His creative activity began in the early years, when the boy was only 8 years old. The son of a noble family was born in the city of Voronezh, in October 1870. He received his first education at home, and at the age of 11, little Ivan became a pupil of the Yelets district gymnasium, where he studied for only 4 years.
Further training was carried out under the watchful guidance of an older brother. With particular interest, the boy studied the works of domestic and world classics. In addition, Ivan devoted a lot of time to self-development. Literature has always interested Bunin, and from childhood the boy determined his destiny. This choice was quite conscious.
Ivan Bunin wrote his first poem at the age of eight, and serious works appeared a little later, when the young talent was barely seventeen years old. During the same period, his first printed love debut took place.
When Ivan was 19 years old, the family moved to the city of Orel. Here, the future writer and poet began to engage in correctional work in the local newspaper. This activity brought young Bunin not only the first experience, but also the first true love. Varvara Pashchenko became his chosen one, she worked in the same publishing house. The office romance was not approved by Ivan's parents, so the young lovers had to leave the city for Poltava. But even there, the couple failed to build relationships similar to family ones. This union, so objectionable to parents on both sides, broke up. But the author carried many personal experiences through his whole life and showed them in his works.
The first collection of poems was published in 1891, when the writer was 21 years old. A little later, the country saw other masterpieces of the young poet, each verse was filled with special warmth and tenderness.
In this marriage, Ivan Alekseevich had a son, but the child died at the age of five, and soon the young spouses broke up. Literally a year later, the poet began to cohabit with Vera Muromtseva, but only in 1922 did the couple officially marry.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was a famous poet, translator, prose writer. He traveled a lot, and these trips endowed a talented person with new knowledge, which he used with inspiration in his poetry and prose.
In the 1920s, he had to emigrate to France. It was a forced measure, justified by the socio-political situation in Russia. In a foreign country, he continued to write and print journalistic articles of interesting content, compose new poems on the theme of love and just live, because he was no longer destined to return to his homeland.
In 1933, Ivan Alekseevich was awarded the Nobel Prize. He was given a monetary reward for the development of Russian classical prose. This money solved many problems of the impoverished nobleman. And Bunin transferred part of the money as assistance to emigrants and needy writers.
Bunin survived the Second World War. He was proud of the courage and exploits of the Russian soldiers, whose courage made it possible to win this terrible battle. It was the most significant event for every person, and the famous writer could not but react to such great feats of our people.
The great Russian poet, the last classic who glorified Russia of the 19th-20th centuries in his works, died in 1953 in Paris.
In many of Bunin's works, the theme of great love and tragedy was openly touched upon. A man who has lived for more than one year with different women managed to extract many frank feelings from these relationships, which he managed to convey in detail in his work.
Vivid works of Ivan Alekseevich do not leave indifferent any reader. They reveal the whole secret of true love, sing excellent images of women and the human soul. He conveys to the reader sincere love and hatred, tenderness and rudeness, happiness and tears of sorrow...
All these feelings are familiar to many romantics, because love never brings only pleasant emotions. Real relationships are built on different feelings that are experienced by two lovers, and if they can endure all the trials sent by fate, real happiness, love and fidelity await them.
This essence was caught by the writer during the period of a love relationship with his civil, and later legal wife, Vera Muromtseva.
Ivan Alekseevich wrote many works dedicated to love and devotion: "Mitya's Love", "Light Breath", "Dark Alleys" (collection of stories) and other works.
"Sunstroke" - a story of passion
An atypical attitude to love is captured in Bunin's famous story "Sunstroke". The slightly ordinary and somewhat ordinary plot turned out to be exciting for the reader. In this work, the main character is a young and pretty woman who is legally married. During a road trip, she meets a young lieutenant, who was famous for his addiction to fleeting novels. This is a selfish and self-confident young man.
Acquaintance with a married woman aroused an instinctive interest in the lieutenant. He knew practically nothing about her, only that she had a beloved husband and a little daughter, who was waiting for her mother to return from Anapa. The young officer managed to arouse interest in his person, and their casual acquaintance ended in an intimate relationship in a hotel room. In the morning, the travelers parted and never met again.
It would seem that the love story ended there, but the main meaning of the work, which Ivan Bunin wanted to convey to the reader, is revealed in further events.
A married lady, after waking up in a hotel room, hastened to leave for her hometown, and at parting, she said to her casual lover the mysterious phrase "it was something like a sunstroke." What did she mean?
The reader can draw his own conclusion. Perhaps the young woman was afraid of continuing the relationship with her lover. At home, a large family, a child, marital duties and life were waiting for her. Or maybe she was inspired by this night of love? A tender and sudden connection with a strange man radically changed the well-established lifestyle of a young lady and left only pleasant memories that will become the brightest moment in her everyday life?
The protagonist of the work also experiences extraordinary feelings. A young and rather sophisticated lover experienced unknown feelings on the night of love with a charming stranger. This chance meeting radically changed his life, only now he realized what true love is. This wonderful feeling brought him pain and suffering, now, after a single night with a married woman, he could not imagine his future without her. His heart was filled with sadness, all thoughts were about his beloved, but such a stranger ...
The writer represented the feeling of love as carnal and spiritual harmony. Having found it, the soul of the protagonist seemed to be reborn.
Bunin appreciated sincere and true love, but he always praised this magical feeling as temporary happiness, often with a tragic end.
In another work by Ivan Alekseevich, called "Mitya's Love", we come to know such feelings, filled with the pangs of jealousy of the main character. Mitya was seriously in love with the beautiful girl Ekaterina, but, by the will of fate, they had a long separation. The guy went crazy, unable to withstand the agonizing days of waiting. His love was sensual and sublime, truly spiritual and special. Carnal feelings were secondary, because, as you know, physical love cannot bring true romance of sincere happiness and peace.
The heroine of this story, Katya, was seduced by another person. Her betrayal tore Mitya's soul apart. He tried to find love on the side, but these attempts could not calm the pain in the heart of a young man in love.
Once, he had a date with another girl, Alena, but the meeting brought only disappointment. Her words and actions simply destroyed the romantic world of the protagonist, their physiological relationship was perceived by Mitya as something vulgar and dirty.
Terrible mental anguish, pain from hopelessness, from the inability to change your fate and return your beloved woman, gave rise to an idea that, as it seemed to the main character, was the only way out of this situation. Mitya decided to commit suicide...
Ivan Bunin boldly criticized love, showed it to the reader in a variety of situations. His work leaves a special imprint in the mind of the reader. After reading the next story, you can think about the meaning of life, reconsider your attitude to seemingly ordinary things, which are now beginning to be perceived in a completely different light.
The rather impressive story "Easy Breathing" tells about the fate of a young girl, Olga Meshcherskaya. She believes in true and sincere love from an early age, but soon, the heroine will face a harsh reality filled with pain and human selfishness.
The tragic story ends with a scene in the cemetery, where, among the grave flowers, the cheerful and still lively eyes of the young beauty Olga are clearly visible in the photograph ...
Love is a strange feeling experienced in different ways. It brings incredible joy and happiness, and then, abruptly changes its direction and transports a person in love into a world of terrible pain, disappointment and tears ...
This topic was quite clearly sung in his intriguing, and often tragic works, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. To feel the love experiences and passion of the main characters, you need to independently read the stories of the great Russian writer and poet, who gave the world many magnificent creative masterpieces on the theme of love!
What is love? “Strong attachment to whom, ranging from inclination to passion; strong desire, desire; the election and preference of someone or something at will, by will (not by reason), sometimes completely unconsciously and recklessly, ”V. I. Dahl’s dictionary tells us. However, every person who has experienced this feeling at least once will be able to supplement this definition with something of his own. "All pain, tenderness Come to your senses, come to your senses!" - I. A. Bunin would add.
The great Russian émigré writer, prose poet has a very special love. It is not the same as it was described by his great predecessors: N. I. Karamzin, V. A. Zhukovsky, I. A. Goncharov, I. S. Turgenev. According to I. A. Bunin, love is not an idealized feeling, and his heroines are not “Turgenev young ladies” with their naivety and romanticism. However, Bunin's understanding of love does not coincide with today's interpretation of this feeling. The writer does not consider only the physical side of love, as the media do for the most part today, and with them many writers, considering it to be in demand. He (I. A. Bunin) writes about love, which is a fusion of "earth" and "heaven", the harmony of two opposite principles. And it is this understanding of love that seems to me (as, I think, to many who are familiar with the writer's love lyrics) the most truthful, true and necessary for modern society.
In his narration, the second does not hide anything from the reader, does not keep silent about anything, but at the same time does not stoop to vulgarity. Speaking about intimate human relationships, I. A. Bunin, thanks to his highest skill, ability to choose the only right, right words, never crosses the line that separates high art from naturalism.
Before I. A. Bunin, in Russian literature, so much about love "has never been written by anyone." He not only decided to show the sides of the relationship between a man and a woman that have always remained secret. His works about love have also become masterpieces of the classical, strict, but at the same time expressive and capacious Russian language.
Love in the works of I. A. Bunin is like a flash, insight, "sunstroke". Most often, it does not bring happiness, followed by separation or even the death of heroes. But, despite this, Bunin's prose is a glorification of love: each story makes you feel how wonderful and important this feeling is for a person.
The cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" is the pinnacle of the writer's love lyrics. “She speaks of the tragic and of many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life,” said I. A. Bunin about his book. And, indeed, the collection, written in 1937-1944 (when I. A. Bunin was about seventy), can be considered an expression of the writer's formed talent, a reflection of his life experience, thoughts, feelings, personal perception of life and love.
In this research work, I set myself the goal of tracing how Bunin's philosophy of love was born, considering its evolution and, at the end of my research, formulating the concept of love according to I. A. Bunin, highlighting its main points. To achieve this goal, I needed to solve the following tasks.
First, to consider the writer's early stories, such as "At the Dacha" (1895), "Velga" (1895), "Without a clan-tribe" (1897), "Autumn" (1901), and, identifying their characteristic features and finding common features with the later work of I. A. Bunin, answer the questions: “How did the theme of love originate in the writer’s work? What are they, these thin trees, from which “Dark Alleys” will grow forty years later?
Secondly, my task was to analyze the stories of the writer of the 1920s, paying attention to which features of I. A. Bunin’s work, acquired during this period, were reflected in the writer’s main book about love, and which were not. In addition, in my work I tried to show how in the works of Ivan Alekseevich, relating to this period of time, two main motives intertwine, which became fundamental in the later stories of the writer. These are the motives of love and death, which in their combination give rise to the idea of the immortality of love.
I took the method of systematic and structural reading of Bunin's prose as the basis of my research, considering the formation of the author's philosophy of love from early works to later ones. Factor analysis was also used in the work.
Literature review
I. A. Bunin was called “a poet in prose and a prose writer in poetry”, therefore, in order to show his perception of love from different angles, and somewhere in order to confirm my assumptions, in my work I turned not only to collections of short stories writer, but also to his poems, in particular to those published in the first volume of the collected works of I. A. Bunin.
The work of I. A. Bunin, like any other writer, is in undoubted connection with his life, fate. Therefore, in my work, I also used the facts of the writer's biography. They were suggested to me by the books of Oleg Mikhailov “The Life of Bunin. Life is given only to the word "and Mikhail Roshchin" Ivan Bunin.
“Everything is known in comparison,” these wise words prompted me to turn to the positions of other famous people: writers and philosophers in a study on the philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin. “Russian Eros or the Philosophy of Love in Russia”, compiled by V.P. Shestakov, helped me to do this.
To find out the opinion of literary critics on issues of interest to me, I turned to the criticism of various authors, for example, the articles of the journal "Russian Literature", the book of Doctor of Philology I. N. Sukhikh "Twenty Books of the 20th Century" and others.
Undoubtedly, the most important part of the source material for my research, its basis and inspiration were the very works of I. A. Bunin about love. I found them in such books as "I. A. Bunin. Tales, stories”, published in the series “Russian classics about love”, “Dark alleys. Diaries 1918-1919 ”(World Classics series”), and collected works edited by various authors (A. S. Myasnikov, B. S. Ryurikov, A. T. Tvardovsky and Yu. V. Bondarev, O. N. Mikhailov , V.P. Rynkevich).
The philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin
Chapter 1
“The problem of love has not yet been developed in my works. And I feel an urgent need to write about it,” says I. A. Bunin in the fall of 1912 to the correspondent of Moskovskaya Gazeta. 1912 - the writer is already 42 years old. Had he not been interested in the love theme before that time? Or perhaps he himself did not experience this feeling? Not at all. By this time (1912), Ivan Alekseevich had experienced many happy days, as well as those full of disappointment and suffering from unrequited love days.
We then - you were sixteen,
I am seventeen years old,
But do you remember how you opened
Door to moonlight? - this is how I. A. Bunin writes in a poem of 1916 “On a quiet night, the late month came out.” It is a reflection of one of those hobbies that I. A. Bunin experienced while still very young. There were many such hobbies, but only one of them grew into a really strong, all-consuming love, became the sadness and joy of the young poet for four whole years. It was love for the doctor's daughter Varvara Pashchenko.
He met her in the editorial office of the Oryol Herald in 1890. At first he took her hostilely, considered her “proud and foppish”, but they soon became friends, and a year later the young writer realized that he was in love with Varvara Vladimirovna. But their love was not cloudless. I. A. Bunin adored her frantically, passionately, but she was changeable towards him. Everything was further complicated by the fact that Varvara Pashchenko's father was much richer than Ivan Alekseevich. In the autumn of 1894, their painful relationship ended - Pashchenko married a friend of I. A. Bunin, Arseny Bibikov. After the break with Varya, I. A. Bunin was in such a state that his relatives feared for his life.
If only it were possible
Love yourself alone
If we forget the past,
Everything that you already forgot
I wouldn't embarrass, I wouldn't scare
Eternal dusk of eternal night:
Quenched eyes
I would love to close! - I. A. Bunin will write in 1894. However, despite all the suffering associated with her, this love and this woman will forever remain in the soul of the writer as something tragic, but still beautiful.
On September 23, 1898, I. A. Bunin hastily marries Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni. Two days before the wedding, he ironically writes to his friend N. D. Teleshov: “I am still single, but - alas! “I will soon be married.” The family of I. A. Bunin and A. N. Tsakni lasted only a year and a half. At the beginning of March 1900, their final break took place, which I. A. Bunin experienced very hard. “Don't be angry at the silence - the devil will break his leg in my soul,” he wrote at that time to a friend.
Several years have passed. The bachelor life of I. A. Bunin has exhausted itself. He needed a person who could support him, an understanding partner who shared his interests. Such a woman in the life of the writer was Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the daughter of a professor at Moscow University. The date of the beginning of their union can be considered April 10, 1907, when Vera Nikolaevna decided to go with I. A. Bunin on a trip to the Holy Land. “I changed my life drastically: from a settled life I turned it into a nomadic one for almost twenty whole years,” V. N. Muromtseva wrote about this day in her Conversations with Memory.
So, we see that by the age of forty, I. A. Bunin managed to experience a passionate love for V. Pashchenko to oblivion, and an unsuccessful marriage with Anya Tsakni, many other novels, and, finally, a meeting with V. N. Muromtseva. How could these events, which, it seems, should have brought the writer so many experiences related to love, not be reflected in his work? They were reflected - the theme of love began to sound in Bunin's works. But why, then, did he state that it was “not developed”? To answer this question, let us consider in more detail the stories written by I. A. Bunin before 1912.
Almost all the works written by Ivan Alekseevich during this period are of a social nature. The writer tells the stories of those who live in the countryside: small landowners, peasants - he compares the village and the city and the people living in them (the story "News from the Motherland" (1893)). However, these works are not without love themes. Only the feelings experienced by the hero for a woman disappear almost immediately after they appear, and are not the main ones in the plots of the stories. The author does not seem to allow these feelings to develop. “In the spring, he noticed that his wife, a cheeky-beautiful young woman, began to start some special conversations with the teacher,” writes I. A. Bunin in his story “Teacher” (1894). However, literally two paragraphs later on the pages of this work, we read: “But relations somehow did not start between her and the teacher.”
The image of a beautiful young girl, and with it the feeling of light love, appear in the story “At the Country House” (1895): “Either smiling, or grimacing, she absently looked with her blue eyes at the sky. Grisha passionately wanted to come up and kiss her on the lips. “Her”, Marya Ivanovna, we will see on the pages of the story only a few times. I. A. Bunin will make her feeling for Grisha, and him for her nothing more than flirting. The story will be of a socio-philosophical nature, and love will play only an episodic role in it.
In the same year, 1895, but a little later, "Velga" (originally "Northern Legend") also appeared. This is a story about the girl Velga's unrequited love for her childhood friend Irvald. She confesses her feelings to him, but he replies: “Tomorrow I will go to sea again, and when I return, I will take Sneggar by the hand” (Sneggar is Velga’s sister). Velga is tormented by jealousy, but when she finds out that her beloved has disappeared into the sea and that only she can save him, she swims away to the "wild cliff at the end of the world", where her beloved is languishing. Velga knows that she is destined to die and that Irwald will never know about her sacrifice, but this does not stop her. “He instantly woke up from a scream,” the voice of a friend touched his heart, but, looking, he saw only a seagull flying up screaming over the boat,” writes I. A. Bunin.
By the emotions caused by this story, we recognize in it the predecessor of the Dark Alleys cycle: love does not lead to happiness, on the contrary, it becomes a tragedy for a girl in love, but she, having experienced the feeling that brought her pain and suffering, does not regret anything “joy resounds in her lamentations.”
In style, "Velga" differs from all the works written by I. A. Bunin, both before and after it. This story has a very special rhythm, which is achieved by inversion, the reverse order of words (“And Velga began to sing ringing songs on the seashore through her tears”). The story resembles a legend not only in the style of speech. The characters in it are depicted schematically, their characters are not spelled out. The basis of the narrative is a description of their actions and feelings, but the feelings are rather superficial, clearly indicated by the author, often even in the speech of the characters themselves, for example: “I want to cry that you have been gone for so long, and I want to laugh that I see you again” (words Velgi).
In his first story about love, I. A. Bunin is looking for a way to express this feeling. But the poetic, in the form of a legend, narration does not satisfy him - there will be no more such works as "Velga" in the writer's work. I. A. Bunin continues to search for words and form to describe love.
In 1897, the story "Without a clan-tribe" appears. It, unlike "Velga", was already written in the usual Bunin manner - emotional, expressive, with a description of many shades of mood that add up to a single feeling of life at one time or another. In this work, the main character becomes the narrator, which we will see later in almost all Bunin's stories about love. However, when reading the story “Without a clan-tribe”, it becomes clear that the writer has not yet finally formulated for himself the answer to the question: “What is love?” Almost the entire work is a description of the state of the hero after he learns that Zina, the girl he loves, is marrying another. The author's attention is focused precisely on these feelings of the hero, but love itself, the relationship between the characters is presented in the light of the breakup that has occurred and is not the main thing in the story.
There are two women in the life of the protagonist: Zina, whom he loves, and Elena, whom he considers his friend. Two women and various, unequal attitudes towards them that appeared in I. A. Bunin in this story can also be seen in "Dark Alleys" (the stories "Zoyka and Valeria", "Natalie"), but in a slightly different light.
At the end of the conversation about the appearance of the theme of love in the work of I. A. Bunin, one cannot fail to mention the story "Autumn", written in 1901. “Made by a non-free, strained hand,” A.P. Chekhov wrote about him in one of his letters. In this statement, the word "tense" sounds like criticism. However, it is precisely the tension, the concentration of all feelings in a short period of time and the style, as if accompanying this situation, "not free", that make up the whole charm of the story.
"Well, I have to go!" she says and leaves. He is next. And, full of excitement, unconscious fear of each other, they go to the sea. “We quickly went through the leaves and puddles, along some high alley to the cliffs,” we read at the end of the third part of the story. "alley" - as if a symbol of future works, "Dark Alleys" of love, and the word "cliff" seems to personify everything that should happen between the characters. And indeed, in the story "Autumn" for the first time we see love as it appears before us in the later works of the writer - a flash, insight, a step over the edge of a cliff.
“Tomorrow I will remember this night with horror, but now I don’t care. I love you,” says the heroine of the story. And we understand that he and she are destined to part, but that both of them will never forget those few hours of happiness that they spent together.
The plot of the story "In Autumn" is very similar to the plots of "Dark Alleys", as well as the fact that the author does not indicate the names of either the hero or the heroine and that his character is barely outlined, while she occupies the main place in the story. This work combines with the cycle "Dark Alleys" also how the hero, and with him the author, treats a woman - reverently, with admiration: "she was incomparable", "her pale, happy and tired face seemed to me the face of an immortal ". However, all these obvious similarities are not the main thing that makes the story "Autumn" similar to the stories of "Dark Alleys". There is something more important. And this is the feeling that these works evoke, a feeling of unsteadiness, transience, but at the same time, the extraordinary power of love.
Chapter 2
The work of I. A. Bunin in the 1920s
Works about love, written by Ivan Alekseevich Bunin from autumn 1924 to autumn 1925 ("Mitina's Love", "Sunstroke", "Ida", "The Case of the Elagin Cornet"), with all the striking differences, are united by one idea underlying each of them. This idea is love as a shock, a “sunstroke”, a fatal feeling that brings moments of joy and great suffering, which fills the entire existence of a person and leaves an indelible mark on his life. Such an understanding of love, or rather its prerequisites, can also be seen in the early stories of I. A. Bunin, for example, in the story "Autumn", considered earlier. However, the theme of the fatal predestination and tragedy of this feeling is truly revealed by the author precisely in the works of the 1920s.
The hero of the story "Sunstroke" (1925), a lieutenant who is accustomed to easily relate to love adventures, meets a woman on a steamer, spends the night with her, and in the morning she leaves. “There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It's like an eclipse hit me. Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke, ”she tells him before leaving. The lieutenant "somehow easily" agrees with her, but when she leaves, he suddenly realizes that it was not a simple road adventure. This is something more, which makes one feel “pain and uselessness of the whole future life without her”, without this “little woman”, who remained a stranger to him.
“The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older,” we read at the end of the story, and it becomes clear that the hero experienced a strong, all-consuming feeling. Love, Love with a capital letter, capable of becoming the most precious thing in a person's life and at the same time his torment, tragedy.
Love-instant, love-flash, we will see in the story "Ida", also written in 1925. The hero of this work is a middle-aged composer. He has a “stocky torso”, “a broad peasant face with narrow eyes”, a “short neck” - the image of a seemingly rather rude person, incapable, at first glance, of lofty feelings. But this is only at first glance. Being in a restaurant with friends, the composer leads his story in an ironic, mocking tone, he is embarrassed, unusual to talk about love, he even attributes the story that happened to him to his friend.
The hero talks about events that took place several years ago. In the house where he lives with his wife, her friend Ida often visited. She is young, pretty, with "rare harmony and naturalness of movements", lively "violet eyes". It should be noted that it was the story "Ida" that can be considered the beginning of the creation by I. A. Bunin of full-fledged female images. In this short work, as if in passing, between times, those features that the writer extolled in a woman are noted: naturalness, following the aspirations of one's heart, frankness in one's feelings towards oneself and towards a loved one.
However, back to the story. The composer does not seem to pay attention to Ida, and when one day she stops visiting their house, he does not even think to ask his wife about her. Two years later, the hero accidentally meets Ida at the railway station and there, among the snowdrifts, “on some of the farthest, side platforms”, she unexpectedly confesses her love to him. She kisses him "with one of those kisses that I remember later not only to the grave, but also in the grave," and leaves.
The narrator says that when he met Ida at that station, when he heard her voice, “he understood only one thing: that, it turns out, he has been brutally in love with this very Ida for many years.” And it is enough to look at the end of the story to understand that the hero still loves her, painfully, tenderly, nevertheless knowing that they cannot be together: entire area:
My sun! My beloved! Hurrah!
Both in "Sunstroke" and "Ida" we see the impossibility of happiness for lovers, a kind of doom, doom that weighs on them. All these motifs are also found in two other works by I. A. Bunin, written around the same time: "Mitya's Love" and "The Case of Cornet Elagin". However, in them, these motives are, as it were, concentrated, they are the basis of the narrative and, as a result, lead the heroes to a tragic denouement - death.
"Don't you already know that love and death are inextricably linked?" - I. A. Bunin wrote and convincingly proved this in one of his letters: “Every time I experienced a love catastrophe, - and there were many of these love catastrophes in my life, or rather, almost every one of my loves was a disaster, “I was close to suicide.” These words of the writer himself can perfectly show the idea of such his works as "Mitina's Love" and "The Case of Cornet Elagin", become a kind of epigraph for them.
The story "Mitya's Love" was written by I. A. Bunin in 1924 and became a commemoration of a new period in the writer's work. In this work, for the first time, he examines in detail the evolution of his hero's love. As an experienced psychologist, the author captures the slightest changes in the feelings of a young man.
The narrative is built only to a small extent on external moments, the main thing is the description of the thoughts and feelings of the hero. It is on them that all attention is focused. However, sometimes the author makes his reader, as it were, look around, see some, at first glance, insignificant, but characterizing the inner state of the hero, details. This feature of the narrative will manifest itself in many of the later works of I. A. Bunin, including Dark Alleys.
The story "Mitya's Love" tells about the development of this feeling in the soul of the main character - Mitya. When we meet him, he is already in love. But this love is not happy, not careless, it speaks of this, the very first line of the work sets it up: "In Moscow, Mitya's last happy day was on the ninth of March." How to explain these words? Perhaps this is followed by the separation of the heroes? Not at all. They continue to meet, but Mitya "stubbornly seems that something terrible has suddenly begun, something has changed in Katya."
At the heart of the whole work lies the internal conflict of the protagonist. The beloved exists for him, as it were, in a double perception: one is close, beloved and loving, dear Katya, the other is “genuine, ordinary, painfully different from the first.” The hero suffers from this contradiction, which is subsequently joined by the rejection of both the environment in which Katya lives and the atmosphere of the village where he will leave.
In "Mitya's Love" for the first time, an understanding of the surrounding reality as the main obstacle to the happiness of lovers is clearly traced. The vulgar artistic environment of St. Petersburg, with its "falsehood and stupidity", under the influence of which Katya becomes "all alien, all public", is hated by the protagonist, just like the village one, where he wants to go to "give himself a rest". Running away from Katya, Mitya thinks that he can also run away from his painful love for her. But he is mistaken: in the village, where everything would seem so nice, beautiful, expensive, the image of Katya haunts him all the time.
Gradually, the tension builds up, the psychological state of the hero becomes more and more unbearable, step by step leading him to a tragic denouement. The ending of the story is predictable, but no less terrible: “She, this pain, was so strong, so unbearable, that wanting only one thing - to get rid of her at least for a minute, he fumbled and pushed the drawer of the night table, caught a cold and heavy lump of a revolver and, with a deep and joyful sigh, he opened his mouth and fired with force, with pleasure.
On the night of July 19, 1890, in the city of Warsaw, in the house number 14 on Novgorodskaya Street, the cornet of the hussar regiment Alexander Bartenev, shot from a revolver, killed the artist of the local Polish theater Maria Visnovskaya. Soon the offender confessed to his deed and said that he had committed the murder at the insistence of Visnovskaya herself, his lover. This story was widely covered in almost all the newspapers of that time, and I. A. Bunin could not help but hear about it. It was the Bartenev case that served as the basis for the plot of the story, created by the writer 35 years after this event. Subsequently (this will be especially evident in the cycle "Dark Alleys"), when creating stories, I. A. Bunin will also turn to his memories. Then it will be enough for him to have an image flashed in his imagination, a detail, in contrast to the "Cornet Elagin Case", in which the writer will leave the characters and events practically unchanged, trying, however, to identify the true reasons for the cornet's act.
Following this goal, in "The Case of Cornet Elagin" I. A. Bunin for the first time will focus the reader's attention not only on the heroine, but also on the hero. The author will describe in detail his appearance: “a small, frail, reddish and freckled man, on crooked and unusually thin legs”, as well as his character: “a man very fond of, but as if always expecting something real, unusual”, “he used to modest and shyly secretive, then he fell into some recklessness, bravado. However, this experience turned out to be unsuccessful: the author himself wanted to name his work, in which it is the hero, and not his feeling, that occupies a central place, "Boulevard novel" I. A. Bunin will no longer return to this type of narration - in his further works about love , in the cycle "Dark Alleys" we will no longer see stories where the spiritual world and the character of the hero would be considered in such detail - all the author's attention will be focused on the heroine, which will serve as a reason for recognizing "Dark Alleys" as "a string of female types".
Despite the fact that I. A. Bunin himself wrote about the “Cornet Elagin Case”: “It’s just very stupid and simple,” this work contains one of the thoughts that became the basis of Bunin’s formed philosophy of love: “Is it really not known what is strange property of any strong and generally not quite ordinary love, even how to avoid marriage? Indeed, among all the subsequent works of I. A. Bunin, we will not find a single one in which the characters would come to a happy life together, not only in marriage, but in principle. The cycle "Dark Alleys", which is considered the pinnacle of the writer's work, will be devoted to love that dooms suffering, love as a tragedy, and the prerequisites for this should undoubtedly be sought in the early works of I. A. Bunin.
Chapter 3
It was a wonderful spring
They were sitting on the beach
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black
Around the wild rose scarlet bloomed,
There was an alley of dark lindens
N. Ogarev "Ordinary Tale".
These lines, once read by I. A. Bunin, evoked in the writer's memory what one of his stories begins with - Russian autumn, bad weather, a high road, a tarantass and an old military man passing through it. “The rest all somehow came together, was invented very easily, unexpectedly,” I. A. Bunin will write about the creation of this work, and these words can be attributed to the entire cycle, which, like the story itself, bears the name “Dark alleys".
"Encyclopedia of love", "encyclopedia of love dramas" and, finally, according to I. A. Bunin himself, "the best and most original" that he wrote in his life - all this is about the cycle "Dark Alleys". What is this cycle about? What is the philosophy behind it? What ideas unite the stories?
First of all, this is the image of a woman and her perception by a lyrical hero. The female characters in "Dark Alleys" are extremely diverse. These are “simple souls” devoted to their beloved, such as Styopa and Tanya in the works of the same name; and bold, self-confident, sometimes extravagant women in the stories "Muse" and "Antigone"; and heroines who are spiritually rich, capable of a strong, lofty feeling, whose love is capable of giving unspeakable happiness: Rusya, Heinrich, Natalie in the stories of the same name; and the image of a restless, suffering, languishing "some kind of sad thirst for love" woman - the heroine of "Clean Monday". However, for all their apparent alienation to each other, these characters, these heroines are united by one thing - the presence in each of them of the original femininity, "light breathing ”, as I. A. Bunin himself called her. This feature of some women was determined by him in his early works, such as, for example, "Sunstroke" and the story "Easy breathing", about which I. A. Bunin said: "We call it uterine, and I called it light breathing." How to understand these words? What is womb? Naturalness, sincerity, spontaneity and openness to love, submission to the movements of one's heart - all that is the eternal secret of female charm.
Turning to the heroine, to the woman, and not to the hero in all the works of the Dark Alleys cycle, making her the center of the story, the author, like every man, in this case a lyrical hero, tries to unravel the riddle of the Woman. He describes many female characters, types, not at all in order to show how diverse they are, but in order to get as close as possible to the secret of femininity, to create a unique formula that would explain everything. “Women seem mysterious to me. The more I study them, the less I understand, ”I. A. Bunin writes these words of Flaubert in his diary.
The writer creates "Dark Alleys" already at the end of his life - at the end of 1937 (the time of writing the first story of the cycle, "The Caucasus"), I. A. Bunin is 67 years old. He lives with Vera Nikolaevna in Nazi-occupied France, far from his homeland, from friends, acquaintances and just people with whom he could talk in his native language. All that remains with the writer is his memoirs. They help him not only to relive once again what happened then, long ago, almost in a past life. The magic of memories becomes for I. A. Bunin a new basis for creativity, allowing him to work, write again, and thus giving him the opportunity to survive in a bleak and alien environment in which he finds himself.
Almost all the stories of "Dark Alleys" are written in the past tense, sometimes even with an emphasis on this: "In that distant time, he spent himself especially recklessly" ("Tanya"), "He did not sleep, lay, smoked and mentally looked at that summer "("Rusya"), "In the fourteenth year, on New Year's Eve, there was the same quiet, sunny evening as the unforgettable one" ("Clean Monday") Does this mean that the author wrote them "from nature", recalling the events own life? No. I. A. Bunin, on the contrary, always claimed that the plots of his stories were fictitious. “In it, everything from word to word is invented, as in almost all of my stories, both past and present,” he said about “Natalie”.
Why, then, was this look from the present into the past needed, what did the author want to show by this? The most accurate answer to this question can be found in the story "Cold Autumn", which tells about a girl who saw off her fiancé to the war. Having lived a long, difficult life after she learned that her loved one had died, the heroine says: “But what happened in my life anyway? Just that cold autumn evening. the rest is an unnecessary dream.” True love, true happiness are only moments in a person’s life, but they are able to illuminate his existence, become the most important and important for him and, ultimately, mean more than the whole life he has lived. This is exactly what I. A. Bunin wants to convey to the reader, showing in his stories love as something that has already become a particle of the past, but left an indelible mark on the souls of the heroes, like lightning illuminated their lives.
The death of a hero in the stories "Cold Autumn" and "In Paris"; impossibility to be together in "Rus", "Tanya"; the death of the heroine in "Natalie", "Heinrich", the story "Oaks" Almost all the stories of the cycle, with the exception of works that are almost plotless, such as "Smaragd", tell us about the inevitability of a tragic ending. And the reason for this is not at all that misfortune, grief is more diverse in its manifestations, in contrast to happiness, and, therefore, it is “more interesting” to write about it. Not at all. The long, serene existence of lovers together in the understanding of I. A. Bunin is no longer love. When a feeling turns into a habit, a holiday into weekdays, excitement into calm confidence, Love itself disappears. And in order to prevent this, the author "stops the moment" at the highest rise of feelings. Despite the separation, grief and even death of the heroes, which seem to the author less terrible for love than everyday life and habit, I. A. Bunin does not get tired of repeating that love is the greatest happiness. “Is there an unhappy love? Doesn't the most mournful music in the world give happiness? - says Natalie, who survived the betrayal of her beloved and a long separation from him.
"Natalie", "Zoyka and Valeria", "Tanya", "Galya Ganskaya", "Dark Alleys" and a few other works - these are, perhaps, all the stories out of thirty-eight in which the main characters: he and she - have names. This is due to the fact that the author wants to focus the reader's attention primarily on the feelings and experiences of the characters. External factors, such as names, biographies, sometimes even what is happening around, are omitted by the author as unnecessary details. The heroes of "Dark Alleys" live, captured by their feelings, they do not notice anything around. Reasonable loses all meaning, only submission to feeling, “non-thinking” remains. Under such a narrative, the very style of the story, as it were, adjusts, letting us feel the irrationality of love.
Details, such as the description of nature, the appearance of the characters, what is called the "background of the story", are still present in "Dark Alleys". However, they are again designed to draw the reader's attention to the feelings of the characters, to complement the picture of the work with bright touches. The heroine of the story "Rusya" presses the cap of her brother's tutor to her chest when they go for a boat ride, with the words: "No, I will take care of him!" And this simple, frank exclamation becomes the first step towards their rapprochement.
In many stories of the cycle, such as, for example, "Rusya", "Antigone", "In Paris", "Galya Ganskaya", "Clean Monday", the final rapprochement of the characters is shown. In the rest, it is implied to one degree or another: in “The Fool” it is said about the connection of the deacon’s son with the cook and that he has a son from her, in the story “One Hundred Rupees” the woman who struck the narrator with her beauty turns out to be corrupt. It was this feature of Bunin's stories that probably served as the reason for identifying them with Junker poems, "literature not for ladies." I. A. Bunin was accused of naturalism, the eroticization of love.
However, when creating his works, the writer simply could not set himself the goal of making the image of a woman as an object of desire mundane, simplifying it, thereby turning the narrative into a vulgar scene. A woman, like a woman's body, has always remained for I. A. Bunin "wonderful, inexpressibly beautiful, completely special in everything earthly." Striking with his mastery of artistic expressiveness, I. A. Bunin balanced in his stories on that subtle border where true art does not decrease even to the hint of naturalism.
The stories of the cycle "Dark Alleys" contain the problem of sex because it is inseparable from the problem of love in general. I. A. Bunin is convinced that love is a union of earthly and heavenly, body and spirit. If the different sides of this feeling are focused not on one woman (as in almost all the stories of the cycle), but on different ones, or only the “earthly” (“Fool”) or only the “heavenly” is present, this leads to an inevitable conflict, as, for example, in the story "Zoyka and Valeria". The first, a teenage girl, is the subject of the hero’s desire, while the second, “a real Little Russian beauty”, cold to him, inaccessible, causes passionate adoration, devoid of hope for reciprocity. When, out of a sense of revenge for the man who rejected her, Valeria is given to the hero, and he understands this, a long-overdue conflict of two loves breaks out in his soul. “He resolutely rushed, pounding on the sleepers, down the slope, towards the steam locomotive escaping from under him, rumbling and blinding with lights,” we read at the end of the story.
The works included by I. A. Bunin in the cycle "Dark Alleys", for all their dissimilarity, heterogeneity at first glance, are valuable precisely because, when read, they form, like multi-colored mosaic tiles, a single harmonious picture. And this picture depicts Love. Love in its wholeness, Love that goes hand in hand with tragedy, but is at the same time a great happiness.
Finishing the conversation about the philosophy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin, I would like to say that it is his understanding of this feeling that is closest to me, as, I think, to many modern readers. Unlike the writers of romanticism, who presented the reader only with the spiritual side of love, from the followers of the idea of the connection of sex with God, such as V. Rozanov, from the Freudians, who put the biological needs of man in the first place in matters of love, and from the symbolists, who bowed before the woman, the Beautiful Lady, I. A. Bunin, in my opinion, was closest to the understanding and description of love that really exists on earth. As a true artist, he was able not only to present this feeling to the reader, but also to point out in it what made and makes many people say: "He who did not love, he did not live."
The path of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin to his own understanding of love was long. In his early works, for example, in the stories "Teacher", "In the Country", this topic was practically not developed. In later ones, such as "The Case of Cornet Elagin" and "Mitina's Love", he searched for himself, experimented with the style and manner of narration. And, finally, at the final stage of his life and work, he created a cycle of works in which his already formed, integral philosophy of love was expressed.
After going through a rather long and fascinating path of research, I came to the following conclusions in my work.
In Bunin's interpretation of love, this feeling is, first of all, an unusual upsurge of emotions, a flash, a lightning bolt of happiness. Love cannot last long, which is why it inevitably entails tragedy, grief, separation, preventing everyday life, everyday life and habit from destroying itself.
It is the moments of love, the moments of its most powerful expression, that are important to I. A. Bunin, so the writer uses the form of memories for his narrative. After all, only they are able to hide everything unnecessary, petty, superfluous, leaving only a feeling - love, illuminating with its appearance the whole life of a person.
According to I. A. Bunin, love is something that cannot be rationally comprehended, it is incomprehensible, and nothing but the feelings themselves, no external factors are important for it. It is this that can explain the fact that in most of the works of I. A. Bunin about love, the heroes are deprived not only of biographies, but even of names.
The image of a woman is central in the later works of the writer. It is always more interesting for the author than he is, all attention is focused on it. I. A. Bunin describes many female types, trying to comprehend and capture on paper the secret of a Woman, her charm.
Speaking the word "love", I. A. Bunin means not only its spiritual and not only its physical side, but their harmonious combination. It is this feeling, which combines both opposite principles, that, according to the writer, can give a person true happiness.
The stories of I. A. Bunin about love could be analyzed endlessly, since each of them is a work of art and is unique in its own way. However, the purpose of my work was to trace the formation of Bunin's philosophy of love, to see how the writer went to his main book "Dark Alleys", and to formulate the concept of love, which was reflected in it, revealing the common features of his works, some of their patterns. Which is what I tried to do. And I hope I succeeded.
Introduction
Youth is the season of love. The first love, the desire to be loved, the only one ... It's all there. But no experience yet. Love seems to us an eternal feeling that brings only joy. And, as a rule, bringing joy to yourself. We dream of an extraordinary feeling in which a woman feels like a queen, a Beautiful Lady, commanding and mercifully condescending to her beloved. And true love, it turns out, brings suffering. Yes, and a loved one, even reciprocating you, for some reason does not want to come to terms with the role of your page or slave. Everything does not happen as it seemed in dreams.
Years pass, and we understand that the faces of love are different and no two are the same. Books help us to understand ourselves, in our feelings - good books, where love is necessarily present as a test of a person for decency, depth, loyalty. Pushkin, Lermontov, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Chekhov - which of them did not write about love? These are great psychologists, connoisseurs of the human soul, who, if not them, will tell us what it is like to love.
Ivan Bunin can be called the last representative of that era and national culture, whose representatives we have just listed and which we call classical, Pushkin's. Bunin came to Russian literature at the turn of the century, when new rhythms, images, idols burst into life, when the connection between times was torn. He, a Russian aristocrat, remained true to his tribal culture.
Love has always been one of Bunin's main themes. In it, the contradiction that languishes the writer is manifested with the greatest force: the charm, the power of life - and its doom, its brevity. Love can be sudden and swift, like a sunstroke (one of the stories is called “Sunstroke”, 1925), but never strong and long. Bliss flashed - and the former life stretched out, now, after happiness, doubly unbearable. Our mothers and fathers read Bunin: they were struck by the measure of frankness with which the writer speaks of love, including its dark, sometimes base side.
I also discovered Bunin. Once I opened a collection of short stories, I could not tear myself away - I read one after another. I especially remember his "Dark Alleys".
Who, no matter how Bunin, will help to understand the question: “What is true love?” Let's try to look at this feeling through his eyes. And for this we reread the collection "Dark Alleys".
I. History of creation
Interestingly, the best works about love - the collection "Dark Alleys" - Bunin created in old age. On January 8, 1941, Ivan Alekseevich wrote to Aldanov: “... I now have a new book ready in 25 new stories (all about love!), Of which only 9 were published in the newspaper, it’s called after the first story, wonderfully - “Dark Alleys” . But where, where to put them! At this time, the writer was over seventy. "Dark Alleys" became Bunin's last fiction book. Direct work on it was nine years. But she grew up on the soil that made Bunin a writer, thereby tying up ends and beginnings, becoming - perhaps more than Arseniev's Life - a book of life. “Since I realized that life is climbing the Alps, I understood everything. I realized that everything is nonsense. There are several things that are unchanging, organic, with which nothing can be done: death, illness, love, and the rest is nothing, ”Confessed Bunin to Galina Kuznetsova (May 2, 1929).
In 1943, Bunin published the first edition of Dark Alleys, a book of love stories (which was published in the USA with the help of his friends and contained only eleven stories). In the second edition (1946) - thirty-eight made up three sections, which made the book a kind of "novel in stories." The writer considered this book "the highest in skill." He wrote this book in the most difficult time of the fascist occupation, in fact, on the verge of death, and perhaps that is why the charm of love in it is so deadly, so sharp.
Thirty-eight Dark Alley stories were written between 1939 and 1945. The collection was formed no wonder, fundamentally old-fashioned. In contrast to the construction of poetry and prose books that has been widespread since the beginning of the century, Bunin simply combines into three sections texts written at the same time: 1937-1938, 1940-1941, 1943-1945 (included in posthumous editions according to the author's desire later stories "In the spring, in Judea" and "Overnight" do not have a permanent place and generally seem alien in the collection).
Deviations from the chronological order are minimal. The last written in the first block, "Dark Alleys" (October 20, 1938), begins the collection and gives it a title. In the third section, the first two (“In a familiar street”, “River inn”) and the last two texts (“Clean Monday”, “Chapel”) are taken out of the chronology, marking, thereby emphasizing the beginning and end - of this section and the entire books.
II. Love formulas are the grammar of love and easy breathing
1. "All stories are only about love"
Already in the stories of the tenth years, he portrays "Klasha" and "Aglaya". Then he comes up with two formulas that could become the titles of sections in "Dark Alleys": "Grammar of Love" (1915) and "Easy Breath" (1916). But early Bunin's exercises in the "grammar of love" were not systematic. The writer was distracted and attracted either by secrets of a national character (“Zakhar Vorobyov”, “John Rydalets”, “Lirnik Rodion”), then social arithmetic (“Village”, “Old Woman”), then Buddhist metaphysics (“Brothers”), then gloomy logic parables about "a monster of a new type, a monster of the void", a product of modern civilization ("Master from San Francisco").
The revolution dramatically changed not only his biography, but also his writing path. After the fury and frenzy of "Cursed Days", Bunin carefully, gropingly seeks the support of his sharply narrowed world. Gradually, through "Sunstroke" and "Mitya's Love", his main, in essence, his only theme remains the one that was elegiacly sung back in "Antonov's Apples", which once brought him his first fame.
The same picture of the world, but in a different emotional tone, becomes a reference for Bunin: an old house, an alley of dark lindens, a lake or a river leading to a station or a provincial town, a blurry road that will lead either to an inn, or to a steamer, or to a Moscow tavern, then to the disastrous Caucasus, then to a luxurious carriage of a train going to Paris. In "Dark Alleys" Bunin is not interested in life, but its sign, the quintessence, not prose, but poetry, not momentary details, but universal patterns. Just the little that remains with a person when he draws a bitter conclusion.
The title of the first story was suggested to Bunin by N. Ogarev's poem "An Ordinary Tale". Apparently, it was remembered from youth and is quoted in the story "Inscriptions" (1924). Its transparent symbolism is explained in a letter to Taffy on February 23, 1944: “This whole book is called after the first story - “Dark Alleys” - in which the “heroine” reminds her lover how he once read poetry to her about “dark alleys” (“The scarlet rose hips bloomed all around, there were alleys of dark lindens”), and all the stories in this book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys.
In "Dark Alleys" Bunin writes "only about love", moreover, about special love. The sun and the luminaries of his world are driven by love-passion, the indivisible unity of the spiritual and the carnal, a feeling that does not know about morality and duties, about duty, about the future, recognizing only the right to meet, to fight him and her, to painfully sweet mutual torture and pleasure.
“I imagine what you think of me. In fact, you are my first love. - Love? “What else is it called?” ("Muse").
Maybe it should be called something else. In the various stories of the book, a search is underway for both this word and this language: a grammar of sunstrokes is being composed.
Chekhov once advised: there should not be many heroes in a story - he and she are quite sufficient for the plot. Most of the Dark Alley stories follow this pattern, even using pronouns instead of first and last names.
Igor Sukhikh claims that the definition of “grammar of love” found by Bunin back in the sixteenth year is “a search in a variety of private, unique stories for a certain formula, paradigm, archetype that defines and explains everything. Most of all, the author is interested in the mystery of the Woman, the mystery of the Eternal Femininity (to use the phraseology of the symbolists so disliked by Bunin).
Like the Symbolists, the late Bunin writes about the incomprehensible. But for him it exists not in lilac worlds, but in the lilac sheen of black earth, not in Stranger with bottomless blue eyes on the far shore, but in the wife of the secretary of the zemstvo district council, who happened to meet on the Volga steamer.
“... The subject of Bunin's observation and study is not the psychological, but the irrational side of love, that incomprehensible essence of it (or that incomprehensible part of its essence), which overtakes like an obsession, God knows where it comes from and carries the heroes towards fate, so their usual psychology disintegrates and becomes like "meaningless chips" or fragments spinning in a tornado. Not external, but internal events of these stories are irrational, and it is typical for Bunin that such irrational events are always shown to him in the most realistic setting and in the most realistic colors, ”wrote V. Khodasevich.
2. "Dark alleys"
Already in the first story “Dark Alleys”, which gave the name to the whole cycle, there is a motive: regrets about the lost happiness are illusory, because life goes on as it should go, and a person is not free to make any changes to it.
The hero of the story "Dark Alleys", while still a young landowner, seduced the lovely peasant woman Nadezhda. And then his life took its course. And now, after many years, he, already being a military man in high ranks, finds himself passing through those places where he loved in his youth. In the mistress of the visiting hut, he recognizes Nadezhda, who has aged like himself, but is still a beautiful woman.
They remember youth, unique moments of happiness. She carried her love for him through her whole life, did not marry, cannot forgive him for neglecting her. And he says to her in his own defense: “I have never been happy in my life ... Sorry that maybe I offend your pride, but I will say frankly - I loved my wife without a memory. And she changed, left me even more insultingly than I did you. He adored his son - while he was growing up, what hopes he did not place on him! And a scoundrel, a wast, an insolent one, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience, came out ... However, all this is also the most ordinary, vulgar story ”
A person, according to Bunin, is in a kind of vicious circle of melancholy, vulgarity, everyday life. Only occasionally will happiness smile at him, and then the doors slam behind him again. Twice the hero of the story "Dark Alleys" knew short moments of happiness, but what was he left with? Nadezhda fell in love once and for all, but she carries this unrequited love like a heavy burden. But, perhaps, the hero of the story once made a mistake, refusing such love and fidelity? The writer answers this question in the negative.
Being already on the road and looking at the flashing horseshoes of the horse, the hero sums up the failed life: “Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” But, my God, what would happen next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?
And closing his eyes, he shook his head
Bunin's heroes eagerly catch moments of happiness, grieve if it passes by, lament when the thread that connects them with the person who gave them short-lived happiness breaks. And at the same time, they are organically incapable of fighting the villainous fate, winning the worldly battle with the superiority of their spirit, will, the strength of their intellect and experience.
Bunin's heroes again and again, with deep tenderness, indulge in memories of another life, which had to be abandoned for many reasons. They have kept a fond memory of the past of the landowners' nests and tend to forget the savagery, poverty and cruelty associated with them. Moreover, it sometimes seems to them that it is in the countryside that they could find complete happiness. But the writer soon proves that this is self-deception, since love could not stop the destruction of noble nests, the disintegration of the consciousness of their inhabitants, and the very escape of the landowners from hereditary penates was inevitable. And in the village itself, for all the idyllic nature of its life, the same harsh law of “stealing” someone else’s happiness operates, the same searches for short-lived bliss go on, which for someone inevitably end in the grief of losing a loved one.
. "Caucasus"
According to Bunin, not a very large share of happiness has been released to mankind, and therefore what is given to one is taken away from another. In the story "Caucasus" two - she and her lover - with bated breath are waiting for the opportunity to finally drink the cup of happiness to the bottom. They go, rather, run to the Caucasus from her husband, who is to blame only for the fact that he is madly in love and jealous of her. She leaves with her lover, knowing for sure that from the moment the train leaves, hours of despair begin for her husband, that he will not stand it and rush after her to the Caucasus, where she, presumably, may be. She redeems her happiness at the cost of the despair of another person. And indeed, he is looking for her in Gelendzhik, Gagra, Sochi, and, not finding her, having strengthened himself in the thought that she deceived him, left with another, shoots himself. Here is the ending of the story: “The next day, upon arrival in Sochi, he swam in the sea in the morning, then shaved, put on clean linen, a snow-white tunic, had breakfast at his hotel on the restaurant terrace, drank a bottle of champagne, drank coffee with chartreuse, slowly smoked a cigar. Returning to his room, he lay down on the sofa and shot himself in the whiskey with two revolvers.
The detail of the descriptions, the refinement of the last fatal gesture have their own special meaning in Bunin's concept of life. A person ends his life not in a state of passion, but because he has no more need to live, that he has already received his share of happiness and pain, despair have become stronger than the thirst for life. Hence the measured detailing of the descriptions of what the officer ate and drank before committing suicide, before he puts bullets in his forehead. In this case, the decision is made by a mature person, who is fully aware of what he will soon do.
Snatching their share of happiness, Bunin's heroes are cruelly selfish, unconsciously and consciously cynical. They often come to the conclusion that it is pointless to spare a person who loves you, because there is not enough happiness for everyone, a person is still lonely and it doesn’t matter when he experiences the bitterness of loss and loneliness - now or later. The writer, as it were, removes responsibility from his characters. Acting cruelly and selfishly, they do not become worse, because they live according to the norms of a badly arranged reality in which they are not able to change anything.
According to Bunin, love is the greatest blessing bestowed on a person; it contains proof that a person is worth more than what is given to him by being, where evil triumphs. Love in Bunin's stories reveals vulgarity, ugliness, some fate inaccessible to knowledge. As something unshakable, eternally gravitating over a person, filling his whole existence with majestic tragedy, retribution for love appears in the writer's works.
4. "Natalie"
An unusually intense fullness of happiness is given to a person for a short time, when love fills his soul with quivering delight, admiration, adoration. In these moments, he feels the beauty of nature in a new way, with great fullness, sees its colors sharply, hears its sounds. So it happened with the hero of the story “Natalie”, whom God, in his words, “punished” by sending two loves: one carnal - to Sonya, the other - high - to Natalie, lovely Natalie, tender, lyrical, able to forever keep love and loyalty. The protagonist, who is able to feel strongly, love brightly, meets on his way the only one who can make him happy. Yet happiness remains elusive.
Bunin this time reveals the destructive beginning of passion, as long as it is not ennobled by true love. This motif is carried through in a delightful story filled with the aroma of memories of youth.
Cousins Meshchersky and Sonya Cherkasova, who have already survived the time of childhood love, meet again when he has already become a student, and she has turned into a pretty and piquant girl. He comes to the Cherkasov estate for the summer, and a pleasant and promising flirting relationship is immediately established between the two young people. Such an "application" was made from the very first minutes of their meeting.
“I am especially pleased now to make sure of your fidelity,” Meshchersky says cheekily, “you have become a perfect beauty, and I have the most serious views on you. What a hand, a neck, and how seductive is this soft dressing gown, under which, it’s true, there’s nothing!
Sonya likes the upcoming game of love, and she answers the novice Don Juan: “But you, too, have become at least somewhere and have matured very much. A lively look and a vulgar black mustache ... But what is it with you? In these two years that I have not seen you, you have turned from a boy who is always flashing from shyness into a very interesting impudent. And this would promise us a lot of love joys, as our grandmothers said, if it weren’t for Natalie, with whom you will fall in love to the grave tomorrow morning ”
Sonya is twenty years old, and chained to her father, she hardly believes that she will get married and have a family. Hence the feigned cynicism, a kind of ease in relations with a man. Well, if personal life is impossible, then at least this is a slight excitement of the soul.
So economical and accurate in words that convey the internal state of the characters, reproducing psycho The logic of relations, Bunin in "Natalie" describes in great detail the atmosphere of the landowner's estate, its interior. The detail of the situation in the Cherkasovs' house, the landscape surrounding the estate - all this is due to the need to create a certain atmosphere for a psychologically complex conflict that develops into a deep life tragedy. The "bifurcation" of the protagonist of the story - Meshchersky, the movement of his restless soul from "earthly love" - Sonya to "heavenly love" - Natalie can only be correctly understood and evaluated taking into account many circumstances. These are the moods of Meshchersky, who arrived at the Cherkasov estate in anticipation of a love affair with his childhood friend Sonya. This is the power over him of the whole situation of the estate, where he was a happy child. This is the joy of a person who has temporarily left the bustle of the city and is returning to the bosom of his beloved nature. How can you not immediately jump up sensuality? How can one not feel her mighty strength when the young man is young, healthy and handsome, and the lovely girl shows interest in him? Both "objects" of his passion are close friends, and the action unfolds simultaneously and in one place. This circumstance immediately gives a tense character to what is happening and causes a tragic outcome. Along with the adoration of Natalie, love dates with Sonya take place. It is in connection, since the delight of contemplating Natalie, whom he adores, is still very far from the “sinful” thought of possessing her, and Sonya each time offers him bold caresses, promising a more complete joy of rapprochement. He dreams of Natalie, and at night he finds himself in Sonya's arms. Meshchersky, loving Natalie and spending nights in Sonya's arms, is "punished" by the writer. In the arms of Sonya, he knows moments of burning passion, but this is not the delight of possession that Bunin described more than once, which is possible only in the arms of his beloved. Meshchersky also robs himself because he is deprived of all that complex love scale of delights, when at last all the feelings and desires of a man are united in one woman. At the beginning of the story, the first stage of the love of a young man is described, who does not yet dare to think about possessing his beloved. But little by little, something that lies at the basis of all love begins to creep into Natalie's "torturous beauty of adoration" - the desire to possess her beloved. Meshchersky does not realize this, not only because he is experiencing the beginning of love, but also because his desires are extinguished every time in Sonya's arms. The idea that a person experiences an extraordinary fullness of happiness for a moment is poetically expressed in many of Bunin's works. These extraordinary moments are born of youth, health, shared by love, and this illumination of happiness often comes under the direct influence of beauty, smells, sounds of nature. The writer says that such complete happiness exists in nature, but at the same time, for some reason, it slips away, like sand waking up between the fingers. In the story "Natalie" happiness woke up through Meshchersky's fingers twice. For the first time, he himself is to blame for this. The ardent nights of the hero with Sonya end dramatically. After a long break, in a storm, Sonya waits for Meshchersky at night in his room. He barely had time to declare his love to Natalie, who admits that she also loves him. He is still in the grip of that “wonderful” and “terrible” that suddenly happened in his life, but as soon as he enters his room, he hears the voice of Sonya, frightened by the storm, excited, ready for anything: “Come quickly to me, hug me, I'm afraid..." It was precisely at those moments when Meshchersky needed it least of all, who was still under the power of a love explanation with Natalie, Sonya suddenly finds herself in his room. The storm, as it were, "electrifies" the heroes of the story, sharpens their intuition. This explains the arrival of Sonya, as well as the sudden appearance of Natalie at the door of Meshchersky's room, where she had never come before. The writer, as it were, “mitigates” the guilt of his hero. Perhaps, after an explanation with Natalie, he would have told Sonya that their dates could not continue. But the storm and the accidental circumstances it caused - the arrival of Natalie, the open door - only partly justify it. What was, was, and he polluted his first love. The sixth chapter opens the second part of the story. Already in the first phrase contains capacious information. A year later, Natalie married Meshchersky, the hero's cousin and namesake. The hero of the story meets Natalie again at the ball. This is a blow for both, another recognition that the love that befell them has not left, that they are meant for each other. It would seem that no one is standing in the way of such a long-awaited, so hard-won happiness. However, Bunin would betray himself, one of his main themes, if he recognized the possibility of gaining happiness forever. And in one line about the death of Natalie, the unity of souls collapses, love dies. Bunin carefully examines all the inner springs of love and comes to the conclusion that only a combination of spiritual and physical intimacy gives rise to a person's short-lived happiness. The very same reasons for the fragility of happiness can be very different, such as they are in a diverse reality. Bunin's attention is attracted by the complexity of human feelings and experiences. 5. In Paris Loneliness is, according to Bunin, the inevitable fate of a person who sees in his surroundings something alien and distant, or, at best, extraneous to his soul. Only love gives happiness to the communion of souls, but even this happiness is transitory and short-lived. This is the main idea expressed in the story "In Paris". Here, the motive of loneliness finds a new expression in the theme of the forever lost homeland, life, aimlessly flowing in a foreign land. This story is a gem of artistic expression. Two Russians meet in Paris. He is a former general, writes the history of the first imperialist and civil wars "by order of foreign publishers." She is a waitress in a small Russian re sidekick. But who they are now does not matter, except perhaps that very sparingly, in passing, is told about their biographies. But these biographies are not fraught with anything unexpected. In them is the fate of the white emigration, who lost their strength of mind in wandering around foreign countries. The path of the hero of the story passed through Constantinople. Here his young wife, like many other Russian women, succumbed to the temptation of an "easy" life, left him for a Greek millionaire, an insignificant boy. Nothing is said about her further fate, but one can assume the worst, knowing what often awaited women there who had strayed from their native shore. With an unhealed wound of her memory, a former general lives out his life in Paris. He lives far from all sorts of political quarrels, as if secluded in himself, waiting for a meeting with a woman who is just as lonely and close to him in spirit. Chance meetings with a half-hour stay in cheap hotels are increasingly moving this dream away from him. And yet it is carried out, short-lived happiness comes. Even less is known about the fate of the heroine of the story. She is married, but the stormy waves of the sea of \u200b\u200blife threw her husband into Yugoslavia, while she settled in Paris. And everything here before meeting the hero gives off a bitter aftertaste of banality. Meeting a young Frenchman who turns out to be a pimp, working as a saleswoman in a large department store, getting fired, another step "down" - serving in a restaurant. Even for an artistic portrait of the hero, the writer does not look for any pretext, "hook". The description of his appearance begins with the very first word of the story. The direct bearing of the officer, bright eyes, looking "with dry sadness", immediately speak of the former profession, years of trials, and lasting mental pain. And then it is reported that he rented a farm in Provence, trying to manage the household, but turned out to be unsuitable for such a life, having taken out of it only the habit of inserting caustic Provencal jokes into the conversation Drizzling rain, a long autumn evening, when a lonely person does not know what to do with himself , a sad showcase of stale dishes of a small restaurant, a small hall with several tables - this is by no means a poetic setting where a long long-awaited and belated love, where two tormented souls find each other. The theme of loneliness is increasingly intertwined with the theme of newfound happiness. He and she feel the need to talk about being alone because they are no longer alone. In them, in essence, the joy of overcoming grief sings. And this conversation ends like this: “Poor! - she said, squeezing his hand. "This word contains both maternal tenderness, and nascent love and a deep understanding of the suffering of another person. The writer sets off the beauty of their feelings with the dreary routine of the surrounding reality, in which Roy they are no longer alone. So, at his house "in the metallic light of a gas lamp, rain fell on a tin vat of garbage." But they hardly notice this and, going up the elevator, they quietly kiss. Opponent of faded idyllicness in descriptions of love relationships, Bunin supplements the story of the love of his characters with a description of the awakening of sensuality. He creates for lonely people who have found each other that fullness of happiness, which is impossible for a long time, must inevitably collapse, either by the will of fate, or by the evil of an unsettled life. The writer stops the flowing narration smoothly and calmly, in order to announce in the next two or three lines after the love scene that his characters have agreed and, just in case, he put the money he earned in the bank in her name. At the same time, he recalls a bitter French proverb: “Even donkeys dance for love,” and adds: “And I feel like I’m twenty years old. But you never know what could be ... "The love story began in the fall, and" ... on the third day of Easter, he died in a subway car - while reading a newspaper, he suddenly threw back his head to the back of the seat, turned his eyes ... "So, autumn , winter, spring - this is a short period of happiness, love, about which - and this is important - nothing is said. And what can you say about shared love, when two people are isolated in it from the whole world, when the struggle constantly going on in it is regarded as an evil that must be shunned. At home, she began to clean the apartment. In the corridor, in a pla-car, I saw his old summer overcoat, gray, with a red lining. She took it off the hanger, pressed it to her face and, pressing it, sat on the floor, twitching all over with sobs and screaming, begging someone for mercy. In this comparison, perhaps, the whole of Bunin, with his love of life, with his horror in the face of death. More than once, apparently, the aged writer had the thought: is it really possible that young life will still awaken in the spring, and I will not? And along with it, another one arose: nevertheless, life is beautiful, and I lived it not in vain, I will leave a particle of myself to people! III. Other Variations on the Theme of Love The story "In Paris", having raised Bunin's favorite theme of love to the highest point of artistic perfection, however, did not exhaust it. The writer's aesthetic attitude to life does not change, but he finds new and new angles in highlighting the main thing, in his opinion, that determines the thoughts and feelings of a person. Various variations of the Bunin theme arise from the infinitely shifting relationships of characters and situations, from the artistic and stylistic decisions of this or that story. According to Bunin, by nature, man was created for happiness and the establishment of beauty on earth. A person's need for happiness, his desire to create beauty are indestructible, although the "evil" reality constantly crushes his hopes, overturns his plans. The evil surrounding a person does not exist, according to Bunin, isolated from a person, it penetrates a person, distorts him, gives rise to a certain irrationality in him, leading him, in turn, to evil, destruction. And this is not the only misfortune that lies in wait for a person. Often love leads to destruction and grief. Yes, the same love that reveals the beauty of the universe to a person gives him short days of happiness. And here Bunin has no contradiction. After all, love does not take into account formal moments, it arises not only when a person has the “right” to love. And since life is badly arranged, there are constant clashes between a person's natural desire for happiness and slavery legalized in love, between freedom and possessiveness in love. Ownership, as the evil of life, standing in the way of human happiness, is one of the main motives of a number of the best stories from the closing Dark Alleys cycle. These include "Galya Ganskaya", "Dubki", "Steamboat" Saratov "," Raven "and standing somewhat apart" Clean Monday ". In the story "Galya Ganskaya" a kind of special case is taken. There are, in fact, no grounds for a tragic outcome, except that passion turns a person into an owner, reaching death in an effort to completely possess. Galya and her lover feel differently and think in different categories. She gave herself undividedly to her love, for such is her nature, and the slightest encroachment on her feelings causes suffering, which she is unable to cope with. But Bunin does not blame his heroine. He only talks about one more case among hundreds of others, when short-lived happiness turns into death. You can not blame the artist, beloved of Hanska, the writer tells us, he was captivated by the beauty, passion of the girl. But she could not love the way she loved. She couldn't bear this. Bunin did not believe that complete and lasting happiness could triumph in a cruel world. Therefore, the slightest glimmer of hope, the slightest excitement of the soul was a precious gift. In the story “Cold Autumn”, a girl whose fiancé was killed during the war, in Galicia, recalls an autumn evening at the estate before his departure and says either to an unnamed interlocutor or to herself: “...Recalling everything that I experienced with Since then, I always ask myself: yes, but what happened in my life after all? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening. Has he ever been? Still, there was. And this is all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream. The same idea is carried out in the short story "Swing". He and she are somewhere in an ordinary noble estate: a dewy park, a kitchen from which comes the appetizing smell of cue balls with onions, a swing that squeals with rings. She has blue eyes and a happy face, and he tells her: “Yes, it seems to me that this evening will not be happier in my life ... Let it be only what is ... It won’t be better.” In the story “Steamboat Saratov”, Bunin manages to send on a five-page space a certain Pavel Sergeevich, an officer who was in a great mood and felt in himself “a happy feeling of readiness for anything”; exhaustively outline the story of his love; shoot a woman from an officer's Browning and turn Pavel Sergeevich into a prisoner sailing on the Saratov steamer across the Indian Ocean. That is the omnipotence of Bunin's gift: right before our eyes, he condensed, compressed a huge novel into a small story. The bitterness spilled over these stories has a strange, bewitching power over the reader's heart: it languishes, compassionate to the narrative, and after the final point again turns to the beginning, again longs to dissolve in some fabulous, frosty evening with lilac hoarfrost in the gardens, in the restrained - the powerful course of this bitterness. It takes its source, as it should be, from the mossy-gloomy green of a spring under the blue sky of central Russia, from a noon, happy life, from love, so full and joyful, sharply sensual, that the soul shrinks with anxiety for its perfection. And our worries are not in vain. The word is filled with lunar clarity and cold - Bunin writes separation. "Dark Alleys" is intended for parting, for this poignant and hopeless ardor, from which its heroes are exhausted. They often believe that they will meet again, that their happy days will continue and last, but this faith is cut short by a shot, death, flight to a foreign land, leaving for a monastery .. Conclusion Bunin story love The simplest genre of "Dark Alleys" is a case, a study, an anecdote ("Beauty", "Fool", "Smaragd", "Guest", "Wolves", "Camargue", "One Hundred Rupees"). The volume of such text is from an incomplete page to one and a half pages. Naturally, neither the plot, nor the chronotope, nor the psychological characteristics are deployed in it. The task consists in the initial fixation, in the designation of a certain paradox. An objective narrative is built in the manner of an everyday story (an anecdote) told in a friendly circle: but there was another case ... But how poignant are these stories! The author brings us to the tragic conclusion that all possession is illusory, including love. The charm of the earth is painful because it is fleeting; you can't take the sunset with you; Eternal love cannot be, if only because it is impossible to live forever. The only thing that can be wrested from death and chaos is the word: in it Bunin captured what constantly slips away in life. Here is all the Russia he lost, all his beloved ones who betrayed him, all the drying up life. How much a tormented, quivering, tender, bitter heart is embedded in the word! What an extensive geography of the stories - Russia, Moscow, Odessa, Paris, Russia again and again: estates, villages, inns, hotels, carriages, stations. What a luxury of details, nature, the fullness of life, the delight of life, happiness, and - a shot, a shot - as if on a hunt: according to the most beautiful, alive, fluttering warm wings, rapidly flickering heart, shining and sparkling - a shot, death, the end. .. Yes, Bunin’s heroes and heroines die (“The Case of Cornet Elagin”, 1925, “Dubki”, 1943), betray their loved ones (“Raven”, “Steamboat Saratov”, both 1944), lose their beloved in the war (“Cold Autumn” , 1944), suddenly go to the monastery ("Clean Monday", 1944) ... One way or another, love has no future. Sometimes it seems that Bunin is artificially separating or destroying heroes, although behind these invariably gloomy denouement is his old conviction: true love is too close to death, true passion cannot stand the test of life.Love is most beautiful in its first, initial stage, what has been achieved turns into sad, mundane, perishable, death overtakes it almost instantly, in its prime.The end of love is similar to death too. And yet, the sadness and tragedy of these stories leave us with a feeling of clear joy, festivity and delight - in front of the power and sensual, full, rich in all overflows of love-life, carnal, jubilant, tragically stunning. Not only aesthetic pleasure, the flesh of life in these stories, sadness about the best that has ever happened to each of us, creates festivity and light flowing among the dark alleys of Bunin's sadly tangled love stories. Drawing life in its entirety, the writer seems to give birth to the former again, creates a new life in incorruptibility. Zinaida Gippius spoke about it this way: “Life, nature, people, the whole world - not reflected - is so beautiful; because he is exactly the same as in the mirror! Beauty, joy, love... But again, "like a sudden wind through the fluttering leaves of a tree, one thought, one consciousness passes through the body: there is death in the world ..." And the world is distorted by a grimace, people who carry death in themselves are distorted .. There is no way out - there is no entrance there, to the magical and only beloved mirror world, where there is no death. If we approach Bunin with this understanding, we will see that human pain, suffering, with which each line of his is written. We will see in his merciless vigilance his stubborn desire to unravel life, his stubborn, undying love for life, for this sweet earthly life... but conquering death. “Love is when you want something that does not exist and does not exist. Yes, yes, never! (Here, in the non-mirror world, with death.) But still. You need to carry in yourself at least some, even a weak light! Bunin carried, in my opinion, not a spark, but lightning bolts of love. He believed: the past exists as long as there is someone who remembers. “And the poor human heart rejoices, is comforted: there is no death in the world, there is no death to what was, what once lived! There are no separations and losses as long as my soul, my Love, Memory is alive! ("Rose of Jericho"). And isn’t Natalie right when she asks: “Although, can there be unhappy love? - she said, raising her face and asking with all the black opening of her eyes and eyelashes. “Doesn’t the most mournful music in the world give happiness?” ("Natalie"). In the end, Bunin turns the physics of sex and the metaphysics of love into an incorporeal dazzling light of memory: “The sadness of eyelashes, shining and black, / Diamonds of tears, plentiful, recalcitrant, / And again the fire of heavenly eyes, / Happy, joyful, humble, - / I remember everything I... / But we are no longer in the world, / Once young and blissful! / Where do you come from to me? / Why do you resurrect in a dream, / Shining with a non-urgent charm, / And delight repeats wonderfully, / That meeting, short, earthly, / What God gave us and immediately canceled again? So what is true love? Is it really so tragically fleeting? According to Bunin, it goes like this. But if you don't want to believe it... Literature Bunin, I.A. Collected works in 4 volumes. T.1/I.A.Bunin. - M.: Pravda, 1988. - 478 p. Bunin, I.A. Collected works in 4 volumes. V.3 / I.A. Bunin. - M.: Pravda, 1988. - 544 p. Bunin, I.A. Collected works in 4 volumes. V.4/I.A.Bunin. - M.: Pravda, 1988. -558 p. Volkov, A.V. Prose of Ivan Bunin / A.V. Volkov. - M.: Moskov. worker, 1969. - 448 p. Lavrov, V.V. Cold autumn. Ivan Bunin in exile 1920-1953, novel-chronicle / V.V. Lavrov. - M. : Young Guard, 1989. - 384 p. Roschin, M.M. Ivan Bunin/Supplement: Bunin in Yalta. Story; "Soviet Chronicle" by Ivan Bunin. Pub. Dm. Chernigovsky // M.M. Roshchin. - M .: Young Guard, 2000. - 329s: - (ZhZL). Shugaev, V.M. Experiences of a reading person / V.M. Shugaev.- M.: Sovremennik, 1988.- 319 p. Bykov, D. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin/ D. Bykov//Encyclopedia for children. T. 9. Russian literature. Part 2. XX century. - M.: Avanta, 2004. - S. 148 - 158. Gippius, 3. N. The mystery of the mirror / Z.N. Gippius // Dreams and Nightmare (1920-1925) - St. Petersburg: Rostok Publishing House LLC, 2002. - P. 162 - 171. Gorelov, A.E. Star lonely / A.E. Gorelov // Three Fates. - L.: Soviet writer. Leningrad branch, 1976. - S. 275 - 621. Khodasevich, V. Bunin. Collected works /V. Khodasevich // Bunin I. A. Selected prose.- M .: Olympus; Publishing house ACT, 1997.- S. 573-579. Sukhikh, I. Russian love in dark alleys / I. Dry//Star. - 2001 - No. 2. - S. 219 - 228. The prose of I.A. Bunin is considered a synthesis of prose and poetry. It has an unusually strong confessional beginning ("Antonov apples"). Often, the lyrics replace the plot basis, and as a result, a portrait-story ("Lirnik Rodion") appears. Among Bunin's works there are stories in which the epic, romantic beginning is expanded - the whole life of the hero falls into the writer's field of vision ("The Cup of Life"). Bunin is a fatalist, an irrationalist, pathos of tragedy and skepticism are characteristic of his works. His work echoes the concept of modernists about the tragedy of human passion. Like the Symbolists, Bunin's attention to the eternal themes of love, death and nature comes to the fore. The cosmic coloring of the writer's works, the permeation of his images with the voices of the Universe bring his work closer to Buddhist ideas. Bunin's works synthesize all these concepts. Bunin's concept of love is tragic. Moments of love, according to Bunin, become the pinnacle of a person's life. Only by falling in love can a person truly feel another person, only a feeling justifies high demands on himself and his neighbor, only a lover is able to overcome his egoism. The state of love is not fruitless for Bunin's heroes, it elevates souls. One example of an unusual interpretation of the theme of love is the story "Chang's Dreams", which is written in the form of a dog's memories. The dog feels the inner devastation of the captain, his master. The image of "distant working people" (Germans) appears in the story. Based on a comparison with their way of life, the writer talks about the possible ways of human happiness: firstly, labor in order to live and multiply, without knowing the fullness of life; secondly, infinite love, which is hardly worth devoting oneself to, since there is always the possibility of betrayal; thirdly, the path of eternal thirst, the search, in which, however (according to Bunin) there is no happiness either. The plot of the story seems to oppose the mood of the hero. True memory breaks through real facts like a dog, when there was peace in the soul, when the captain and the dog were happy. Moments of happiness are highlighted. Chang carries the idea of loyalty and gratitude. This, according to the writer, is the meaning of life that a person is looking for. Bunin's love is most often sad, tragic. A person is not able to resist it, the arguments of reason are powerless before it, because there is nothing like love in strength and beauty. The writer defines love surprisingly accurately, comparing it with a sunstroke. This is the title of a story about an unexpected, impetuous, "crazy" affair of a lieutenant with a woman who accidentally met on the ship, who does not give her name or address. The woman leaves, saying goodbye forever to the lieutenant, who at first perceives this story as an accidental, non-binding affair, a lovely road accident. Only with time does he begin to feel "insoluble torment", experiencing a sense of bereavement. He tries to deal with his condition, performs some actions, perfectly aware of their absurdity and uselessness. He is ready to die only in order to miraculously bring her back, to spend another day with her. At the end of the story, the lieutenant, sitting under a canopy on the deck, feels ten years older. In a wonderful story by Bunin, the uniqueness and beauty of love, which a person often does not suspect, is expressed with great force. Love is a sunstroke, the greatest shock that can radically change a person's life, make him either the happiest or the most unhappy. Bunin's work is characterized by an interest in ordinary life, the ability to reveal its tragedy, the saturation of the narrative with details. Bunin is considered to be the successor of Chekhov's realism, but his realism differs from Chekhov's in its extreme sensitivity. Like Chekhov, Bunin addresses eternal themes. Nature is important to him, however, in his opinion, the highest judge of a person is human memory. It is the memory that protects Bunin's heroes from inexorable time, from death. Bunin's favorite heroes are endowed with an innate sense of the beauty of the earth, an unconscious desire for harmony with the world around them and with themselves. Such is the dying Averky from the story "Thin Grass". Having worked all his life as a farm laborer, having experienced a lot of torment, grief and anxiety, this peasant did not lose his kindness, the ability to perceive the beauty of nature, a sense of the high meaning of life. Memory constantly brings Averky back to those "distant twilight on the river" when he was destined to meet "that young, sweet, who now looked at him with indifferent, pitiful eyes with senile eyes." A short playful conversation with a girl, full of deep meaning for them, could not erase from their memory either the years lived or the trials they had endured. Love is the most beautiful and bright thing that the hero had throughout his long, laborious life. But, thinking about this, Averky recalls both the "soft dusk in the meadow", and the shallow backwater, turning pink from the dawn, against which the girl's camp is barely visible, surprisingly in harmony with the charm of the starry night. Nature, as it were, participates in the life of the hero, accompanying him both in joy and in sorrow. Distant twilight on the river at the very beginning of life is replaced by autumn melancholy, the expectation of imminent death. The state of Averky is close to the picture of fading nature. "Dying, the grasses dried up and rotted. The threshing floor became empty and bare. A mill in a homeless field became visible through the vines. The rain sometimes changed to snow, the wind hummed in the holes of the barn, evil and cold." For ten years (1939 - 1949), Bunin wrote the book "Dark Alleys" - stories about love, as he himself said, "about her" dark "and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys." This book, according to Bunin, "talks about the tragic and about many things that are tender and beautiful - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life." Bunin went his own way, did not join any fashionable literary movements or groups, in his words, "did not throw out any banners" and did not proclaim any slogans. Criticism noted the powerful language of Bunin, his art of raising "everyday phenomena of life" into the world of poetry. There were no "low" topics unworthy of the poet's attention for him. Shortly before his death, Bunin wrote in his memoirs: “I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my writing memories would not have been like that. and its continuation, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Just one flood fell to his lot..." “You are a thought, you are a dream. Through the smoky blizzard Crosses run - outstretched arms. I listen to the pensive spruce - Singing call... Everything is just thought and sounds! What lies in the grave, are you? Parting, sadness was marked your hard way. Now they are gone. Crosses Store only ashes. Now you are a thought. You are eternal. » Love in Bunin's stories is shown from different angles. 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, delivers only suffering. Option 1 Love is an eternal theme that has attracted writers and poets of all eras. It is impossible to resist this feeling, just as it is impossible not to sing it in poetry and prose. The real singer of love, psychologist and expert of human souls and hearts is I. A. Bunin. None of his works leaves the reader indifferent. Reading Bunin's short stories filled with incredible meaning, you understand that love is not as simple as it seems at first glance. In most of his works, the author shows love as a powerful force that can either elevate a person or destroy him at one moment. The heroes of Bunin's works die, part, experience unrequited love and remain unhappy. The author emphasizes that true love comes suddenly, when you do not look for it and do not expect it, and remains in the heart forever. Despite all the tragedy and pain that love most often brings to the heroes of Bunin's works, they perceive it as the most beautiful and unique feeling. All Bunin's works are unique and do not resemble each other. In the story "Sunstroke" the hero, starting an affair with an attractive fellow traveler, finds true love and suffering for life. Due to the pressure of society, the character of the story "Dark Alleys" Nikolai Alekseevich abandons Nadezhda, for which he then pays and remains unhappy. The work "Cold Autumn" and farewell to the groom killed in the war will not leave any reader indifferent. Unrequited love in the story "Clean Monday" and the tragic story of Olya Meshcherskaya, the heroine of the story "", once again prove that love is eternal. Nothing can truly separate people in love, neither distances of thousands of kilometers, nor death. And, despite the fact that love brings the heroes a lot of suffering, in those moments when they are inspired by this feeling, they are the happiest. Option 2 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 along with 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. So, 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 has never experienced anything like it and is unlikely to ever experience it. 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 another 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 the unrequited love of a young guy for 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. Option 3 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", "", "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 ways of his creative path, was revealed from different angles. 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 a 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 a 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 "" 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 the mutual love of two young people, but in some of his works one can also find a love triangle: "" 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 this 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, the true beauty of his inner world, values in relation to a loved one, manifests itself. 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. Option 4 Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is one of the most prominent Russian writers of the twentieth century. He remarkably turned out both poetry and prose, both short stories and novels. But still, I appreciate the talent of Ivan Alekseevich precisely for that part of his work that can be called a "small" genre. And I especially like Bunin's stories, the main theme of which is love. In these works, the author's talent for describing all the innermost, sometimes quite unusual, for conveying ideas and thoughts is most clearly revealed. Extraordinary poetry brings sensuality to the narrative, which is so necessary for works with such themes. If you trace all of Bunin's work from beginning to end, then you can divide it into periods, based on which topic he prefers in his works. I am interested in the collection "Dark Alleys", written during the Second World War, because it is completely devoted to the theme of love, after reading the stories from it, you can try to formulate the main idea, the author's thought. In my opinion, the main "thesis" of Bunin's work lies in the quote: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not shared." But in the love dramas of the collection, and it is they that form its basis, one can also be convinced that Bunin appreciates only natural, pure love, high human feeling, rejecting far-fetched false impressions. Ivan Alekseevich also in his stories inextricably links love with death, connects the beautiful and the terrible. But this is not a far-fetched composition, the author thus tries to show readers how closely love borders on death, how close the two extremes are from each other. The stories "Sunstroke", "" and "Natalie" are best known to readers. All of them perfectly fit the description of a tragic love story with a sad ending, but in each of them Bunin opens up a new aspect to us, a new look at love. The heroes of "Sunstroke" quite by chance meet on a steamer. But their fleeting attraction does not go unnoticed for both characters. She says to the lieutenant: “There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It’s like an eclipse hit me ... Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke. But this shock concerns him only when he, having escorted her to the ship, returns to the hotel. His heart "constricted with incomprehensible tenderness," and "he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror, despair," because he did not know either her name or surname. Love, which the lieutenant realized too late, almost destroys him, he is ready to die for another day spent with her. But we are convinced that in fact love is a blessing, despite the fact that it breaks off so quickly, we understand how strong and comprehensive this feeling is. In the short story "Clean Monday", so beloved by the author, we are told about the hero's unrequited love for the mysterious heroine. She is not interested in and even rejects many things accepted in their circle, her complex nature haunts the hero. The heroine's aloofness (“she doesn't need anything: neither flowers, nor books, nor dinners, nor theaters, nor dinners outside the city ...”) is explained on Forgiveness Sunday, when the characters go together to the cemetery. We learn about her passion for antiquity, Kremlin cathedrals and monasteries. The heroine tries to find meaning and support in the world around her, but does not find it, even the love of the hero does not bring her happiness. The meaning of the name is that the heroine, not finding beauty and spirituality in the modern world, is cleansed of her previous life and goes to a monastery, where, as she thinks, she will be happy. The protagonist of the third story, Vitaly Meshchersky, turns out to be himself guilty of a love tragedy that broke out between him, his cousin Sonya and her friend Natalie. The student cannot decide whether to prefer "passionate bodily intoxication" for Sonya or a sincere and sublime feeling for Natalie. Departure from choice ends in a tragic ending. The author shows us that Vitaly's feeling for Sonya is feigned, and love for Natalie is true, proves her superiority. In stories about love, I. A. Bunin argues that love is a high and beautiful feeling, and a person who is able to love is highly moral. Despite the fact that love brings not only joy and happiness, but also grief, suffering is a great feeling. And I completely agree with this. Option 5 The theme of love occupies almost the main place in Bunin's work. This theme allows the writer to correlate what is happening in the soul of a person with the phenomena of external life, with the requirements of a society that is based on the relationship of purchase and sale and in which wild and dark instincts sometimes reign. Bunin was one of the first in Russian literature to speak not only about the spiritual, but also about the bodily side of love, touching with extraordinary tact the most intimate, intimate aspects of human relationships. Bunin was the first to dare to say that bodily passion does not necessarily follow a spiritual impulse, which happens in life and vice versa (as happened with the heroes of the story “Sunstroke”). And no matter what plot moves the writer chooses, love in his works is always a great joy and a great disappointment, a deep and insoluble mystery, it is both spring and autumn in a person’s life. Over the years, Bunin spoke about love with varying degrees of frankness. In his early prose, the characters are young, open and natural. In such stories as "In August", "In Autumn", "Dawn All Night", everything is extremely simple, brief and significant. The feelings that the characters experience are ambiguous, colored with halftones. And although Bunin talks about people who are alien to us in appearance, life, relationships, we immediately recognize and understand in a new way our own premonitions of happiness, expectations of deep spiritual turns. The rapprochement of Bunin's heroes rarely achieves harmony, more often it disappears as soon as it has arisen. But the thirst for love burns in their souls. A sad farewell to his beloved ends with dreams (“In August”): “Through tears I looked into the distance, and somewhere I dreamed of sultry southern cities, a blue steppe evening and the image of some woman who merged with the girl I loved ...” . The date is remembered because it testifies to a touch of a genuine feeling: “Whether she was better than the others whom I loved, I don’t know, but that night she was incomparable” (“Autumn”). And in the story “Dawn all night” it is said about the premonition of love, about the tenderness that a young girl is ready to pour out on her future chosen one. At the same time, youth tends not only to get carried away, but also quickly disappointed. Bunin shows us this painful for many gap between dreams and reality. After a night in the garden, full of nightingale whistling and spring trembling, young Tata suddenly hears in her sleep how her fiancé shoots jackdaws, and realizes that she does not love this rude and mundane man at all. Nevertheless, in most of Bunin's early stories, the desire for beauty and purity remains the main, genuine movement of the characters' souls. In the 1920s, already in exile, Bunin wrote about love, as if looking back into the past, peering into the departed Russia and those people who are no longer there. This is how we perceive the story "Mitya's Love" (1924). Here Bunin consistently shows how the spiritual formation of the hero takes place, leads him from love to collapse. In the story, life and love are closely intertwined. Mitya's love for Katya, his hopes, jealousy, vague forebodings seem to be covered with a special sadness. Katya, dreaming of an artistic career, spun in the fake life of the capital and cheated on Mitya. His torment, from which he could not save the connection with another woman - the beautiful but down to earth Alenka, led Mitya to commit suicide. Mitin's insecurity, openness, unpreparedness to face harsh reality, inability to suffer make us feel more acutely the inevitability and inadmissibility of what happened. In a number of Bunin's stories about love, a love triangle is described: husband - wife - lover (“Ida”, “Caucasus”, “The most beautiful sun”). In these stories, an atmosphere of inviolability of the established order reigns. Marriage is an insurmountable barrier to achieving happiness. And often what is given to one is ruthlessly taken away from another. In the story “Caucasus”, a woman leaves with her lover, knowing for sure that from the moment the train leaves, hours of despair begin for her husband, that he will not stand it and rush after her. He is really looking for her, and not having found her, he guesses about the betrayal and shoots himself. Already here, the motif of love as a “sunstroke” appears, which has become a special, ringing note of the “Dark Alleys” cycle. With the prose of the 1920s and 1930s, the stories of the “Dark Alleys” cycle are brought together by the motif of memories of youth and homeland. All or almost all stories are in the past tense. The author seems to be trying to penetrate into the depths of the subconscious of the characters. In most stories, the author describes bodily pleasures, beautiful and poetic, born of genuine passion. Even if the first sensual impulse seems frivolous, as in the story “Sunstroke”, it still leads to tenderness and self-forgetfulness, and then to true love. This is exactly what happens with the heroes of the stories “Dark Alleys”, “Late Hour”, “Rusya”, “Tanya”, “Business Cards”, “In a Familiar Street”. The writer writes about lonely people and ordinary lives. That is why the past, overshadowed by young, strong feelings, is drawn as a truly high point, merges with the sounds, smells, colors of nature. As if nature itself leads to the spiritual and physical rapprochement of people who love each other. And nature itself leads them to inevitable separation, and sometimes to death. The skill of describing everyday details, as well as a sensual description of love, is inherent in all the stories of the cycle, but the story “Clean Monday” written in 1944 appears not just as a story about the great mystery of love and a mysterious female soul, but as a kind of cryptogram. Too much in the psychological line of the story and in its landscape and everyday details seems like a ciphered revelation. Accuracy and abundance of details are not just signs of the times, not just nostalgia for forever lost Moscow, but the opposition of East and West in the soul and appearance of the heroine, leaving love and life for a monastery. Bunin's heroes greedily catch moments of happiness, grieve if it passes by, lament if the thread that connects them with their loved one breaks. But at the same time, they are never able to fight fate for happiness, to win an ordinary worldly battle. All stories are stories of escape from life, even for a brief moment, even for one evening. Bunin's heroes are selfish and unconsciously cynical, but still lose the most precious thing - their beloved. And they can only remember the life they had to give up. Therefore, Bunin's love theme is always permeated with the bitterness of loss, parting, death. All love stories end tragically, even if the characters survive. After all, at the same time they lose the best, valuable part of the soul, lose the meaning of existence and find themselves alone. The fate of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was both happy and tragic. He reached unsurpassed heights in his art, the first among Russian writers to receive the Nobel Prize, was recognized as an outstanding master of the word. But for thirty years Bunin lived in a foreign land, with unquenched longing for his homeland and constant spiritual closeness with her. From these experiences was born the greatest artistic value cycle of stories, which was released in 1943 in New York in a truncated composition. The next edition of this cycle took place in Paris in 1946. It included thirty-eight stories. This collection differed from the coverage of love in Soviet literature. The collection is named after the title of one of the stories included in it. Bunin recalled how this story was written: “I reread Ogaryov’s poems and settled on a famous poem: It's been a wonderful spring! They were sitting on the beach She was in her prime, His mustache was barely black... All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, There was an alley of dark lindens ... Then, for some reason, it seemed like how this story begins - autumn, bad weather, a high road, a tarantass, in it an old military man. The rest just sort of fell into place." This is how the idea and the name of the work appeared. The hero of the story "Dark Alleys", while still a young landowner, seduced the peasant woman Nadezhda. And then his life took its course. And now, after many years, he, already being a military man in high ranks, finds himself passing through those places where he loved in his youth. In the hostess of the visiting hut, he recognizes Nadezhda, who has aged like himself, but is still a beautiful woman. The meeting of former lovers is the plot outline of the work. Bunin shows himself to be a true connoisseur of the human soul, he subtly conveys the inner experiences of the characters. Their brief conversation contains more emotional than factual information. Interesting difference in the behavior of the characters. Nikolai Alekseevich is an old military man, he is already under sixty, and he blushes like a delinquent young man in front of this woman: “He blushed to tears.” And Hope? She is calm and gloomy, her every word reeks of bitterness and pain, she seems to pass judgment on her long-standing offender: “What God gives to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Everyone passes youth, but love is another matter”, “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten”. Although, as it turns out later, life has already punished the old man: he was never happy in life after he abandoned Nadezhda ... And what a name she has - Nadezhda! It is interesting that this woman still loves her former master: “No matter how much time passed, she lived alone. She knew that you were gone for a long time, that for you it was as if nothing had happened, but ... ”But he does not believe her, because he does not love himself, and he hardly did. And yet, the hero of Bunin's story has a sensual memory of what was once felt, felt. He recalls youth, unique moments of happiness. The heroine carried her love for him through her whole life, did not marry and could not forgive that her beloved neglected her, she remained unhappy. And the hero was also unhappy. Here is what Nikolai Alekseevich says in his defense to Nadezhda: “I have never been happy in my life, please don’t think. I'm sorry that maybe I offend your vanity, but I'll tell you frankly - I loved my wife without a memory. And she changed, left me even more insultingly than I did you. And now the heroine is avenged ... Thus, Bunin's love does not go into the family channel, is not resolved by a happy marriage. Bunin deprives his heroes of eternal happiness, deprives them because they get used to it, and the habit leads to the loss of passion. Love out of habit cannot be better than lightning-fast love, but sincere. So for the hero of the story “Dark Alleys”, despite the short duration, the experienced feelings remain eternal: they are eternal in the memory of the hero precisely because life is fleeting. And if it were not for this chance meeting at the inn at the end of the day and youth, the long-standing love for his former serf would not have been overshadowed by anything and would have shone with a marvelous lamp. That is why the old man utters the words with such bitterness: “Be healthy, dear friend. I think that I have lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life. The theme of love in Bunin is a cross-cutting motif that permeates all of his work, thus linking the Russian and emigrant periods. It allows him to correlate deep spiritual experiences with the phenomena of external life, and also to penetrate the secrets of the human soul, based on the influence of objective reality on a person. The recognized master of the artistic word Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in works about love appears before us as a psychologist who knows how to amazingly subtly convey the state of the soul wounded by this wonderful feeling. Possessing a rare talent, the ability to love, the writer professes his own philosophy of love in his work. Reading the stories of I.A. Bunin, we notice that the author's love does not exist in marriage and family, and he is not attracted to quiet family happiness. For him, it is not so much long and cloudless love that is important, but short-term, like lightning that flared up in the darkness and went out, but left its deep imprint in the soul. Love in the writer's stories is a tragedy, madness, a catastrophe, a great feeling that can elevate or destroy a person. A sudden “flash” of love can happen to anyone and at any moment. Love is passion. We come to this conclusion after getting acquainted with the story, the heroes of which were suddenly overtaken by love. Love, which has no past and future - there is only the present, only "now". A woman and a man do not even have names - just She and He. For the author (and the reader) it does not matter at all. Without talking about the experiences of the heroine after leaving, the writer describes in detail the state of mind of the hero. An accidental meeting with a “charming, light, little creature”, an unexpected strong feeling, an absurd parting ... And then misunderstanding and mental anguish ... “... a completely new feeling ... that didn’t exist at all when they were together”, appeared in the soul of the lieutenant after that , as he at first thought, "a funny acquaintance." What some people learn in years, he happened to experience in one day. Perhaps this day turned out to be one of the most difficult in the life of the protagonist. The enormous power of love, like a sunstroke, suddenly “struck” him. The lieutenant leaves the city as if he were a different person. There is no longer any passion, no hatred, no love in his soul, but, having experienced confusion, horror, despair, he now feels "ten years older." "Truly magical" moments of life gives a person love, warms the soul with bright memories. But love also has its own "dark alleys", so it often dooms Bunin's heroes to suffering, does not lead them to happiness. The happiness of the main character of the short story "Dark Alleys" did not take place. Hope's boundless love for her master forever made her lonely. A woman who has preserved her former beauty even now remembers the past, lives with memories of it. The love in her soul did not go out for many years. “Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter,” she admits indifferently to Nikolai Alekseevich, who left her thirty years ago. “There was ... nothing more expensive ... in the world at that time, and then” for Nadezhda, therefore she “never could” forgive her offender. Despite the fact that it is difficult for the indecisive and conceited Nikolai Alekseevich, prone to class prejudices, to imagine Nadezhda, the keeper of the inn, as his wife, he becomes sad after an unexpected meeting with her. The sixty-year-old military man understands that this once slender young beauty gave him the best moments of his life. Probably, for the first time he thought about happiness, about responsibility for committed actions. The life that Nikolai Alekseevich abandoned long ago will now remain only in his memories. Love at I.A. Bunin is that ghostly happiness that a person strives for, but, unfortunately, very often misses. In it, as in life, light and dark principles always oppose. But the author, who gave us wonderful works about love, was convinced: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not shared." "The Caucasus" is included in the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys", in which I. A. Bunin, with his inherent writing skills, briefly describes the movements of human souls, hardships and individual aspirations, focusing on the most mysterious and beautiful feeling - love. The protagonist of the story "Caucasus" comes to Moscow and lives from date to date with the object of his adoration. He appreciates every moment of her appearance, a thin sketch of the portrait of the heroine says a lot - she is pale, excited and beautiful. Bunin focuses on the feelings and experiences of the characters, without giving a detailed description of their appearance. The lovers are united by a mutual feeling and a risky plan - to leave Moscow and escape to the Caucasus. The marriage of the heroine burdens and disturbs the hearts of young people. The love triangle is a frequent theme in fiction. Such situations clearly show how strong feelings tear a person out of his usual life, bearing irreparable consequences. The heroine's husband is an ambitious officer, he is jealous of his wife and follows her every step. The author does not pay attention to the inner world of the military, but the human tragedy arises immediately - the spouse in jealousy and suspicion expresses the same love, which has acquired a painful and destructive character. Strong feelings cannot be boxed in, they cannot be normalized by following any rules. Love manifests itself in a person as an unbridled desire, comparable to the craving for life. Love makes a revolution in the hearts of people, it makes a person go beyond the ordinary, which is what the main characters of the work do. Despite the risk and danger, they still leave the capital to the south. The happiness of one is the misfortune of another. The officer is looking for his wife in Gelendzhik, in Sochi, in Gagra. He understands that his beloved is gone for him forever. He cannot accept it, he finds the only way out - suicide. Love is unpredictable and indomitable. Bunin in his work clearly shows the desire of people to put their spiritual aspirations into practice. For some, this is happiness and newfound harmony, for others it is a tragedy and the end of existence. Bunin does not show the further fate of the main characters, their feelings may pass, one of them may be in the place of the deceased officer. But such is the mysterious nature of love, one of the strongest feelings of man. Every love is happiness even if it is not divided. Many works, and above all his stories about love, reveal to us his subtle and observant soul as a writer-artist, writer-psychologist, writer-lyricist. The cycle "Dark Alleys" is a collection of short stories, life sketches, the main theme of which is a high and bright human feeling. And here Bunin appears as a bold innovator, how frank, naturalistically distinct and at the same time light, transparent, elusive love is in these stories. All Bunin's stories about love have a unique plot, original lyrical characters. But they are all united by a common “core”: the suddenness of love insight, the passion and short duration of the relationship, the tragic outcome. This is because true love, as the writer believed, is doomed to be only a flash and does not tolerate extension. As the highest gift of fate, it is said about love in the story "Sunstroke". But here, too, the tragedy of high feeling is aggravated precisely by the fact that it is mutual and too beautiful to last without becoming commonplace. Surprisingly, despite the unhappy endings of the stories, Bunin's love is almost always perfect, harmonious, mutual, neither quarrels nor the prose of life can spoil or undermine it. Maybe that's why it's so short? After all, these moments of relationships that elevate both a man and a woman do not pass without a trace, they remain in memory as landmarks and reliable light beacons to which people return throughout their lives. The dissimilarity of the "love plots" of Bunin's stories helps us to understand the diversity, individuality, uniqueness of each love story: happy or unhappy, mutual or unrequited, uplifting or destroying ... Throughout life, a person can more than once touch this secret that arises deep in the heart and turns , painting the whole world in bright colors - and each time his love will be new, fresh, unlike the past ... I think that is exactly what I. A. Bunin wanted to convey in his stories."Love in Bunin's stories" - essay
The theme of love in the work of Bunin
The theme of love in the story of I. A. Bunin "Dark alleys"
The theme of love in the stories of I.A. Bunin "Sunstroke"
Love in Bunin's story "The Caucasus"
Love in the works of I. A. Bunin (briefly)
