Symbiosis of the “poetic” and ethical principles in Leo Tolstoy’s autobiographical trilogy

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the artistic specifics of Leo Tolstoy’s autobiographical novels “Childhood”, “Adolescence”, “Youth”. The aim of the study is to propose a new interpretation of the artistic structure of Tolstoy’s trilogy, associated with understanding the special role of the symbiosis of the ethical and “poetic” principles. The author proves that the forms of “poetization of the world” found in Tolstoy’s trilogy are an essential element of Tolstoy’s autobiography. These forms most effectively influenced the expression of the writer’s ethical doctrine and predetermined the principles of the unique autobiographical worldview of the text’s creator. The scientific originality of the study stems from a new approach to understanding the autobiographical whole from the point of view of the interaction between two structural and organizing principles, the ethical one, associated with showing the moral growth of a person, and the “poetic” one, which serves as a means of expressing the author’s special ideological position. The main result of the study amounts to the conclusion about the symbiosis of the “poetic” and the ethical, which formed the basis of L. Tolstoy’s aesthetic discovery in his artistic autobiography. Only taking into account the symbiosis of the two principles will reveal the deep philosophical meaning of Tolstoy’s work.