carriage. Ahead of the others, closer, a dark-haired, very thin, oddly thin, black-eyed girl in a yellow chintz dress, tied with a white handkerchief, from under which strands of combed hair emerged, ran up to the carriage. The girl was shouting something, but, recognizing the stranger, without looking at him, ran back with a laugh.
Prince Andrew suddenly felt pain for some reason. The day was so good, the sun was so bright, everything was so cheerful; and this slender and pretty girl did not know and did not want to know about his existence and was content and happy with some of her own separate - indeed, stupid - but cheerful and happy life. “Why is she so happy? What is she thinking about? Not about the military charter, not about the structure of the Ryazan quitrent. What is she thinking about? And how is she happy? " - Prince Andrey involuntarily asked himself with curiosity.
Count Ilya Andreevich in 1809 lived in Otradnoye in the same way as before, that is, he received almost the entire province, with hunts, theaters, dinners and musicians. He, like every new guest, was once Prince Andrew and almost forcibly left him to spend the night.
During the boring day, during which Prince Andrey was occupied by the senior hosts and the most honorable of the guests, with whom the house of the old count was full on the occasion of the approaching name day, Bolkonsky, several times glancing at Natasha, laughing at something, having fun between the other, young half of the society, kept asking himself: “What is she thinking? Why is she so happy? "

Prince Andrew's room was on the middle floor; they also lived in the rooms above him and did not sleep. He heard a woman's voice from above.
“Just one more time,” said a woman's voice from above, which Prince Andrew now recognized.
- But when are you going to sleep? Answered another voice.
- I will not, I cannot sleep, what can I do! Well, the last time ...
Two female voices began to sing a musical phrase that constituted the end of something.
- Oh, how lovely! Well, now sleep, and end.
“You sleep, but I can't,” answered the first voice, approaching the window. She, apparently, completely leaned out the window, because you could hear the rustle of her dress and even breathing. Everything was quiet and petrified, like the moon and its light and shadows. Prince Andrew was also afraid to move, so as not to betray his involuntary presence.
- Sonya! Sonya! The first voice was heard again. - Well, how can you sleep! Look, what a charm! Oh, how lovely! Wake up, Sonya, ”she said almost with tears in her voice. - After all, such a lovely night has never, never happened.
Sonya answered something reluctantly.
- No, look what a moon is! .. Ah, how lovely! You come here. Darling, darling, come here. Well, see? So I would have squatted, like this, I would have grabbed myself under my knees - as tighter as possible, I have to strain myself - and I would fly. Like this!
- Completely, you will fall.
There was a struggle and Sonya's disgruntled voice:
- After all, the second hour.
- Oh, you just spoil everything for me. Well, go, go.
Again everything fell silent, but Prince Andrey knew that she was still sitting here, he sometimes heard a quiet stirring, sometimes sighs.
- Oh my god! My God! What is it! She suddenly cried out. - Sleep like that! - and slammed the window.
"And I don't care about my existence!" - thought Prince Andrew while he listened to her talk, for some reason expecting and afraid that she would say something about him. “And again she! And how on purpose! " He thought. Such an unexpected confusion of young thoughts and hopes, which contradicted his whole life, suddenly arose in his soul that, feeling himself unable to understand his condition, he immediately fell asleep.

(Petersburg, December 31, 1809 Natasha Rostova's first ball. Natasha dancing with Andrei Bolkonsky)

Natasha looked in the mirrors and in the reflection could not distinguish herself from others. Everything blended into one brilliant procession. At the entrance to the first hall, the uniform hum of voices, steps, and greetings deafened Natasha; the light and brilliance blinded her even more. The owner and hostess, who had already stood at the front door for half an hour and said the same words to those who entered: "Charme de vous voir" (delighted to see you), - the Rostovs and Peronskaya met in the same way.
Two girls in white dresses, with the same roses in black hair, sat down in the same way, but involuntarily the hostess stopped her eyes for a longer time at slender Natasha. She looked at her and smiled at her alone, in addition to her master's smile. Looking at her, the hostess remembered, perhaps, her golden, irrevocable girlish time, and her first ball. The owner also watched Natasha with his eyes and asked the count, who is his daughter?
- Charmante! He said, kissing the tips of his fingers.
Guests were standing in the hall, crowding in front of the front door, waiting for the emperor. The Countess was at the forefront of this crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several voices asked about her and were looking at her. She realized that she was liked by those who paid attention to her, and this observation calmed her somewhat.
“There are people like us, there are worse than us,” she thought.

More than half of the ladies had cavaliers and went or were preparing to go to Polish. Natasha felt that she remained with her mother and Sonya among the minority of the ladies who had been pushed back to the wall and not taken to Polish. She stood with her slender arms lowered, and with a measured, rising, slightly definite chest, holding her breath, gleaming frightened eyes looked before her, with an expression of readiness for the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow. She was not occupied either by the sovereign or by all the important persons to whom Peronskaya pointed out - she had only one thought: “Can it be that no one will come up to me like that, really, I won’t dance between the first ones, won’t all these men, who now they don't seem to see me, but if they look at me, they look with such an expression as if they were saying: “Ah! it’s not her, there’s nothing to watch! “No, it cannot be! She thought. “They should know how much I want to dance, how well I dance and how much fun it will be for them to dance with me.”
The sounds of Polish, which had been going on for quite a long time, were already beginning to sound sad - a memory in Natasha's ears. She wanted to cry. Peronskaya moved away from them. The count was at the other end of the room, the countess, Sonya and she stood alone, as in a forest, in this alien crowd, uninteresting and unnecessary to anyone. Prince Andrey walked past them with a lady, obviously not recognizing them. Handsome Anatol, smiling, said something to the lady he was leading, and looked at Natasha's face with the same look as one looks at the walls. Boris walked past them twice and turned away each time.

Prince Andrew watched these gentlemen and ladies who were shy in the presence of the sovereign, and died from the desire to be invited.
Pierre went up to Prince Andrew and grabbed his hand.
- You always dance. There is my protégée, young Rostova, invite her, - he said.
- Where? Bolkonsky asked. “I’m sorry,” he said, addressing the baron, “we’ll bring this conversation to the end in another place, but we have to dance at the ball. - He stepped forward, in the direction that Pierre indicated to him. The desperate, dying face of Natasha caught the eye of Prince Andrey. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, realized that she was a beginner, remembered her conversation at the window and with a cheerful expression went up to Countess Rostova. “Let me introduce you to my daughter,” said the Countess, blushing.
`` I have the pleasure of being familiar, if the Countess remembers me, '' said Prince Andrei with a courteous and low bow, completely contrary to Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, going up to Natasha and raising his hand to hug her waist even before he finished the invitation to dance ... He offered her a waltz tour. That dying expression on Natasha's face, ready for despair and delight, suddenly lit up with a happy, grateful, childish smile.
“I have been waiting for you for a long time,” this frightened and happy girl seemed to say with her smile that shone from ready tears, raising her hand on the shoulder of Prince Andrey. They were the second pair to enter the circle. Prince Andrey was one of the best dancers of his time. Natasha danced beautifully. Her legs in ballroom satin shoes quickly, easily and independently of her did their job, and her face shone with delight of happiness. Her bare neck and arms were thin and ugly in comparison with Helen's shoulders. Her shoulders were thin, her chest was vague, her arms were thin; But Helene was already as if varnish from all the thousands of glances that glided over her body, and Natasha seemed like a girl who had been naked for the first time and who would have been very ashamed of it if she had not been assured that it was so necessary.
Prince Andrew loved to dance and, wanting to quickly get rid of the political and intelligent conversations with which everyone turned to him, and wanting to quickly break this annoying circle of embarrassment resulting from the presence of the sovereign, he went to dance and chose Natasha, because Pierre had pointed out her to him. and because she was the first of the pretty women to catch his eye; but as soon as he embraced this thin, mobile, trembling camp and she stirred so close to him and smiled so close to him, the wine of her delight hit him in the head: he felt revived and rejuvenated when, taking a breath and leaving her, he stopped and began to look at the dancers.

After Prince Andrei, Boris approached Natasha, inviting her to dance, the dancer-adjutant who had started the ball, and other young people approached Natasha, and Natasha, passing her unnecessary gentlemen to Sonya, happy and flushed, did not stop dancing the whole evening. She did not notice or see anything that occupied everyone at this ball. She not only did not notice how the sovereign spoke for a long time with the French envoy, how he spoke especially graciously with such and such a lady, how the prince such and such did and said such and such, how Helene had great success and received special attention such and such; she did not even see the sovereign and noticed that he had left, only because after his departure the ball became more lively. One of the merry cotillions, before supper, Prince Andrew again danced with Natasha. He reminded her of their first meeting in Otradnenskaya alley and how she could not sleep on a moonlit night and how he could not help hearing her. Natasha blushed at this reminder and tried to justify herself, as if there was something embarrassing in the feeling in which Prince Andrew had involuntarily overheard her.
Prince Andrew, like all people who grew up in the world, loved to meet in the world that which did not have a common secular imprint. And such was Natasha, with her surprise, joy, and shyness, and even mistakes in French. He treated and spoke with her especially tenderly and carefully. Sitting beside her, talking with her about the simplest and most insignificant subjects, Prince Andrew admired the joyful sparkle of her eyes and her smile, which was not related to the speeches being spoken, but to her inner happiness. While Natasha was chosen and she stood up with a smile and danced around the hall, Prince Andrey admired especially her timid grace. In the middle of the cotillion Natasha, having finished her figure, still breathing heavily, approached her place. The new gentleman invited her again. She was tired and out of breath, and apparently thought to refuse, but immediately again gaily raised her hand on the gentleman's shoulder and smiled at Prince Andrey.
“I would be glad to have a rest and sit with you, I am tired; but you see how they choose me, and I am happy about it, and I am happy, and I love everyone, and we all understand this, ”and this smile said a lot. When the gentleman left her, Natasha ran across the hall to take two ladies for the figures.
“If she comes up first to her cousin, and then to another lady, then she will be my wife,” Prince Andrew said quite unexpectedly to himself, looking at her. She went first to her cousin.
“What nonsense sometimes comes to mind! - thought Prince Andrew. “But it is only true that this girl is so sweet, so special that she will not dance here for a month and will get married ... This is a rarity here,” he thought when Natasha, straightening the rose that had been reclined by the bodice, sat down beside him.
At the end of the cotillion, the old count, in his blue dress coat, walked up to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to his place and asked his daughter if she was having fun? Natasha did not answer and only smiled with such a smile, which reproachfully said: "How could you ask about this?"
- As fun as ever! She said, and Prince Andrew noticed how quickly her thin arms were raised to hug her father, and immediately dropped down. Natasha was as happy as never before in her life. She was at that highest stage of happiness, when a person becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of evil, unhappiness and grief.

The next day, Prince Andrei recalled yesterday's ball, but for a while he dwelt on it with the thought: “Yes, it was a very brilliant ball. And yet ... yes, Rostova is very nice. There is something fresh, special, non-Petersburg in her that distinguishes her. "

(Prince Andrey's visit to the Rostovs shortly after the ball)

Prince Andrey went on visits to some houses where he had not yet been, including the Rostovs, with whom he renewed his acquaintance at the last ball. In addition to the laws of courtesy, according to which he had to be with the Rostovs, Prince Andrey wanted to see this special, lively girl at home, who left him a pleasant memory.
Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was in a blue home dress, in which she seemed to Prince Andrey even better than in the ballroom. She and the entire Rostov family received Prince Andrei, as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, which had been sternly judged by Prince Andrei, now seemed to him to be made up of beautiful, simple and kind people. The hospitality and good nature of the old count, which was especially charming in Petersburg, was such that Prince Andrew could not refuse dinner. “Yes, these are kind, glorious people, thought Bolkonsky, of course, who do not understand in the least the hair of the treasure that they have in Natasha; but kind people who make up the best background for this especially poetic, overflowing with life, lovely girl! "

(Bolkonsky, Natasha and Pierre meet at a dinner at Colonel Berg's)

Pierre, as one of the most honored guests, was to sit in Boston with Ilya Andreich, general and colonel. Pierre had to sit opposite Natasha at the Boston table, and the strange change that had taken place in her since the day of the ball struck him. Natasha was silent, and not only was she not as good as she was at the ball, but she would have been bad if she had not had such a meek and indifferent appearance to everything.

"What with her?" Thought Pierre, looking at her. She was sitting next to her sister at the tea table and reluctantly, without looking at him, answered something to Boris who had sat down next to her. Having departed a whole suit and took five bribes to the delight of his partner, Pierre, who heard the chant of greetings and the sound of someone's footsteps entering the room during the collection of bribes, looked at her again.

"What happened to her?" He said to himself even more surprised.

Prince Andrey with a thrifty, gentle expression stood before her and said something to her. She raised her head, flushed and, apparently trying to keep her gusty breath, looked at him. And the bright light of some kind of inner, previously extinguished fire burned in her again. She was all transformed. From bad she again became the same as she was at the ball.

Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and Pierre noticed a new, youthful expression in the face of his friend.

Pierre changed several times during the game, then with his back, then facing Natasha, and during the entire duration of the six robbers he made observations of her and his friend.

“Something very important is happening between them,” thought Pierre, and the joyful and at the same time bitter feeling made him worry and forget about the game.

Everyone in the house felt for whom Prince Andrey was traveling, and he, without hiding, tried to be with Natasha all day. Not only in the soul of Natasha, who was frightened, but happy and enthusiastic, but in the whole house there was a sense of fear of something important that was about to happen. The Countess gazed with sad and seriously stern eyes at Prince Andrey when he spoke to Natasha, and timidly and feignedly began some insignificant conversation, as soon as he looked back at her. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and was afraid to be a hindrance when she was with them. Natasha turned pale with fear of anticipation when she remained alone with him for a minute. Prince Andrew amazed her with his timidity. She felt that he needed to tell her something, but that he could not decide on it.

- But this, such ... never happened to me! She said. - Only I'm scared with him, I'm always scared with him, what does that mean? So this is real, right? Mom, are you sleeping?
“No, my soul, I’m scared myself,” replied the mother. - Go.
“I won’t sleep anyway. What nonsense to sleep! Mother, mother, this has never happened to me! She said with surprise and dismay at the feeling she was conscious of in herself. - And could we think! ..
It seemed to Natasha that even when she first saw Prince Andrey in Otradnoye, she had fallen in love with him. She seemed to be frightened by this strange, unexpected happiness that the one whom she had chosen back then (she was firmly convinced of this), that the same one now met her again and, it seems, was not indifferent to her. “And he had to come to Petersburg on purpose now that we are here. And we had to meet at this ball. All this is fate. It is clear that this is fate, that all this was led to this. Even then, as soon as I saw him, I felt something special. "
- What else did he tell you? What are these verses? Read it ... - Mother said thoughtfully, asking about the poems that Prince Andrey wrote in Natasha's album.
- Mom, is it not a shame that he is a widower?
- Enough, Natasha. Pray to God. Les mariages se font dans les cieux (Marriages are made in heaven).
- My dear mother, how I love you, how I feel good! - Natasha shouted, crying with tears of happiness and excitement and hugging her mother.

(Bolkonsky confesses to Pierre that he is in love with Natasha)

Prince Andrew, with a radiant, enthusiastic and renewed face to life, stopped in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad face, smiled at him with the egoism of happiness.
“Well, my dear,” he said, “I wanted to tell you yesterday, and today I came to you for this. Never experienced anything like it. I'm in love, my friend.
Pierre suddenly sighed heavily and collapsed with his heavy body on the sofa beside Prince Andrey.
- To Natasha Rostov, right? - he said.
- Yes, yes, to whom? I would never have believed it, but this feeling is stronger than me. Yesterday I suffered, suffered, but I will not give up this torture for anything in the world. I have not lived before. Now only I live, but I cannot live without her. But can she love me? .. I'm old for her ... What are you not saying? ..
- I AM? I AM? What did I tell you? ”Pierre said suddenly, getting up and starting to walk around the room. - I always thought that ... This girl is such a treasure, such ... This is a rare girl ... Dear friend, I ask you, do not be smart, do not hesitate, marry, marry and marry ... And I am sure that there will be no happier person than you.
- But she?
- She loves you.
"Don't talk nonsense ..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into Pierre's eyes.
“He loves, I know,” Pierre shouted angrily.

(Andrei Bolkonsky asks for the hand of Natasha Rostova)

Natasha, pale and frightened, ran into the drawing room.
- Mom, Bolkonsky has arrived! - she said. - Mom, this is awful, this is unbearable! I don't want ... to suffer! What should I do?..
Before the countess had time to answer her, Prince Andrey entered the drawing-room with an anxious and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha, his face lit up. He kissed the hand of the countess and Natasha and sat down beside the sofa ...
“It has been a long time since we had pleasure ...” the countess began, but Prince Andrei interrupted her, answering her question and, obviously, in a hurry to say what he needed.
- I have not been with you all this time, because I was with my father: I had to talk with him about a very important matter. I just returned last night, ”he said, glancing at Natasha. “I need to speak with you, Countess,” he added after a moment's silence.
The Countess sighed heavily and lowered her eyes.
“I'm at your service,” she said.
Natasha knew that she had to leave, but she could not do it: something was squeezing! her throat, and she was discourteously, straight, with open eyes looking at Prince Andrew.
"Now? This minute! .. No, it can't be! " She thought.
He looked at her again, and this look convinced her that she was not mistaken. Yes, now, this very minute, her fate was being decided.
“Come, Natasha, I’ll call you,” the countess said in a whisper.
Natasha looked with frightened, imploring eyes at Prince Andrey and at her mother, and went out.
“I have come, Countess, to ask your daughter's hand in marriage,” said Prince Andrey.
The countess's face flushed, but she said nothing.
- Your proposal ... - the Countess began gravely. He was silent, looking into her eyes. - Your offer ... (she was embarrassed) we are pleased, and ... I accept your offer, I am glad. And my husband ... I hope ... but it will depend on her ...
- I will tell her when I have your consent ... do you give it to me? - said Prince Andrew.
“Yes,” said the Countess, and held out her hand to him and, with a mixed feeling of aloofness and tenderness, pressed her lips to his forehead as he bent over her hand. She wanted to love him like a son; but she felt that he was a stranger and a terrible person for her.
“I’m sure my husband will agree,” said the countess, “but your father ...
- My father, to whom I communicated my plans, made it an indispensable condition of consent that the wedding was not earlier than a year. And this is what I wanted to tell you, - said Prince Andrey.
- It is true that Natasha is still young, but - for so long!
“It could not be otherwise,” said Prince Andrey with a sigh.
“I'll send it to you,” said the Countess and left the room.
“Lord, have mercy on us,” she repeated, looking for her daughter. Sonya said that Natasha was in the bedroom. Natasha was sitting on her bed, pale, with dry eyes, looking at the image and, crossing herself quickly, whispering something. Seeing her mother, she jumped up and rushed to her.
- What? mom? .. What?
- Go, go to him. He asks for your hand, ”the countess said coldly, as it seemed to Natasha ...“ Go ... go, ”said the mother with sadness and reproachfulness after her fleeing daughter and sighed heavily.
Natasha did not remember how she entered the living room. Entering the door and seeing him, she stopped. "Has this stranger now become everything for me?" - She asked herself and instantly answered: "Yes, that's all: he alone is now dearer to me than everything in the world." Prince Andrew went up to her, lowering his eyes.
“I fell in love with you from the minute I saw you. Can i hope?
He looked at her, and the serious passion of her expression startled him. Her face said: “Why ask? Why doubt something that you cannot not know? Why speak when words cannot express what you feel. "
She approached him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.
- Do you love me?
“Yes, yes,” Natasha said as if with annoyance, sighed loudly, another time, more and more often, and sobbed.
- About what? What's wrong with you?
“Oh, I'm so happy,” she answered, smiled through her tears, bent down closer to him, thought for a second, as if asking herself if this was possible, and kissed him.
Prince Andrew held her hand, looked into her eyes and did not find in his soul the former love for her. Something suddenly turned in his soul: there was no former poetic and mysterious charm of desire, but there was pity for her female and childish weakness, there was a fear of her devotion and trust, a heavy and at the same time joyful consciousness of duty that forever linked him to her. The real feeling, although it was not as light and poetic as before, was more serious and stronger.
- Did maman tell you that it can't be earlier than a year? - said Prince Andrey, continuing to look into her eyes.
“Is it really me, that child-girl (everyone said that about me),” thought Natasha, “can it be that now from this moment I am a wife equal to this strange, sweet, intelligent person, respected even by my father? Is that really true? Is it really true that now it is no longer possible to joke with life, now I am big, now it is already my responsibility for every deed and word of mine? Yes, what did he ask me? "
“No,” she replied, but she did not understand what he was asking.
“Forgive me,” said Prince Andrew, “but you are so young, and I have already experienced so much life. I'm scared for you. You don't know yourself.
Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying to understand the meaning of his words, but did not understand.
- No matter how difficult this year will be for me, delaying my happiness, - Prince Andrey continued, - in this period you will believe yourself. I ask you to make my happiness in a year; but you are free: our engagement will remain a secret, and if you were convinced that you did not love me, or would love ... - said Prince Andrey with an unnatural smile.
- Why do you say that? Natasha interrupted him. “You know that from the day you first came to Otradnoye, I fell in love with you,” she said, firmly convinced that she was telling the truth.
- In a year you will recognize yourself ...
- A whole year! - Natasha suddenly said, now only realizing that the wedding was postponed for a year. - Why a year? Why a year? .. - Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay. Natasha did not listen to him.
“Can’t it be otherwise?” She asked. Prince Andrew did not answer, but expressed in his face the impossibility of changing this decision.
- This is terrible! No, it's awful, awful! Natasha suddenly began to speak, and again began to sob. “I’ll die waiting for a year: it’s impossible, it’s awful. She looked into the face of her fiancé and saw in him an expression of compassion and bewilderment.
“No, no, I’ll do everything,” she said, suddenly stopping her tears, “I’m so happy!
The father and mother entered the room and blessed the bride and groom.
From that day on, Prince Andrei began to go to the Rostovs as his fiancé.

There was no engagement, and Bolkonsky's engagement to Natasha was not announced to anyone; Prince Andrew insisted on this. He said that since he is the cause of the delay, he must bear the full weight of it. He said that he had bound himself forever with his word, but that he did not want to bind Natasha and gave her complete freedom. If in six months she feels that she does not love him, she will be in her right, if she refuses him. It goes without saying that neither the parents nor Natasha wanted to hear about this; but Prince Andrew insisted on his own. Prince Andrey visited the Rostovs every day, but not as the groom treated Natasha: he told her you and kissed only her hand. After the day of the proposal, between Prince Andrey and Natasha, a completely different, close, simple relationship was established than before. They didn't seem to know each other until now. Both he and she loved to remember how they looked at each other when they were still nothing; now both of them felt like completely different creatures: then feigned, now simple and sincere. At first, the family felt awkward in dealing with Prince Andrew; he seemed like a man from an alien world, and Natasha taught her family to Prince Andrey for a long time and proudly assured everyone that he only seemed so special, and that he was the same as everyone else, and that she was not afraid of him, and that no one should be afraid of him.

When Prince Andrey spoke (he spoke very well), Natasha listened to him with pride; when she spoke, she noticed with fear and joy that he was looking attentively and probingly at her. She asked herself in bewilderment; “What is he looking for in me? Does he achieve something with his gaze? What if not in me what he is looking for with this look? " Sometimes she entered into her usual insanely cheerful mood, and then she especially loved to listen and watch how Prince Andrey laughed. He rarely laughed, but when he laughed, he gave himself up to his laughter, and every time after this laugh she felt closer to him. Natasha would have been perfectly happy if the thought of the impending and impending separation had not frightened her.

Volume 2 Part 4

Natasha told him about her romance with Prince Andrey, his arrival in Otradnoye and showed him his last letter.
- Well, are you glad? Natasha asked. - I am so calm and happy now.
“I’m very glad,” Nikolai answered. - He's a great person. Well, are you very much in love?
“How can I tell you,” Natasha answered, “I was in love with Boris, with a teacher, with Denisov, but that's not at all that. I am at peace, firmly. I know that there are no better people than him, and so I feel calm, good now. Not at all the same as before ...
Nikolai expressed his displeasure to Natasha that the wedding had been postponed for a year; but Natasha furiously attacked her brother, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, that it would be bad to join the family against the will of her father, that she herself wanted it.
“You don't understand at all, at all,” she said. Nikolai fell silent and agreed with her.
My brother was often surprised when he looked at her. It did not seem at all that she was a loving bride apart from her fiancé. She was even, calm, absolutely cheerful as before. This surprised Nikolai and even made him look incredulously at Bolkonsky's matchmaking. He did not believe that her fate had already been decided, especially since he had not seen Prince Andrew with her. He kept thinking that something was wrong in this supposed marriage.

(Episode on the hunt. Natasha's Russian soul)

- Well, well, dear, uncle, - Natasha moaned in such a pleading voice, as if her life depended on it. The uncle got up, and it was as if there were two people in him - one of them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, and the merry fellow made a naive and neat trick before the dance.
- Well, niece! - shouted the uncle, waving his hand to Natasha, tore off the chord.
Natasha threw off the kerchief that was thrown over her, ran ahead of her uncle and, propping her hands on her hips, made a movement with her shoulders and stood.
Where, how, when she sucked into herself from the Russian air she breathed - this decanter, brought up by an emigrant Frenchwoman - this spirit, where did she get these techniques that pas de châle should have long ago supplanted? But the spirit and the methods were the same, inimitable, unstudied, Russian, which her uncle had expected from her. As soon as she stood, she smiled solemnly, proudly and slyly, cheerfully, the first fear that gripped Nicholas and all those present, the fear that she would do the wrong thing, passed, and they were already admiring her.
She did the same thing and did it so precisely, so quite accurately that Anisya Fyodorovna, who immediately gave her the handkerchief necessary for her business, shed a tear through her laughter, looking at this thin, graceful, so alien to her, in silk and velvet, a countess who knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, in Anisya's father, in her aunt, in her mother, and in every Russian person.
- Well, decanter, it's a clean march! - laughing happily, said the uncle, having finished the dance. - Oh yes niece! If only you have a good husband to choose, a clean business march!
“Already chosen,” Nikolai said, smiling.
- O? - said the uncle in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha. Natasha nodded her head with a happy smile.
- What another! - she said. But as soon as she said this, a different, new structure of thoughts and feelings arose in her. “What did Nikolai's smile mean when he said: 'already chosen'? Is he glad about it or not? He seems to think that my Bolkonsky would not approve, would not understand this joy of ours. No, he would understand everything. Where is he now? " Thought Natasha, and her face suddenly became serious. But this only lasted one second. “Don't think, don't dare to think about it,” she said to herself and, smiling, sat down again with her uncle, asking him to play something else.

Natasha, who easily and even cheerfully endured the first time of separation from her fiancé, was now becoming more agitated and impatient every day. The thought that in this way, for nothing, her best time, which she would have used to love him, was lost for no one, tormented her relentlessly. Most of his letters angered her. It was offensive to her to think that while she lives only with the thought of him, he lives a real life, sees new places, new people that are interesting to him. The more entertaining his letters were, the more annoyed she was. Her letters to him not only did not bring her comfort, but seemed boring and false duty. She did not know how to write, because she could not comprehend the possibility of expressing in a letter truthfully at least one thousandth of what she was used to expressing with her voice, smile and look. She wrote him classically monotonous, dry letters, to which she herself did not ascribe any meaning and in which, by boulders, the Countess corrected her spelling errors.

Volume 2 Part 5

(Conversation of Princess Marya Bolkonskaya with Pierre Bezukhov about Natasha)

- Have you heard about the Rostovs? She asked to change the conversation. - I was told that they will soon be. André I also wait every day. I would like them to see each other here.
- And how does he look at this case now? - asked Pierre, by he meaning the old prince. Princess Marya shook her head.
- But what to do? Only a few months remain until a year. And it cannot but be. I would only wish to save my brother from the first minutes. I would like them to come as soon as possible. I hope to get along with her ... You have known them for a long time, - said Princess Marya, - tell me, with your hand on your heart, the whole truth, who is this girl and how do you find her? But the whole truth; because, you know, Andrei risks so much, doing it against his father's will, that I would like to know ...
An obscure instinct told Pierre that in these reservations and repeated requests to tell the whole truth, Princess Marya's hostility towards her future daughter-in-law was expressed, that she wanted Pierre not to approve of Prince Andrew's choice; but Pierre said what he felt rather than thought.
“I don’t know how to answer your question,” he said, blushing, not knowing why. - I absolutely do not know what kind of girl she is; I cannot analyze it in any way. She is charming. And why, I don't know: that's all that can be said about her. - Princess Marya sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes, I expected this and was afraid."
- Is she smart? - asked Princess Marya. Pierre pondered.
“I think not,” he said, “but by the way, yes. She does not deign to be smart ... No, she is charming, and nothing more. - Princess Marya again shook her head disapprovingly ...
- Oh, I so desire to love her! Tell her if you see her before me.
- I heard that they will be one of these days, - said Pierre.
Princess Marya told Pierre her plan about how she, the Rostovs had just arrived, would get closer to her future daughter-in-law and try to accustom the old prince to her.

(The Rostov family at the opera. Meeting of Natasha Rostova and Anatoly Kuragin)

That evening the Rostovs went to the opera, for which Marya Dmitrievna got a ticket.
Natasha did not want to go, but she could not refuse Marya Dmitrievna's affection, which was exclusively for her. When she, dressed, went out into the hall, waiting for her father, and, looking in the large mirror, saw that she was good, very good, she became even more sad; but sadly sweet and loving.
"My God! if he was here, then I would not, as before, with some stupid timidity in front of something, but in a new way, simply, would hug him, cuddle up to him, make him look at me with those searching , with the curious eyes with which he so often looked at me, and then would make him laugh, as he laughed then, and his eyes - as I see those eyes! Thought Natasha. - And what do I care about his father and sister: I love him alone, him, him, with this face and eyes, with his smile, male and together with the child ... No, it's better not to think about him, not to think, to forget , completely forget for this time. I can’t bear this expectation, I’m going to sob now, ”and she moved away from the mirror, making an effort to keep from crying. - And how can Sonya love Nikolenka so calmly and calmly and wait so long and patiently! She thought, looking at Sonya, also dressed, with a fan in her hands. - No, she's completely different. I can not!"
Natasha felt at that moment so softened and softened that it was not enough for her to love and to know that she was loved: now, now she needed to hug her beloved one and speak and hear from him the words of love with which her heart was full. While she rode in the carriage, sitting next to her father, and gazed thoughtfully at the lights of the street lamps flashing in the frozen window, she felt even more in love and sadder and forgot who and where she was going.

Two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count Ilya Andreich, who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted general attention. In addition, everyone knew vaguely about Natasha's conspiracy with Prince Andrei, knew that since then the Rostovs lived in the village, and looked with curiosity at the bride of one of the best suitors in Russia. Natasha became prettier in the country, as everyone told her, and that evening, thanks to her agitated state, she was especially good. She amazed with the fullness of life and beauty combined with indifference to everything around her. Her black eyes looked at the crowd, not looking for anyone, and her slender hand, bare above the elbow, leaned on a velvet ramp, apparently unconsciously, in time with the overture, clenched and unclenched, crumpling the poster.

One minute, when everything on the stage was quiet, waiting for the beginning of the aria, the front door creaked, and the steps of a belated man sounded on the carpet of the parterre on the side on which the Rostovs' box was. "Here he is, Kuragin!" - whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned, smiling, to the incoming person. Natasha looked in the direction of Countess Bezukhova's eyes and saw an unusually handsome adjutant, with a self-confident and at the same time courteous air, approaching their bed. It was Anatol Kuragin, whom she had long seen and noticed at the St. Petersburg ball. He was now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and an aiguillette. He walked with a restrained, valiant gait, which would have been ridiculous if he had not been so handsome and if there had not been such an expression of good-natured contentment and amusement on his beautiful face. In spite of the fact that the action was going on, he, slowly, slightly rattling his spurs and saber, smoothly and high carrying his perfumed beautiful head, walked along the sloping carpet of the corridor. Glancing at Natasha, he went up to his sister, put his hand in a doused glove on the edge of her box, shook her head and, bending over, asked something, pointing at Natasha.
- Mais charmante! (Very, very sweet!)- he said, obviously about Natasha, as not so much she heard, how much she understood from the movement of his lips. Then he went to the first row and sat down beside Dolokhov, friendly and carelessly nudging that Dolokhov with whom others so ingratiatingly treated. He winked cheerfully, smiled at him and rested his foot on the ramp.

Kuragin all this intermission stood with Dolokhov in front of the ramp, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha knew that he was talking about her, and this gave her pleasure. She even turned so that he could see her profile, in her opinion, in the most advantageous position. Before the beginning of the second act, the figure of Pierre appeared in the stalls, whom the Rostovs had not seen since their arrival. His face was sad, and he had grown even fatter since Natasha had last seen him. He, not noticing anyone, went to the first rows. Anatole went up to him and began to say something to him, looking and pointing at the Rostovs' box. Pierre, seeing Natasha, perked up and hurriedly walked through the rows to their bed. Approaching them, he leaned his elbows and, smiling, talked for a long time with Natasha. During her conversation with Pierre, Natasha heard a man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and for some reason found out that it was Kuragin. She looked around and met his eyes. He, almost smiling, looked straight into her eyes with such an admiring, affectionate look that it seemed strange to be so close to him, to look at him so, to be so sure that he liked you, and not to be familiar with him.

During this act, Natasha, every time she glanced into the stalls, saw Anatol Kuragin, throwing his hand over the back of the chair and looking at her. She was pleased to see that he was so captivated by her, and it did not occur to her that there was anything bad in it.

During the intermission, Helen's box smelled of cold, the door opened, and, bending down and trying not to catch anyone, Anatole entered.
“Let me introduce you to my brother,” Helen said, restlessly running her eyes from Natasha to Anatole. Natasha turned her pretty head over her bare shoulder to the handsome man and smiled. Anatole, who was as good up close as he was from afar, sat down next to her and said that he had long wanted to have this pleasure, since the Naryshkin ball, at which he had the pleasure, which he had not forgotten, to see her. Kuragin with women was much smarter and simpler than in male society. He spoke boldly and simply, and Natasha was strangely and pleasantly struck by the fact that not only there was nothing so terrible in this man, about whom so much was told, but that, on the contrary, he had the most naively cheerful and good-natured smile.
Anatol Kuragin asked about the impression of the performance and told her about how in the last performance Semenova, playing, fell.
“You know, Countess,” he said, suddenly addressing her as if she were an old, old acquaintance, “we have a merry-go-round in suits; you should participate in it: it will be a lot of fun. All gather at the Arkharovs'. Please come, right, huh? He said.
While saying this, he did not take his smiling eyes off his face, from his neck, from Natasha's bare hands. Natasha undoubtedly knew that he admired her. It was pleasant for her, but for some reason she felt cramped, hot and heavy from his presence. When she looked at him, she felt that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his gaze so that he would look better at her eyes. But, looking into his eyes, she felt with fear that between him and her there was absolutely no barrier of bashfulness that she always felt between herself and other men. She, not knowing how, after five minutes felt terribly close to this man. When she turned away, she was afraid that he would take her bare hand from behind, kiss her on the neck. They talked about the simplest things, and she felt that they were close, as she had never been with a man. Natasha looked back at Helene and at her father, as if asking them what that meant; but Helen was busy talking with some general and did not answer her gaze, and her father's gaze did not tell her anything, except what he always said: "Fun, well, I'm glad." In one of the moments of awkward silence, during which Anatole calmly and stubbornly looked at her with his bulging eyes, Natasha, in order to break this silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. Natasha asked and blushed. She constantly thought that she was doing something indecent when talking to him. Anatole smiled, as if encouraging her.
- At first I didn't like it much, because what makes the city pleasant? Ce sont les jolies femmes (These are pretty women), is not it? Well, now I like it very much, ”he said, looking significantly at her. “Will you go to the merry-go-round, Countess? Please go, ”he said, and stretching out his hand to her bouquet and lowering his voice, he said:“ Vous serez la plus jolie. Venez, chère comtesse, et comme gage donnez moi cette fleur. (You will be the prettiest. Go, dear countess, and give me this flower as a pledge)
Natasha did not understand what he said, just as he did, but she felt that there was an indecent intent in his incomprehensible words. She didn’t know what to say, and turned away as if she hadn’t heard what he said. But as soon as she turned away, she thought that he was here behind, so close to her.
“What is he now? Is he embarrassed? Angry? Need to fix this? " She asked herself. She couldn't help looking back. She looked him straight in the eye, and his closeness, and confidence, and the good-natured gentleness of his smile won over her. She smiled too, as did he, looking straight into his eyes. And again she felt with horror that there was no barrier between him and her.
The curtain went up again. Anatole came out of the box, calm and cheerful. Natasha returned to her father in the box, already completely subordinated to the world in which she was. Everything that was happening in front of her already seemed to her quite natural; but on the other hand, all her former thoughts about her fiancé, about Princess Marya, about country life never crossed her mind, as if all that had been a long time ago, long past.
In the fourth act, there was some devil who sang, waving his hand until the boards were pulled out under him and he sank there. Natasha saw only this from the fourth act: something agitated and tormented her, and the cause of this excitement was Kuragin, whom she involuntarily followed with her eyes. When they were leaving the theater, Anatole approached them, called their carriage and gave them a lift. Sitting Natasha up, he shook her hand above the wrist. Natasha, agitated, red and happy, looked back at him. He, shining with his eyes and smiling tenderly, looked at her.
Only after arriving home, Natasha could clearly think over everything that happened to her, and, suddenly remembering Prince Andrei, she was horrified and in front of everyone, at tea, for which everyone sat down after the theater, gasped loudly and, flushed, ran out of the room. "My God! I am lost! She said to herself. - How could I allow this to happen? She thought. For a long time she sat, covering her flushed face with her hands, trying to give herself a clear account of what had happened to her, and could neither understand what happened to her, nor what she felt. Everything seemed to her dark, unclear and frightening. There, in this huge lighted hall, where Duport jumped on wet boards to music with bare legs in a jacket with sequins, girls and old men, and naked, with a calm and proud smile, Helen shouted bravo in delight, - there, under the shadow of this Helen, it was all clear and simple there; but now alone, with herself, it was incomprehensible. "What it is? What is this fear that I felt for him? What is this remorse that I feel now? " She thought.
To one old Countess Natasha would have been able to tell everything she thought in bed at night. Sonya, she knew, with her stern and whole look, either would not understand anything, or she would be horrified by her confession. Natasha, alone with herself, tried to resolve what tormented her.
"Did I die for the love of Prince Andrew, or not?" She asked herself, and with a soothing grin answered herself: “What kind of fool am I, why am I asking this? What happened to me? Nothing. I didn’t do anything, I didn’t cause it. No one will know, and I will never see him again, she told herself. - So, it is clear that nothing happened, that there is nothing to repent of, that Prince Andrew can love me and so. But what kind? Oh my God, my God! Why is he not here! " Natasha calmed down for a moment, but then again some instinct told her that although all this was true and although there was nothing, instinct told her that all the former purity of her love for Prince Andrey had perished. And she again in her imagination repeated her entire conversation with Kuragin and imagined the face, gesture and gentle smile of this handsome and courageous man, while he shook her hand.

Natasha made a strong impression on Kuragin. At dinner after the theater with the receptions of a connoisseur, he made out in front of Dolokhov the dignity of her arms, shoulders, legs and hair and announced his decision to follow her. What could come out of this courtship - Anatole could not ponder and know how he never knew what would come of his every action.

(Natasha Rostova falls in love with Anatol Kuragin)

Anatole, evidently at the door, was waiting for the Rostovs to enter. He at once, having greeted the count, went up to Natasha and followed her. As soon as Natasha saw him, the same as in the theater, a feeling of vain pleasure that he liked her, and fear of the absence of moral barriers between her and him seized her.

Natasha looked at the fat Georges, but she heard nothing, did not see and did not understand anything of what was being done in front of her; she only felt completely irrevocably again in that strange, insane world, so far from the previous one, in that world in which it was impossible to know what was good, what was bad, what was reasonable and what was insane. Anatole was sitting behind her, and she, feeling his closeness, was frightened waiting for something.

Anatole invited Natasha to a waltz, and during the waltz he, shaking her waist and hand, told her that she was a ravissante (charming) and that he loves her. During the ecossaise, which she again danced with Kuragin, when they were left alone, Anatole did not say anything to her and only looked at her. Natasha was in doubt if she had seen in a dream what he said to her during the waltz. At the end of the first figure, he again shook her hand. Natasha raised her frightened eyes to him, but there was such a self-confidently gentle expression in his gentle gaze and smile that she could not, looking at him, say what she had to say to him. She dropped her eyes.
- Do not tell me such things, I am engaged and love another, - she said quickly ... She looked at him. Anatole was not embarrassed or upset by what she said.
- Don't tell me about it. What is it to me? - he said. - I say that I am madly, madly in love with you. Am I to blame that you are delicious? .. We start.
Natasha, lively and anxious, looked around her with wide, frightened eyes and seemed more cheerful than usual. She remembered almost nothing of what happened that evening. She danced Ecossaise and Grosvater, her father invited her to leave, she asked to stay. Wherever she was, whoever she spoke to, she felt his gaze on her. Then she remembered that she asked her father for permission to go to the dressing room to straighten her dress, that Helene had gone after her, told her, laughing, about her brother's love, and that in the little couch she again met Anatole, that Helen had disappeared somewhere, they were left alone , and Anatole, taking her hand, said in a gentle voice:
- I cannot go to you, but will I never see you? I love you madly. Really never? .. - And he, blocking her path, brought his face closer to hers.
His shining large male eyes were so close to hers that she could not see anything but those eyes.
- Natalie ?! His voice whispered inquiringly, and someone squeezed her hands painfully. - Natalie ?!
“I don't understand anything, I have nothing to say,” said her gaze.
Hot lips pressed against hers, and at that very moment she felt free again, and in the room there was the sound of Helen's footsteps and dresses. Natasha looked back at Helene, then, red and trembling, looked at him in a frightened, questioning manner and went to the door.

Returning home, Natasha did not sleep all night; she was tormented by the insoluble question, whom did she love: Anatole or Prince Andrew? She loved Prince Andrew - she clearly remembered how much she loved him. But she loved Anatole too, that was beyond doubt. “Otherwise, how could all this be? She thought. - If I could after that, saying goodbye to him, could answer his smile with a smile, if I could admit it, it means that I fell in love with him from the first minute. It means that he is kind, noble and beautiful, and it was impossible not to love him. What should I do when I love him and love another? " She said to herself, finding no answers to these terrible questions.

<…>What could she write next after all that happened yesterday? “Yes, yes, it was all, and now everything is different,” she thought, sitting over the letter she had begun. - Should I refuse him? Is it really necessary? It's awful! .. ”And, in order not to think of these terrible thoughts, she went to Sonya and together with her began to sort out the patterns.
After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took Princess Marya's letter. “Is it all over already? She thought. - Is it really so soon all this happened and destroyed all the old? She recalled in all her former strength her love for Prince Andrei and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She vividly imagined herself as the wife of Prince Andrei, imagined the picture of happiness with him, repeated so many times by her imagination, and at the same time, flaring up with excitement, imagined all the details of her yesterday's meeting with Anatole.
“Why couldn't it be together? - sometimes, in a perfect eclipse, she thought. - Then only I would be completely happy, but now I have to choose, and without either of the two I can not be happy. One thing, she thought, “to tell what happened, to Prince Andrey or to hide, is equally impossible. And with this nothing is spoiled. But is it really possible to part forever with this happiness of love for Prince Andrey, whom I have lived for so long? "
“Young lady,” the girl said in a whisper, with a mysterious look, entering the room. - One person told me to tell you. - The girl submitted a letter. - Only for Christ's sake, young lady ... - said the girl, when Natasha, without thinking, broke the seal with a mechanical movement and read Anatole's love letter, from which she, without understanding a word, understood only one thing, that this letter was from him, from the person she loves. “Yes, she loves, otherwise how could what happened? Could there be a love letter from him in her hand? "
With trembling hands, Natasha held this passionate, love letter, composed for Anatol Dolokhov, and, reading it, found in it echoes of everything that, it seemed to her, she herself felt.
“Since yesterday evening, my fate has been decided: to be loved by you or to die. I have no other choice, ”the letter began. Then he wrote that he knew that her relatives would not give her to him, that there were secret reasons for this, which he alone could reveal to her, but that if she loved him, then she should say this word yes, and no human strength hinder their bliss. Love will conquer everything. He will kidnap and take her to the ends of the world.
"Yes, yes, I love him!" - thought Natasha, rereading the letter for the twentieth time and looking for some special deep meaning in each of his words.

(Natasha tells Sonya about her love for Anatoly Kuragin)

- No, Sonya, I can't take it anymore! - said Natasha. “I can’t hide from you anymore. You know we love each other! .. Sonya, my dear, he writes ... Sonya ...
Sonya, as if not believing her ears, looked with all her eyes at Natasha.
- And Bolkonsky? - she said.
- Oh, Sonya, oh, if you could only know how happy I am! - said Natasha. - You don't know what love is ...
- But, Natasha, is it really all over?
Natasha looked at Sonya with large, open eyes, as if she did not understand her question.
- Well, you refuse to Prince Andrey? - said Sonya.
“Oh, you don’t understand anything, don’t talk nonsense, you listen,” Natasha said with instant annoyance.
“No, I can't believe it,” Sonya repeated. - I do not understand. How did you love one person for a whole year and suddenly ... After all, you only saw him three times. Natasha, I don’t believe you, you’re joking. In three days to forget everything and so ...
“Three days,” Natasha said. - I think I love him for a hundred years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before him. And she didn’t love anyone as much as him. You cannot understand this, Sonya, wait, sit down here. - Natasha hugged and kissed her. - I was told that it happens, and you probably heard, but now I just experienced this love. This is not what it used to be. As soon as I saw him, I felt that he was my master, and I was his slave, and that I could not help but love him. Yes, a slave! What he tells me, I will do. You don't understand this. What am I supposed to do? What am I to do, Sonya? - Natasha said with a happy and frightened face.
“But think about what you’re doing,” Sonya said, “I cannot leave it like that. These secret letters ... How could you let him do this? She said with horror and disgust, which she could hardly hide.
“I told you,” Natasha answered, “that I have no will, how you don’t understand this: I love him!

- Does he love you?
- Does she love? Natasha repeated with a smile of regret for her friend's lack of understanding. - You read the letter, did you see it?
- But if he is an ignoble person?
"Is he an ignoble man?" If you only knew! - Natasha said.
- If he is a noble person, then he must either declare his intention, or stop seeing you; and if you do not want to do it, then I will do it; I'll write to him and tell Daddy, '' Sonya said resolutely.
- Yes, I can not live without him! Cried Natasha.
- Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Remember your father, about Nicolas.
- I do not need anyone, I do not love anyone but him. How dare you say that he is ignoble? Don't you know that I love him? - Natasha shouted. “Sonia, go away, I don’t want to quarrel with you, go away, for God's sake, go away: you see how I suffer,” Natasha shouted angrily in a restrained, irritated and desperate voice.

(Natasha writes in a letter to Princess Marya that she cannot be the wife of Prince Andrey)

Natasha went to the table and, without thinking for a minute, wrote the answer to Princess Marya, which she could not write the whole morning. In this letter, she briefly wrote to Princess Marya that all their misunderstandings were over, that, taking advantage of the generosity of Prince Andrei, who, leaving, gave her freedom, she asks her to forget everything and forgive her, if she is to blame before her, but that she cannot to be his wife. All this seemed to her so easy, simple and clear at that moment.

(Failed escape and Natasha's illness)

When Pierre returned to Moscow, he received a letter from Marya Dmitrievna, who called him to her on a very important matter concerning Andrei Bolkonsky and his bride. Pierre avoided Natasha. It seemed to him that he had a stronger feeling for her than a married man should have for his friend's bride. And some kind of fate constantly brought him to her.

Opening the door to the hall, Pierre saw Natasha, sitting by the window, with a thin, pale and angry face. She looked back at him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.
- What's happened? - asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna.
“Good deeds,” answered Marya Dmitrievna. - I have lived fifty-eight years in the world, I have never seen such shame. - And, having taken Pierre's word of honor to be silent about everything that he learns, Marya Dmitrievna told him that Natasha had refused her fiancé without the knowledge of her parents, that the reason for this refusal was Anatol Kuragin, with whom her wife Pierre had brought her and with whom Natasha wanted to escape in the absence of his father in order to secretly get married.
Pierre, raising his shoulders and gaping his mouth, listened to what Marya Dmitrievna was saying to him, not believing her ears. The bride of Prince Andrey, so much beloved, this formerly dear Natasha Rostova, exchange Bolkonsky for the fool Anatole, already married (Pierre knew the secret of his marriage), and fall in love with him so much to agree to run away with him! - this Pierre could not understand and could not imagine.
The sweet impression of Natasha, whom he had known since childhood, could not unite in his soul with a new idea of ​​her baseness, stupidity and cruelty. He remembered his wife. “They are all the same,” he said to himself, thinking that he was not alone in the sad fate of being associated with a nasty woman. But he still felt sorry for Prince Andrew to tears, he felt sorry for his pride. And the more he pitied his friend, the more contempt and even disgust he thought of this Natasha, with such an expression of cold dignity passing by him through the hall. He did not know that Natasha's soul was filled with despair, shame, humiliation and that it was not her fault that her face inadvertently expressed calm dignity and severity.
- How to get married! - said Pierre to the words of Marya Dmitrievna. - He could not get married: he is married.
“Hour after hour is no easier,” said Marya Dmitrievna. - Good boy! What a bastard! And she waits, she waits for the second day. At least stop waiting, I must tell her.

Pierre went to Marya Dmitrievna to inform about the fulfillment of her desire - about the expulsion of Kuragin from Moscow. The whole house was in fear and excitement. Natasha was very ill, and, as Marya Dmitrievna secretly told him, on the same night as it was announced to her that Anatole was married, she was poisoned with arsenic, which she quietly took out. After swallowing it a little, she was so scared that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done. The necessary measures were taken in time against the poison, and now she was out of danger; but nevertheless she was so weak that it was impossible to think of taking her to the village, and she was sent for the countess. Pierre saw the confused count and the tear-stained Sonya, but he could not see Natasha.

Having received the news of Natasha's illness, the countess, still not quite healthy and weak, with Petya and the whole house came to Moscow, and the whole Rostov family moved from Marya Dmitrievna to their house and completely settled in Moscow. Natasha's illness was so serious that, to her happiness and to the happiness of her family, the thought of everything that was the cause of her illness, her act and the break with her fiancé passed into the background. She was so sick that it was impossible to think about how much she was to blame for everything that happened, while she did not eat, did not sleep, noticeably lost weight, coughed and was, as the doctors made it felt, in danger. All I had to think about was helping her. The doctors visited Natasha both separately and in consultation, spoke a lot of French, German and Latin, condemned each other, prescribed a variety of medicines for all diseases known to them; but none of them had the simple idea that they could not be aware of the disease that Natasha suffered, just as not a single disease that a living person is possessed by can be known: for every living person has his own characteristics and always has a special and new, complex, unknown to medicine disease, not a disease of the lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, etc., recorded in medicine, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable compounds in the suffering of these organs.

Natasha's signs of illness were that she ate little, slept little, coughed and never revived. The doctors said that the patient should not be left without medical assistance, and therefore they kept her in the city in the stuffy air. And in the summer of 1812 the Rostovs did not leave for the countryside.
Despite a large number of swallowed pills, drops and powders from jars and boxes, from which Madame Schoss, a hunter for these gizmos, collected a large collection, despite the absence of the usual village life, youth took its toll: Natasha's grief began to be covered with a layer of impressions of her life, it it ceased to lie on her heart with such excruciating pain, it began to become past, and Natasha began to physically recover.

M. Bashilov, who illustrated the novel in 1866, Tolstoy wrote about the depiction of the scene between Natasha and Boris Drubetsky in the flower room: inflexible)..."

However, Tanechka Bers - Lev Nikolaevich's sister-in-law, sister of his wife Sophia, impetuous, addicted, sometimes frivolous - is not the only prototype of Natasha Rostova. As the writer himself admitted, he "took Tanya, smashed with Sonya, and it turned out Natasha."

"Natasha is a half-young lady, half-girl, sometimes childishly funny, sometimes girlishly charming."

. "When he woke up, Natasha, that same living Natasha, whom of all the people in the world he most wanted to love with that new, pure divine love that was now open to him, was kneeling before him. He realized that it was alive. , the real Natasha, and was not surprised, but quietly delighted. Natasha, on her knees, frightened but chained (she could not move) looked at him, holding back her sobs. Her face was pale and motionless. Only in the lower part of him something trembled. then".

L. Pasternak, 1893

Cross-post in the community dedicated to everything related to books,

Natasha Rostova is the central female character in the epic novel War and Peace by L.N. Tolstoy and his favorite heroine. The novel covers the period from 1805 to 1820, and during this time we follow how the image of Natasha develops.

For the first time we see Natasha as a thirteen-year-old teenager. She is still awkward and ugly, her hair is tied back with black curls, but she is sincere and at the same time beautiful in her spontaneity.

The heroine is still an ugly duckling, but who is already ready to turn into a beautiful swan. She has extraordinary musical abilities, she is endowed with an amazing voice, spontaneous and responsive. At the same time, the heroine has a strong character, with an unbending moral core.

Natasha grows up in an atmosphere of happiness, love and gaiety, which is characteristic of the Rostov family. The Rostovs' house in Moscow is always full of life, but the life of the family in Otradnoye is no less idyllic, where the heroine is surrounded by magnificent landscapes, she participates in Christmas games, fortune-telling. But it is known that the classics have always portrayed their favorite heroes in unity with nature and in direct connection with national traditions.

As the plot develops, the heroine turns into an attractive, lively, feeling girl. Natasha is capable of self-sacrifice, she is not alien to high emotional impulses. So, she decisively burns her hand, proving her friendship and love to Sonya, takes part in the fate of the wounded when she gives carts to take them out of burning Moscow. During the Patriotic War of 1812, Natasha took a responsible position. She is confident and courageous. She does not assess what is happening, but obeys her life principles, which are dictated to her by her sincere and pure character. It is the heroine who saves her mother from mental insanity after the death of Petya, she takes care of the seriously wounded Prince Andrei. However, Tolstoy does not idealize his heroine, selfish motives are often traced in her behavior, her actions are not always dictated by reason, according to the author, she "does not deign to be smart." However, this characteristic, unflattering in the modern sense, speaks of the main distinguishing feature of Natasha's image - emotionality and intuitive sensitivity. She strives to live life to the fullest, wants to love and be loved. But her emotionality, amorousness played a bad joke with her: being engaged to Andrei Bolkonsky, she is fond of Anatol Kuragin, clearly an unworthy object of her attention. Only when she wakes up from this obsession and meets the wounded Prince Andrey in Mytishchi, does she realize her guilt and grab the opportunity to redeem her. Caring for Prince Andrew revives her to life.

The role of wife and mother played by Natasha Rostova in the epilogue of the novel is not accidental. The heroine becomes the wife of Pierre Bezukhov, who is close to her in spirit, because it was he who, at the beginning of the novel, in a thirteen-year-old girl, saw a beautiful and sublime soul with a rich inner world.

In the epilogue of the novel, Natasha is completely immersed in family concerns, she shares her husband's interests and understands him. The author draws Natasha as, in his opinion, an ideal woman should be. “Natasha got married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 she already had three daughters and one son, whom she desired and now fed herself,” writes Tolstoy, calling his heroine “a strong, beautiful and fertile female”. But Natasha Rostova sees the meaning of her life in this. This characterization of the heroine, given in the epilogue, once again testifies to the fact that Natasha seems to be a part of nature, she even thinks not with her mind, "but with her whole being, that is, with her flesh." Natasha takes on the role of a willing and happy slave: "Natasha in her house put herself on the foot of her husband's slave." The heroine loves and is loved. And this is for her the true content of a fulfilling and happy life.

One of the most striking and attractive images of the novel is the image of Natasha Rostova. Like a light spring breeze, this gentle, fragile girl bursts into the boring, prim life around her, refreshes her, fills her with energy and infects everyone with her happiness. “Unable to hold on any longer, she jumped and ran out of the room as soon as her fast legs could carry,” - this is how we see Natasha on the first pages of the novel. She will remain the same in the future, having endured many trials, going through difficulties and disappointments. Because the spiritual purity and beauty of this girl cannot be overshadowed by any vicissitudes of fate.

* “No, look what a moon is! .. Ah, how lovely! You come here. Well, see? So I would have squatted, like this, I would have grabbed myself under my knees - tighter, tighter, it is necessary to strain, - and would fly. Like this!"

These were the first words that Andrei Bolkonsky heard from Natasha Rostova. And these words, as well as the great energy of joy and happiness, seemed to have turned his entire inner world, his entire past life. Natasha, like a beautiful bird, flew through life, carrying along not only Prince Andrey, but also everyone who came across her. The inner world of Tolstoy's heroine is revealed to us through individual touches to her portrait. It is enough to pay attention to her eyes: "curious", "pleading", "shining", "somewhat mocking" or "sadly questioning."

Russian nature is her element. Let us recall the days spent by the heroine in Otradnoye: horse races on triplets on a frosty Christmas night, dancing with mummers, games, singing. These scenes reflect all the charm of Natasha Rostova's nature, her close connection with the life of the people. Her simplicity and naturalness are explained by the fact that she "knew how to understand everything that was in Anisya, and in Anisya's father, and in her aunt, and in her mother, and in every Russian person." She experiences the pain and suffering of the soldiers who defended her homeland as her own. That is why she feels an incredible surge of mental strength. She gives all the carts to the wounded, leaves things, because she simply does not imagine that she can do otherwise in this situation. What does all the wealth mean now when it comes to saving Russian soldiers and officers ?!

Tolstoy's heroine lives not with her mind, but with her heart. And the heart never deceives at all. That is why Natasha Rostova understood people so well and could always come to their aid. She understands Nikolenka's feelings when he lost almost his entire fortune. That evening Natasha sang only for her brother, and he, listening to her voice, forgot about all the troubles. She understands Denisov well, who proposed to her. She takes pity on him and understands that “he didn’t mean to say, but he did by accident”. In the prosperous Boris Drubetskoy, her childish fiancé, she could easily discern a petty, vain self-lover and careerist. This man could not possibly become a companion of such a sensitive and open girl as Rostov. Possessing a tremendous capacity for compassion, Natasha begins to cry with Sonya, not even knowing the reason for her friend's tears, but "only because Sonya was crying."

The heroine of Tolstoy is remarkable for her amazing emotionality, openness, and spiritual integrity. She is capable of deep affection and strong feelings, she is sincere and sincere in both joy and suffering.

Being an open, sincere person, Natasha does not understand all the falsity of the society around her. It seems to her that everyone is equally kind, lovely, wonderful people who sincerely love each other. This is probably due to the fact that she herself, with all her soul, strives for universal love and friendship. Unwillingness to see negative traits often leads the heroine to reckless actions. So, she was not immediately able to unravel the true nature of Anatol Kuragin, who only used, deceived her.

Tolstoy's heroine is characterized by pure, sincere love for people. Natasha Rostova and love are inseparable. She sincerely loves her father and mother, Nikolai and Sonya ... But her inner world is revealed especially fully in her love for Volkonsky. Having gone through many life trials, this love has retained its purity, depth and tenderness. Natasha fell in love with Prince Andrew at first sight. When he invited her to the waltz, her face lit up with a happy, almost childish smile. "I have been waiting for you for a long time," as if this frightened and happy girl said with her smile, beaming because of those ready to shed tears, raising her hand on the shoulder of Prince Andrey. " The girl's heart overflowed with happiness and joy from the consciousness that she could become the wife of this man. Natasha was deeply worried about the upcoming separation from her fiancé: “Red and agitated, with dry eyes, she walked that day around the house, doing the most insignificant things, as if not understanding what awaited her ...“ Don't leave! ” - only she said to him in such a voice that made him think about whether he really needed to stay, and which he remembered for a long time.

Young Rostova, it seemed, did not fully realize what was happening to her. After Bolkonsky's departure, she feels confused. Without thinking what she was doing, the girl simply opened up to meet feelings. Sometimes these feelings turned out to be wrong - as in the case of Anatole. Only after some time, true love woke up in Natasha's soul, she fully realized her feelings for Andrei. It was a joyful and new feeling that engulfed Rostov entirely, brought her back to life.

In the image of Natasha Rostova, Tolstoy embodied all those qualities that, according to the author, should be present in the soul of every real person, qualities that he himself most appreciated in people. His heroine is a cheerful, sensitive, natural, spontaneous girl. She is distinguished by giftedness, the ability to see and understand the soul of another person, a willingness to come to the rescue, a subtle intuition. She loves people and does only good to everyone, she strives to live life to the fullest, to enjoy every minute she lives. And radiate warmth and light every minute. Indeed, the heroine of Tolstoy, thanks to her unique spiritual qualities, the wealth of her inner world, becomes a bright ray of light in a boring and gray secular society.