A reader at the crossroads: "binary" plots in Leo Tolstoy's A Circle of Reading

The article aims to explore the structure and poetics of the late collection of aphorisms A Circle of Reading written by Leo Tolstoy in 1904-1908. On the basis of the ideologically important fictional parts of the book, the so-called "weekly readings", the author proves that the collection, despite its heterogeneity, has its own poetics. Using the structural approach to the analysis of plots and motifs, the study has revealed a certain plot pattern in the sixteen of the 32 "weekly readings". The pattern consists in pairs of structurally and thematically similar but semantically different plots. Such a form, which can be called a "binary structure" and whose identification becomes possible by the comparative analysis of the plots, allows deepening our understanding of A Circle of Reading as a hybrid text that contains mutually exclusive aphorisms and plots. To explain these contradictions, the author considers A Circle of Reading in the context of Tolstoy's views and philosophy. The discovered tendency is closely related to the most relevant principle of Tolstoy's late works, the intention to abandon the writer's self, which Tolstoy did not accomplish completely. Using Irina Pa-perno's idea that Tolstoy's authoritative voice in A Circle of Reading was balanced by the voices of the wise men and their aphorisms as a reference point, the author argues that "weekly readings" not so much demonstrate the idea of a community of people and their shared outlook, but, on the contrary, increase the influence of the author's personality on the reader through the doublet structure of "weekly readings". The idea of mental and social solidarity is typical for Tolstoy's later literary texts, but the "weekly readings" in A Circle of Reading subvert this tendency, so that the idea of community is embodied there inconsistently. The author concludes that this attitude towards the reader's involvement (according to it, the reader has the opportunity to observe the alternative development of the plot and to decide which of the outcomes is the most acceptable from the moral point of view) softens Tolstoy's previous categorically expressed ethics. At the same time, the structure of the binary plots shows that the preferable behaviour is connected with the evangelical precepts. This pattern enables Tolstoy to influence the reader and impose his authoritative stance, however, indirectly. Although Tolstoy provides the reader with a relative freedom of choice, he nevertheless manifests the author's power by reference to Christian morality, which is stressed in one of the binary plots. Ultimately, the fictional plots being part of the generically heterogeneous book A Circle of Reading show that Tolstoy still positions himself as an author who, despite his attempts to abandon the writer's self in the 1890s, is not yet ready to overcome it.

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