Composition: Bunin. I.A. - Miscellaneous - "Philosophical problems of one of the works of Russian literature of the twentieth century. (The meaning of life in I. Bunin's story "The Gentleman from San Francisco")"
"Philosophical problems of one of the works of Russian literature of the twentieth century. (The meaning of life in I. Bunin's story "The Gentleman from San Francisco")"
Philosophical problems of one of the works of Russian literature of the twentieth century.
(The meaning of life in I. Bunin's story "The Gentleman from San Francisco")
Though we are mortal, we must
do not submit to corruptible things,
but, as far as possible, rise
to immortality and live according to
with what is best in us. Aristotle.
One thousand nine hundred and fifteen. The First World War is in full swing. Its fire is inflated by no means without the participation of the "choice society". “The Brians and Milyukovs say,” writes I. Bunin, “but we mean absolutely nothing. They are preparing millions of people for slaughter, and we can only be indignant, nothing more. Ancient slavery? Now slavery is such, in comparison with which ancient slavery is a mere trifle. This is the civilized slavery Bunin showed in his story "The Man from San Francisco". The plot of the story is simple. The hero of the story, a wealthy American businessman whose name is not even mentioned, having achieved high material well-being, decides to arrange a long trip for his family. But all plans are destroyed by one unforeseen circumstance - the death of the hero.
The main idea is not just a story about an American businessman. It is larger. It would seem that the main character is dying - the plot potential has been exhausted. But the boundaries of the story are much wider than the boundaries of history. The reader is presented with a panorama of the Gulf of Naples, a sketch of a street market, images of the boatman Lorenz and the Abruzzi mountaineers, and, finally, the image of Atlantis, a steamer returning a dead master to America.
"Atlantis" closes the compositional circle of the story. If at the beginning the gentleman himself has fun on the ship - communicates with rich people, watches the bright times of "lovers", then at the end the same thing happens with other passengers, and "deep below them, at the bottom of the dark hold," stands the coffin of the gentleman, who once planned to have fun for two whole years. The coffin in the hold is a kind of verdict on the mindlessly rejoicing society, a reminder that rich people are by no means omnipotent and do not always determine their fate. Wealth is by no means a guarantee of happiness. The latter is in completely different human dimensions.
The independence of a person from his social status or wealth is the main theme of the work.
In addition, the theme of happiness is revealed in the story. True, the master and his family have a peculiar idea of him. For the hero, happiness is to sit and look at the frescoes next to the billionaire, for his daughter - to marry the prince. Love, like other feelings in the "choice society", is artificial. The proof of this is the pair specially hired to play the lovers.
Violation of the master's plans is already happening in Neapal. Not subject to the master and therefore unpredictably capricious nature makes him go to Capri.
The author describes in great detail the order of existence of the master. Three times in the story the plot movement almost stops, canceled first by a methodical presentation of the cruise itinerary, then by a measured account of the “daily routine” on the Atlantis, and finally by a careful description of the order established in the Neopolitan hotel. The "graphs" and "points" of the master's existence are mechanically lined: "first", "second", "third"; "at eleven", "at five", "on the clock network". In general, the regimented way of life of an American and his companions sets a monotonous rhythm for describing the entire social world, makes the reader see the artificiality, mechanicalness and monotony of the life of a "choice society".
The unpredictable elements of true life become an expressive contrast to the punctual world of the master. Against the backdrop of a clear routine for the existence of the hero, his death seems "illogical". But even more “illogical” and unpredictable are the actions of the hotel employees and the “choice society”. They are clearly unhappy that the death of their master interrupted their fun. The owner of the hotel feels guilty for not being able to hide what happened. With the death of a hero, his power over people is lost. At the request of the wife of a gentleman from San Francisco to find a coffin, the owner of the hotel cynically offers a box of soda water, in which the body is delivered to the steamer.
It turns out that everything he has accumulated has no meaning in the face of that eternal law to which everyone is subject without exception. It is obvious that the meaning of life is not in the acquisition of wealth, but in something that cannot be valued in money - worldly wisdom, kindness, spirituality.
While working on the story, the writer makes the following entry in his diary: “I cried while writing the end.” Bunin does not at all mourn his hero, but is in pain from the deadly life of the rich, who decide the fate of ordinary people.
An essay on the topic "Philosophical problems of Bunin's works" is often given to high school students at home. His amazing stories really make the soul tremble with delight, discover the unknown facets of his own being.
The heroes of I. A. Bunin balance at the junction of the past and the present. They cannot completely cross the existing border, because they are weighed down by resentment, mental pain or tender romantic feelings. Fatal discrepancies are often shown: one character loves, and for another, the connection means absolutely nothing. What are the features of the philosophical problems of Bunin's works? Let's try to understand the examples of specific texts.
"Rusya"
A story that makes you think about a lot, helps to rethink the harsh realities of everyday life. The protagonist indulges in memories of his first love, and these thoughts significantly affect his mood. He tries to keep quivering thoughts from his heart, not hoping that his wife will understand. These feelings ruthlessly disturb his soul. Questions that are raised in the work:
- Why do people lose their best dreams with age? Where does youth go, the ability to look at things with delight, imbued with their selfless integrity?
- Why does the heart clench when such memories pop up?
- Why didn't the main character fight for his love? Was it cowardice on his part?
- Perhaps the memories of a former love simply refreshed his feelings, awakened dormant thoughts, excited his blood? And if the events turned out well and the characters lived together for many years, the magic could disappear.
The essay-reasoning “Philosophical problems of Bunin’s works” may include the following lines: the attractiveness of first love should be precisely in its unattainability. The irretrievability of the departed moment helps to idealize it.
"Dark alleys"
In the center of the story is the love of a woman, which she carried through thirty years. Meeting years later will only add to her suffering or will it be a release from years of attachment? Although this feeling makes her suffer, the heroine cherishes it like a rare treasure. Here the author emphasizes the idea that a person is not free to control his feelings, but is able to control his own conscience. In addition, after meeting the heroine, a man has a strong feeling that he has missed something really important in life.
The significance of experiences is shown at a high level. The philosophical problems of Bunin's works, one way or another, are aimed at finding individual truth. Each character has their own truth.
"Sunstroke"
The story tells of an unexpected love that pierced the lieutenant's heart. The drama lies in the fact that the main character was able to realize how much he needed this woman only after breaking up with her. His heartfelt dialogue with himself looks truly painful.
The character cannot accept the accomplished loss: he does not know her address or name. He tries to find solace in everyday affairs, but finds himself unable to concentrate on anything. Even the day before, this connection seemed to him a funny adventure, but now it has become an unbearable torment.
"Mowers"
The philosophical problems of Bunin's works are not limited to the theme of love. This text reflects the unity of the soul of the entire Russian people, its natural integrity. The protagonist gets to hay and is amazed at how self-sufficient ordinary workers can feel. How amazingly they relate to their work and are happy in its performance! There is a song that unites them all, makes them feel involved in what is happening.
"Clean Monday"
The story shows the love of a man for a young girl - a timid, tender feeling. He patiently waits for reciprocity for years, knowing full well that the answer may sound like a refusal. It seems that the girl is playing with him: she constantly calls for evenings, theatrical performances. The hero accompanies her everywhere, secretly hoping to win favor. In the finale, the true motives of the girl's behavior are revealed to the reader: she had fun in the end, tried to be filled with impressions, because she knew that this would not happen again in her life, the heroine goes to the monastery. The feelings of the man were unnecessary.
Thus, the philosophical problems of Bunin's works touch the most hidden corners of the reader's soul. His stories evoke ambivalent feelings: they make you regret the past and at the same time help you look to the future with hope. There is no hopelessness in these short stories, since a balance is struck between feelings and a wise attitude to the events described. The philosophical problems of the works of Bunin and Kuprin are in many respects similar, they have a common basis - the eternal search for truth and meaning.
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 declare 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 shot 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.
Composition "Philosophical problems of Bunin's works".
Ivan Bunin has established himself as a lyrical writer, who in his works raises questions of love with a sad outcome. But the lyrical author pays a lot of attention to philosophical problems. The topics that Bunin raises are relevant at all times. He talks about the meaning of life, about death, about patriotism, about loneliness.
The plot of a philosophical work
Bunin believed that man is only a small part of a larger plan. He often expressed sad thoughts that human existence is so short. Along with this, there is a problem of loneliness. The human soul is forced to suffer in this vast alien world. Best of all, the philosophy of Ivan Bunin is demonstrated by the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco". This is an instructive work that can completely change the worldview.
The main character didn't bother with a name. But the writer hints at his high position, using sarcasm. The goal of the master is wealth. He wants to acquire as much material wealth as possible. In this he equals the world leaders. Millionaires became his idols. It is in money that the protagonist sees the meaning of his existence. And when the goal is achieved, the man dies at the age of 58. All his life he dreamed of a carefree existence, and when this was achieved, fate struck back. No one regrets the death of a man. Everyone takes his departure calmly. Wife and daughter are not upset at all. Now they will become the owners of the wealth that the man saved. The writer claims that happiness is not in material values. Respect, love, health, friendship cannot be bought with money.
Moral of the story
Fate cannot be predicted. One moment you were in charge of life, and the next moment you were no longer there. And no one even remembered that there was such a person and aspired to something there. No one dismisses the importance of finance. Money helps to gain a certain freedom. But there are more important things in life. You need to try to leave your mark in history so that at least someone remembers you. Nobody is eternal. Some will live longer, some less. Therefore, it is necessary to act. Ivan Bunin in his work acts as a brilliant psychologist. He manages to accurately convey the spectrum of human emotions. Thanks to his philosophy, he gives answers to important questions, comes to a logical conclusion.
If you liked the essay on the topic "Philosophical problems of Bunin's works", then you may also like the following essays
Soloukhina O.V.
Recently, in literary criticism, especially in Western literature, the perception of a work outside the historical and literary context, outside the knowledge of the author's concept, relying only on one's own emotions while reading and free associations "about" has become "legalized".
With this approach to a work of art, each reading differs from the previous one to the same extent as the individuality of readers is unique and time is unique with its hierarchy of values. There is nothing objective left in the work, nothing that does not depend on the arbitrary interpretation of the reader, who has his own sympathies, moods, etc. There is no need to study the “contexts”, the author’s intention, realities, to restore the genealogy of the work. And this means nothing more than the rejection of cultural heritage - to live today and the blind ecstasy of this life.
In order for the meaning of the work not to be blurred, in order to preserve the historical and artistic value, it is necessary to try to get closer to the author's program of understanding, which, of course, exists in every work, but is recognized only with a conscious desire to read the work adequately to the intention of its creator. There is a direct connection between the author's concept and the reader's insight into the meaning of the text. Guidelines for readers, among other components, are knowledge about the foundations of the author's worldview, the moral and philosophical underlying basis that is hidden behind the artistic images of each great work. The spiritual search of the artist is dictated not by an external goal - to explore this or that subject, but by a natural predisposition to a certain field of thought. The reader should not disregard those aspects in the spiritual self-consciousness of the writer, which, at first glance, did not play a fundamental role, since everything, ultimately, is reflected in creativity.
Bunin the artist was shaped by Russian culture, folk art, classical literature, which he knew very well and which remained for him throughout his life a "criterion" of value. But the writer's primordially national vision of the world, a penetrating knowledge of Russian history, literature, and folklore were naturally comprehended with kindred attention to the philosophical and ethical systems of other peoples. A well-educated man, Bunin freely turned to the cultures of other countries - and these appeals left their mark on the works, influenced the creation of images, and suggested plots. A special role in the spiritual self-consciousness of the writer was played by the “organic, hereditary attraction to the East,” which was noted by Gorky. Despite the fact that researchers of creativity have repeatedly mentioned the influence of Eastern philosophical and religious systems, in particular Buddhism, on Bunin, this topic remains unexplored to this day. And at the same time, attention to Buddhism accompanied the artist throughout his life, giving peculiar tones to his worldview, the concept of life, death, and personal development. “As for Bunin,” wrote D.V. Ioannisyan, his passion for Buddhist philosophy is not a fleeting whim. He repeatedly returns to the development of the provisions of this doctrine that are closest to him in all subsequent years.
It is important to emphasize that the impetus for Bunin's "road to the East" was Russia, the desire to understand its essence, predict its future, and get in touch with the past. The fascination with Buddhism was secondary, it lay down in the soul already formed by the Russian cultural tradition, but without taking it into account, much in the writer's vision of the world will remain incomprehensible. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the philosophy of Buddhism influenced Bunin both in a positive direction (development of the theme of historical memory) and in a negative direction (the ideas of fatalism in explaining a person's act).
The question immediately arises: can a person with such a sensual perception of the world, one might say, with such a voluptuous attitude to every moment of life, adhere to a philosophy whose goal is to rid a person of suffering by extinguishing in himself all the desires of sensations that bind us to the world? Is there a contradiction in this? No, says Bunin. Moreover, in the story “Night” and in the religious-philosophical treatise “The Liberation of Tolstoy”, he develops a view that the truths expressed by the Buddha can be deeply experienced only by people of a special type - artists who carry within themselves “a heightened sense of all-being”, to whom Bunin included both Tolstoy and himself. The feeling of the world and oneself in it is so great that it overwhelms the personality, pushing the boundaries not only of the five senses, but also of one's own life. “Yes,” Bunin said, “I feel in myself all my ancestors ... And further, further I feel my connection with“ the beast, animals - and I have a scent, and eyes, and hearing - for everything - not just human, but internal - "animal". Therefore, "like an animal" I love life. All its manifestations - I am connected with it, with nature, with the earth, with everything that is in it, under it, above it.
The personality is so great that it cannot fit only in itself, it is possible for it to remember what was before birth, and memory torments with its secret - in fact, it is these feelings that pave the first bridge to Buddhism with its concept of the chain of births and deaths. Bunin perceived Buddhism as something long awaited by his consciousness, as a secretly cherished memory of the spiritual homeland. Therefore, it is more correct to speak not about the influence of Buddhism on his work, but about the meeting of the artist's independently formed individual views with some aspects of the teachings of Buddhism, perceived later.
In the novel The Life of Arseniev, Bunin shows how from the "origin of the days" every contact with the world resonates with Arseniev with a sense of the immensity of the knowledge given to him. The perception of life is so sharpened that one's own life becomes, as it were, small. Memory is boundlessly erased, tormented by vague memories of previous births. The writer endows his hero with a sense of belonging to the oceanic, tropical world," which he "knew already in childhood, looking at pictures with date palms": "In the Tambov field, under the Tambov sky, with such extraordinary power I remembered everything that I saw, what I lived once, in my former, immemorial existences, that later, in Egypt, in Nubia, in the tropics, I could only say to myself: yes, yes, all this is exactly as I first remembered thirty years ago! Much in Arseniev's perception can be called Buddhist - this is the absence of a sense of the beginning and end of life, and "memories" of the incorruptible previous rebirths; the feeling of a single stream (“there is no nature separate from us, every slightest movement of the air is the movement of our life”) and the deceitfulness of earthly desires (“the earth forever alluring and forever deceiving us”). So these feelings were longed for in the young Arseniev (and therefore, we can say, in Bunin), in order to be embodied in the painful search for an integral philosophical system already in the early stories.
Early Bunin is the way to yourself. His stories are quite large in volume, they contain an abundance of rhetorical constructions, philosophical questions are addressed directly to the reader. Bunin's movement "towards himself" can be defined as a movement from the "boredom of life" to its self-sufficient joy, from the perception of the world as given, settled by endless rapture with every moment of his stay on earth.
In the early stories, all the images that will be developed later are laid. At an early stage, the impossibility of reconciliation with death, the known mystery of life, in a word, the questions that torment the writer with their unsolvedness, are still universal in nature. But gradually the search for the writer expands, filled with the spirit of other philosophical systems, especially the Buddhist East.
In the story “Silence”, written in 1901, Eastern motifs of merging with the world and finding peace in this are developed: “It seems to me that someday I will merge with this eternal silence, at the threshold of which we stand, and that happiness is only in it. ". Finding peace and happiness in merging with the universal existence of the world is characteristic of Buddhism and other Eastern religions - Brahmaism, Hinduism. The words "eternal silence" most accurately convey the concept of this peace. Did Bunin himself realize that many of the tones of his worldview, characteristic, let’s say right away, not only of Buddhism, but also of other worldview systems, are a feeling of all his ancestors in himself, faith in the cycles of rebirth, a thirst for merging with the whole world, an understanding of the tragic dependence between love , desires and suffering, coincide with the ideas of the Buddha's sermons? Yes, of course, judging by his statements, numerous references to teaching texts, willing retellings of legends about the life of the Buddha. But the question arises: when did he consciously turn to Buddhism, what books did he read, is there any concrete confirmation of his interest?
Probably, the impetus for the conversion to Buddhism was the young Bunin's fascination with Tolstoy and Tolstoy, whose views were close to Indian philosophy. For the first time in Bunin's work, the words "Buddha - the teacher of mankind" are uttered by Tolstoyan Kamensky, the hero of the early story "At the Dacha" (1895). More than forty years later, in The Liberation of Tolstoy, Bunin will correlate his views on life, death, the main points of life with Tolstoy's "Buddhist" statements.
Not the last role was played by the general enthusiasm for the East, which gripped the creative intelligentsia at the turn of the century. In those years, books on the philosophies and religions of India were intensively translated (scientific works of Max Muller, G. Oldenberg), excerpts from the Upanishads, sayings of the Buddha and legends about his life were published. A whole galaxy of Russian Buddhist scholars appeared: F. Shcherbatskaya, S.F. Oldenburg, O.O. Rosenberg. In the works of A. Bely, A. Blok, D. Merezhkovsky, Vl. Solovyov, the question of the fate of Russia was decided depending on the victory of the East or West, which acted as moral and ethical categories that have symbolic meaning.
There were also social reasons for Bunin's conversion to Buddhism: they were in the social conditions of the early 20th century. Researchers have written more than once about the tragic moods of the Russian intelligentsia during the years of reaction after the 1905 revolution. Awareness of the imperfection of the existing, the need for a new state of affairs and the complete impossibility of somehow changing reality - is it not this spiritual state that part of the Russian intelligentsia can explain the attraction to mysticism, to Eastern religions, which preached deliverance from the hardships of life not through social changes, but by repayment in all aspirations, renunciation of all activity? These sentiments were of great concern to M. Gorky, who in the articles of 1905-1910 ardently called for getting rid of the "Asian pessimism" that had swept over the literary circles of Russia, and reviving "stubborn faith in the truth, eternal thirst for justice, revolutionary enthusiasm and boundless courage."
Bunin, as can be judged from the works and archival materials, perceived Buddhism from a specifically artistic point of view, accepting and using everything closest to his nature, worldview and without going into those most complex speculative positions, regarding which Buddhist scholars, according to F. Shcherbatsky, “ roam in the dark."
According to quotations, echoes in Bunin's works, one can determine that he liked to read most of all from the extensive Buddhist literature. These are books that Bunin did not part with: Sutta-Nipata, the most ancient part of the Buddhist canon, and G. Oldenberg's study “Buddha. His life, teachings and community.
The journey to Ceylon, which lasted from mid-December 1910 to mid-April 1911, played a decisive role in shaping the views of the artist. Recognizing oneself, meeting face to face with philosophy, to which he was predisposed from childhood, realizing its significance for his life - this is both the inner motive that moved Bunin to this journey, and the result of it.
In the State Oryol Museum I.S. Turgenev, where most of the Bunin archive is stored, there are dozens of books, guides, notebooks with translations made by V.N. Muromtseva-Bunina and the nephew of the writer N.A. Pusheshnikov. Bunin carefully prepared for each of her journeys. His travel notes about Ceylon - only a few yellowed sheets have survived - are vivid visual impressions, the desire to fix what he saw objectively, impartially. True, the writer cannot resist sending his nephew the lilac-blue petals of the sacred flower from the Buddha's altar with the request: "Save."
The study of geography, history and literature of the countries of the Buddhist East quickly responded. It was after the trip that Bunin began to freely, as a keepsake, quote the sayings of the Buddha. In 1912, he signed one of his photographs with the words of a slightly paraphrased Buddhist sutta: “May all beings be happy, both weak and strong, both visible and invisible, both born and not yet born.”
Bunin saw and experienced a lot during the trip. His letters from Ceylon were, as never before, "imbued with strength and passion." He will remember this trip for the rest of his life. Ceylon will now forever be included in his Works - this is the city of the "King of Kings", and "Night of the Renunciation", and "Gotami", and "Compatriot", and other stories. Five years later, in 1915, Bunin writes in his diary: “Quiet, warm day. I'm trying to sit down to write. Heart and head are silent, empty, lifeless. Sometimes complete despair. Is this the end of me as a writer? Only about Ceylon I want to write ... "
During a three-week voyage across the Indian Ocean to Ceylon, Bunin experienced rare moments of life when everything insignificant leaves and a person is close to comprehending the truth. Bunin's spiritual upheaval is similar to Tolstoy's Arzamas horror. But for Bunin, the comprehension of the truth did not happen through horror, longing and incredible fear, but through joyful communion.
The hero of the story "Compatriot" (1916) Zotov made a similar journey, and the shock that he experienced forever connected his life with the East: teaching of wisdom ... "And then he passionately begins to assure that" "all power is in what" he has already seen, felt the Indian tropics, perhaps thousands of years ago - through the eyes and soul of his infinitely ancient ancestor ... he I experienced extraordinary feelings on the way here ... "The spectacle of a new world, new skies opened before me, but it seemed to me ... that I had already seen them once" ... the feverish breath of our terrible Ancestral Homeland reached us.
It is known that there was a real prototype of Zotov and the hero of one of Veresaev's "Unfictional Stories" in life. But, according to V.N. Afanasiev, Bunin endowed Zotov with features "coming from the worldview inherent in the author himself." Romain Rolland, after reading the stories “Compatriot” and “Brothers”, writes to his correspondent: “I feel that his (Bunina’s) consciousness itself is permeated (against his own will) with the spirit of vast, incomprehensible Asia.”
In 1925-1926, Bunin returned to the lyric-philosophical short stories characteristic of the beginning of his journey, and created two stories inspired by a trip to Ceylon - “Many Waters” and “Night”, in which the system of his philosophical views, implemented into art form. "Many Waters" - a record of those thoughts and feelings that the hero-author experienced during a three-week voyage across the Indian Ocean - Bunin called one of his "best writings." All the hero's attention is focused on his inner state: "... it seemed that the soul of all mankind, the soul of millennia was with me and in me." The hero of the story “Many Waters” expands the boundaries of memory, he, comprehending that single life that “performs its mysterious wandering through our bodies”, joins eternal life, eternal time, or rather, even the absence of time, to All-Being.
The story "Night" is autobiographical. Bunin wrote about this in The Liberation of Tolstoy. This story is also significant in that it shows the constancy of Bunin's thoughts, the connection of his early works with later ones. The situations reproduced in the stories "Fog" (1901) and "Night" (1925) coincide in many details. But in the early story, Bunin posed questions that tormented him with a lack of answers, but now he is striving to fully understand his perception of life, his worldview. The action (the action of thought) in both stories takes place late at night, before dawn. Why is the state that gripped the heroes of stories possible only at night, in the early hours of the morning? The hero of "The Fog" does not know: "I do not understand the silent secrets of this night, just as I do not understand anything in life." The hero of "Night" answers: "What is night? The fact that the slave of time and space is free for a certain period of time, that his earthly assignment, his earthly name, rank has been removed from him, and what is prepared for him, if he is awake, is a great temptation: fruitless "reasoning", a fruitless striving for understanding, then there is a pure misunderstanding; misunderstanding neither of the world, nor of oneself surrounded by it, nor of one's own beginning, nor one's own end.
Not everyone, however, is given to touch the "great secret of the world." This requires a certain mental attitude - a feeling of sadness and loneliness - and a certain sensitivity of nature. The hero of the "Night" extremely sincerely expresses his idea of the world as an endless stream of being. We emphasize again that the actual author's sense of the world, as it were, finds support in Buddhist philosophy. “My birth is by no means my beginning,” writes Bunin, then quotes the words of the Buddha: “I remember that once, myriads of years ago, I was a kid.” And he continues: “And I myself experienced the same ... But it is so likely that my ancestors lived precisely in the Indian tropics. How could they, who so many times passed on to their descendants and finally passed on to me the almost exact shape of the ear, chin, brow ridges, how could they not pass on to their thinner, weightless flesh associated with India? There are those who are afraid of snakes, spiders "madly", that is, contrary to the mind, but this is the feeling of some former existence, a dark memory of, for example, that once the ancient ancestor of the fearful was constantly threatened with death from a cobra, scorpion, tarantula " And he adds already quite definitely: "My ancestor lived in India".
But after all, it was precisely about this, with the torment of bewilderment and disbelief in his own feelings, that Bunin's hero asked himself in his early stories: “Where was I until that time in which my quiet infancy was clouded?
Nowhere, I answer myself.
No. I do not believe this, just as I do not believe and will never believe in death, in annihilation. Better say: I don't know. And your ignorance is also a mystery” (“At the source of days”).
L-ra: Russian literature. - 1984. - No. 4. - S. 47-59.
