The main characters met by chance, in December. Listening to Andrei Bely's lecture, the young man laughed and twirled around so that the girl who happened to be next to him, who at first looked at him with some bewilderment, eventually also laughed. After that, every evening he went to the heroine’s apartment, which she rented only because beautiful view opening on the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.
In the evening, lovers went to dine in expensive restaurants, went to various concerts, visited theaters ... He did not know how this connection would end, and even tried not to allow such thoughts in himself, since she forever stopped talking about the future. So begins Bunin " Clean Monday". Summary story, published in 1944, we present to your attention.
Heroine
The heroine was incomprehensible and mysterious. The relationship of the lovers was uncertain and strange, so the young man was constantly in agonizing expectation, unresolved tension. However, every hour shared with the heroine was happiness for him.
The girl was alone in Moscow (her father, an enlightened man from a noble merchant family, was a widower and lived in Tver already at rest), studied at courses (simply because she liked history) and constantly learned the beginning of one melody - "Moonlight Sonata" , just the beginning. He gave her flowers, trendy books and chocolates, in return receiving only an absent-minded and indifferent "Thank you ...". It seemed that she was not interested in anything, there was no need, but she still chose certain flowers, read all the books presented, ate chocolate, dined with appetite.
Only expensive fur and clothes were her only obvious weakness, as Bunin notes ("Clean Monday"). The summary would be incomplete without a description of the characters of the boy and girl.
Two opposites
Both heroes were healthy, rich, young and very pretty, so much so that at concerts and in restaurants they were seen off with enthusiastic looks. He was from somewhere Penza province, handsome "Italian" southern beauty. The character of the hero was appropriate: cheerful, lively, always ready to smile. The beauty of the girl was somehow Persian, Indian, and how he was restless and talkative, she was so thoughtful and silent.
Hero's Doubt
Describing the summary of "Clean Monday", it is necessary to note the doubts that sometimes owned the hero. Even when he suddenly kissed her impulsively and passionately, she did not resist it, but was always silent. And when she felt that the hero was unable to cope with herself, she pulled away silently, went to her bedroom and dressed for the trip. The girl said she wasn't fit to be a wife. The young man thought: "We'll see!" - and never after that did not talk about marriage.
Sometimes, however, such a situation was unbearably painful for the gentleman. He began to think that this was not love. Having said this to the girl, the hero heard in response that no one really knows what love is. After that, all evening they again talked only about strangers, and the young man was again glad that he was simply there, hearing her voice, looking at the lips that he kissed an hour ago.
Forgiveness Sunday
We continue to describe the main events of the story that Bunin created ("Clean Monday"). Their summary is as follows. Two months of winter passed, January and February, and then Maslenitsa. The heroine dressed in all black on Forgiveness Sunday, saying that tomorrow was clean Monday, and gave her gentleman the idea to go to loneliness ... Then they walked for a long time Novodevichy cemetery, visited the graves of Chekhov and Ertel, searched for a long time and unsuccessfully for the house where Griboyedov lived, after which they went to Okhotny Ryad, in a tavern.
It was warm here and there were many cabbies. The heroine said that this Rus' was now preserved only somewhere in the northern monasteries, and that someday she would go to the most remote of them. Again he looked at her with concern and surprise: what is the matter with her today, again quirks? This question is asked by the hero, and Bunin with him.
Clean Monday
A summary of what happened next is as follows. The next day, the girl asked to be taken to the theater, to a skit, although she said that there was nothing more vulgar than him. Here she smoked incessantly and carefully looked at the actors, who grimace under the friendly laughter of the public. One of them looked at her with mock greed, and then, crouching to his hand, asked about her gentleman: "What kind of handsome man is this? I hate it." Leaving the skit at three o'clock in the morning, she half-jokingly, half-seriously said that the actor was, of course, right, "of course, handsome." Contrary to her custom, she let the carriage go that evening.
In the apartment, the heroine immediately went to the bedroom, took off her dress and, wearing only her shoes, combing her black hair with a comb, standing in front of the dressing table, said: “He said that I don’t think much about him. No, I thought.”
Parting
In the morning, the hero woke up, feeling her gaze on him. The girl said that she was leaving for Tver in the evening, and did not know for how long, she promised to write as soon as she arrived at the place.
Here are the further events of the story, their summary. Bunin I. A. continues as follows. The letter received two weeks later was laconic - a firm, albeit affectionate, request not to wait, not to make attempts to see and find the heroine. The girl said that she would remain a novice for a while, and then, perhaps, she would decide to become a nun. He disappeared for a long time in taverns, sinking more and more. Then he began to recover little by little - hopelessly, indifferently ...
Two years later
Almost 2 years have passed since that day. On such a quiet evening, the hero took a cab and headed for the Kremlin. Here he stood for a long time without praying in the Archangel Cathedral, after which he traveled a lot, like two years ago, through the dark streets and cried.
He looked at them, and suddenly one of the girls raised her head and looked at him in the darkness, as if seeing. What could she discern, how did she sense the youth's presence? He turned and silently walked out of the gate.
This is how Bunin I.A. ends his story. ("Clean Monday"). The summary of the chapters is interesting and intriguing.
To the question The main characters and their characteristics in Bunin's story "Clean Monday". given by the author Eurovision the best answer is The heroes of Bunin's story "Clean Monday" arouse sympathy in the reader, and the reader worries about them. We don't know their names, but that doesn't matter. The writer gives young people who have fallen in love with each other exact characteristics, and the narration is conducted on behalf of the hero, who tries to be objective, talking about his life drama. Both of them are beautiful: “Being a native of the Penza province, at that time I was handsome for some reason with southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one famous actor... ". His beloved was also of amazing beauty: “And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: - a swarthy amber face, magnificent and somewhat sinister in its thick black hair, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows, black, like velvet coal, eyes; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded by a dark fluff; when leaving, she most often put on a pomegranate velvet dress and the same shoes with gold clasps (and she went to courses as a modest student, had breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on the Arbat) ... "
The hero appears before us as a completely earthly person who has simple ideas about happiness with a loved one, he wants to create a family with her, to be always together. But the heroine, her inner world seems to us to be more complex. The hero himself speaks of this difference between them, noting the differences in outward behavior: “As far as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking something, everything seemed to delve into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often put it down and looked inquiringly in front of her ... ". That is, from the very beginning she looked strange, unusual, as if alien to all surrounding reality. She herself says that she feels not created for the joys of life familiar to many people: “No, I am not fit to be a wife. I’m not good, I’m not good…” Indeed, as the story develops, we see that she is quite sincere towards the hero, she sincerely loves him, but there is something in her that worries her, prevents her from making an unequivocal decision.
The girl amazes with her inconstancy in hobbies and interests, as if there are several people in her, she constantly follows different ways. The Beloved is unable to fully understand her, because he sees how incompatible things are united in her. So, at times she behaves like an ordinary girl of her age and circle: attends courses, goes for walks, to the theater, dine in restaurants. And it becomes incomprehensible why she studied at the courses, why she learned the beginning of the Moonlight Sonata, for which she hung a portrait of the barefoot Tolstoy over the sofa. When her lover asked her the question “why?”, She shrugged her shoulders: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? But in her heart the heroine is inwardly alien to all this. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners outside the city ...”
The heroine fully reveals herself when she suddenly offers to go to the cemetery, and together with the hero we learn that she often goes to the Kremlin cathedrals, monasteries, loves to read Russian chronicle tales. In her soul, a craving for the divine and for all the richness of the cosmos, hesitation and longing for the ideal coincided. It seems to her that only in monasteries and spiritual hymns has the “feeling of the homeland, its antiquity”, spirituality been preserved. But it cannot be said that the heroine does not try to find meaning in the world around her - it is no coincidence that the circle of her hobbies is so wide. Yes, she completely surrenders to the feeling of love, and she does not doubt her feelings, but she is absolutely sure that earthly happiness is not what she needs.
The girl leaves Moscow, explaining her departure as follows: “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then
The story "Clean Monday" is included in the collection "Dark Alleys", but in terms of depth of content it differs from other stories depicting numerous variations on the theme of love. “Clean Monday” is only outwardly a story about specific young people and their love, but in reality it is a story about the fate of Russia, as Bunin understood it, and about the Russian character, as the author imagined it. The drama of failed love precedes for the writer the drama of Russia during the First World War and revolutions.
The heroine of Clean Monday has a mysterious Russian character, who in the story has neither a name nor a life story. Only by individual hints can one understand that she is the daughter of a wealthy merchant, attends women's courses for some reason, without burdening herself too much with her studies. In it, as in all surrounding Moscow life, there is clearly a contradiction between two sides, two cultures - Western and Eastern, European and Asian. The heroine's father is a Tver merchant, and her grandmother is from Astrakhan, that is, Russian and some kind of eastern (Tatar, Turkish or Persian?) blood flows in her veins. Outwardly, she looks like an oriental beauty, whom the Moscow Art Theater actor Kachalov once called the Queen of Shamakhan. At the same time, a portrait of the barefoot Leo Tolstoy hangs in her room, she is interested in church life, ancient Russian chronicles, goes to the Old Believer cemetery. To the bewildered question of the hero, how does she know the details of the Old Believer funeral, the heroine meaningfully answers: “You don’t know me.” The strange female student seems to be looking for wholeness for herself, as if striving to combine in her soul spontaneous impulses and logical reasoning explained by the chaos of the East and the clarity of the West. In the Novodevichy Convent, in the monument on the grave of Chekhov, she noticed inharmonious fragmentation: “What a nasty mixture of Russian leaf-leaf style and Art Theater».
Duality, the interweaving of Western and Eastern in Russian life permeates the entire story. Here the hero looks at the Kremlin and sees the ancient cathedrals built Italian architects, and tips Kremlin towers similar to Kyrgyz hats. In the tavern, where the heroes ate pancakes on the last day of Shrovetide, the heroine noticed the icon of the Three-Handed Mother of God, similar to indian god Shiva. In the apartment she has a wide Turkish sofa and an expensive piano, on which she learns " moonlight sonata» Beethoven.
The narrator, who is trying to understand the strange female student, feels that there is some secret hidden in her; between Western and Eastern details associated with the image of the heroine, details from pre-Petrine Rus': historical heroes(Peresvet and Oslyabya), saints (Princess of Murom), signs of ancient piety. This, according to Bunin, is the essence of Russia and the Russian character, restrained, deep and ambiguous. The behavior of the heroine is only externally incomprehensible, but internally it is very meaningful. She plunges into the motley bohemian bustle and at the same time stubbornly ponders her life purpose, gradually becoming stronger in the thought of humility and service to God. She appears in the story already with a firm, but as yet unannounced decision to leave the world for a monastery. This act, unexpected for the hero and the reader, makes the image of a strange female student significant, towering over love drama underlying the plot.
The significance of the image of the heroine is also manifested in the fact that Bunin directly connects the search for the purpose of life for the student with the search for a path for Russia. The image of the heroine and the image of the country merge, as a result, a complex image-symbol is formed, in which individual and national-historical features are combined. The clash in the image of the heroine of western and eastern features helps to reveal the third (main) side of her appearance - nationally unique, unaffected by foreign influence.
Summing up, it should be noted that the story "Clean Monday" is not only a story fatal love unnamed narrator. This is also a description of the contradictory nature of a Russian person who, like an incomprehensible female student, is always looking for the truth and cannot find it. In addition, this is a discussion about the historical path of Russia: according to Bunin, she will be saved if the people manage to curb spontaneous (unbridled) passions and embark on the path of humility, as the heroine did, taking monastic vows and patriarchal values.
It is unlikely that the solution proposed by the writer can be considered saving for Russia, which has always been and remains a country of extremes, although for individual person turning to God and serving Him is quite possible. So, young, smart, a beautiful woman hiding from real life in the monastery, but Bunin already knows that even there she cannot be saved from the impending national tragedy - world war and revolution.
The story "Clean Monday" is included in the cycle " Dark alleys". This is a story about love, only about strange love, which the heroine refuses. Bunin here is not only trying to unravel great secret love, but also to tell about the mystery human destiny, about the complex nature of the Russian national character, about the spirit of Russian history itself, about faith in God and the incomprehensibility of the paths to him. The title of the story says that the events described take place on the eve of the most important Orthodox holiday, Clean Monday, coming after Forgiveness Sunday and being the first day of Great Lent and the end of Shrovetide. The title of the story is symbolic. So the author emphasizes a sharp change in the fate of the heroine: the transition from secular, worldly life to life associated with the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent.
The narration is given in the form of a story on behalf of the protagonist. It is interesting to note that again the main characters are unnamed, the author calls them "he" and "she". This is necessary in order to show that the feelings experienced by the characters are quite typical, experienced by many people and thus serve as a sign of a huge generalizing, universal meaning. The landscape described at the beginning of the story “Clean Monday” is already preparing us for the perception of some event, joyful and special.
The center of the composition of the work is the heroine, she. Main character tells in detail that they met by chance in December, at a lecture by Andrei Bely. She is rich, the daughter of an enlightened nobleman merchant family, lives alone in well-furnished, spacious rooms with smart flowers, with an expensive piano, with a Turkish sofa. There is something dual in her nature: on the one hand, luxury, the symbols of which in the story are a pomegranate-colored velvet dress, a Turkish sofa, mahogany furniture, on the other, a clear interest in ascetic life (a portrait of a barefoot Leo Tolstoy on the wall) . Her daily life passes in a series of secular entertainments and pleasures. However, the narrator notices that she does not seem to need all this. The protagonist unexpectedly notices her interest in Russian history, in knowledge (for some reason she studied at the courses).
Hero of Clean Monday. - an open, kind, but frankly frivolous person, subject to the power of chance. He can't understand his girlfriend. ‘The refined skill of the writer was reflected here in the fact that the language ordinary person he was able to express all the complex, serious, controversial nature heroines. It is thanks to the story of an ordinary hero about outstanding personality we feel the striking exclusivity of this female character.
The heroine combines seemingly incompatible things: a lively interest in the modern life of Moscow (here are skits of the Art Theater, and Chaliapin's concerts; and numerous restaurants) and at the same time an active rejection of this life; reading the most modern books and a deep interest in ancient Russian history, acquaintance with church rites. Here the writer reflects not just on the character of the heroine, but on the Russian. national character in general, in which, as in the architecture of the Moscow Kremlin, Russian cathedrals built by by Italian masters; western and eastern features are combined, the memory of many Generations lives on. Particularly bright oriental is highlighted by Bunin in the portrait of the heroine, in the image of her peculiar beauty: “And her beauty was some kind of Indian, Persian…”
She goes to the Rogozhskoye (Old Believer) cemetery where the color of pre-Petrine Rus' is so strong, to the Kremlin cathedrals, to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, reads ancient Russian monuments literature. So the image of the heroine of the story, by the will of the author, is associated with something soil - with the soul of Russia, with its history.
The climax of the story - the only closeness of the heroine with her beloved - takes place on the last night of Shrove Tuesday, and the decision to change her life and go to the monastery falls on Pure Monday. The denouement is an epilogue, when the hero remembers what happened two years later. And on such a quiet, sunny evening as that unforgettable one, he took a cab and went to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent, where by chance he recognized in one of the nuns his last love: and then one of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered with a white scarf, blocking the candle with her hand, fixed her eyes on the darkness, as if just at me. What could she See in the dark, how could she feel my presence?
In this story, Bunin's idea about the subconscious or conscious, but Hidden CONNECTIONS of each person with the past, the idea that the memory of centuries is alive in each person, the memory of generations, which moves, along with
the influence of modernity, his bad and good deeds, determines his complex emotions, motives, inclinations, memory. It is by this measure of the great historical past that the heroine measures modern life, precisely from a moral standpoint,
developed over the centuries in the Russian man, the author approaches the love of his heroes.
In his story Clean Monday, Bunin writes about the relationship of two young people, rich and beautiful. Even now we can imagine what such people are like. After all, even now there is secular communication, although entertainment has become a little different.
Perhaps, in our days, the hero could be some kind of creator of a profitable startup from the family of an official. Although such details are not significant, and the author himself does not concentrate on this, for the most part he outlines the characters. It is characteristic and not even personalities, because the main characters are given without names.
He is just him, some kind of "Sicilian", as another hero describes him, pointing to his characteristic southern appearance and inherent activity. Bunin really builds some contrast between the main characters and points to the main character with warm tones, southern accents, makes him mobile and active. The heroine, in turn, is more calm and in many ways the opposite, if he talks a lot, then she is silent, he is mobile, she is calm.
In addition, the author points to a rather significant detail. The hero seeks his chosen one, who does not allow him to get closer, so to speak, to the fullest. Perhaps in some way for his behavior it is precisely such impatience that is decisive and at the same time he always doubts love. main character and doubts whether such a relationship is love at all.
It seems to me that he is youthfully stupid and impatient, and this fact can be traced in the story. He measures love through bodily intimacy, he wants to assent when the heroine talks about the monastery, but he absolutely does not understand the seriousness of her intentions. At the same time, he often considers the heroine simpler than himself, but the heroine is simply not particularly proud and boasts of her own education and religiosity.
Did he have real feelings? There probably were, but not as deep as the heroine had. Still, for the most part, he is obsessed with passion and emotions, wants bodily reciprocity, shows his attitude purely outwardly, but forgets about the inner.
Nevertheless, one should not belittle this hero, since he is still very cultured and interesting. It's just that his character is different from the character of the heroine and, in fact, they complement each other. In his composition, Bunin, through his characters, draws something like the lunisolar symbolism or the generalized symbolism of male and female.
Some interesting essays
- Levonty in the story The horse with a pink mane Astafiev's image, characterization essay
Uncle Levonty - minor hero story, the father of Viti's friends. Arriving from another place in the village, he, an experienced sailor, works on logging: sawing, splitting and renting it to a factory near the village.
- Characteristics and image of Anna Odintsova in the novel Fathers and Sons essay
Anna Sergeevna Odintsova, wife of the wealthy elderly landowner Odintsov. She married quite early in order to rid herself of the snares of poverty. Soon Anna became a widow and took possession of the wealth of her deceased husband.
- Genre of the poem The Bronze Horseman by Pushkin, features and originality of style
IN general literature work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin called " Bronze Horseman is considered to be a poem. But many many writers disagree.
- Composition Description Paintings Alexander Nevsky Korina
Before us is a painting by the artist Pavel Korin called Alexander Nevsky. The painting depicts Prince Alexander Nevsky. He left a big mark in the history of medieval Rus'
- Analysis of the fairy tale Wild landowner Saltykov-Shchedrin essay
This one lives fairy tale character on everything ready, proud of himself and indulging his own whims. Only he does not know what makes a blissful existence. Peasants to whom I really owe everything
