Achromatic coloratives in Leo Tolstoy's late artistic prose: semantics and functions

This article deals with the study of the author’s changes in achromatic coloratives’ semantics and their functions in Tolstoy’s late artistic prose. In his popular stories “What Men Live By”, “Where Love Is, God Is”, “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” the coloratives with the roots “-black-”, “-dark-” and “-white-” mainly fulfil a descriptive function that conveys the writer’s desire to show life through peasant’s eyes and gives seemingly impartial presentation of events. In Tolstoy’s stories of the 1880s “The Death of Ivan Ilyich”, “The Kreutzer Sonata” and “The Devil” the condemnation of man’s sins before God is conveyed by means of the color spectrum, that’s why the negative semantics of coloratives with the roots “-black-”, “-dark-” and “-white-” and their evaluative function appear. In “What Men Live by”, “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and the “Resurrection” the coloratives with the root “-light-” acquire a symbolic meaning and spot the characters’ spiritual growth who go along to comprehend the God’s Word. In the “Resurrection” and “Hadji Murat”, alternatively to Tolstoy’s popular stories and those ones of the 1880s, the colorative code with its evaluative and prospective coloratives’ functions is presented. In “Hadji Murat” the use of the coloratives with the root “-light-” serves as a minus-trick, emphasizing peoples’ moral deafness and their unwillingness to live by the laws of good. When describing the life of the highlanders, the coloratives mainly perform a descriptive function, when depicting officers, they accomplish an evaluative function, and when recreating natural and mythopoetic images, the coloratives perform a prospective function. In the finale of the novel “Resurrection” the coloratives with the roots “-black-”, “-dark-”, “-white-” and “-light-” associated with life-giving, fulfill a prospective function, presaging the Kingdom of God. In his late artistic prose Tolstoy becoming more categorical in blaming people who ignored the ideas of the good and justice, keeps on supporting life by the Gospel.