Semantics of a Night Garden in L. Tolstoy’s Story “Two Hussars”

The article focuses on the image of a night garden, as well as its ideological and artistic interpretation in L. Tolstoy’s story “Two Hussars” (1856). The atmosphere of the night gives a person the opportunity to deeply feel the connection between the earthly and the heavenly. The image of the night has extensive cultural, symbolic, and spiritual content. Interest in the nocturnal state of the world has been reflected in literature, fine arts, and music (in the form of a piano nocturne). As for the image of a garden, it is interpreted as Eden, an earthly paradise. Although a garden is isolated from pristine nature, it retains a natural and ontological connection with it. In world and Russian classical literature, there are many examples of highly artistic night landscapes. These include the image of a night garden in Tolstoy’s story. It is focused on contemplation; it develops picturesquely at an andante pace, and is created with the help of changing visual images and natural sounds. At the same time, the garden is full of mystery; it is connected with deep processes of life, and it is one with the Universe. A spring night garden is one of the manifestations of the eternal beauty of nature. The important functional role of a night garden is an anthropocentric one. Tolstoy needs story heroine Lisa’s motifs of love dreams, a fleeting adventure in the night garden that Count Turbin Jr. was counting on, to delve into psychological, moral, and philosophical problems. The author shows that man is given the opportunity to come into contact with the outside world. Nature is gracious, open to those who sincerely surrender to it; it awakens the best principles in a person, introduces them to the mystery of life. The image of a night garden had a special appeal for Tolstoy, which is confirmed by its ap|pearance in the artist’s subsequent works. In Family Happiness, it is associated with the theme of love; in the epic War and Peace – with a person’s desire to soar into the world of beauty and harmony; in the novel Anna Karenina, a garden is a place where Levin had a revelation about Divine providence and the laws of good in people’s lives.