• ×

    • Ivan Bunin collection of dark alleys. Dark Alleys (2011)

    26.04.2019

    I. A. Bunin is the first of the Russian writers who received the Nobel Prize, who achieved popularity and fame at the world level, has fans and associates, but ... deeply unhappy, because since 1920 he was cut off from his homeland and yearned for her. All the stories of the period of emigration are imbued with a sense of melancholy and nostalgia.

    Inspired by the lines of the poem “An Ordinary Tale” by N. Ogarev: “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed / There was an alley of dark lindens,” Ivan Bunin had the idea to write a cycle of love stories about subtle human feelings. Love is different, but it is always a strong feeling that changes the lives of the characters.

    The story "Dark Alleys": a summary

    The story "Dark Alleys", of the same name to the cycle and being the main one, was published on October 20, 1938 in the New York edition of "New Earth". The main character, Nikolai Alekseevich, accidentally meets Nadezhda, whom he seduced and abandoned many years ago. For the hero then it was just an affair with a serf girl, but the heroine seriously fell in love and carried this feeling through her whole life. After the novel, the girl got her freedom, began to earn her own living herself, currently owns an inn and "gives money on interest." Nikolai Alekseevich ruined Nadezhda's life, but was punished: his beloved wife left him as meanly as he himself had once done, and his son grew up a scoundrel. The heroes part, now forever, Nikolai Alekseevich understands what kind of love he missed. However, the hero, even in his thoughts, cannot overcome social conventions and imagine what would have happened if he had not abandoned Nadezhda.

    Bunin, "Dark Alleys" - audiobook

    Listening to the story "Dark Alleys" is unusually pleasant, because the poetic nature of the author's language is also manifested in prose.

    The image and characteristics of the protagonist (Nikolai)

    The image of Nikolai Alekseevich causes antipathy: this person does not know how to love, he sees only himself and public opinion. He is afraid of himself, of Hope, no matter what happens. But if everything is outwardly decent, you can do whatever you like, for example, break the heart of a girl for whom no one will intercede. Life punished the hero, but did not change him, did not add firmness of spirit. His image personifies the habit, everyday life.

    The image and characteristics of the main character (Hope)

    Much stronger is Nadezhda, who was able to survive the shame of an affair with a “master” (although she wanted to lay hands on herself, she got out of this state), and also managed to learn how to earn money on her own, and in an honest way. The coachman Klim notes the mind and justice of a woman, she “gives money at interest” and “gets richer”, but does not profit from the poor, but is guided by justice. Hope, despite the tragedy of her love, kept her in her heart for many years, forgave her offender, but did not forget. Her image is the soul, sublimity, which is not in origin, but in personality.

    The main idea and main theme of the story "Dark Alleys"

    The theme of love connects the Russian and émigré periods. Just as the heroes remember their departed love, so the author yearns for the abandoned Motherland, loves it, but cannot accept the changes that have taken place in it.

    Interesting? Save it on your wall!

    The story of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin "Dark Alleys" was written in 1938 and was included in the collection of short stories "Dark Alleys" dedicated to the theme of love. The work was first published in 1943 in the New York edition of Novaya Zemlya. The story "Dark Alleys" is written in the traditions of the literary direction of neorealism.

    Main characters

    Nikolai Alekseevich- a tall, thin man of sixty years old, a military man. In his youth, he loved Nadezhda, but abandoned her. He was married and has a son.

    Hope- a woman of forty-eight years, the mistress of the inn. All her life she loved Nikolai Alekseevich, which is why she never married.

    Klim- the coachman of Nikolai Alekseevich.

    “In the cold autumn bad weather” a “cart with a half-raised top” driven up to a long hut located on one of the roads of Tula. The hut was divided into two halves - a post station and a private room (inn), where travelers could stop, rest, and spend the night.

    The tarantass was ruled by a “strong man”, a “serious and dark-faced” coachman, “resembling an old robber”, while in the tarantass itself sat a tall and “slender old military man”, outwardly similar to Alexander II with an inquiring, strict and tired look.

    When the coachman stopped the chariot, the military man went into the upper room. Inside it was “warm, dry and tidy”, in the left corner there was a “new golden image”, in the right corner there was a whitewashed stove, from behind the damper of which came the sweet smell of cabbage soup. The visitor took off his outer clothing and called out to the hosts.

    Immediately, a “dark-haired”, “black-browed”, “beautiful woman beyond her age, resembling an elderly gypsy” entered the room. The hostess offered the visitor something to eat. The man agreed to drink tea, asking to put the samovar. Questioning the woman, the visitor learns that she is not married and runs the household herself. Unexpectedly, the hostess calls the man by his name - Nikolai Alekseevich. “He quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed,” recognizing in his interlocutor his old love - Nadezhda.

    Excited, Nikolai Alekseevich begins to remember how long they had not seen each other - “thirty-five years?” . Hope corrects him - "Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich". The man knew nothing of her fate since then. Nadezhda said that soon after they parted, the gentlemen gave her freedom, and she never married, because she loved him too much. Flushing, the man muttered, “Everything passes, my friend.<…>Love, youth - everything, everything. But the woman did not agree with him: “Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter.” Nadezhda says that she could not forget him, “she lived all alone”, recalls that he left her “very heartlessly” - she even wanted to commit suicide more than once, that she called him Nikolenka, and he read poetry to her about “all sorts” dark alleys"" .

    Delving into his memories, Nikolai Alekseevich concludes: “Everything passes. Everything is forgotten”, to which Nadezhda replied: “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten”. Shedding tears, the man asks for horses, saying: “If only God would forgive me. And you seem to have forgiven." However, the woman did not forgive and could not forgive: "just as I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so then it was not."

    Nikolai Alekseevich asks the woman for forgiveness and says that he was also unhappy. He was madly in love with his wife, but she cheated and left him even more insultingly than he did Nadezhda. He adored his son, “but a scoundrel, a wast, an insolent man, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience, came out.” “I think that I also lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life.” In parting, Nadezhda kisses his hand, and he kisses hers. After the coachman, Klim recalled that the hostess looked after them from the window.

    Already on the road, Nikolai Alekseevich becomes ashamed that he kissed Nadezhda's hand, and then ashamed of this shame. The man recalls the past - “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...”. He thinks about what would have happened if he had not abandoned her, and was “this very Nadezhda not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?” And, closing his eyes, he shook his head.

    Conclusion

    I. A. Bunin called the story "Dark Alleys" the most successful work of the entire collection, his best creation. In it, the author reflects on the questions of love, on whether a true feeling is subject to the passage of time - is true love able to live for decades or does it remain only in our memories, and everything else is “a vulgar, ordinary story”.

    A brief retelling of "Dark Alleys" will be useful in preparing for the lesson or when familiarizing yourself with the plot of the work.

    Story test

    After reading, try to take the test:

    Retelling rating

    Average rating: 3.9. Total ratings received: 1674.

    Bunin's cycle of short stories "Dark Alleys" is the best written by the author in his entire creative career. Despite the simplicity and accessibility of Bunin's style, the analysis of the work requires special knowledge. The work is studied in the 9th grade in literature lessons, its detailed analysis will be useful in preparing for the exam, writing creative papers, test tasks, drawing up a story plan. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with our version of the analysis of “Dark Alleys” according to the plan.

    Brief analysis

    Year of writing– 1938.

    History of creation The story was written in exile. Homesickness, bright memories, escape from reality, war and famine - served as an impetus for writing the story.

    Subject- love lost, forgotten in the past; broken destinies, the theme of choice and its consequences.

    Composition- traditional for a short story, a story. It consists of three parts: the arrival of the general, a meeting with a former lover and a hasty departure.

    Genre- short story (novella).

    Direction- realism.

    History of creation

    In "Dark Alleys" the analysis will be incomplete without the history of the creation of the work and knowledge of some details of the writer's biography. In N. Ogaryov's poem "An Ordinary Tale" Ivan Bunin borrowed the image of dark alleys. This metaphor impressed the writer so much that he endowed it with his own special meaning and made it the title of a cycle of stories. All of them are united by one theme - bright, fateful, memorable for a lifetime of love.

    The work, included in the cycle of stories of the same name (1937-1945), was written in 1938, when the author was in exile. During the Second World War, hunger and poverty haunted all the inhabitants of Europe, the French city of Grasse was no exception. It was there that all the best works of Ivan Bunin were written. Returning to memories of the wonderful times of youth, inspiration and creative work gave strength to the author to survive the separation from his homeland and the horrors of war. These eight years away from their homeland became the most productive and most important in Bunin's creative career. Mature age, wonderfully beautiful landscapes, rethinking of historical events and life values ​​- became the impetus for the creation of the most important work of the master of the word.

    In the most terrible times, the best, subtle, poignant stories about love were written - the cycle "Dark Alleys". In the soul of every person there are places where he looks infrequently, but with special trepidation: the brightest memories, the most “dear” experiences are stored there. It was these “dark alleys” that the author had in mind when giving the title to his book and the story of the same name. The story was first published in New York in 1943 in the Novaya Zemlya edition.

    Subject

    Leading theme- the theme of love. Not only the story “Dark Alleys”, but all the works of the cycle are based on this wonderful feeling. Bunin, summing up his life, was firmly convinced that love is the best thing that can be given to a person in life. It is the essence, the beginning and the meaning of everything: a tragic or happy story - there is no difference. If this feeling flashed through a person's life, it means that he did not live it in vain.

    Human destinies, the irreversibility of events, the choice that had to be regretted are the leading motives in Bunin's story. The one who loves always wins, he lives and breathes his love, it gives him the strength to move on.

    Nikolai Alekseevich, who made his choice in favor of common sense, realizes only at the age of sixty that his love for Nadezhda was the best event in his life. The theme of choice and its consequences is clearly revealed in the plot of the story: a person lives his life with the wrong people, remains unhappy, fate returns the betrayal and deceit that he allowed in his youth in relation to a young girl.

    The conclusion is obvious: happiness consists in living in harmony with your feelings, and not in defiance of them. The problem of choice and responsibility for one's own and others' fate is also touched upon in the work. The issue is broad enough, despite the small volume of the story. It is interesting to note the fact that in Bunin's stories, love and marriage are practically incompatible: emotions are swift and vivid, they arise and disappear as quickly as everything in nature. Social status has no meaning where love reigns. It equalizes people, makes meaningless ranks and estates - love has its own priorities and laws.

    Composition

    Compositionally, the story can be divided into three parts.

    The first part: the arrival of the hero at the inn (descriptions of nature and the surrounding area predominate here). Meeting with a former lover - the second semantic part - mainly consists of a dialogue. In the last part, the general leaves the inn - running from his own memories and his past.

    Main events- the dialogue between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich is built on two absolutely opposite views on life. She lives with love, finding consolation and joy in it, keeps the memories of her youth. The author puts the idea of ​​a story into the mouth of this wise woman - what the work teaches us: “everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” In this sense, the characters are opposite in their views, the old general mentions several times that “everything passes”. This is how his life passed, meaningless, joyless, wasted. Criticism took the cycle of stories enthusiastically, despite its courage and frankness.

    Main characters

    Genre

    Dark alleys belongs to the genre of the story, some researchers of Bunin's work tend to consider them short stories.

    The theme of love, unexpected abrupt endings, tragic and dramatic plots - all this is characteristic of Bunin's works. It should be noted the lion's share of lyricism in the story - emotions, past, experiences and spiritual quest. The general lyrical orientation is a distinctive feature of Bunin's stories. The author has a unique ability to fit a huge time period into a small epic genre, reveal the character's soul and make the reader think about the most important thing.

    The artistic means used by the author are always varied: accurate epithets, vivid metaphors, comparisons and personifications. The technique of parallelism is also close to the author, quite often nature emphasizes the state of mind of the characters.

    Antipyretics for children are prescribed by a pediatrician. But there are emergency situations for fever when the child needs to be given medicine immediately. Then the parents take responsibility and use antipyretic drugs. What is allowed to give to infants? How can you bring down the temperature in older children? What medicines are the safest?

    DARK ALLEYS

    In a cold autumn storm, on one of the big Tula roads, flooded with rain and cut by many black ruts, to a long hut, in one connection of which there was a state postal station, and in the other a private room where you could relax or spend the night, dine or ask for a samovar , a tarantass with a half-raised top rolled up, thrown with mud, a trio of fairly simple horses with their tails tied up from the slush. On the goats of the tarantass sat a strong man in a tightly belted coat, serious and dark-faced, with a sparse resin beard, resembling an old robber, and in the tarantass a slender old military man in a large cap and in a Nikolaev gray overcoat with a beaver standing collar, still black-browed, but with white mustaches that connected with the same sideburns; his chin was shaved and his whole appearance had that resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military at the time of his reign; his eyes were also inquiring, stern and at the same time tired.
    “To the left, Your Excellency,” the coachman shouted rudely from the goat, and he, bending slightly on the threshold from his tall stature, entered the porch, then into the upper room to the left.
    The visitor threw off his overcoat on the bench and turned out to be even slimmer in one uniform and boots, then he took off his gloves and cap and with a weary look ran his pale, thin hand over his head - his gray hair with bouffants at the temples slightly curled to the corners of his eyes, a handsome elongated face with dark eyes kept in some places small traces of smallpox. There was no one in the room, and he shouted hostilely, opening the door to the entrance hall:
    - Hey, who's there!
    Immediately afterwards, a dark-haired woman, also black-browed and also still beautiful beyond her age, resembling an elderly gypsy, with a dark down on her upper lip and along her cheeks, light in walking, but plump, with large breasts under a red blouse, with triangular, like a goose, belly under a black woolen skirt.
    The visitor glanced briefly at her rounded shoulders and light legs in worn red Tatar shoes and curtly, inattentively answered:

    - You mean you keep it?
    - Yes sir. Herself.
    - What is it? A widow, or something, that you yourself are doing business?

    The woman kept looking at him inquisitively, squinting slightly.


    “My God, my God,” he said, sitting down on the bench and looking straight at her. - Who would have thought! How many years have we not seen each other? Thirty-five years?
    - Like this ... My God, how strange!
    - What is strange, sir?
    - But everything, everything ... How can you not understand!

    - And where did you live then?

    - No, it wasn't.
    - I couldn't do it.

    He blushed to tears and, frowning, walked again.
    “Everything passes, my friend,” he muttered. - Love, youth - everything, everything. The story is vulgar, ordinary. Everything goes away with the years. How does it say in the book of Job? "How will you remember the water that has flowed."
    - What does God give to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Everyone passes youth, but love is another matter.

    - So she could. No matter how much time passed, all lived one. I knew that you were gone for a long time, that it was as if there was nothing for you, but ... It’s too late to reproach now, but it’s true, you left me very heartlessly - how many times I wanted to lay hands on myself from resentment from one, no longer talking about everything else. After all, there was a time, Nikolai Alekseevich, when I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me? And I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of "dark alleys," she added with an unkind smile.

    - A! Everything passes. Everything is forgotten.
    Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.


    - No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive. Since our conversation touched upon our feelings, I will say frankly: I could never forgive you. Just as I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have it later either. That's why I can't forgive you. Well, what to remember, the dead are not carried from the churchyard.
    “Yes, yes, there’s nothing to do, order the horses to be brought in,” he answered, moving away from the window with a stern face. - I'll tell you one thing: I've never been happy in my life, don't think, please. I'm sorry that maybe I offend your vanity, but I'll tell you frankly - I loved my wife without a memory. And she changed, left me even more insultingly than I did you. He adored his son - while he was growing up, what kind of hopes he did not place on him! And a scoundrel, a wast, an insolent one, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience, came out ... However, all this is also the most ordinary, vulgar story. Be well, dear friend. I think that I have lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life.
    She came up and kissed his hand, he kissed hers.
    - Order to serve ...
    When we drove on, he thought gloomily: “Yes, how lovely she was! Magically beautiful!” With shame he recalled his last words and the fact that he had kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame. "Isn't it true that she gave me the best moments of my life?"
    By sunset, a pale sun peeped through. The coachman drove at a trot, constantly changing black ruts, choosing less dirty ones, and also thinking something. Finally he said with serious rudeness:
    - And she, Your Excellency, kept looking out the window as we left. Right, how long have you been wanting to know her?
    - A long time ago, Klim.
    - Baba - the mind chamber. And everyone, they say, is getting richer. Gives money in growth.
    - This means nothing.
    - How does it not mean! Who doesn't want to live better! If you give with a conscience, there is little harm. And she is said to be right about it. But cool! If you don't give it back on time, blame yourself.
    - Yes, yes, blame yourself ... Drive, please, so as not to be late for the train ...
    The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields, the horses evenly splashed through the puddles. He looked at the flashing horseshoes, knitting his black eyebrows, and thought:
    “Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” But, my God, what would happen next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?
    October 20, 1938

    There are poets who, so to speak, write with their ears. His eyes make a person transparent; we see through all the draperies. Bunin's dense, transparent phrases, their "painstaking plasticity", praised by Thomas Mann, were the result of obsessive work. Before the end was preceded by many projects. Everything must be right, from the blouse to the overall composition. It is no coincidence that he compared his polished prose to the precision and elegance of mathematical formulas.

    Bunin in Flaubert, whom he admired from the time of the first readings, recognized the passion that he shared with Chekhov. He also admired him, but only his stories, not the parts whose "feeling" bothered him. Bunin's greatest admiration was Tolstoy. Bunin's story "The Lord from San Francisco", which immediately made him known throughout Europe, was undoubtedly inspired by Tolstoy's "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" as well as "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann.


    CAUCASUS


    - I just for one minute...
    She was pale with the beautiful pallor of a loving, agitated woman, her voice broke, and the way she, throwing her umbrella anywhere, hastening to lift her veil and embrace me, shocked me with pity and delight.
    “It seems to me,” she said, “that he suspects something, that he even knows something, perhaps he read some of your letters, picked up the key to my table ... I think that he is capable of anything with his cruel, selfish nature. Once he told me directly: “I will stop at nothing, defending my honor, the honor of my husband and officer!” Now, for some reason, he literally follows my every step, and in order for our plan to succeed, I have to be terribly careful. He already agrees to let me go, so I inspired him that I would die if I did not see the south, the sea, but, for God's sake, be patient!
    Our plan was audacious: to leave in the same train for the Caucasian coast and live there in some completely wild place for three or four weeks. I knew this coast, once lived for some time near Sochi, - young, lonely, - for the rest of my life I remember those autumn evenings among the black cypresses, by the cold gray waves ... And she turned pale when I said: “And now I will be there with you, in the mountain jungle, by the tropical sea ... ”We did not believe in the implementation of our plan until the last minute - it seemed to us too great happiness.

    But his descriptions of human suffering are poignant. Dostoevsky remains unsurpassed in his art of uncovering life as ugly as the drift. He then lived until his death in France. The German occupation he experienced in his summer home near Grasse.

    Most of them come from the narrative volume "Dark Alleys", which the author himself considered his best. Horst Bienek called Bunin "Russian Proust". But Bunin's work is something other than "search for lost time," even as iconographic images flicker on the altar wall, horseshoes kiss on the pavement, vodka, wine and cognac flow in streams, and white hands kiss. It is a backdrop, a backdrop in front of which old stories are constantly set over and over again, so impressive that sunken Russia is painted with the colors of longing.

    Cold rains were falling in Moscow, it seemed that summer had already passed and would not return, it was dirty, gloomy, the streets were wet and black, with the open umbrellas of passers-by and the tops of cabs raised, trembling on the run. And it was a dark, disgusting evening, when I was driving to the station, everything inside me froze from anxiety and cold. I ran through the station and the platform, pulling my hat over my eyes and burying my face in the collar of my overcoat.
    In the small first-class compartment I had booked in advance, the rain was noisily pouring down on the roof. I immediately lowered the window curtain, and as soon as the porter, wiping his wet hand on his white apron, took the tea and went out, I locked the door. Then he opened the curtain a little and froze, not taking his eyes off the diverse crowd, scurrying back and forth with things along the car in the dark light of station lamps. We agreed that I would arrive at the station as early as possible, and she as late as possible, so that somehow I would not run into her and him on the platform. Now it was time for them to be. I looked more and more tensely - they were all gone. The second bell rang - I went cold with fear: I was late or he suddenly did not let her in at the last minute! But immediately after that, he was struck by his tall figure, an officer's cap, a narrow overcoat and a hand in a suede glove, with which he, walking with wide steps, held her arm. I staggered away from the window, fell into the corner of the sofa. Nearby was a second-class carriage - I mentally saw how he entered it economically with her, looked around - whether the porter arranged her well - and took off his glove, took off his cap, kissing her, baptizing her ... The third call deafened me, moving the train plunged into a stupor ... The train diverged, dangling, swaying, then began to carry smoothly, at full speed ... The conductor, who escorted her to me and transferred her things, I thrust a ten-ruble note with an icy hand ...

    Bunin's people became addicted to warmth and affection, hot for life. They want to get out of their trot and take out the racing moment, cost him what he wants to daily solitude. Often they travel - Bunin himself traveled a lot and - when visiting strange houses, in short, in an unfamiliar environment, cut off from everyday connections, irritable for everything new. There is a poor, brave woman who sleeps on a ship with a successful young writer; wife, who goes with the lieutenant from the board and to the hotel.

    Limits are always crossed, and excess must be redeemed. Love in Bunin needs an obstacle. Class, marriage, or just what used to be called a "character". Bunin's people do not keep him at home. They don't make cost-benefit calculations their feelings. Love is suffering, it is slavery. There are almost always perpetrators and victims, sometimes the sexes on this one, sometimes on the other side. Even men don't cure a love affair with aspirin, but with a revolver in the temple. And men, as in Musa, turn into a nightmare with a proposal.


    "I couldn't have dinner at all," she said. - I thought that I could not stand this terrible role to the end. And I'm terribly thirsty. Give me narzan,” she said, saying “you” to me for the first time. - I am convinced that he will follow me. I gave him two addresses, Gelendzhik and Gagra. Well, he will be in Gelendzhik in three or four days ... But God is with him, death is better than these torments ...

    So, no happy love? And where would the doom of transitivity be better shown than in the theme of love? Where the love of life and love in their painful beauty become overwhelming in the consciousness of their transitivity. In late stories, Bunin leaves a century behind them in style and style, even if there are memories of ancient Rus' and the author wants to record the lost youth with prose as a high school student, apprentice, or lieutenant.

    The author is no longer wiser than his person, retains all excuses for his actions and behavior, no longer worries about motivations, psychologisms and explanations. Conflicts are noted, but there are no solutions. It seems that only with superficial stimuli supplied by external factors is it possible for the reader to understand the inner life of people. With these narratives, often on less than ten pages, Bunin created a peculiar form between story and story.

    In the morning, when I went out into the corridor, it was sunny and stuffy in it, from the latrines it smelled of soap, cologne and everything that a crowded carriage smells like in the morning. Behind the dust-clouded and heated windows was a flat, scorched steppe, one could see dusty wide roads, carts drawn by oxen, railway booths flashed by with canary circles of sunflowers and scarlet mallows in the front gardens ... Then came the boundless expanse of bare plains with mounds and burial grounds, the unbearable dry sun , a sky like a dusty cloud, then the ghosts of the first mountains on the horizon ...
    From Gelendzhik and Gagra, she sent him a postcard, wrote that she still did not know where she would stay. Then we went down along the coast to the south.
    We found a primeval place, overgrown with plane tree forests, flowering shrubs, mahogany, magnolias, pomegranates, among which fan palms rose, cypresses blackened ...
    I woke up early and, while she slept, until tea, which we drank at seven o'clock, I walked along the hills into the forest thickets. The hot sun was already strong, pure and joyful. In the forests, the fragrant fog shone azure, dispersed and melted, behind the distant wooded peaks the eternal whiteness of the snowy mountains shone ... Back I walked through the sultry and smelling of burning dung from the pipes of the bazaar of our village: trade was in full swing there, it was crowded with people, from riding horses and donkeys , - in the mornings a lot of different tribes of mountaineers gathered there to the bazaar, - Circassian women walked smoothly in black clothes long to the ground, in red dudes, with their heads wrapped in something black, with quick bird-like glances that sometimes flickered from this mourning wrapping.
    Then we went to the shore, always completely empty, bathed and lay in the sun until breakfast. After breakfast - all grilled fish, white wine, nuts and fruits - in the sultry twilight of our hut under the tiled roof, hot, cheerful streaks of light stretched through the through shutters.
    At sunset, wonderful clouds often piled up behind the sea; they burned so magnificently that she sometimes lay down on the couch, covered her face with a gas scarf and cried: another two, three weeks - and again Moscow!
    The nights were warm and impenetrable, in the black darkness floated, flickered, fire flies shone with topaz light, tree frogs rang like glass bells. When the eye got used to the darkness, stars and mountain ridges appeared above, trees loomed over the village, which we did not notice during the day. And all night long there was heard from there, from the dukhan, a dull thud on the drum and a throaty, mournful, hopelessly happy cry, as if all of the same endless song.
    Not far from us, in a coastal ravine, descending from the forest to the sea, a small, transparent river quickly jumped over a rocky bed. How wonderfully its brilliance shattered, boiled in that mysterious hour, when from behind the mountains and forests, like some wondrous creature, the late moon gazed intently!
    Sometimes at night terrible clouds would come down from the mountains, there would be a vicious storm, in the noisy grave blackness of the forests now and then magical green abysses would open up and antediluvian thunder would crack in the heavenly heights. Then the eaglets woke up and meowed in the forests, the leopard roared, the yappers yelped ... Once a whole flock of them ran to our illuminated window - they always run to housing on such nights - we opened the window and looked at them from above, and they stood under a brilliant downpour and yapped, asked to come to us ... She cried joyfully, looking at them.

    Today, the reaction to these stories is incomprehensible. Apart from diaries, "Damned Days", "Prose from the Week of the Revolution", Bunin never worried about social and political problems. "Fat frivolity" was accused of being 73 years old and that he had nothing but such things on his mind as he had problems with his time on his nails. Bunin reacted indignantly: I am worried, old man, with the most puzzling in the world, trying to penetrate the origin of life and understand the source of all being, and I am reproached with spiritual simplicity is simply incomprehensible!

    He was looking for her in Gelendzhik, in Gagra, in Sochi. The next day, upon arrival in Sochi, he swam in the sea in the morning, then shaved, put on clean linen, a snow-white tunic, had breakfast at his hotel on the restaurant terrace, drank a bottle of champagne, drank coffee with chartreuse, slowly smoked a cigar. Returning to his room, he lay down on the sofa and shot himself in the whiskey with two revolvers.
    November 12, 1937

    Love, whether it be luck or misfortune, is now the "source of life." And even worse than unhappy love is only one thing: it even leaves. And all "other accidents". And so the only real misfortune is our transient. That we will be human without the realization that every "thing has an end" - and without our struggle with it?

    This article is for private use only. Four Russian Nobel Prize winners received Russian literature, all of them Soviet. The authorities of the regime hated Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Boris Pasternak. The latter could even force the Politburo to reject the prize. The only acceptable one, Mikhail Sholokov, brought him the Quiet Don prize, which was awarded the prize in a dubious way. Around him there is a great discussion on plagiarism. Ivan Bunin is by far the most unknown.


    BALLAD

    On the eve of the big winter holidays, the village house was always heated up like a bathhouse and presented a strange picture, for it consisted of spacious and low rooms, the doors of which were all wide open - from the entrance hall to the sofa room, located at the very end of the house - and shone in red corners with wax candles and lamps in front of the icons.
    On these holidays, smooth oak floors were washed everywhere in the house, which soon dried from the firebox, and then they covered them with clean blankets, in the best order they put furniture shifted for the time of work in their places, and in the corners, in front of the gilded and silver salaries of icons, lamps were lit and candles, yet other fires were put out. By this hour, the winter night was already dark blue outside the windows, and everyone dispersed to their sleeping rooms. At that time, complete silence settled in the house, reverent and, as it were, waiting for something, peace, which could not be more befitting of the sacred night view of the icons, illuminated mournfully and touchingly.
    In winter, the wanderer Mashenka sometimes visited the estate, gray-haired, dry and fractional, like a girl. And only she alone in the whole house did not sleep on such nights: coming after supper from the people's room to the hallway and taking off her little feet in woolen stockings felt boots, she silently walked around all these hot, mysteriously lit rooms on soft blankets, kneeling everywhere , crossed herself, bowed before the icons, and there she again went into the hallway, sat down on the black chest, which had stood in it for centuries, and read prayers, psalms in an undertone, or simply spoke to herself. And so I once learned about this "God's beast, the Lord's wolf": I heard Mashenka praying to him.
    I could not sleep, late at night I went out into the hall to go to the sofa room and take something to read from the bookcases there. Mashenka did not hear me. She said something, sitting in a dark hallway. I paused and listened. She recited the psalms by heart.
    “Hear, Lord, my prayer and heed my cry,” she said without any expression. - Do not be silent to my tears, for I am a wanderer with you and a stranger on earth, like all my fathers ...
    - He who lives under the roof of the Almighty under the shadow of the Almighty rests ... You will step on the asp and the basilisk, trample on the lion and the dragon ...
    At the last words, she quietly but firmly raised her voice, pronounced them with conviction: you will trample the lion and the dragon. Then she paused and, sighing slowly, said as if she were talking to someone:
    “For his is all the beasts in the forest and the cattle on a thousand mountains…

    I approached and said softly:
    - Masha, don't be afraid, it's me.


    I put my hand on her bony shoulder with a large collarbone, made her sit up and sat down next to her.
    She wanted to get up again. I held her again:
    - Oh, what are you! And you say that you are not afraid of anything! I ask you: is it true that there is such a saint?
    She thought. Then she answered seriously:
    - How did you see it? Where? When?
    - A long time ago, sir, in time immemorial. And where - and I don’t know how to say: I remember one thing - we went there for three days. There was a village Krutye Gory there. I myself am distant, - maybe they deigned to hear: Ryazan, - and that region will be even lower, in the Zadonshchina, and what a rough terrain there, you won’t find a word for that. It was there that the village behind the eyes of our princes, their grandfather's favorite. - A whole, maybe a thousand clay huts along bare mounds-slopes, and on the highest mountain, on its crown, above the Kamennaya River, the master's house, also all naked, three-tiered, and the church is yellow, columned, and in that church this same divine wolf: in the middle, therefore, a cast-iron slab over the grave of the prince, who was slaughtered by him, and on the right pillar - he himself, this wolf, in all his height and warehouse written: sits in a gray fur coat on a thick tail and stretches all over, rests his front paws on the ground - and shines into his eyes: a gray-haired necklace, awned, thick, a large head, pointed-eared, bared with fangs, eyes are fierce, bloody, around the head there is a golden glow, like saints and saints. It's scary to even remember such a marvelous marvel! So alive he sits looking, as if he is about to rush at you!

    - I got there, sir, for the reason that I was then a serf girl, I served at the house of our princes. I was an orphan, my parent, they babbled, some passerby was - a runaway, most likely - illegally seduced my mother, and God knows where, and my mother, after giving birth to me, soon died. Well, the gentlemen took pity on me, they took me from the servants into the house as soon as I was thirteen years old and put me on errands to the young mistress, and she fell in love with me so much that she did not let me go for an hour from her grace. So she took me with her on a voyage, as the young prince planned to go with her to his grandfather's heritage, to this very village behind the eyes, to Steep Mountains. There was that patrimony in a long-standing desolation, in desertion, - the house was packed, abandoned since the death of grandfather, - well, our young gentlemen wanted to visit it. And what a terrible death grandfather died, we all knew according to legend.
    Something slightly cracked in the hall and then fell, slightly knocked. Mashenka kicked off her legs from the chest and ran into the hall: there was already a smell of burning from a fallen candle. She hushed up the candle wick, which was still fuming, trampled the smoldering pile of the blanket, and jumping onto a chair, again lit the candle from the other burning candles stuck in the silver holes under the icon, and fitted it into the one from which it had fallen: she turned it over with a bright flame down, drank into the hole with wax flowing like hot honey, then she inserted it, deftly removed the carbon deposits from other candles with thin fingers and again jumped to the floor.
    “Look how merrily it’s glowing,” she said, making the sign of the cross and looking at the revived gold of the candle flames. - And what a church spirit went!
    There was a smell of sweet fumes, the lights were trembling, the face of the ancient image looked out from behind them in an empty silver mug. In the upper, clean panes of the windows, thickly frosted from below with gray hoarfrost, the night turned black and the paws of the branches in the front garden, weighed down by layers of snow, were close to white. Mashenka looked at them, crossed herself once more, and went back into the hallway.
    - Why formidable?
    - But because hidden, when only an alector, a rooster, in our opinion, and even a nocturnal owl, an owl, can not sleep. Here the Lord himself listens to the earth, the most important stars begin to play, ice-holes freeze over the seas and rivers.

    - Why, this is a dark, long-standing matter, sir, - perhaps there is only one ballad.
    - How did you say?
    - Ballad, sir. That's how all our gentlemen used to say, they loved to read these ballads. I used to listen - frost on the head goes:
    Cheese-boron howls behind the mountain,
    Sweeps in a white field,
    It became a blizzard-bad weather,
    The road sunk… How good, Lord!
    - What's good, Mashenka?

    - How to say, sir? Maybe it’s true that it’s creepy, but now everything seems cute. After all, when was that? Already so long ago - all the kingdoms-states have passed, all the oaks have crumbled from antiquity, all the graves have been leveled with the ground. That's the thing, - in the household they said it word for word, but is it true? It was as if this was still under the great queen, and as if the prince was sitting in Krutye Gory because she was angry with him for something, imprisoned him away from herself, and he became very fierce - most of all for the execution of his slaves and fornication in love. He was still very strong, and in terms of appearance he was excellently handsome and as if there was not a single girl in his household, nor in his villages, no matter what he demanded for himself, in his seraglio, on the first night. Well, he fell into the most terrible sin: he was flattered even by the newlywed of his own son. He was in St. Petersburg in the tsarist military service, and when he found his betrothed, received permission from his parent for marriage and got married, then, therefore, he came with the newlywed to bow to him, in these very Steep Mountains. And he will be seduced by her. About love, sir, it is not for nothing that they sing:

    His glory shone at the beginning of the year. It was his most miserable year. There was a volume of stories. Bunin traveled extensively, and he visited Constantinople on numerous occasions, but also in the south of Russia, the barren steppe that forms the background in several of his newer stories. The protagonist of the story says that his thoughts returned "to the beginning of his uninhabited life, to this great, dead city, which was ever diminished by dust", and then the words "Asia, Asia!".

    Bunin is a great writer of landscapes and weather. His work abounds in the colors of a landscape of the sun and moon, and above them clouds: At the far end of the country road, which shone in its beautiful green, dense rye, shrouded in the bright light of the sun, which fell behind the house. In this direction, she looked, first of all, lured by the vastness of the steppe.

    Free eBook available here Dark alleys the author whose name is Bunin Ivan Alekseevich. In the library ACTIVELY WITHOUT TV you can download the book Dark Alleys in RTF, TXT, FB2 and EPUB formats for free or read online the book Dark Alleys Bunin without registration and without SMS.

    The size of the archive with the book Dark Alleys = 190.85 KB

    "She", Parashka's girl, who grows along the highway as the longest story with 47 printed pages, is a masterpiece of observation and even more a hint, innumerable in the fate of a life in which not the ability of unfortunately connected individuals to play a leading role.

    Bunin's readers lived like he was in exile

    It's about desire, love, and also wine. But Bunin does not declare morality. Bunin spent several generations with the poet of the revolution in Capri; he later separated from it. There is little in "dry grass"; Averka's servant dies and dies. These 40 pages contain all the suffering of the Russian peasantry. With novels and stories about the Russian countryside, Bunin quickly gained fame - remarkable, despite the modernization of rural Russia, the main problem of late tsarism, which finally violated the land issue.


    Bunin Ivan Alekseevich
    Dark alleys
    Ivan Alekseevich Bunin
    Dark alleys
    Content
    I
    Dark alleys
    Caucasus
    Ballad
    Stepa
    Muse
    late hour
    II
    Russia
    Gorgeous
    fool
    Antigone
    Emerald
    Wolves
    Business Cards
    Zoya and Valeria
    Tanya
    In Paris
    Galya Ganskaya
    Henry
    Natalie
    III
    In a familiar street
    river inn
    Kuma
    Start
    "Oaks"
    "Madrid"
    Second coffee pot
    Cold autumn
    Steamboat "Saratov"
    Crow
    Camargue
    One hundred rupees
    Revenge
    Swing
    Clean Monday
    Chapel
    Spring in Judea
    Accommodation
    I
    DARK ALLEYS
    In a cold autumn bad weather, on one of the big Tula roads, flooded with rain and cut by many black ruts, to a long hut, in one connection of which there was a government postal station, and in the other a private room where you could relax or spend the night, dine or ask for a samovar , a tarantass with a half-raised top rolled up, thrown with mud, a trio of fairly simple horses with their tails tied up from the slush. On the goats of the carriage sat a strong man in a tightly girded Armenian coat, serious and dark-faced, with a sparse resin beard, resembling an old robber, and in the carriage was a slender old military man in a large cap and in a Nikolaev gray greatcoat with a beaver standing collar, still black-browed, but with white mustaches that connected with the same sideburns; his chin was shaved and his whole appearance had that resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military at the time of his reign; his eyes were also inquiring, stern and at the same time tired.
    When the horses stopped, he threw out his leg in a military boot with a flat top from the tarantass and, holding the hem of his greatcoat with his hands in suede gloves, ran up to the porch of the hut.
    “To the left, Your Excellency,” the coachman shouted rudely from the goat, and he, bending slightly on the threshold from his tall stature, went into the vestibule, then into the upper room to the left.
    It was warm, dry and tidy in the upper room: a new golden image in the left corner, under it a table covered with a clean, harsh tablecloth, cleanly washed benches behind the table; the kitchen stove, which occupied the far right corner, was again white with chalk; closer stood something like an ottoman, covered with piebald blankets, resting with its mouldboard against the side of the stove; from behind the stove damper there was a sweet smell of cabbage soup - boiled cabbage, beef and bay leaves.
    The newcomer threw off his overcoat on the bench and turned out to be even slimmer in one uniform and boots, then he took off his gloves and cap and with a weary look ran his pale, thin hand over his head - his gray hair, combed at the temples, slightly curled to the corners of his eyes, his handsome elongated face with dark eyes kept in some places small traces of smallpox. There was no one in the room, and he shouted hostilely, opening the door to the entrance hall:
    - Hey, who's there!
    Immediately afterwards, a dark-haired woman, also black-browed and also still beautiful beyond her age, resembling an elderly gypsy, with dark fluff on her upper lip and along her cheeks, light in walking, but plump, with large breasts under a red blouse, with triangular belly, like a goose's, under a black woolen skirt.
    “Welcome, Your Excellency,” she said. - Would you like to eat, or will you order a samovar?
    The visitor glanced briefly at her rounded shoulders and light legs in worn red Tatar shoes and curtly, inattentively answered:
    - Samovar. Is the hostess here or do you work?
    - Mistress, Your Excellency.
    - You mean you keep it?
    - Yes sir. Herself.
    - What is it? A widow, or something, that you yourself are doing business?
    - Not a widow, Your Excellency, but you have to live with something. And I love to manage.
    - So-so. This is good. And how clean, nice you have.
    The woman kept looking at him inquisitively, squinting slightly.
    “And I love cleanliness,” she replied. - After all, she grew up under the masters, how not to be able to behave decently, Nikolai Alekseevich.
    He quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed.
    - Hope! You? he said hastily.
    - I, Nikolai Alekseevich, - she answered.
    "My God, my God," he said, sitting down on the bench and looking straight at her. - Who would have thought! How many years have we not seen each other? Thirty-five years?
    - Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich. I'm forty-eight now, and you're under sixty, I think?
    - Like this ... My God, how strange!
    - What is strange, sir?
    - But everything, everything ... How can you not understand!
    His fatigue and absent-mindedness disappeared, he got up and resolutely walked along the room, looking at the floor. Then he stopped and, blushing through his gray hair, began to say:
    “I don’t know anything about you since then. How did you get here? Why didn't she stay with the masters?
    - The gentlemen gave me freedom soon after you.
    - And where did you live then?
    - Long story, sir.
    - Married, you say, was not?
    - No, it wasn't.
    - Why? With the beauty that you had?
    - I couldn't do it.
    Why couldn't she? What do you want to say?
    - What is there to explain. Don't forget how much I loved you.
    He blushed to tears and, frowning, walked again.
    “Everything passes, my friend,” he muttered. - Love, youth - everything, everything. The story is vulgar, ordinary. Everything passes over the years. How does it say in the book of Job? "How will you remember the water that has flowed."
    - What God gives to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Everyone passes youth, but love is another matter.
    He lifted his head and paused, smiling painfully.
    - After all, you could not love me all the time!
    - So she could. No matter how much time passed, all lived one. I knew that you were gone for a long time, that it was as if there was nothing for you, but ... It’s too late now to reproach, but it’s true, you left me very heartlessly - how many times I wanted to lay hands on myself from resentment from one, not to mention everything else. After all, there was a time, Nikolai Alekseevich, when I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me? And I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of "dark alleys," she added with an unkind smile.
    - Oh, how good you were! he said, shaking his head. - How hot, how beautiful! What a camp, what eyes! Do you remember how everyone looked at you?
    - I remember, sir. You were also very good. And after all, I gave you my beauty, my fever. How can you forget that.
    - A! Everything passes. Everything is forgotten.
    Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.
    "Go away," he said, turning away and going to the window. - Leave, please.
    And, taking out a handkerchief and pressing it to his eyes, he added quickly:
    If only God would forgive me. And you seem to have forgiven.
    She walked to the door and paused.
    - No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive. Since our conversation touched upon our feelings, I will say frankly: I could never forgive you. Just as I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have it later either. That's why I can't forgive you. Well, what to remember, the dead are not carried from the churchyard.
    “Yes, yes, there’s nothing to do, order the horses to be brought in,” he answered, moving away from the window with a stern face. - I'll tell you one thing: I've never been happy in my life, don't think, please. I'm sorry that maybe I offend your pride, but I'll tell you frankly - I loved my wife without a memory. And she changed, left me even more insultingly than I did you. He adored his son - while he was growing up, what kind of hopes he did not place on him! And a scoundrel, a wast, an insolent one, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience, came out ... However, all this is also the most ordinary, vulgar story. Be well, dear friend. I think that I have lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life.
    She came up and kissed his hand, he kissed hers.
    - Order to serve...
    When we drove on, he thought gloomily: "Yes, how lovely she was! Magically beautiful!" With shame he recalled his last words and the fact that he had kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame. "Isn't it true that she gave me the best moments of my life?"
    By sunset, a pale sun peeped through. The coachman drove at a trot, constantly changing black ruts, choosing less dirty ones, and also thinking something. Finally he said with serious rudeness:
    - And she, Your Excellency, kept looking out the window as we left. Is it true, how long have you been wanting to know her?
    - A long time ago, Klim.
    - Baba - the mind chamber. And everyone, they say, is getting richer. Gives money in growth.
    - This means nothing.
    - How does it not mean! Who doesn't want to live better! If you give with a conscience, there is little harm. And she is said to be right about it. But cool! If you don't give it back on time, blame yourself.
    - Yes, yes, blame yourself ... Drive, please, so as not to be late for the train ...
    The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields, the horses evenly splashed through the puddles. He looked at the flashing horseshoes, knitting his black eyebrows, and thought:
    "Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best minutes. And not the best, but truly magical!" I wouldn't leave her? What nonsense! This very Nadezhda is not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my Petersburg house, the mother of my children?"
    And closing his eyes, he shook his head.
    October 20, 1938
    CAUCASUS
    Arriving in Moscow, I thievishly stayed in inconspicuous rooms in a lane near the Arbat and lived languidly, a recluse - from meeting to meeting with her. During these days she visited me only three times, and each time she came in hastily, with the words:
    I'm just for one minute...
    She was pale with the beautiful pallor of a loving, agitated woman, her voice broke, and the way she, throwing her umbrella at random, hastening to lift her veil and embrace me, shook me with pity and delight.
    “It seems to me,” she said, “that he suspects something, that he even knows something, perhaps he read some of your letters, picked up the key to my table ... I think that he capable of his cruel, selfish nature. Once he told me directly: "I will stop at nothing, defending my honor, the honor of my husband and officer!" Now, for some reason, he literally follows my every step, and in order for our plan to succeed, I have to be terribly careful. He already agrees to let me go, so I inspired him that I would die if I did not see the south, the sea, but, for God's sake, be patient!
    Our plan was audacious: to leave in the same train for the Caucasian coast and live there in some completely wild place for three or four weeks. I knew this coast, once lived for some time near Sochi, - young, lonely, - for the rest of my life I remembered those autumn evenings among the black cypresses, by the cold gray waves ... And she turned pale when I said: "And now I I will be with you there, in the mountain jungle, by the tropical sea ... "We did not believe in the implementation of our plan until the last minute - it seemed to us too great happiness.
    Cold rains were falling in Moscow, it seemed that summer had already passed and would not return, it was dirty, gloomy, the streets were wet and black, with the open umbrellas of passers-by and the tops of cabs raised, trembling on the run. And it was a dark, disgusting evening, when I was driving to the station, everything inside me froze from anxiety and cold. I ran through the station and the platform, pulling my hat over my eyes and burying my face in the collar of my overcoat.
    In the small first-class compartment I had booked in advance, the rain was noisily pouring down on the roof. I immediately lowered the window curtain, and as soon as the porter, wiping his wet hand on his white apron, took the tea and went out, I locked the door. Then he opened the curtain a little and froze, his eyes fixed on the diverse crowd, scurrying back and forth with things along the carriage in the dark light of the station lamps. We agreed that I would arrive at the station as early as possible, and she as late as possible, so that somehow I would not run into her and him on the platform. Now it was time for them to be. I looked more and more tensely - they were all gone. The second bell rang - I went cold with fear: I was late or he suddenly did not let her in at the last minute! But immediately after that, he was struck by his tall figure, an officer's cap, a narrow overcoat and a hand in a suede glove, with which he, walking wide, held her arm. I staggered away from the window, fell into the corner of the sofa. Nearby was a second-class carriage - I mentally saw how he entered it housekeepingly with her, looked around - whether the porter arranged her well - and took off his glove, took off his cap, kissing her, baptizing her ... The third call deafened me , the moving train plunged me into a stupor ... The train diverged, dangling, swaying, then began to carry smoothly, at full speed ... To the conductor, who escorted her to me and transferred her things, I slipped a ten-ruble note with an icy hand ...
    When she entered, she did not even kiss me, she only smiled pitifully, sitting down on the sofa and taking off her hat, unhooking it from her hair.
    "I couldn't have dinner at all," she said. - I thought that I could not stand this terrible role to the end. And I'm terribly thirsty. Give me narzan,” she said, saying “you” to me for the first time. - I am convinced that he will follow me. I gave him two addresses, Gelendzhik and Gagra. Well, he will be in Gelendzhik in three or four days ... But God is with him, death is better than these torments ...
    In the morning, when I went out into the corridor, it was sunny and stuffy in it, from the toilets it smelled of soap, cologne, and everything that a crowded car smells like in the morning. Behind the dust-clouded and heated windows there was an even scorched steppe, one could see dusty wide roads, carts drawn by oxen, railway booths flashed by with canary circles of sunflowers and scarlet mallows in the front gardens ... Then came the boundless expanse of naked plains with mounds and burial grounds, a dry sun, a sky like a dusty cloud, then the ghosts of the first mountains on the horizon...
    From Gelendzhik and Gagra, she sent him a postcard, wrote that she still did not know where she would stay.
    Then we went down along the coast to the south.
    We found a primeval place, overgrown with plane trees, flowering shrubs, mahogany, magnolias, pomegranates, among which fan palms rose, cypresses blackened ...
    I woke up early and, while she slept, until tea, which we drank at seven o'clock, I walked along the hills into the forest thickets. The hot sun was already strong, pure and joyful. In the forests, the fragrant fog shone azurely, dispersed and melted, behind the distant wooded peaks the eternal whiteness of the snowy mountains shone ... Back I walked through the sultry bazaar of our village, smelling of burning dung from the pipes: trade was in full swing there, it was crowded with people, from riding horses and donkeys, - in the mornings many mountaineers of different tribes gathered there to the market, - Circassian women in black clothes long to the ground, in red dudes, with their heads wrapped in something black, with quick birdlike glances, flickering sometimes from this mourning wrapping.
    Then we went to the shore, always completely empty, bathed and lay in the sun until breakfast. After breakfast - all grilled fish, white wine, nuts and fruit - in the sultry twilight of our hut under the tiled roof, hot, cheerful stripes of light stretched through the through shutters.
    When the heat subsided and we opened the window, the part of the sea, visible from it between the cypress trees that stood on the slope below us, was the color of a violet and lay so evenly, peacefully, that it seemed there would never be an end to this peace, this beauty.
    At sunset, wonderful clouds often piled up behind the sea; they burned so magnificently that sometimes she lay down on the couch, covered her face with a gas scarf and cried: two, three more weeks - and again Moscow!
    The nights were warm and impenetrable, in the black darkness floated, flickered, fire flies shone with topaz light, tree frogs rang like glass bells. When the eye got used to the darkness, stars and mountain ridges appeared above, trees loomed over the village, which we did not notice during the day. And all night long there was heard from there, from the dukhan, a dull knock on the drum and a throaty, mournful, hopelessly happy cry, as if all of the same endless song.
    Not far from us, in a coastal ravine, descending from the forest to the sea, a small, transparent river quickly jumped over a rocky bed. How wonderfully its brilliance shattered, boiled in that mysterious hour, when from behind the mountains and forests, like some wondrous creature, the late moon gazed intently!
    Sometimes at night terrible clouds moved in from the mountains, there was a vicious storm, in the noisy grave blackness of the forests every now and then magical green abysses opened up and antediluvian thunderclaps cracked in the heavenly heights. Then the eaglets woke up in the forests and meowed, the leopard roared, the coin yelped... Once a whole flock of them ran to our illuminated window - they always run to the shelter on such nights - we opened the window and looked at them from above, and they stood under in a brilliant downpour and yapped, asked to come to us ... She wept joyfully, looking at them.
    He was looking for her in Gelendzhik, in Gagra, in Sochi. The next day, upon arrival in Sochi, he swam in the sea in the morning, then shaved, put on clean linen, a snow-white tunic, had breakfast at his hotel on the restaurant terrace, drank a bottle of champagne, drank coffee with chartreuse, slowly smoked a cigar. Returning to his room, he lay down on the sofa and shot himself in the whiskey with two revolvers.
    November 12, 1937
    BALLAD
    On the eve of the big winter holidays, the village house was always heated up like a bathhouse and presented a strange picture, for it consisted of spacious and low rooms, the doors of which were all wide open - from the entrance hall to the sofa room, located at the very end of the house - and shone in red corners with wax candles and lamps in front of the icons.
    On the eve of these holidays, they washed the smooth oak floors everywhere in the house, which soon dried out from the firebox, and then covered them with clean blankets, in the best order they put furniture shifted for the time of work in their places, and in the corners, in front of the gilded and silver settings of the icons, they lit lamps and candles, yet other fires were extinguished. By this hour, the winter night was already dark blue outside the windows, and everyone dispersed to their sleeping rooms. At that time, complete silence reigned in the house, reverent and, as it were, waiting for something, peace, which could not be more befitting of the sacred night view of the icons, illuminated mournfully and touchingly.
    In winter, the wanderer Mashenka sometimes visited the estate, gray-haired, dry and fractional, like a girl. And only she alone in the whole house did not sleep on such nights: coming after dinner from the people's room to the hallway and taking off her little feet in woolen stockings, she silently walked around all these hot, mysteriously lit rooms on soft blankets, kneeling everywhere , crossed herself, bowed before the icons, and there she again went into the hallway, sat down on the black chest, which had stood in it for centuries, and read prayers, psalms in an undertone, or simply spoke to herself. And so I once learned about this "God's beast, the Lord's wolf": I heard Mashenka praying to him.
    I could not sleep, late at night I went out into the hall to go to the sofa room and take something to read from the bookcases there. Mashenka did not hear me. She said something, sitting in a dark hallway. I paused and listened. She recited the psalms by heart.
    “Hear, Lord, my prayer and heed my cry,” she said without any expression. - Do not be silent to my tears, for I am a wanderer with you and a stranger on earth, like all my fathers ...
    - Tell God: how terrible you are in your deeds!
    - He who lives under the roof of the Almighty rests under the shadow of the Almighty ... You will step on the asp and the basilisk, trample on the lion and the dragon ...
    At the last words, she quietly but firmly raised her voice, uttered them with conviction: trample the lion and the dragon. Then she paused and, sighing slowly, said as if she were talking to someone:
    - For all the beasts in the forest and the cattle on a thousand mountains ...
    I glanced into the hallway: she was sitting on the chest, her small legs in woolen stockings straight down from him and her arms crossed over her chest. She looked ahead of her, not seeing me. Then she raised her eyes to the ceiling and said separately:
    - And you, God's beast, God's wolf, pray for us the queen of heaven.
    I approached and said softly:
    - Masha, don't be afraid, it's me.
    She dropped her hands, stood up, bowed low:
    - Hello, sir. No, sir, I'm not afraid. Why should I be afraid now? It was in her youth that she was stupid, she was afraid of everything. The dark-eyed demon was embarrassing.
    “Sit down, please,” I said.
    “No way,” she replied. - I'll stand.
    I put my hand on her bony shoulder with a large collarbone, forced her to sit up and sat down next to her.
    - Sit down, or I'll leave. Tell me, who are you praying to? Is there such a saint - the Lord's wolf?
    She wanted to get up again. I held her again:
    - Oh, what are you! And you say you're not afraid of anything! I ask you: is it true that there is such a saint?
    She thought. Then she answered seriously:
    - So, there is, sir. There is also the beast Tigris-Ephrat. Since it is written in the church, therefore, it is. I saw him myself.
    - How did you see it? Where? When?
    - A long time ago, sir, in time immemorial. And where - and I don’t know how to say: I remember one thing - we went there for three days. There was a village Krutye Gory there. I myself am distant, - perhaps, they deigned to hear: Ryazan, - and that region will be even lower, in the Zadonshchina, and what a rough terrain there, you won’t find a word for that. It was there that the village behind the eyes of our princes, their grandfather's favorite. - A whole, maybe a thousand clay huts along bare mounds-slopes, and on the highest mountain, on its crown, above the Kamennaya River, the master's house, also all naked, three-tiered, and the church is yellow, columned, and in that church this same divine wolf: in the middle, therefore, a cast-iron slab over the grave of the prince, who was slaughtered by him, and on the right pillar - he himself, this wolf, in all his height and warehouse written: sits in a gray fur coat on a thick tail and stretches all over, rests his front paws on the ground - and shines into his eyes: the necklace is gray-haired, spiny, thick, his head is large, pointed-eared, bared with fangs, his eyes are fierce, bloody, around the head there is a golden glow, like saints and saints. It's scary to even remember such a marvelous marvel! So alive he sits looking, as if he is about to rush at you!
    “Wait, Mashenka,” I said, “I don’t understand anything, why and who painted this terrible wolf in the church?” You say - he stabbed the prince: so why is he a saint and why does he need to be a prince's grave? And how did you get there, in this terrible village? Tell me everything.
    And Mashenka began to tell:
    - I got there, sir, for the reason that I was then a serf girl, I served at the house of our princes. I was an orphan, my parent, they babbled, some passerby was - a runaway, most likely - illegally seduced my mother, and God knows where, and my mother, after giving birth to me, soon died. Well, the gentlemen took pity on me, they took me from the servants into the house as soon as I was thirteen years old and put me on errands to the young mistress, and she fell in love with me so much that she did not let me go for an hour from her grace. So she took me with her on a voyage, as the young prince planned to go with her to his grandfather's heritage, to this very village behind the eyes, to Steep Mountains. There was that patrimony in a long-standing desolation, in desertion, - and the house was packed, abandoned from the very death of grandfather, - well, our young gentlemen wanted to visit it. And what a terrible death grandfather died, we all knew according to legend.
    Something slightly cracked in the hall and then fell, slightly knocked. Mashenka kicked off her legs from the chest and ran into the hall: there was already a smell of burning from a fallen candle. She hushed up the candle wick, which was still fuming, trampled the smoldering pile of the blanket, and, jumping onto a chair, again lit the candle from the other burning candles stuck in the silver holes under the icon, and fitted it into the one from which it had fallen: she turned it over with a bright flame down, dripped into the hole with wax flowing like hot honey, then inserted it, deftly removed the carbon deposits from the other candles with thin fingers, and again jumped down to the floor.
    “Look how merrily it’s glowing,” she said, making the sign of the cross and looking at the revived gold of the candle flames. - And what a church spirit went!
    There was a smell of sweet fumes, the lights were trembling, the face of the ancient image looked out from behind them in an empty silver mug. In the upper, clean panes of the windows, thickly frosted from below with gray hoarfrost, the night was turning black and the paws of the branches in the front garden, weighed down by layers of snow, were close to white. Mashenka looked at them, crossed herself again, and went back into the hallway.
    “It’s time for you to rest, sir,” she said, sitting down on the chest and holding back a yawn, covering her mouth with her dry hand. - The night has become ominous.
    - Why formidable?
    - But because hidden, when only an alector, a rooster, in our opinion, and even a nocturnal owl, an owl, can not sleep. Here the Lord himself listens to the earth, the most important stars begin to play, the ice-holes freeze over the seas and rivers.
    - Why don't you sleep at night?
    - And I, sir, sleep as much as necessary. Does an old man need much sleep? Like a bird on a branch.
    - Well, lie down, just tell me about this wolf.
    - Why, this is a dark matter, long-standing, sir, - perhaps there is only one ballad.
    - How did you say?
    - Ballad, sir. That's how all our gentlemen used to say, they loved to read these ballads. I used to listen - frost on the head goes:
    Cheese-boron howls behind the mountain,
    Sweeps in a white field,
    It became a blizzard-bad weather,
    The road is down...
    How good, sir!
    - What's good, Mashenka?
    - That's good, sir, that you yourself do not know what. Creepy.
    - In the old days, Mashenka, everything was terrible.
    - How to say, sir?

    Bunin Ivan Alekseevich is one of the best writers of our country. The first collection of his poems appeared in 1881. Then he wrote the stories "To the End of the World", "Tanka", "News from the Motherland" and some others. In 1901, a new collection, Falling Leaves, was published, for which the author received the Pushkin Prize.

    Popularity and recognition come to the writer. He meets M. Gorky, A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Tolstoy.

    At the beginning of the 20th century, Ivan Alekseevich created the stories "Zakhar Vorobyov", "Pines", "Antonov apples" and others, which depict the tragedy of the destitute, impoverished people, as well as the ruin of the estates of the nobles.

    and emigration

    Bunin took the October Revolution negatively, as a social drama. He emigrated in 1920 to France. Here he wrote, in addition to other works, a cycle of short stories called "Dark Alleys" (we will analyze the story of the same name from this collection a little lower). The main theme of the cycle is love. Ivan Alekseevich reveals to us not only its bright sides, but also the dark ones, as the name itself speaks of.

    Bunin's fate was both tragic and happy. In his art, he reached unsurpassed heights, the first of the domestic writers to receive the prestigious Nobel Prize. But he was forced to live in a foreign land for thirty years, with longing for his homeland and spiritual intimacy with her.

    Collection "Dark alleys"

    These experiences served as an impetus for the creation of the cycle "Dark Alleys", the analysis of which we will analyze. This collection, in a truncated form, first appeared in New York in 1943. In 1946, the next edition came out in Paris, which included 38 stories. The collection differed sharply in its content from the way in which the theme of love was habitually covered in Soviet literature.

    Bunin's view of love

    Bunin had his own view of this feeling, different from others. His final was one - death or parting, regardless of how much the heroes loved each other. Ivan Alekseevich believed that it looked like a flash, but this is precisely what is beautiful. Love over time is replaced by affection, which gradually turns into everyday life. Bunin's heroes are deprived of this. They experience only a flash and part, having enjoyed it.

    Consider the Analysis of the story that opens the cycle of the same name, let's start with a brief description of the plot.

    The plot of the story "Dark Alleys"

    Its plot is uncomplicated. General Nikolai Alekseevich, already an old man, arrives at the post station and meets his beloved here, whom he has not seen for about 35 years. Hope he learns not immediately. Now she is the hostess in which their first meeting once took place. The hero finds out that all this time she loved only him.

    The story "Dark Alleys" continues. Nikolai Alekseevich is trying to justify himself to the woman for not visiting her for so many years. "Everything passes," he says. But these explanations are very insincere, clumsy. Nadezhda wisely answers the general, saying that youth passes for everyone, but love does not. The woman reproaches her lover that he left her heartlessly, so she wanted to lay hands on herself many times, but she realizes that now it is too late to reproach.

    Let us dwell in more detail on the story "Dark Alleys". shows that Nikolai Alekseevich does not seem to feel remorse, but Nadezhda is right when she says that not everything is forgotten after all. The general also could not forget this woman, his first love. In vain he asks her: "Go away, please." And he says that if only God would forgive him, and Nadezhda, apparently, has already forgiven him. But it turns out that it isn't. The woman admits that she could not do it. Therefore, the general is forced to make excuses, to apologize to his former lover, saying that he was never happy, but he loved his wife without memory, and she left Nikolai Alekseevich, cheated on him. He adored his son, had high hopes, but he turned out to be an insolent, spendthrift, without honor, heart, conscience.

    Is there an old love left?

    Let's analyze the work "Dark Alleys". Analysis of the story shows that the feelings of the main characters have not faded away. It becomes clear to us that the old love has been preserved, the heroes of this work love each other as before. Leaving, the general admits to himself that this woman gave him the best moments of his life. For the betrayal of his first love, fate takes revenge on the hero. Does not find happiness in the life of the family Nikolai Alekseevich ("Dark Alleys"). An analysis of his experiences proves this. He realizes that he missed the chance given by fate once. When the coachman tells the general that this landlady gives money at interest and is very "cool", although fair: if she didn't return it on time, then blame yourself, Nikolai Alekseevich projects these words onto his life, reflects on what would have happened if he hadn't abandoned this woman.

    What prevented the happiness of the main characters?

    At one time, class prejudices prevented the fate of the future general from joining the fate of a commoner. But love did not leave the heart of the protagonist and prevented him from becoming happy with another woman, raising his son with dignity, as our analysis shows. "Dark Alleys" (Bunin) is a work that has a tragic connotation.

    Nadezhda also carried love through her whole life and in the end she also ended up alone. She could not forgive the hero for the suffering caused, since he remained the dearest person in her life. Nikolai Alekseevich was unable to break the rules established in society, did not dare to act against them. After all, if the general married Nadezhda, he would meet the contempt and misunderstanding of those around him. And the poor girl had no choice but to submit to fate. In those days, bright alleys of love between a peasant woman and a master were impossible. This is a public issue, not a private one.

    The drama of the fate of the main characters

    Bunin in his work wanted to show the dramatic fate of the main characters, who were forced to part, being in love with each other. In this world, love was doomed and especially fragile. But she lit up their whole life, forever remained in the memory of the best moments. This story is romantically beautiful, although dramatic.

    In Bunin's work "Dark Alleys" (we are now analyzing this story), the theme of love is a through motif. It also permeates all creativity, thus linking the emigrant and Russian periods. It is she who allows the writer to relate spiritual experiences with the phenomena of external life, as well as to approach the mystery of the human soul, based on the influence of objective reality on it.

    This concludes the analysis of "Dark Alleys". Everyone understands love in their own way. This amazing feeling has not yet been unraveled. The theme of love will always be relevant, because it is the driving force behind many human actions, the meaning of our lives. This conclusion is led, in particular, by our analysis. Bunin's "Dark Alleys" is a story that, even with its title, reflects the idea that this feeling cannot be fully understood, it is "dark", but at the same time beautiful.



    Similar articles
     
    Categories
    Video footage
    Popular
    New