True and imaginary values ​​in the image of I.A. Bunin. Life and work of Bunin I A

Hypermarket of knowledge >> Literature >> Literature Grade 11 >>I. A. Bunin. Biography. Creation

The role of the "small" homeland and noble traditions

"I come from the old noble family, who gave Russia many prominent figures, both in the field of state and in the field of art, where two poets of the beginning of the last century are especially famous: Anna Bunina and Vasily Zhukovsky ... - Bunin wrote in the preface to the French edition of the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco ”, - All my ancestors were connected with the people and with the land, they were landowners. My grandfathers and fathers were also landowners, who owned estates in central Russia, in that fertile substeppe, where the ancient Moscow tsars, in order to protect the state from the raids of the southern Tatars, created barriers from settlers from various Russian regions, where, thanks to this, the richest Russian language was formed. and where almost all the greatest Russian writers came from, led by Turgenev and Tolstoy. Pride in one's ancestry, noble life and culture, the specifics of the way of a whole social stratum, irretrievably washed away by time into the "Leteisk waters" - all this influenced the "life composition" of the writer, remained a complex amalgam in his work. “Everything I lived among in my adolescence was very Russian,” Bunin recalled. Bread, approaching the very rapids in summer; peasant songs and legends; stories of a father who participated - as if in antiquity - with his own militia in the Sevastopol defense of 1853-1855; "grandfather's books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines" - everything was Russia. The fading traditions of the "estate culture" in Bunin's work were especially pronounced. From here, from the memory of childhood and adolescence, Antonov apples (1900), the story Sukhodol (1911), the first chapters of the novel The Life of Arseniev (1930) came out.

The nature of social duality

Pride in their origin. sometimes demonstrative, got along with Bunin with opposite beginnings. “Almost from adolescence,” he admitted, “I was a“ freethinker ”, completely indifferent not only to my blue blood, but also to the complete loss of everything that was connected with it.” This was facilitated by the impressions of equal youth. In the autumn of 1881, Bunin entered the first grade of the gymnasium in Yelnya, finding himself “on bread” at the local hash. For a spoiled boy, the change of home environment to a twilight and strict life was a difficult test. Not only life became different, but the psychological and, if you like, aesthetic atmosphere that surrounded the young Bunin. If a real cult of Pushkin reigned at home. Zhukovsky, Lermontov, Polonsky, and it was emphasized that all these were “noble poets”, from the same “kvass” with Bunin, then other names sounded in the small Yelets house - Nikitina and Koltsoid. about which it was said: "our brother is a tradesman, our countryman." These impressions affected the heightened interest that Bunin showed all his life to writers "from the people", devoting to them (from Nikitin to the Yelets self-taught poet E. I. Nazarov) more than one heartfelt article.

The influence of the elder brother Yu. A. Bunin

Dissatisfaction with the Yelets gymnasium and its teachers, unconscious in the early years, resulted in Bunin by December 1885 in a firm desire to leave it and study independently. By this time, his elder brother Julius (1857-1921), a populist revolutionary, spent a year in prison, and then was sent under police supervision to his parents' estate. Yu. A. Bunin helped Ivan develop his rich, diverse inclinations and interests and treated him, according to the writer N. D. Teleshov, “Almost like a father. His influence on his younger brother was enormous. Love and friendship between the brothers were inseparable. Yu. A. Bunin recalled in a conversation with the wife of Ivan Alekseevich V. N. Muromtseva: “When I arrived from prison, I found Vanya still a completely undeveloped boy; but I immediately saw his giftedness, similar to that of his father. Less than a year later, he grew so mentally that I could already have conversations with him almost as an equal on many topics.

First experiences

Studying with his younger brother, Julius was convinced that he did not perceive the “abstract” at all, but he made great strides in the study of history, languages ​​and especially literature. He had already written several poems, but he did not dare to send them to print, when an event suddenly happened (which prompted him to dare. It was the death of the popular liberal democratic poet Nadson. So in No. 8 of Rodina magazine for 1887, Bunin's poem appeared "Over the grave of S. Ya. Nadson" Much later, in autobiographical novel Bunin's "Life of Arseniev" will dedicate ironic characteristics to Nadson and his youthful admiration for the "sufferer" poet who burned out from consumption, he will explain with abstract aesthetic considerations: the hero was struck by the romantic appearance of Nadson and the touchingness of his death. In fact, young Bunin wrote his poetic requiem with ardent sympathy and reverence. Another thing is that, according to his traditions, Nadson was still far away from the seventeen-year-old poet from the Yelets district. That this is so is proved by the next published Bunin's poem "The Village Beggar", written under the influence of I. S. Nikitin. Isn't this the key to the unexpected for the critics of the 1910s. Bunin's turn to peasant theme that from his youth he experienced a strong attraction to writers from the very thick of the people? The selection of names in the critical experiments of the young Bunin is also characteristic: Nikolai Uspensky, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Nikitin (article “In Memory of strong man", 1894).

Spiritual health, folk start

The last article convinces that Nikitin appears to Bunin not just major artist, sensitive to national specifics, but even purely human, with his personal qualities, the Voronezh poet (Countryman Bunin) served him at that time as an example to follow: “He is among those great ones who created a kind of Russian warehouse, its freshness, its great artistry in simplicity , her strong and simple language, her realism at its very best sense this word. All its brilliant representatives are people who are firmly connected with their country, with their land, receiving their power and strength from it. This assessment reflected the lively, non-bookish connection of the half-impoverished "barchuk" Bunin with village life, work, leisure, and peasant aesthetics. In fact, he was closer to the peasantry and understood it better than many populist urban intellectuals, one of whom, the publicist Skabichevsky, outraged him with his indifferent confession. that "in all my life I have not seen how rye grows, and I have not talked to a single peasant." But it would be a mistake to go to the other extreme and imagine the young Bunin as the heir to the legacy of Koltsov and Nikitin. And if we consider Bunin's work in the future decades, it becomes obvious that the most profound and powerful on him, on his "vital composition" was the impact of other names and other books.

Traditions of Russian classics

Already at the time of adolescence, Bunin had an adamant desire to become not just anyone, but "the second Pushkin and Lermontov." He felt in himself, as it were, a special “right” to them. In exile, in distant Grasse, he exclaimed with youthful ardor: “I should have written a“ novel ”about Pushkin! Can anyone else feel that way? This is our, mine, dear ... ” Bunin sees in Pushkin (as later in Leo Tolstoy) a part of Russia, alive and inseparable from it. Answering the question, what was the impact of Pushkin on him, Bunin reflected: “When did he enter me, when did I know and love him? But when did Russia enter me? When did I know and love her sky, air, sun, relatives, loved ones? After all, he is with me - and so especially - from the very beginning of my life. Bunin himself, who in his youth admired self-taught writers, enlightened by "unscientific nature" (which struck him with an illiterate inscription on Koltsov's grave in Voronezh), was not like them, although he remained "undersized", with four incomplete classes gymnasium. High culture left an imprint in his soul, organically, vitally assimilated in his youth by Pushkin, Lermontov, Zhukovsky, Gogol, Turgenev, Tolstoy, Polonsky, Fet. He studies Shakespeare, Goethe, Byron, and at the age of 25 creates his own famous translation Longfellow's poem "The Song of Hiawatha" Bunin is thoroughly acquainted with Ukrainian literature and folklore. interested in Polish poetry, especially Mickiewicz (“for the sake of Mickiewicz, I even studied Polish,” he says).

Wanderer

It seems that these searches left their mark on everything Bunin touched, determined the very rhythm, the structure of her life. He, a nobleman with a centuries-old pedigree, is an eternal wanderer who does not have his own corner. How he left his home at the age of nineteen (“with one cross on his chest,” according to his mother). so he hung out as a “guest” all his life: either in Orel, as a day laborer in the local Orlovsky Vestnik, then in Kharkov with his brother Julius, surrounded by Narodnaya Volya, then in Poltava among the Tolstoyans, then in Moscow and St. Petersburg - in hotels, then near Chekhov in Yalta, then with the middle brother Evgeny in Vasilyevsky, then with the secondary writer Fedorov in Odessa, then on Capri at Gorky, then in long, months-long journeys through the white snow (especially attracted to the origins of ancient civilizations or even to the mythical ancestral home of mankind). And how much and stubbornly he sought an answer to the thoughts that tormented him - in peasant labor and life, following his brother Eugene; in attempts to simplify the Tolstoyans; among populists under the influence of Yu. A. Bunin - “and everyone in radical circles” (according to own confession); later - in the philosophy of L. N. Tolstoy, in Buddhism and, of course, in Christian doctrine. Like a tumbleweed, Bunin wanders around Russia: he is a proofreader, statistician, librarian, owner of a bookshop. Finally, he is the author of an imperfect poetic book “Poems. 1887-1891", published in Orel, as well as unpretentious essays "Nefyodka", "Small-located", "Landowner Vorgolsky", etc. Only very rarely, for example, in little story"Fedoseevna" (1891), we will meet features that anticipate mature creativity writer.

New quality of prose

Bunin's movement as a prose writer from the mid-1890s to the early 1900s. manifests itself primarily in the expansion of horizons, in the transition from observations of the individual destinies of peasants or small estates to generalizing reflections. So, sketches of inert life, into which the "cast iron" burst, develop into thoughts about whole country and her "dull forest people" (" new road", 1901). Close to the grandiose and mysterious mysteries of nature, with the incessant hum of pines and the meek twinkling of stars, the life of a village person appears in a particularly sharp intersection of the features of pure nature, pristineness and pity, non-historicism ("Drevlyane, Tatar" - "Meliton", 1901; "a completely savage village" - "Pines", 1901). Bunin sees no way out of these contradictions. His sympathies are turned back, to the patriarchal past, when "the warehouse of the middle noble life... had a lot in common with the warehouse of a rich peasant life in its homeliness and rural old-world well-being. If "New Road" and "Pines" are thoughts about peasant Rus', then "Antonov apples" (from where this quote is given) is a reflection on the fate of the local nobility. However, for Bunin, "estate" and "hut" are not only not separated by social contradictions, but, on the contrary, live by close interests and concerns. An elegiac glow is discerned in Bunin's stories, especially in those that describe the fading landed nobility. On the ashes of the landowners' nests, where deaf nettles and burdock grow, among the cut down linden alleys and cherry orchards, the author's heart shrinks with sweet sadness: “But the estate, the estate! A whole poem of desolation!” - "poems of desolation" can be called "Antonov apples" (1900), and "Golden bottom" (1904), and "Epitaph" (1900).

Lyrics and poetry are the leading elements in Bunin's early creative work. It is she who, as it were, leads the prose behind her, paves the way for it. Prose gradually acquires a special laconicism, the condensation of the word. And "Pines", and "New Road", and "Antonov's Apples", and "Gold Bottom" amaze with accuracy of details, boldness of similitudes, artistic concentration. Let us only remember the young elder from the Antonov Apples, as important as the “Kholmogory cow”. And what an inflorescence of aromas in the story: “rye aroma of new straw and chaff”, “fragrant smoke of cherry branches”, “strong smell of mushroom dampness” and then others: “old mahogany furniture, dried lime blossom” and the main aroma that creates a whole the mood of this short story is "Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness." Prose acquired not only new vocabulary, compactness and balance. She obeyed the inner melody, the music. Bunin sought, in the words of Flaubert, "to give prose the rhythm of verse, leaving prose prose." It is noteworthy that he himself saw in his search for the rhythm of prose, as it were, a continuation of poetry. Bunin's confession is recorded in the diary of the writer's nephew N. A. Pusheshnikov: “I was probably born a poet after all. Turgenev was also a poet first of all... For him, the main thing in the story was the sound, and everything else - that's it. For me, the main thing is to find the sound. Once I found it, everything else comes naturally.”

Bunin the poet

As a poet, Bunin completed the classical tradition of 19th-century Russian verse. Pushkin, Tyutchev, Fet, Maikov, A. K. Tolstoy, Polonsky - their poetry left such a deep mark on his soul because it was, as it were, part of the world around him. The life of the parental home, entertainment: riding mummers at Christmas time, hunting, fairs, field work - all this, transforming, was reflected in the verses of the singers of the Russian estate. And of course, love. “In early youth,” recalled Bunin, “Polonsky captivated me in many ways, tormented me with those love dreams, images with which I was happy so early in my imaginary love.” True, in the conditions of the new time, such a problematic also carried a certain limitation, which Bunin himself confirmed with a dispassionate motto:

I am looking for in this world a combination of beautiful and eternal...

But Bunin still had an area subject to him - the world of nature, and above all Russian nature. “So to know and love nature, as Bunin knows how,” A. Blok wrote, “few people know how. Thanks to this love, the poet looks vigilantly and far away, and his colorful and sound impressions are rich.

If at the turn of the century for Bunin's poetry, landscape lyrics are most characteristic ("Before sunset, it came running ..."; "On the window, silver from hoarfrost ..."; "Autumn. Bowls of the forest. Moss of dry swamps ...", etc. .), then from the mid-900s. Bunin is increasingly turning to philosophical lyrics, continuing Tyutchev's problems.

I'm a man like God, I'm doomed
To know the longing of all countries and all times.
("Dog", 1909)

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born on October 22, 1870 in Voronezh into a noble family. His childhood and youth were spent in the impoverished estate of the Oryol province.

He spent his early childhood in a small family estate (the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province). Ten years old he was sent to the Yelets gymnasium, where he studied for four and a half years, was expelled (for non-payment of tuition fees) and returned to the village. systematic education future writer didn't get what he regretted all his life. True, the older brother Julius, who graduated with flying colors from the university, went through the entire gymnasium course with Vanya. They were engaged in languages, psychology, philosophy, social and natural sciences. It was Julius who had a great influence on the formation of Bunin's tastes and views.

An aristocrat in spirit, Bunin did not share his brother's passion for political radicalism. Julius, feeling the literary abilities of his younger brother, introduced him to Russian classical literature, advised him to write himself. Bunin enthusiastically read Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, and at the age of 16 he began to write poetry himself. In May 1887, Rodina magazine published the poem "The Beggar" by sixteen-year-old Vanya Bunin. Since that time, his more or less constant literary activity began, in which there was a place for both poetry and prose.

Since 1889, an independent life began - with a change of professions, with work both in provincial and metropolitan periodicals. Collaborating with the editorial office of the Orlovsky Vestnik newspaper, the young writer met the newspaper's proofreader Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. The young spouses, who lived unmarried (Pashchenko's parents were against marriage), subsequently moved to Poltava (1892) and began to serve as statisticians in the provincial government. In 1891, Bunin's first collection of poems, still very imitative, was published.

1895 was a turning point in the life of the writer. After Pashchenko agreed with Bunin's friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left the service and moved to Moscow, where he made literary acquaintances with L.N. Tolstoy, whose personality and philosophy had a strong influence on Bunin, with A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov.

Since 1895 Bunin has been living in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Literary recognition came to the writer after the publication of such stories as “On the Farm”, “News from the Motherland” and “At the End of the World”, dedicated to the famine of 1891, the cholera epidemic of 1892, the resettlement of peasants to Siberia, and impoverishment and the decline of the petty nobility. Bunin called his first collection of short stories At the End of the World (1897). In 1898, Bunin published the poetry collection Under the Open Air, as well as the translation of Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha, which was highly appreciated and awarded Pushkin Prize first degree.

In 1898 (some sources indicate 1896) he married Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni, a Greek woman, the daughter of a revolutionary and emigrant N.P. Click. Family life again turned out to be unsuccessful and in 1900 the couple divorced, and in 1905 their son Nikolai died.

On November 4, 1906, an event occurred in Bunin's personal life that had an important impact on his work. While in Moscow, he met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva, the niece of the same S.A. Muromtsev, who was the chairman of the First State Duma. And in April 1907, the writer and Muromtseva went on their "first long journey" together, visiting Egypt, Syria, and Palestine. This journey not only marked the beginning of their life together, but also gave birth to a whole cycle of Bunin's stories "The Shadow of a Bird" (1907 - 1911), in which he wrote about the "light-bearing countries" of the East, their ancient history and amazing culture.

In December 1911, in Capri, the writer finished autobiographical story Sukhodol, which, being published in Vestnik Evropy in April 1912, was a huge success with readers and critics. On October 27-29 of the same year, the entire Russian public solemnly celebrated the 25th anniversary of literary activity I.A. Bunin, and in 1915 in the St. Petersburg publishing house A.F. Marx got it out complete collection essays in six volumes. In 1912-1914. Bunin took a close part in the work of the "Book Publishing House of Writers in Moscow", and collections of his works were published in this publishing house one after another - "John Rydalets: stories and poems 1912-1913." (1913), "The Cup of Life: Stories 1913-1914." (1915), "The Gentleman from San Francisco: Works 1915-1916." (1916).

The First World War brought Bunin "a great spiritual disappointment." But it was precisely during this senseless world slaughter that the poet and writer especially acutely felt the meaning of the word, not so much journalistic as poetic. In January 1916 alone, he wrote fifteen poems: "Svyatogor and Ilya", "Land without history", "Eve", "The day will come - I will disappear ...", etc. In them, the author fearfully expects the collapse of the great Russian state. Bunin reacted sharply negatively to the revolutions of 1917 (February and October). The pitiful figures of the leaders of the Provisional Government, as he believed Great master, were able to lead Russia only to the abyss. This period was devoted to his diary - a pamphlet " cursed days", first published in Berlin (Sobr. soch., 1935).

In 1920, Bunin and his wife emigrated, settling in Paris and then moving to Grasse, a small town in southern France. About this period of their life (until 1941) can be read in the talented book by Galina Kuznetsova "Grasse Diary". A young writer, a student of Bunin, she lived in their house from 1927 to 1942, becoming the last very strong hobby of Ivan Alekseevich. Infinitely devoted to him, Vera Nikolaevna made this, perhaps the biggest sacrifice in her life, understanding the emotional needs of the writer (“Being in love is even more important for a poet than traveling,” Gumilyov used to say).

In exile, Bunin creates his own the best works: "Mitya's love" (1924), " Sunstroke”(1925), “The Case of the Cornet Elagin” (1925) and, finally, “The Life of Arseniev” (1927-1929, 1933). These works have become a new word in Bunin's work, and in Russian literature as a whole. And according to K. G. Paustovsky, “The Life of Arseniev” is not only the pinnacle work of Russian literature, but also “one of wonderful phenomena world literature.
In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize, as he believed, primarily for "The Life of Arseniev." When Bunin arrived in Stockholm to receive the Nobel Prize, in Sweden he was already recognized by sight. Bunin's photographs could be seen in every newspaper, in shop windows, on the cinema screen.

With the outbreak of World War II, in 1939, the Bunins settled in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette, where they spent the entire war. The writer closely followed the events in Russia, refusing any form of cooperation with the Nazi occupation authorities. He experienced the defeat of the Red Army on the eastern front very painfully, and then sincerely rejoiced at its victories.

In 1945, Bunin returned to Paris again. Bunin repeatedly expressed a desire to return to his homeland, calling the decree of the Soviet government of 1946 "On the restoration of citizenship of the USSR subjects of the former Russian Empire ..." called "a generous measure." However, the Zhdanov decree on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" (1946), which trampled on A. Akhmatova and M. Zoshchenko, forever turned the writer away from the intention to return to his homeland.

Although Bunin's work received wide international recognition, his life in a foreign land was not easy. Latest compilation short stories "Dark Alleys", written in the dark days of the Nazi occupation of France, went unnoticed. Until the end of his life, he had to defend his favorite book from the "Pharisees". In 1952, he wrote to F. A. Stepun, the author of one of the reviews on Bunin's works: "It is a pity that you wrote that in the "Dark Alleys" there is a certain excess of examining female charms ... What an "excess" there! I gave only a thousandth of how men of all tribes and peoples "examine" everywhere, always women from their ten years age up to 90 years.

At the end of his life, Bunin wrote a number of more stories, as well as the extremely caustic Memoirs (1950), in which Soviet culture is sharply criticized. A year after the appearance of this book, Bunin was elected the first honorary member of the Pen Club. representing writers in exile. IN last years Bunin also began work on the memoirs of Chekhov, which he was going to write back in 1904, immediately after the death of a friend. However, the literary portrait of Chekhov remained unfinished.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin died on the night of November 8, 1953 in the arms of his wife in dire poverty. In his memoirs, Bunin wrote: “I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my writing memories would not have been like that. , Stalin, Hitler ... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Only one flood fell to his lot ... "Bunin was buried in the cemetery of Sainte-Genevieve-des-Bois near Paris, in a crypt, in a zinc coffin.

In the course of this part of the lecture, students complete the task: in the form of a plan, note the main features of Bunin's work (present 2-3 options on the discussion board).

Teacher. Features of Bunin as an artist, the originality of his place in Russian realism of the 19th-20th centuries. deeply revealed in his works.

Against the backdrop of Russian modernism, Bunin's poetry and prose stand out as good old. They continue the eternal traditions of Russian classics and in their pure and strict outlines they give an example of nobility and beauty.

I. A. Bunin draws facts, and from them beauty itself, organically, is born.

One of the highest virtues of his poems and stories is the absence of a fundamental difference between them: they are two faces of the same essence.

Assistant work.

Student's message on question 3 on page 46 of the textbook: “What is the relationship between Bunin the prose writer and Bunin the poet? How does the metaphorical nature of poetry, its musicality and rhythm invade prose? Is it possible to say that Bunin's prose is plowed by the poet's plow ("Antonov apples")

Teacher. Bunin does not like "thousand-year Russian poverty", squalor and prolonged ruin of the Russian village, but the cross, but suffering, but "humble, native features" do not allow not to love.

It is impossible to read the pages of Sukhodol dedicated to the village without a deep shudder. Do not shield yourself from compassion by reading scary story about the starvation of Anisya, a peasant martyr. Her son did not feed her, left her to the mercy of fate; and, old, malnourished all her life, already dry from hunger for a long time, she died when nature was in bloom and “the rye was tall, swayed, shiny, like expensive marten fur.” Looking at all this, “Out of habit, Anisya rejoiced at the harvest, although for a long time there had been no benefit to her from the harvest.”

When you read about this in Bunin, you not only feel pity and your heart hurts, your conscience also hurts. How many such ungratefully forgotten people are today!

Reading Bunin, you understand that the village is not a plot for him, he is forever connected with Russia. Love for Russia with its "Courageous thousand-year-old slave poverty" is the writer's testament to a new generation.

Assistant work. Student's report on question 2 on page 45 of the textbook: “What are the origins of Bunin's social duality? What is the attraction to noble traditions and the writer's repulsion from them? How did Bunin perceive "the master and the peasant"? Consider Bunin's early prose from this position, for example, the story "Tanka".

Teacher. Captivates and enchants nature in the works of Bunin: it is not abstract, for its image the author selected images that are closely related to life and everyday life ordinary person. The author's blood connection with nature is emphasized by the richness of "colorful and auditory sensations" (A. Blok).

His nature is “a yellow tablecloth of stubble”, “clay carpets of mountains”, butterflies “in chintz motley dresses”, “silver strings” of telegraph pole wires on which tailbones sit - “completely black icons on music paper”.

The originality of the writer's style is determined by the special nature of the depiction.

In Bunin's prose, there is a very wide range of speech means that recreate various manifestations of sensory perception and are distinguished by a high degree of concentration in a relatively small space of text.

Sample Plan

1. Continues the traditions of Russian classics.

3. He does not like Russian poverty, but he is forever connected with Russia.

4. Nature enchants in Bunin's works.

5. The special nature of the pictorial:

a) a wide range of speech means;

b) high degree their concentration.

IV. Work with text(in groups).

On the cards - fragments of Bunin's texts. Students conduct an independent study of the text in order to determine the range of speech means used by the author.

I am a group.

Work with a fragment of the story "Antonov apples".

“... I remember early fine autumn. August was with warm rains, as if on purpose for hay - with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And "autumn and winter live well, if the water is calm and raining on Lawrence." Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled on the fields. This is also a good sign: “There are a lot of tenets in Indian summer - vigorous autumn” ... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning ... I remember a big, all golden, dried up and thinned garden, I remember maple alleys, the delicate aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so pure, as if it were not there at all, voices and the creak of carts are heard throughout the garden.

These are tarkhans, philistine gardeners hired peasants and pour apples to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look at the starry sky, smell the tar in fresh air and listen to the long wagon train carefully creaking in the dark along the high road.

Sample Answer

This fragment combined with the included folklore elements (folk omens, the name of a religious holiday) creates an image of Russia, the country to which the emigrated writer remained faithful.

Anaphoric repeat "remember", "remember" brings this prose text closer to poetry. There are a lot of repetitions in this fragment, which is typical for the writer's style. The motif of the starry night sky, so often found in lyric poems

The reader's perception is affected not only by the pictures drawn by Bunin the artist, but also by the smells conveyed by him (the scent of fallen leaves, the smell of tar, honey and Antonov apples) and sounds (the voices of people, the creak of carts, the creaking of the convoy along the road).

I am a group.

Work with a fragment of the story "Late hour".

“The bridge was so familiar, the same as if I had seen it yesterday: rudely ancient, humpbacked and as if not even stone, but some kind of petrified from time to time to eternal indestructibility - I thought as a high school student that he was still under Batu. However, only some traces of the city walls on the cliff under the cathedral and this bridge speak of the antiquity of the city. Everything else is old, provincial, nothing more. One thing was strange, one thing indicated that, after all, something had changed in the world since I was a boy, a young man: before the river was not navigable, but now it must have been deepened and cleared; the moon was to my left, quite far above the river, and in its shaky light and in the shimmering, quivering gleam of the water, the paddle steamer was white, which seemed empty - it was so silent - although all its portholes were lit, like motionless golden eyes and everything was reflected in the water with streaming golden pillars: the steamer stood exactly on them.

Sample Answer

In this sketch, speech means are diverse, recreating various manifestations of sensory perception.

Not only adjectives are used to denote color ( gold ), but also a verb with the meaning of color ( turned white ), which gives the text the same dynamism as the participles "in a shimmering, trembling light."

Bunin conveys the situation in perception specific person, as indicated by the use of the pronoun "the moon was on the left from me». This makes the sketch more realistic and puts the focus on internal state person, which is revealed in the pictures he perceives.

In the description of the old bridge, the association is interesting different parties perception in compound adjective rough ancient: rude points to external signs bridge, ancient adds a temporal connotation to the epithet.

I am a group

Work with a fragment of the story "Mowers".

“The charm was in that unconscious, but consanguineous relationship that was between them (the mowers) and us - and between them, us and this grain-growing field that surrounded us, this field air that they and we breathed from childhood, this evening time, these clouds in the already pinking west, this fresh, young forest full of honey grasses up to the waist, wild innumerable flowers and berries, which they constantly plucked and ate, and this high road, its expanse and reserved distance. The beauty was that we were all children of our homeland and were all together and we all felt good, calm and loving without a clear understanding of our feelings, because they are not needed, should not be understood when they are. And there was also a charm (already completely unaware of us then) that this homeland, this our common Home was - Russia, and that only her soul could sing as the mowers sang in this birch forest that responded to their every breath.

Sample Answer

The story "Mowers" uses an anaphoric construction (one-man command is typical for these sentences), which brings this prose work closer to poetry. This fragment is structured as a lyrical monologue. Lyrical expression is created by repetitions of different types: lexical repetition (words was, this), repetition of single-root words ( in kinship, grain-growing, homeland), repetitions of words with the general semantics "common" ( common, native, consanguineous, kinship, together).

The theme of Russia sounds, as in most of the works of I. A. Bunin, in the words “we are children of our homeland”, “our common home” the author confesses his love for this country, emphasizing the blood relationship with its people.

IN this text another feature characteristic of the writer's style is manifested: the author influences the reader's different sensory perceptions by describing the color ( rosy west), smell ( honey herbs), even connects the taste ( berries, which "every minute plucked and ate" scythes).

Homework:

1. Write a miniature "Impressions of the first meeting with Bunin."

2. Individual tasks:

a) question 4 on page 46 of the textbook: “What is the poeticization of loneliness in Bunin’s work of the 1900s connected with?” Consider those poems "Sonnet", "Loneliness";

b) a message on the topic “I. A. Bunin is the finest painter of nature.

Reflecting on the national pride that has been inherent in the Russian people for centuries, Bunin asks: “Where did she go later, when Russia perished? How did we not defend everything that we so proudly called Russian, in the strength and truth of which we seemed to be so sure? Persistently repeating the idea of ​​the “end” of Russia, which perished “before our eyes in such a magically short time”, he refutes his own gloomy conclusion with the whole artistic structure of the novel. A manor, a field expanse, an old Russian county town (where the high school student Alexei Arsenyev lives “on bread” with the tradesman Rostovtsev), days of Lenten study, inns, taverns, a circus, a city garden filled with the smell of flowers, which were simply called “tobacco” , Crimea, Kharkov, Orel, Poltava, Moscow, the Mother See - a huge mosaic picture of Russia is formed from a multitude of miniatures.

And what landscapes appear on the pages of Arseniev's Life, how the writer feels and responds to the slightest movement in the life of nature! According to Bunin, this is also a national trait: “Russian people are primitively natural influences". The descriptions of nature in the novel are such that many passages beg for an anthology, captivate by the sonority and nobility of the language. It is characteristic that Bunin's nature and man are inseparable: man is dissolved in nature.

"The Life of Arseniev" is dedicated to the journey of the soul a young hero with an unusually fresh and sharp perception of the world. The main thing in the novel is flourishing human personality, expanding it to those limits when it is able to absorb a huge amount of impressions. Before us is the confession of a great artist, his recreation with the greatest detail of the situation where his earliest creative impulses first appeared. Arsenyev has a heightened sensitivity to everything - “my vision was such that I saw all seven stars in the Pleiades, heard the whistle of a gopher in the evening field a mile away, got drunk, smelling the smell of a lily of the valley or an old book.”

novel innovation. The novel showed the author's desire to express himself as fully as possible, to assert himself in words, to convey, as Bunin himself said on another occasion, "something unusually simple and at the same time unusually complex, that deep, wonderful, inexpressible thing that is in life, in myself and what is never written properly in a book

gah." What is new in The Life of Arseniev is already manifested in the very genre of the work, which is built as a free lyric-philosophical monologue, where there is no familiar heroes, where it is even impossible to single out the plot in the usual sense of the word. Here the writer's long-standing desire to bypass, to overcome the established canons is reflected, all with the same goal of overcoming the end and death (in which, again, perhaps, an unconscious polemic with his own ideas about the "end" manifested itself).

A passionate and deep feeling permeates the last, fifth book of the novel - "Lika". It was based on the transformed experiences of Bunin himself, his youthful love for VV Pashchenko. In the novel, death and oblivion recede before the power of love, before the heightened feeling - of the hero and the author - of life.

At this time, in the perception of contemporaries, Bunin appears as a living classic. In 1933, he was the first among Russian writers to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. (Later it was received by B. Pasternak, A. Solzhe Nitsyn, M. Sholokhov and I. Brodsky.) The official communication said: “By the decision of the Swedish Academy of November 9, 1933 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Ivan Bunin for the strict artistic talent with which he recreated in literary prose typically Russian character. a significant role this event was played by the appearance of the first four books of Arseniev's Life. Bunin's philosophical treatise "The Liberation of Tolstoy" (1937), dedicated to his beloved writer, was a peculiar result of his moral and spiritual quest.

"Dark alleys". IN During the war years, Bunin completed the book of short stories "Dark Alleys", which was published in its entirety in 1946 in Paris. This is the only book in Russian literature in which "everything is about love." Thirty-eight novels of the collection give a great variety of unforgettable female types - Rusya, Antigone, Galya Ganskaya, Fields ("Madrid"), the heroine of "Clean Monday". In "Dark Alleys" we will meet both a crude sensuality and a simply skillfully told playful anecdote ("One Hundred Rupees"), but the theme of pure and beautiful love. An extraordinary strength and sincerity of feeling are characteristic of the heroes of these stories, and there is no whole savoring of risky details in them, notorious

that "strawberry". Love, as it were, says: “Where I stand, it cannot be dirty!”

« Clean Monday». Bunin's heroes are uncompromising in their quest for absolute love. “We were both rich; they are healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants, at concerts they saw us off with their eyes, ”says the hero of Clean Monday. It would seem that they have everything for absolute happiness. What else is needed? “Our happiness, my friend,” his beloved quotes Platon Karataeva, “is like water in a delusion: you pull it - it puffed up, but you pull it out - there’s nothing.” But they are different natures. The hero of "Clean Weekly" (as, indeed, a number of other short stories - "Gali Ganskaya", for example, or "Tanya", or " dark alleys”) - an “ordinary”, for all its physical attractiveness and emotional fullness, a person. Not that - heroes nya. In her strange actions, one can feel the significance of her character, the rarity of her "chosen" nature. Her mind is torn apart. She is not averse to plunging into the "today's" life of that elite Moscow - Chaliapin's concerts, "kapustniks" Art Theater, some courses, reading fashionable Western writers of the beginning of the century: Hoffmannsthal, Schnitzler, Pshibyshevsky, lectures by Andrei Bely, etc. But internally she is alien (like Bunin himself) to all this. She is intensely looking for something whole, heroic, selfless and finds her ideal in serving God. On the present it seems to her miserable and untenable. On “Clean Monday” she paid off with the “peace” - alluring love and beloved, and went to the “great tonsure”, to the monastery. The story is an example of late Bunin's prose, with its inclination towards perfect laconism, artistic brevity, thickening of external pictoriality, which allows us to speak of neorealism as a writing method.

As a poet, Bunin honed and perfected his gift, but here the muse, inspiration visited him infrequently. On the other hand, a few poems, permeated with a feeling of loneliness, homelessness and longing for Russia, were masterpieces:

The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole. How bitter was the young heart,

When I left my father's yard, Say "I'm sorry" to my home!

It is easy to see that both from the point of view of everyday life and from the point of view of history, the last twenty years of his long life turned out to be cut in half: the first, “peaceful”, decade was marked by his nobel laureate his calm and concentrated work on the novel "The Life of Arseniev", relative material security and the final (albeit not very loud, but strong) recognition of his talent, warmed by love for the "last muse" - the poetess and writer Galina Kuznetsova; The next decade brought the occupation of France by Hitler's troops, a break with his beloved, hunger, the writer's suffering in cut-off Grasse, and then a serious illness and a slow fading away in genuine need and proud poverty.

V modest apartment on Rue Jacques Offenbach.

1. How did Russian prose develop at the beginning of the century? What directions and searches determined its development?

2. What are the origins of Bunin's social duality? How did the attraction to noble traditions and the writer's repulsion from them manifest itself? How did Bunin perceive "the master and the peasant"? Consider Bunin's early prose from this position, for example, "Antonov apples", "Tanka".

3. What is the relationship Bunin the prose writer and Bunin the poet? How does the metaphorical nature of poetry, its musicality and rhythm intrude into prose? Is it possible to say that Bunin's prose was plowed by the poet's plow ("Antonov's Apples")?

4. What is the poeticization of loneliness in Bunin's work connected with? 1900s? Consider Bunin's poems "Sonnet", "Loneliness", stories "Pass", "Autumn".

5. Why do you think neither the symbolism nor the romanticism of the Gorky trend influenced Bunin's pre-revolutionary work?

6. Determine the meaning of Bunin's philosophical quests, reflected in the story "John the Sovereign".

7. What are the features of the narrative in the story "John the Rydalets"?

8. Compare the characters of the Krasov brothers - Kuzma and Tikhon ..,

IN What is the similarity and what is the deep difference between these heroes?

9. What is Bunin's hidden polemic with Gorky (the story "The Village")?

10. How is the theme of the doom of the world expressed in Bunin's story "The Lord from San Francisco"?

12. What is the closeness of Bunin to the position of L. Tolstoy obli

13. What features, according to I. Bunin, are characteristic of true love? Why does he think that love is brief guest on the ground" (the stories "Sunstroke", "Clean Monday", "Dark Alleys")?

Essay topics

The affirmation of the eternity of nature in the lyrics of I. Bunin. Philosophical lyrics by I. Bunin.

Love as a spiritual rebirth in the stories of I. Bunin (cycle "Dark Alleys").

Essay topics

The image of the narrator in the works of I. Bunin. Traditions of Russian classics in the work of I. Bunin.

Kuznetsov a Galina. Grasse diary.- M., 1995. "Grasse diary" written last love and Muse Buni

on and covers the years when the writer worked hard on his final work - the novel "The Life of Arseniev", recreates the complex creative nature of the writer, his deep spiritual world and unique appearance. This is the most important source for understanding the biography and work of Bunin. In addition to a detailed diary written by G. Kuznetsova in Grasse, the publication includes excerpts from the diary of the military years, her prose and poetry.

M u r o m c e v a - B u n i n a V. N. Bunin's life: Conversations with memory.- M., 1989.

Bunin's wife, assistant, friend kept a diary throughout their life together. The book is based on the systematic notes of VN Muromtseva. They bring a lot of new ideas to our ideas about personality, character, creative laboratory writer, about the conditions of his work, interests, searches of Russian emigrants in Paris. Multi-decade period of Bunin's biography

With peace and L. A. I. A. Bunin. Life and work. - M., 1995.

The book examines the evolution of the writer's literary activity against the broad social and artistic background of the era, textually analyzes his programmatic works.

ALEXANDER IVANOVICH KUPRIN (1870-1938)

The life-loving talent of Kuprin, one of the "kings" of Russian prose of the 20th century, was highly appreciated by writers of various polar trends. L. N. Tolstoy, “The Great Lion” of our literature, said: “Kuprin is a real artist, a huge talent. Raises questions of life deeper than those of his brothers...” One of the leaders of symbolism, Konstantin Balmont, echoed, already in verse:

This is wisdom true strength In the storm itself - silence.

You are dear and dear to all of us, We all love Kuprin.

Childhood. Mother's role. Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin was born on August 26 (September 7), 1870 in the provincial town of Narovchat Penza province. Kuprin did not remember his father, who died of cholera when the boy was in his second year. In 1874, he moved with his mother to Moscow and settled in the common ward of the widow's house on Kudrinskaya Square. Thus begins for the writer a seventeen-year streak of uninterrupted imprisonment in all kinds of government institutions.

In the widow's house (described later in the story "Holy Lies", 1914), at least he was not separated from his mother. In general, for Kuprin's childhood and the formation of his personality, the mother played an enormous role, who in the eyes of the child undividedly took the place of the "supreme being." Judging by the testimonies of contemporaries, Love. Alekseevna Kuprina, born Tatar princess Kulanchakova, "possessed a strong, unyielding character and high nobility." It was a woman of energy

glib, strong-willed (what did it cost her to raise three children, almost without a livelihood, after the death of her husband!) and even with a touch of despotism in her character. The authority of Lyubov Alekseevna remained unshakable throughout her long life. In his autobiographical novel Juncker (1928-1932), he does not call the mother of the protagonist Aleksandrov anything other than "adored". Dreamy and at the same time "Asian" quick-tempered

Tender, gentle and stubborn to the point of stubbornness, the boy turned out to be indebted to his mother for many traits of his character.

Severe barracks school. In 1877 due to severe financial situation Lyubov Alekseevna was compelled to send her son to the Aleksandrovsky juvenile orphan school. Seven-year-old Sasha put on his first uniform in his life - "canvas pantaloons and a canvas shirt, trimmed around the collar and around the sleeves with a uniform kumacho ribbon." Government environment, evil old de you are educators finally, peers who "were distorted from the very beginning" - all this caused the boy suffering. He escapes and, after wandering around Moscow for two days, returns to the boarding school with a confession (the story of 1917 "The Brave Fugitives").

However, the tests that awaited Kuprin were just beginning. In 1880, he passed the entrance exams to the Second Moscow Military Gymnasium, which two years later was transformed into a cadet corps. And again the uniform: “A black cloth jacket, without a belt, with blue shoulder straps, eight copper buttons in one row and red loops on the collar.” In the story "At the Break" ("Kade you", 1900), Kuprin captured in detail the morals that crippled the child's soul, the stupidity of the authorities, the "universal cult of the fist", giving the weak to be torn to pieces by the stronger, and finally, desperate longing for family and home.

"It happened in early childhood come back after for long years they have holidays in a boarding school, - Kuprin recalled. - Everything is gray, barracks, it smells of fresh oil paint and mastic, comrades are rude, the authorities are unfriendly. While the day is still somehow strong ... But when the evening comes and the fuss in the dimly lit bedroom subsides, - oh, what a

bearing sorrow, what despair take possession of the little soul! You gnaw on the pillow, suppressing your sobs, whisper sweet names and cry, cry with hot tears, and you know that you will never satiate your grief with them ”(1904 essay“ In Memory of Chekhov ”).

The formation of personality and the origins of humanism. Third Alexander Junker School in Moscow, where Kup

but a strong young man, a dexterous gymnast, a cadet, without measure giving birth to the honor of his uniform, an indefatigable dancer who passionately fell in love with every pretty waltz partner.

To a certain extent, Kuprin's childhood and youth provide material for finding his characteristic features as an artist. The chanting of a heroic, courageous beginning, a natural and coarsely healthy life is combined in the writer’s work, as we will see, with a heightened sensitivity to the suffering of others, with close attention to a weak, “small” person who is oppressed by an offensively alien and hostile environment. This second, most fruitful element of Kuprin the artist goes back to impressions little Sasha received in cadet corps. It was necessary for a child to go through the horrors of a military bursa, to go through a humiliating public flogging, in order to so painfully acutely feel, say, the torment of the Tatar Baiguzin, who was tortured on a battalion parade ground (“Under Knowledge”, 1894), or the drama of the miserable, downtrodden soldier Khlebnikov ( "Duel", 1905).

First literary experiments. Service in the regiment. Despite the gloominess of life in the cadet corps, it was there that the real, deep love of the future writer for literature was born. By this time, Kuprin himself began to try his hand at literature (first in poetry). I will already be in the cadet school, he first appeared in print. Having met the poet L. I. Palmin, Kuprin published a very mediocre story, The Last Debut (1889), in the Russian satirical sheet magazine.

When, on August 10, 1890, after graduating "in the first category" from the Alexander School, the freshly baked second lieutenant went to the 46th Dnieper Infantry Regiment, quartered in the town of Proskurov, Podolsk Tu-

Bernia, he himself did not take his "writing" seriously.

Almost four years of service for the first time pushed Kuprin with the hardships of everyday life and army reality. However, it was these years that gave Kuprin the opportunity to fully understand the provincial military life, as well as to get acquainted with the impoverished life of the Belarusian outskirts, the Jewish town, with the mores of the “out of place” intelligentsia. The impressions of this time were, as it were, a “reserve” for many years to come (Kuprin learned the material for a number of stories, and first of all the story “The Duel”, during his officer service). In 1893, the young lieutenant finished the story "In the Dark", the stories " moonlit night” and “Inquiry”. Everyday life in the barracks in the Dnepr regiment becomes more and more unbearable for Kuprin. This is how Lieutenant Romashov “grows up” in The Duel, who until recently dreamed of military glory, but after intense reflections about the inhumanity of army drill, the savagery of a provincial officer’s existence, decides to retire.

Kuprin submits his resignation, receives it, and by the autumn of 1894 is in Kyiv. He publishes a lot in local and provincial newspapers, writes stories, essays, notes. The result of this restless, half-writer's, half-reporter's life were two collections: the essays "Kiev Types" (1896) and the stories "Miniatures" (1897).

Kuprin "universities". Kuprin's works of the 90s. unequal, often he allowed stamps, melo drama. A little time will pass, and Kuprin will sharply ridicule his own literary stamps("By order", 1901). Genuine knowledge of life contributed to the overcoming of literature, borrowed melodramatic stencils and commonplace descriptions. The writer's autobiography contains a truly terrifying list of the occupations that he tried after parting with his military uniform: he was a reporter, a manager at the construction of a house, bred tobacco "silver shag" in the Volyn province, served in a technical office, was a psalmist, moved on stage, studied dentistry, even wanted to be tonsured a monk, served in an artel carrying furniture from the firm of a certain Loskutov, unloaded watermelons, etc. Chaotic, feverish dreams, shift

"specialties" and positions, frequent trips around the country, an abundance of new meetings - all this gave Kuprin an inexhaustible wealth of impressions - it was necessary to generalize them artistically.

And when in 1896, having entered the head of accounting for a forge and a carpentry workshop at one of the largest steel foundries and rail-rolling plants in the Donetsk basin, Kuprin wrote a series of essays on the situation of workers, at the same time they formed the contours of the first major work - the story "Moloch".

It was already in many ways a real "Kuprin" prose with its, according to Bunin, "accurate and without excess generous language." Thus begins the rapid creative development of Kuprin, who created most of the most significant works at the turn of the two centuries. Kuprin's talent, which not long ago was traded in the field of cheap fiction, is gaining confidence and strength. Following the "Moloch" there are works that put forward the writer in the first ranks of Russian literature - "Army Ensign" (1897), "Olesya" (1898) and then, already at the beginning of the 20th century, - "In the Circus" (1901) , "Horse Thieves" (1903), "White Poodle" (1903) and the story "Duel" (1905).

In 1897, Kuprin served as manager of an estate in the Rivne district of the Volyn province; the impressions of this time formed the basis of the story "Olesya". With luscious humor he describes the Polessye village of Perebrod, in vivid detail he paints portraits of “the poorest and laziest peasant” in the whole village and the experienced hunter Yarmola; executive officer, drunkard and bribe-taker constable Evpsikhiy Afrikanovich; expelled by superstitious peasants into the forest "Witchers" Manuilikha. But in the center of the story there are antipodes: a young "panych" Ivan Timofeevich, who came from the city, and Manuilikha's granddaughter, the proud and wayward beauty Olesya. “There was nothing in it like local girls, whose faces, under ugly bandages covering their foreheads from above, and their mouths and chins from below, wear such a uniform, frightened expression ... original beauty her face, once seen, could not be forgotten, but it was difficult, even getting used to it, to describe it. However, the romantic feeling that flared up in the soul of young people