The poetics of the word in the foreign language lexis of “Hadji Murad” by L. Tolstoy

The article is devoted to the study of artistic multilingualism in Leo Tolstoy’s short novel “Hadji Murad,” which becomes a means of the author’s poetics. The writer was proficient not only in Western, but also in Eastern languages. He had participated in military operations in Chechnya and was familiar with the customs, traditions and folklore of the Caucasus peoples. All this led to the use of a large number of foreign words of different origins in the creation of characters, material and linguistic reality in “Hadji Murad.” The author employed them to recreate the national, cultural, socio-political and religious features of the Russian Empire and the Caucasus. The analysis of foreign words made it possible to identify the contradistinction of the Eastern and the Western, European worldviews in the work. At the same time, the article examines and assesses the penetration of their components into the Russian worldview. Meanwhile, the differentiation of characters occurs not only on the basis of ethnicity, but also by social class. Besides, artistic multilingualism became one of Tolstoy’s means of conveying his ideas. By using foreign words, the writer showed in “Hadji Murad” the elitist orientation and licentiousness of art, the negative impact of progress on humans and society, the despotism of rulers who don’t care about the well-being of their people, as well as the cruelty and destructiveness of war.