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Bunin love stories. creative workshop

Bunin love stories. creative workshop

03.02.2019

Current page: 1 (the book has 16 pages in total)

Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Anton Chekhov
The Best of Love

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©The electronic version of the book was prepared by LitRes

"What space!" Repin I. E.

From the publisher

How often do we hear and pronounce the word "love" ... For many centuries, poets, writers, philosophers and the most ordinary people tried to find a definition for this feeling, to describe it. But so far no one has been able to answer the question: what is love? Probably because this feeling is multifaceted and contradictory: it can elevate, but it can also overthrow to the very bottom, it can give wings, or it can deprive you of the desire to live, it can make you commit wonderful reckless deeds and push a person to meanness and betrayal.

The Bible says: “Love is long-suffering, merciful, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, does not pride itself, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything. Love never ceases, although prophecy will cease, and tongues will be silent, and knowledge will be abolished. Not everyone can see it in the daily bustle, and not everyone will find the strength in themselves for such love, which gives not only joy, but also causes pain, and sometimes and kills, because many of the great love stories in literature are tragic.

Our book includes prose works the brightest representatives Silver Age domestic literature- I. Bunin, A. Kuprin and A. Chekhov, who dedicated their best creations to this feeling - painful first love; sudden love, striking like lightning; love, which becomes the meaning of all life and bestows the greatest happiness, and sometimes becomes a real obsession and torment.

Our choice fell on these three great writers not by chance. The theme of the relationship between a man and a woman occupies perhaps the most important place in their work. Before you are poignant love stories written in the unsurpassed language of the classics and found expression in a short literary form- the form of a story.

In the works of Ivan Bunin, love is always tragic, it is spiritualized in its brevity and doom, and, having reached its peak, ends with separation, and often with the death of one of the main characters, as in "Mitya's Love" and "Sunstroke". Love was considered by the writer as elevating "to the infinite heights of value human personality”, giving equally “gentle chaste fragrance” and “awe of intoxication” with pure passion.

"Garnet Bracelet" - Alexander Kuprin's masterpiece - one of the most tedious and sad works about love, self-sacrificing, all-forgiving and extraordinary love. The plot of the story "Helen", on the contrary, is recognizable and therefore so close to many. The heroes who fell in love with each other in their youth meet by chance many years later and realize that their pure and sincere youthful love may have been the most important, most real and beautiful thing that happened in their lives.

The stories told by Anton Chekhov are also colored by longing for a real and unfulfilled feeling. The writer believed that “love is either the remnant of something degenerate, which was once huge, or it is part of what will develop into something huge in the future, but in the present it does not satisfy, it gives much less than you expect.” love in it famous story"Lady with a Dog" has a taste of bitterness from the impossibility of two loving people find happiness. Heroes, meeting true love already in adulthood, understand how empty and meaningless their life is, and are annoyed at the cruelty of fate that has played with them bad joke: gave love too late, when everyone already has a family, a load of bleak personal life, the futility of hoping for the best.

And in the story "Ariadne" love is a way of manipulating one person to another. The heroine, beautiful, but so cold, plays a cruel game with a man in love with her, now pushing away, now giving him hope, turning him into an unfortunate puppet.

Enjoy best stories love, which came out from the pen of Russian classics, they are dedicated to the beautiful and ambiguous feeling without which our life is meaningless!

Moskvoretsky bridge (fragment). Korovin. K. A.

Ivan Bunin
Mitina love

I

In Moscow, Mitya's last happy day was the ninth of March. So, at least, it seemed to him.

He and Katya walked at twelve o'clock in the morning up Tverskoy Boulevard. Winter suddenly gave way to spring, it was almost hot in the sun. As if the larks really flew in and brought with them warmth, joy. Everything was wet, everything was melting, drops were dripping from the houses, windshield wipers were chipping ice off the sidewalks, throwing sticky snow off the roofs, everywhere was crowded and lively. High clouds parted with thin white smoke, merging with the wet blue sky. Pushkin towered in the distance with blissful thoughtfulness, the Passion Monastery shone. But the best thing was that Katya, who was especially pretty that day, breathed all simplicity of heart and intimacy, often, with childish trustfulness, took Mitya by the arm and looked down into his face, happy even, as if a little arrogantly, striding so wide that she could hardly keep up with him.

Near Pushkin, she suddenly said:

- How funny you are, with some kind of cute boyish awkwardness, you stretch your big mouth when you laugh. Do not be offended, for this smile I love you. Yes, here's another for your Byzantine eyes ...

Trying not to smile, overpowering both secret contentment and slight resentment, Mitya answered amiably, looking at the monument, now already raised high in front of them:

- As for boyishness, in this respect we seem to have gone not far from each other. And I look like a Byzantine just like you look like a Chinese empress. You are all just crazy about these Byzantiums, Revivals ... I don’t understand your mother!

“Well, if you were her, would you lock me up in the tower?” Katya asked.

- Not in the tower, but simply on the threshold would not let all this supposedly artistic bohemia, all these future celebrities from studios and conservatories, from theater schools- answered Mitya, continuing to try to be calm and friendly casual. - You yourself told me that Bukovetsky had already invited you to dine in Strelna, and Yegorov offered to sculpt a naked woman, in the form of some kind of dying sea wave, and, of course, terribly flattered by such an honor.

“I still won’t give up art even for you,” Katya said. “Maybe I'm ugly, as you often say,” she said, although Mitya never told her this, “maybe I'm spoiled, but take me the way I am. And let's not quarrel, stop being jealous of me even today, on such a wonderful day! How can you not understand that you are still the best for me, the only one? she asked softly and insistently, already looking into his eyes with feigned seductiveness, and thoughtfully, slowly recited:

Between us a dormant secret,
The soul gave the ring to the soul ...

This is the last, these verses have already hurt Mitya quite painfully. In general, many things even that day were unpleasant and painful. The joke about boyish awkwardness was unpleasant: similar jokes he heard from Katya not for the first time, and they were not accidental - Katya often showed herself in one thing or another more mature than he, often (and involuntarily, that is, quite naturally) showed her superiority over him, and he painfully took it as a sign of some secret vicious experience of her. It was unpleasant “after all” (“you are still the best for me”) and the fact that for some reason this was said in a suddenly lowered voice, especially unpleasant were the verses, their mannered reading. However, even poetry and this reading, that is, the very thing that most of all reminded Mitya of the environment that took Katya away from him, sharply arousing his hatred and jealousy, he endured relatively easily on this happy day of March 9, his last happy day in Moscow, as often seemed to him afterwards.

On that day, on her way back from the Kuznetsky Most, where Katya had bought some of Scriabin's things from Zimmermann, she spoke among other things about his, Mitina's, mother and said, laughing:

“You can’t imagine how afraid I am of her in advance!

For some reason, never once in all the time of their love did they touch the question of the future, of how their love would end. And then suddenly Katya started talking about his mother, and spoke in such a way, as if by itself it was implied that mother was her future mother-in-law.

II

Then everything went on as before. Mitya accompanied Katya to the studio Art Theater, to concerts, to literary evenings or sat in her Kislovka and sat up until two in the morning, taking advantage of the strange freedom that her mother gave her, always smoking, always rouged lady with crimson hair, dear, kind woman(who had long lived separately from her husband, who had a second family). Katya also ran to Mitya's, to his student rooms on Molchanovka, and their dates, as before, almost entirely proceeded in the heavy intoxication of kisses. But it stubbornly seemed to Mitya that something terrible had suddenly begun, that something had changed, that something had begun to change in Katya.

That unforgettable, easy time flew by quickly, when they had just met, when, having barely met, they suddenly felt that it was most interesting for them to talk (and even from morning to evening) only with each other - when Mitya so unexpectedly found himself in that fairy world love, which he secretly expected from childhood, from adolescence. That time was December, frosty, serene, day after day adorning Moscow with thick hoarfrost and a dull red ball of low sun. January and February swirled Mitya's love in a whirlwind of continuous happiness, already, as it were, realized or, at least, about to be realized. But even then something began (and more and more often) to confuse, to poison this happiness. Even then, it often seemed as if there were two Katyas: one was the one whom Mitya began to insistently desire and demand from the first minute of his acquaintance with her, and the other was a genuine, ordinary, painfully different from the first. And yet, Mitya did not experience anything like the present.

Everything could be explained. Spring women's worries began, purchases, orders, endless alterations of one or the other, and Katya really had to often visit dressmakers with her mother: in addition, she had an exam ahead of her at the private theater school where she studied. Therefore, her preoccupation, absent-mindedness could be quite natural. And so Mitya comforted himself every minute. But consolations did not help - what the suspicious heart said in spite of them was stronger and confirmed more and more obviously: Katya's inner inattention to him grew, and at the same time his suspiciousness, his jealousy grew. The director of the theater school turned Katya's head with praises, and she could not help telling Mitya about these praises. The director told her: “You are the pride of my school,” he said “you” to all his students, and, in addition to general classes, he began to study with her later also separately, in order to shine with her at the exams especially. It was already known that he corrupted the students, every summer he took one with him to the Caucasus, to Finland, abroad. And it began to occur to Mitya that now the director had plans for Katya, who, although she was not to blame for this, still probably felt it, understood it, and therefore was already, as it were, in vile, criminal relations with him. And this thought was all the more tormenting, since Katya's diminished attention was too obvious.

It seemed like something was pulling her away from him. He couldn't calmly think about the headmaster. But what a director! It seemed that in general some other interests began to prevail over Katya's love. To whom, to what? Mitya did not know, he was jealous of Katya for everyone, for everything, most importantly, for that common thing he imagined, which, secretly from him, she seemed to have begun to live. It seemed to him that she was irresistibly drawn somewhere away from him and, perhaps, towards something that was even scary to think about.

Once Katya, half in jest, said to him in the presence of her mother:

- You, Mitya, generally talk about women according to Domostroy. And you will make a perfect Othello. I would never fall in love with you and marry you!

Mother objected:

“And I can’t imagine love without jealousy. Who is not jealous, he, in my opinion, does not love.

“No, mother,” said Katya with her constant tendency to repeat other people's words, “jealousy is disrespect for the one you love. That means they don't like me if they don't believe me,” she said, deliberately not looking at Mitya.

“But in my opinion,” my mother objected, “jealousy is love.” I even read it somewhere. There it was very well proven, and even with examples from the Bible, where God himself is called a zealot and an avenger...

As for Mitya's love, it was now almost entirely expressed only in jealousy. And this jealousy was not simple, but somehow, as it seemed to him, special. He and Katya have not yet crossed last line intimacy, although they allowed themselves in those hours when they were alone, too much. And now, during these hours, Katya was even more passionate than before. But now even this began to seem suspicious, and at times aroused a terrible feeling. All the feelings that made up his jealousy were terrible, but among them there was one that was more terrible than all of them and which Mitya did not know how to do, could not define or even understand. It consisted in the fact that those manifestations of passion, the very thing that was so blissful and sweet, higher and more beautiful than anything in the world when applied to them, Mitya and Katya, became indescribably vile and even seemed something unnatural when Mitya thought about Katya and about another man. Then Katya aroused in him a sharp hatred. Everything that, eye to eye, he himself did with her, was full of heavenly charm and chastity for him. But as soon as he imagined someone else in his place, everything changed instantly - everything turned into something shameless, arousing a thirst to strangle Katya, and, above all, it was her, and not an imaginary rival.

Reflection. Weistling M.

III

On the day of Katya's examination, which finally took place (on the sixth week of the Lent), it was as if the whole truth of Mitya's torments was especially confirmed.

Here Katya no longer saw him at all, did not notice him, she was all a stranger, all public.

She had big success. She was dressed in all white, like a bride, and her excitement made her charming. She was clapped warmly and enthusiastically, and the director, a self-satisfied actor with impassive and sad eyes, who was sitting in the front row, only for the sake of greater pride, sometimes made remarks to her, speaking in a low voice, but somehow so that it was audible throughout the hall and sounded unbearable.

“Less reading,” he said weightily, calmly and so authoritatively, as if Katya were his complete property. “Don’t play, but worry,” he said separately.

And it was unbearable. Yes, even the reading itself, which evoked applause, was unbearable. Katya burned with a hot blush, embarrassment, her voice sometimes broke, her breath was not enough, and it was touching, charming. But she read with that vulgar melodiousness, falseness and stupidity in every sound, which were considered the highest art reading in that environment, hated by Mitya, in which Katya already lived with all her thoughts: she did not speak, but all the time she exclaimed with some importunate languid passion, with an immoderate plea, unjustified in her persistence, and Mitya did not know where eyes to do with shame for her. Worst of all was that mixture of angelic purity and depravity that was in her, in her flushed face, in her white dress, which seemed shorter on the stage, since everyone sitting in the hall looked at Katya from below, in her white shoes and tight-fitting silky white stockings on her legs. “The girl sang in the church choir,” Katya read with forced, immoderate naivete about some supposedly angelically innocent girl. And Mitya felt both a heightened closeness to Katya - as you always feel in a crowd for the one you love - and evil hostility, he also felt pride in her, the consciousness that after all she belongs to him, and at the same time heart-rending pain : no, no longer belongs!

After the exam, there were again happy days. But Mitya no longer believed them with the same ease as before. Katya, recalling the exam, said:

- What a fool you are! Didn't you feel that I read so well only for you alone!

But he could not forget what he felt at the exam, and could not admit that these feelings had not left him even now. Katya also felt his secret feelings, and once, during a quarrel, she exclaimed:

“I don’t understand why you love me if, in your opinion, everything is so bad in me!” And what do you finally want from me?

But he himself did not understand why he loved her, although he felt that his love not only did not decrease, but was growing along with the jealous struggle that he waged with someone, with something because of her, because of this love, because of its tensing strength, its ever-increasing demands.

“You only love my body, not my soul!” Katya once said bitterly.

Again these were someone else's, theatrical words, but for all their absurdity and hackneyedness, they also touched on something painfully insoluble. He did not know why he loved, he could not say exactly what he wanted ... What does it mean in general - to love? It was all the more impossible to answer this, since neither in what Mitya heard about love, nor in what he read about it, there was not a single word accurately defining it. In books and in life, everyone seems to have agreed once and for all to talk either only about some kind of almost incorporeal love, or only about what is called passion, sensuality. His love was like no other. What did he feel for her? What is called love, or what is called passion? Did Katya's soul or body bring him almost to fainting, to some kind of near-death bliss, when he unbuttoned her blouse and kissed her breasts, heavenly lovely and virgin, opened with some kind of soul with amazing humility, the shamelessness of the purest innocence?

IV

She changed more and more.

Success in the exam meant a lot. And yet there were other reasons as well.

Somehow, Katya immediately turned with the onset of spring, as if into some kind of young secular lady, smart and always in a hurry somewhere. Mitya was now simply ashamed of her dark corridor when she came—now she didn’t come, but always came—when she, rustling silk, quickly walked along this corridor, lowering her veil over her face. Now she was invariably gentle with him, but she was invariably late and shortened her visits, saying that she again had to go with her mother to the dressmaker.

- You know, we're freaking out! she said, her eyes twinkling round, merrily and in surprise, realizing perfectly well that Mitya did not believe her, and yet she spoke, since now there was absolutely nothing to talk about.

And now she almost never took off her hat, and never let go of her umbrella, sitting on Mitya's bed on the fly away and driving him crazy with her calves covered in silk stockings. And before you leave and say that this evening she will not be at home again - again you need to visit someone with your mother! - she invariably did the same thing, with the obvious goal of fooling him, rewarding him for all his “stupid”, as she put it, torments: she looked at the door with a feigned thievish look, slipped off the bed and, waving her hips at his legs, spoke in a hasty whisper :

- Well, kiss me!

V

And at the end of April, Mitya. Finally, he decided to give himself a rest and go to the countryside.

He completely tormented himself and Katya, and this torment was all the more unbearable because it seemed that there were no reasons for it: what really happened, what was Katya guilty of? And one day Katya, with the firmness of despair, said to him:

- Yes, go away, go away, I can't do it anymore! We need to temporarily part, sort out our relationship. You have become so thin that your mother is convinced that you have consumption. I can not do it anymore!

And Mitya's departure was decided. But Mitya was leaving, to his great surprise, although he was beside himself with grief, still almost happy. As soon as the departure was decided, suddenly everything was back. After all, he still passionately did not want to believe in anything terrible that neither day nor night gave him peace. And the slightest change in Katya was enough for everything to change again in his eyes. And Katya again became tender and passionate, already without any pretense - he felt this with the unmistakable sensitivity of jealous natures - and again he began to sit with her until two in the morning, and again there was something to talk about, and the closer the departure became, the separation seemed more absurd, the need to "show things off." Once Katya even cried—and she never cried—and these tears suddenly made her terribly dear to him, pierced him with a feeling of acute pity and, as it were, some kind of guilt before her.

In early June, Katya's mother left for the Crimea for the whole summer and took her with her. We decided to meet in Miskhor. Mitya was also supposed to come to Miskhor.

And he got ready, made preparations for his departure, walked around Moscow in that strange intoxication that happens when a person is still cheerfully on his feet, but is already ill with some kind of serious illness. He was painfully, drunkenly unhappy and at the same time painfully happy, touched by Katya's return of closeness, her solicitude for him - she even went with him to buy travel belts, as if she were his bride or wife - and in general the return of almost everything that reminiscent of the first time of their love. And he perceived everything around him in the same way - houses, streets, people walking and driving along them, the weather, all the time frowning like spring, the smell of dust and rain, the church smell of poplars that blossomed behind the fences in the alleys: everything spoke of the bitterness of separation and about the sweetness of hope for the summer, for a meeting in the Crimea, where nothing will interfere and everything will come true (although he did not know what exactly everything was).

Portrait of a young man Leonid Chernyshev. Surikov V.I.

On the day of departure, Protasov came to say goodbye. Among high school students, among students, young men are often encountered who have mastered their own manner with good-natured, gloomy mockery, with the air of a person who is older, more experienced than anyone in the world. Such was Protasov, one of Mitya's closest friends, his only true friend, who knew, despite all the secrecy, silence of Mitya, all the secrets of his love. He watched Mitya tying the suitcase, saw how his hands shook, then grinned with sad wisdom and said:

“You are pure children, God forgive me! And behind all this, my dear Werther from Tambov, it is still time to understand that Katya is, first of all, the most typical female nature and that the police chief himself will not do anything about it. You, the nature of a man, climb the wall, make the highest demands of the instinct of procreation, and, of course, all this is completely legal, even sacred in a sense. Your body eat higher intelligence as rightly pointed out by Herr Nietzsche. But it is also lawful that you might break your neck on this sacred path. There are individuals in the animal world who, even according to the state, are supposed to pay at the cost of their own existence for their first and last love act. But since this state is probably not absolutely necessary for you, then look out for both, take care of yourself. Actually, don't rush. "Junker Schmit, honestly Summer will return! Light is not a bast, not a wedge converged on Katya. I see from your efforts to strangle the suitcase that you completely disagree with this, that this wedge is very kind to you. Well, forgive me for the unsolicited advice - and may Nikola Ugodnik keep you with all his relatives!

And when Protasov, squeezing Mitya's hand, left, Mitya, pulling a pillow and a blanket into the belts, heard through his open window into the courtyard how a student who lived opposite, who studied singing and practiced from morning to evening, rattled, trying his voice, - sang " Azru." Then Mitya hurried with his belts, fastened them at random, grabbed his cap and went to Kislovka to say goodbye to Katya's mother. The motive and words of the song that the student sang sounded and repeated in him so insistently that he did not see either the streets or the oncoming ones, he walked even drunker than everyone else walked. the last days. In fact, it was as if the world had converged like a wedge, that Junker Schmitt wanted to shoot himself with a pistol! Well, well, he got along so well, he thought, and again returned to the song about how, walking in the garden and “shining with her beauty,” she met the Sultan’s daughter in the garden of a black slave who stood by the fountain “paler than death,” as once she asked him who he was and where he came from, and how he answered her, beginning ominously, but humbly, with gloomy simplicity:

I am called Mohammed ... -

and ending with an enthusiastic and tragic cry:

- I am from the family of poor Azras,
When we love, we die!

Katya was getting dressed to go to the station to see him off, and called out to him affectionately from her room—from the room where he had spent so many unforgettable hours! - that she will arrive at the first call. A sweet, kind woman with crimson hair was sitting alone, smoking, and looked at him very sadly - she probably understood everything for a long time, guessed everything. He, all scarlet, trembling inwardly, kissed her tender and flabby hand, bowing his head like a son, and with motherly affection she kissed him several times on the temple and made the sign of the cross.

“Oh, dear,” she said with a timid smile in the words of Griboedov, “live while laughing!” Well, Christ is with you, go, go...

Literary activity begins as a poet. In articles written in his youth, he imitates Pushkin, Lermontov.

In 1891, the first book of poems was published, in 1897 - the first collection of poems "To the End of the World", and in 1901 - another collection of poems "Leaf Fall".

Intimate and landscape lyrics form the basis of the work of the Russian poet of the 90s - 1900s.

Landscape lyrics displays life philosophy author. Nature is the source creative ideas artist. Therefore, the lyrics of this period are characterized by the motif of the frailty of human existence, as opposed to the eternity and incorruptibility of nature.

To lyrical works This period can be attributed to the poem "Forest Road".

The image of the Motherland is the key one in Bunin's poetry. For example, the poem "Spring".

The poet's lyrics are characterized by restraint in expressing feelings, a variety of described moods and an almost complete absence of artistic tropes.

The range of lyrics is quite wide, however, I.A. Bunin brought prose.

Main topics early stories the writer of steel - an image of the peasantry and the ruined nobility.

In his stories such as " new road”, “Pine”, the author writes about the outgoing harmony of the patriarchal way of life, about the gradual withering away of the class.

The devastation and ruin of noble nests causes sadness. The author's sadness is especially vividly conveyed in the story " Antonov apples» (1900).

The writer avoids sharp plot events. For early creativity Bunin is characterized by the smoothness of the narrative, sometimes even slowness. The texts are filled with complex associations and figurative connections. Special meaning It has artistic detail which can tell about psychological state character, beauty and complexity of being.

The revolution of 1905 left its imprint on the work of the writer and poet. According to I.A. Bunin, the Russian peasant was divided into two types - the humble and the rebel. He will write about the confrontation of these types of people in his works “Village”, “Dry Valley”, “Thin Grass”.

1914 - 1916 - this is the time of the finalization of the style and worldview in the writer's work. During this period, a person is a part of something eternal, which is included by the writer in the Cosmos, but at the same time, everyday ties are not lost, so a person is forced to fight for elusive and fragile happiness.

This dialectic is typical of Bunin's works of this period. A well-known example reflecting these thoughts was the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco". The writer through the image of the protagonist showed depravity and sinfulness modern civilization who lost their spirituality.

The foreign prose of the writer is saturated with a feeling of sadness and homesickness.

In exile I.A. Bunin is working on the collection " Dark alleys”, where he conveys love as the embodiment of the unity of spiritual and physical principles.

Bunin, as a poet, is engaged in poetry until the end of his days. He ended his career by writing shortly before his death last poem"Night".

A few words about Bunin

I love Bunin. This love did not come to me immediately: in childhood and adolescence Plot is valued more than style; action is valued more than contemplation. Therefore, Bunin's wonderful miniature stories at first passed me by, and Bunin's poems do not particularly attract me to this day. It was only later that I tasted how good Bunin's prose, and imbued with the simple charm of his filigree style.

Newly Writer Efim Sorokin sent me your new novel“Digital Angel”, and in it two writer-heroes, talking about creativity, commemorate Bunin:

“- Patience and work! .. To learn how to write, one must write! .. Through anxieties, worries, doubts ... And do not listen to well-wishers who line up writers in rows. This one is the first row, this one is the second one, this one is the fifth one ... It is clear that Bunin and Nabokov are two mountains with snowy peaks, you will never get there, but ... "

Such an assessment of Bunin is common among the writers, but in order to make such a judgment, one must be very well versed in literature. Bunin's talent is not striking (unlike the brightest Nabokov's), but in the highest degree precious.

Bunin lived a long writing life, and his skill over the years did not fade, but only honed. But the main theme of his works, which is most interesting, remained unchanged: Russia and tragic love. Despite emigration, he managed to “conserve” Russia in himself and, despite the age at which best stories cycle "Dark alleys" , he subtly and in detail expounded the spiritual movements of very young heroes. If we compare, for example, stories "Easy breath" and "Rusya" , it is difficult to assume that a quarter of a century passed between their writing, that one was written in Russia (possibly, however, as in Capri) before the revolution, and the second - in France during World War II. These stories are very close to each other. And already completely written off from nature after a week, a month, a maximum of a year, it seems the story "Madrid" , and at the moment of describing this pre-revolutionary "idyll" Soviet troops already liberated Europe from the Nazis ...

Therefore, considering the stories of Bunin is very different years, we will not go beyond the thematic framework of the pre-revolutionary period, but before embarking on such an analysis, we will give the reader the opportunity to get acquainted with biography of I.A. Bunin . Something interesting can be found and.

Ivan Bunin was twice a laureate Pushkin Prize(1903, 1909) and Nobel Prize winner (1933). Nobel Prize was awarded to him "for the strict artistic talent with which he recreated a literary prose typically Russian character.

King Gustav V of Sweden presents Bunin with a Nobel Prize

laureate and gold medal. Stockholm. Photo 1933.

I.A. Bunin accepts congratulations after handing him

Nobel Prize. Stockholm. Photo 1933.

He was a fully recognized classic during his lifetime, but he lived as an exile, died in poverty and was buried in a Russian cemetery far from Russia.

House I.A. Bunin in Voronezh and the grave in the cemetery of Sainte Genevieve de Bois

This fate can serve as a kind of consolation for modern Russian writers, who, for the most part, are also in poverty and almost begging. Ivan Bunin, despite the hardships of life, did not quit writing, did not drink too much, did not betray literature, did not betray Russia either, only complained that he was born too late, otherwise all these victims, deprivations and homelessness could well have been avoided.

In his memoirs, he wrote: “I was born too late. Had I been born earlier, these would not have been my writing memories. I wouldn’t have to go through ... 1905, then the first world war, followed by the 17th year and its continuation, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler ... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood fell to his lot ... "

L. Andreev and I. Bunin I.A. Bunin and V.N. Bunin

Stories by I.A. Bunin about love relationships

The most famous story about tragic love, more precisely, about easy breathing natural, natural feeling, which has nothing in common with love in a high sense, is, naturally, a story « Easy breath».

you can read story or listen audiobook

There is also a film adaptation of this story with, in my opinion, not quite successful selection of an actress for the role. main character, but close enough to the text.

Video fragment 1. Film "Dedication to love".

This story contains a mystery: the story described in it is both tragic, and banal, and dirty, but the feeling of the reader after reading remains light and bright. This effect was studied by the famous psychologist L.S. Vygotsky who devoted an entire section of the book "Psychology of Art" to this story.

Illustration by O. Vereisky

However, I will not analyze this story, providing your attention with a completely high-quality and detailed analysis EAT. Boldyreva and A.V. Ledeneva . Please familiarize yourself with it, as well as with the work of L.S. Vygotsky, the link to which is given above.

I myself, following the tradition of analyzing one masterpiece by one author, will focus on a less well-known, but perhaps even stronger story. "Rusya".

"Rusya"

Illustration O.G. Vereisky

you can readstory or listen audiobook

Compositionally the story is beautifully built: all possible structural parts, including the prologue, the plot, the exposition, the development of the action, the climax, the denouement and the epilogue can be distinguished very clearly:

1) prologue- parking of the train in a place memorable to the protagonist;

2) tie- the story of the protagonist to his wife that he was once a tutor in a country estate located nearby, and was in love with the owner's daughter, and she seemed to reciprocate, and a gloomy joke to his wife's question about why he didn't married that girl;

3) exposure- a description of the estate, Rus' and her family, which began in a conversation with his wife and continued in the memory of the protagonist (the technique is called retrospection, i.e. looking into the past)

4) development of action - love story from the inception of feelings to physical intimacy (first climax) and exposure (second climax);

5) interchange- the choice of Rus' in favor of the mother and the departure of the protagonist;

6) epilogue- a conversation with his wife after a night full of memories of Ruse, and latin phrase summing up a disappointing result of a bygone history.

A similar prologue and epilogue (a conversation with his wife on the train) frame the action harmoniously; this technique is called loopback. Another loop framed the deepest and most intimate memory of Rus, which the hero experiences while lying on a bed in a dark compartment: starting with moles and ending with exile. Inside, this history is not interrupted by exits into modernity, like pieces of history before and after it. Here is the frame, very symbolic:

A blue-purple peephole above the door peered quietly into the darkness. She soon fell asleep, he did not sleep, lay, smoked and mentally looked at that summer ... "

“He woke up, opened his eyes - still steadily, mysteriously, gravely looked at him from the black darkness a blue-lilac eye over the door, and all with the same speed steadily rushing forward, springing, swaying, the carriage rushed.

Pay attention to how this indivisible and hidden , framed by two layers of looping, changes the hero. Let's start with the inner loopback, i.e. from the look of the door peephole: first he " staring silently into the darkness, and then "steadily, mysteriously, gravely looked at him from the black darkness." The dynamics, as they say, are obvious: at first the eye is calm, and its gaze is directed into the darkness, and then the gaze changes direction and stares at the hero "steadily, mysteriously and gravely", and even from the "black darkness" i.e. this very darkness into which he was striving main character with blissful calmness, since she did not seem terrible to him (he " mentally looked at that summer "), gave him a disappointing verdict.

Now let's go through the outer loop. At the beginning of the story, the husband and wife get along and trust each other, they are united, their conversation is peaceful:

“He leaned on the window, she on his shoulder.

(…)

Why didn't you marry her?

“Obviously, I had a presentiment that I would meet you.”

After a night of memories, the situation changes:

“After Kursk, in the dining car, when after breakfast he drank coffee with cognac, his wife said to him:

- Why are you drinking so much? This is already, it seems, the fifth glass. Are you still sad, do you remember your country girl with bony feet?

“I’m sad, I’m sad,” he replied, smiling unpleasantly. - Country girl... Amata nobis quantum amabitur nulla!

- Is it in Latin? What does it mean?

- You don't need to know that.

“How rude you are,” she said, sighing casually, and began to look out the sunny window.

It is obvious that the peaceful flow family life violated, and the translation of the phrase is as follows:“Beloved by us, like no other will be loved!” It's about the "dacha girl".

Attention should be paid to one more compositional device, common with "Easy Breath". In "Easy Breathing" a violation of the chronology is repeatedly allowed, and at the end of the story it causes a bright joyful sadness in the reader: after the description cool lady, who comes to the grave of Olya Meshcherskaya, her recollection (retrospection) is given of how Olya shared information about female beauty subtracted in old book, and about easy breathing, which she, Olya, of course, has. In the same way, in “Rus”, after describing the death of love, describing “expulsion from paradise”, after the hero returns from the beautiful spacious past to the cramped compartment of the present, he is visited by another memory: about the cranes that let Rusya get very close to them ( detailed description!), and, seemingly without any logical link, about their last happy day violated by a crazy mother:

And on that last day of theirs, on that last sitting side by side in the living room on the sofa, over a volume of the old Niva, she also held his cap in her hands, pressed it to her chest, as then, in the boat, and spoke, shining in his eyes with joyful black-mirror eyes:

“And I love you so much now that there is nothing dearer to me than even this smell inside the cap, the smell of your head and your nasty cologne!”

It is very likely that there is an encrypted reference to the proverb about a tit in the hands and a crane in the sky. The crane is Rusya, the tit is the current wife, only Rusya was in his hands, and that is why the main character is so bitter, and that is why he leans so much on cognac and is rude to his wife.

As for the story itself, contained in the inner loop, I don’t want to take it apart piece by piece, so as not to kill the charm.

Illustration by N. Leonova

And he again pressed her hands to his lips, sometimes, as if something sacred, kissed her cold breast. What a completely new creature she had become for him! And behind the blackness of the low forest, a greenish half-light stood and did not go out, weakly reflected in the flat whitening water in the distance, sharply, of celery, the dewy coastal plants smelled, mysteriously, pleadingly invisible mosquitoes whined - and flew, flew with a quiet crackling over the boat and further, over this at night glowing water, terrible, sleepless dragonflies.

About these three sentences alone I could write a lot - but why? I will not "verify harmony with algebra".

The story "Rusya" is well filmed, the actors are very well chosen, so I suggest you watch the part of it where the love story itself is shown, what I designated as "indivisible and hidden".

Video fragment 2. Film "Dedication to love".

Did Russia do the right thing? Did the main character do the right thing? Was it possible to find another way out of this situation? All these questions are idle and somehow schoolboyishly naive. As it happened, it happened. I am not Belinsky to talk about "slave fear public opinion and not God to judge anyone's sin. As a result of the story told by Bunin, the hero is not completely happy and regrets something - but about what? About the past or about the present? And what exactly would he like to change? Definitely, we only know that a girl named Rusya, "beloved by us, will not be loved like any other." By the way, this is a verse of Catullus.

Ivan Bunin, Alexander Kuprin, Anton Chekhov

The Best of Love

"What space!" Repin I. E.

From the publisher

How often do we hear and pronounce the word "love" ... For many centuries, poets, writers, philosophers and the most ordinary people have tried to find a definition for this feeling, to describe it. But so far no one has been able to answer the question: what is love? Probably because this feeling is multifaceted and contradictory: it can elevate, but it can also overthrow to the very bottom, it can give wings, or it can deprive you of the desire to live, it can make you commit wonderful reckless deeds and push a person to meanness and betrayal.

Our book includes prose works of the brightest representatives of the Silver Age of Russian literature - I. Bunin, A. Kuprin and A. Chekhov, who dedicated their best works to this feeling - painful first love; sudden love, striking like lightning; love, which becomes the meaning of all life and bestows the greatest happiness, and sometimes becomes a real obsession and torment.

Our choice fell on these three great writers not by chance. The theme of the relationship between a man and a woman occupies perhaps the most important place in their work. Before you are piercing love stories written in the unsurpassed language of the classics and found their expression in a short literary form - the form of a story.

In the works of Ivan Bunin, love is always tragic, it is spiritualized in its brevity and doom, and, having reached its peak, ends with separation, and often with the death of one of the main characters, as in "Mitya's Love" and "Sunstroke". Love was considered by the writer as elevating "to the infinite heights the value of the human personality", bestowing equally "gentle chaste fragrance" and "awe of intoxication" with pure passion.

"Garnet Bracelet" - Alexander Kuprin's masterpiece - one of the most languid and sad works about love, selfless, forgiving and extraordinary love. The plot of the story "Helen", on the contrary, is recognizable and therefore so close to many. The heroes who fell in love with each other in their youth meet by chance many years later and realize that their pure and sincere youthful love may have been the most important, most real and beautiful thing that happened in their lives.

The stories told by Anton Chekhov are also colored by longing for a real and unfulfilled feeling. The writer believed that “love is either the remnant of something degenerate, which was once huge, or it is part of what will develop into something huge in the future, but in the present it does not satisfy, it gives much less than you expect.” Love in his famous story "The Lady with the Dog" has a touch of bitterness from the impossibility of two loving people to find happiness. The heroes, having met true love already in adulthood, understand how empty and meaningless their life is, and are annoyed at the cruelty of fate, which played a cruel joke on them: gave love too late, when everyone already has a family, a load of joyless personal life, futility hope for the best.

Enjoy the best love stories written by Russian classics, they are dedicated to a wonderful and ambiguous feeling, without which our life is meaningless!

Moskvoretsky bridge (fragment). Korovin. K. A.

Ivan Bunin

Mitina love

In Moscow, Mitya's last happy day was the ninth of March. So, at least, it seemed to him.

Near Pushkin, she suddenly said:

Trying not to smile, overpowering both secret contentment and slight resentment, Mitya answered amiably, looking at the monument, now already raised high in front of them:

“Well, if you were her, would you lock me up in the tower?” Katya asked.

“Not in the tower, but simply on the threshold, I would not let all this supposedly artistic bohemia, all these future celebrities from studios and conservatories, from theater schools,” Mitya replied, continuing to try to be calm and friendly casual. - You yourself told me that Bukovetsky already invited you to dine in Strelna, and Yegorov offered to sculpt naked, in the form of some kind of dying sea wave, and, of course, you are terribly flattered by such an honor.

At all times, the theme of love was the main one, many writers sang about the relationship between a man and a woman. Ivan Alekseevich was no exception, in many stories he writes about love. Love is the purest and brightest feeling in the world. The theme of love is eternal in any era.

In the works of Bunin, the writer describes the innermost and secret things that happen between two people. The work of Ivan Alekseevich can be divided into periods. So the collection "Dark Alleys" written during the World War is devoted entirely to love. The collection contains so much love and warm feelings, it is simply filled with love.

Bunin believes that love is a great feeling, even if this love is unrequited. The writer believes that any love has the right to life. Also, after reading the stories of Ivan Alekseevich, you can see that love in his works goes next to death. He draws a line, as it were, that death can stand behind a great bright feeling.

In some of his stories, Bunin writes that love is not always beautiful and sunny, and maybe the love story will end tragically. For example, in the story " Sunstroke"his characters meet on a steamboat, where a wonderful feeling flares up between them. The girl in love tells the lieutenant that the feeling that visited them is like a sunstroke that overshadowed their mind. She says she's never experienced anything like it and probably never will. Unfortunately, the lieutenant realizes very late how much he fell in love with the girl, because he did not even know her last name and where she lives.

The lieutenant was ready to die for the sake of one more day spent with the girl he loved so much. He was overwhelmed with feelings, but they were big and bright.

In another story, Bunin describes unrequited love young guy to a girl who does not pay any attention to him. Nothing makes a girl happy and even a guy’s love doesn’t make her happy. At the end of the novella, she goes to a monastery, where she thinks she will find happiness.

In another story, Ivan Alekseevich writes about a triangle in which a guy cannot choose between passion and love. The whole story he rushes between the girls and everything ends tragically.

In the works of Bunin, where he writes about love, all aspects of this feeling are described. After all, love is not only joy and happiness, but also suffering and sorrow. Love is a great feeling, for which you often have to fight.

Composition The theme of love in Bunin's work

The theme of love has always been and is an integral part of any work. I. A. Bunin revealed it especially vividly in his stories. The writer described love as a tragic and deep feeling, he tried to reveal to the reader all the secret corners of this strong attraction.

In Bunin's works, such as "Dark Alleys", "Cold Autumn", "Sunstroke", love is shown from several sides. On the one hand, this feeling, capable of bringing great happiness, on the other hand, a bright and ardent feeling inflicts deep wounds on the soul of a person, delivering days only suffering.

For the author, love was not just a naive feeling, it was strong and real, often accompanied by tragedy, and in some moments even death. The theme of love, in different fit it creative way, opened with different side. At the beginning of his work, Bunin described love between young people as something light, natural and open. She is beautiful and gentle, but at the same time can bring disappointment. For example, in the story "Dawn all night" he describes the strong love of a simple girl for young man. She is ready to give all her youth and soul to her beloved, to completely dissolve in him. But reality can be cruel, and as often happens, falling in love passes and a person begins to look at many things differently. And in this work, he clearly describes the breakup of relations that brought only pain and disappointment.

AT certain period of his time, Bunin emigrated from Russia. It was at this time that love for him became a mature and deep feeling. He began to write about her with sadness and longing, recalling his past years of life. This is clearly displayed in the novel "Mitina's Love" written by him in 1924. At first everything goes well, the feelings are strong and reliable, but later they will lead the main character to death. Bunin wrote not only about mutual love two young people, but in some of his works one can also find love triangle: "Caucasus" and "The most beautiful sun". The happiness of some inevitably brings heartache and disappointment to the third.

Love played a special role in his great work, written during the war years, Dark Alleys. In it, she is displayed as a great happiness, despite the fact that in the end it ends in tragedy. The love of two people who met each other already in adulthood is shown in the story "Sunstroke". It was during this life period that they so needed to experience it. true feeling. The love of a lieutenant and a mature woman was doomed in advance and could not unite them for life. But after parting, she left in their hearts the sweet bitterness of pleasant memories.

In all his stories, Bunin sings of love, its difference and contradictions. If there is love, a person becomes infinitely radiant, manifests true beauty him inner world, values in relation to a loved one. Love in Bunin's understanding is a true, selfless, pure feeling, even if, after a sudden outbreak and attraction, it can lead to tragedy and deep disappointment.

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