Prince Vasily Kuragin is one of the significant characters in the epic novel War and Peace. His family, soulless and rude, arrogant and acting ahead when there is an opportunity to get rich, is opposed to the delicate and kind-hearted Rostov family and the intellectual Bolkonsky family. Vasily Kuragin does not live by thoughts, but rather by instincts.
When he meets an influential person, he tries to get closer to him, and this happens automatically for him.
Appearance of Prince Vasily Sergeevich
We meet him first in the salon of Anna Pavlovna, where all the intellectual is going and what kind of poor color St. Petersburg is for testing. Nobody has arrived yet, he leads useful and confidential conversations with the aging forty-year-old “enthusiast”. Important and official, bearing his head high, he arrived in a court uniform with stars (he managed to get awards without doing anything useful for the country). Vasily Kuragin is bald, perfumed, sedate, and, despite his sixty years, graceful.
His movements are always free and familiar. Nothing can bring him out of equilibrium. Vasily Kuragin grew old, having spent his whole life in the world, and brilliantly owns himself. His flat face is wrinkled. This all becomes known from the first chapter of the first part of the novel.
Prince's worries
He has three children whom he loves few. He himself in the same chapter says that he does not have parental love for children, but he considers it a great task to attach them well in life.
In a conversation with Anna Pavlovna, he as if inadvertently asks who the place of the first secretary in Vienna is destined for. This is his main purpose of visiting Scherer. He needs to attach to the warm place of the silly son Hippolytus. But, by the way, he agrees that Anna Pavlovna will try to marry his dissolute son Anatole with the rich and noble Maria Bolkonskaya, who lives with her father on the estate of
Lysy Gory. Vasily Kuragin received at least one benefit from this evening, because he was not used to spending time useless for himself. And in general, he knows how to use people. He is always attracted to those who stand above him, and the prince has a rare gift - to catch the moment when people can and should be used.
The ugly deeds of the prince
In the first part, starting from chapter XVIII, Vasily Kuragin, having arrived in Moscow, tries to take possession of Pierre’s inheritance, destroying his father’s will. Julie Karagin wrote more or less in detail about this ugly story of Maria Bolkonskaya in a letter. Having received nothing and playing a "ugly role", as Julie put it, Prince Vasily Kuragin left for Petersburg embarrassed. But he did not stay in this state for long.
He seemed absent-mindedly made efforts to bring Pierre closer to his daughter, and successfully completed this business with a wedding. Pierre’s money should serve the prince’s family. So it should be, according to Prince Vasily. An attempt to marry Anatol’s hanger on the unrequited ugly Princess Mary cannot be called a worthy act either: he is only concerned with a rich dowry, which his son can get. But his such an immoral family is degenerating. Hippolytus is just a fool, which no one takes seriously. Helene is dying. Anatole, having undergone amputation of the leg, it is not known whether he will survive or not.
Character Kuragin
He is a confident, empty and indifferent person. The tone of his voice for decency and participation always shines through mockery. He always tries to get closer to people of high position. So, for example, everyone knows that he is on good terms with Kutuzov, and they turn to him for help in order to put his sons in adjutants. But he used to refuse to everyone, so that at the right moment, and we have already talked about this, to take advantage of mercies only for himself. Such small lines scattered in the text of the novel describe a secular man - Vasily Kuragin. L. Tolstoy’s characteristic of it is very unflattering, and with its help the author describes the upper world as a whole.
A great intriguer, accustomed to living thoughts of a career, money and profit, is Vasily Kuragin. “War and peace” (and peace in the days of Tolstoy was written through the unusual letter i and meant not only peace as the absence of war, but, to a greater extent, the universe, and there was no direct antithesis in this name) - a work in which the prince shown against the backdrop of worldly receptions and in his home, where there is no warmth and cordial relations. The epic novel contains monumental pictures of life and hundreds of characters, one of which is Prince Kuragin.