In Russian classical literature, the theme of love has always occupied one of the central places. Against the background of the chaste works of Russian writers, Bunin's depiction of this feeling looks bold and frank.
Russian literature of the 19th century is, in my opinion, primarily the literature of "first love". According to Bunin, love is a combination of spirit and flesh. The writer believes that without knowing the flesh, it is impossible to comprehend the spirit. Love is an earthly joy, an incredible attraction of one person to another. Everything connected with this feeling is pure and sincere in Bunin, fanned with mystery and even holiness.
In Bunin's works there are many moments related to the description of physical proximity, physiology, and the body. But at the same time, the writer manages to maintain a sense of the beautiful, the divine, the holy. Such moments Bunin describes languidly and excitedly. It can even be said that in his work the writer defends everything carnal, bodily. He believes that human morality is largely conditional, it is not able to appreciate and protect true feelings.
Almost all of Bunin's love stories are a story about the mysterious female nature, about the secret of the female soul, which seeks to love, but will never love. The end of love, according to Bunin, is always tragic. So, in the story “Mitya’s Love”, the hero is haunted by Rubinstein’s romance to the words of Heine: “I am from the kind of poor Azrovs, Having fallen in love, we die ...” According to the memoirs of the writer’s wife, V.I. Muromtseva-Bunina, Ivan Alekseevich for many years was impressed by this romance, which he heard in his youth.
The cycle "Dark Alleys" is a book connected by a unity of conception and style. “All the stories in this book,” Bunin wrote, “are only about love, about its “dark” and most often gloomy and cruel alleys.” It was in love that the writer saw the meaning of life, happiness, despite the instability of this feeling. But after all, according to Bunin, life itself is also unstable, bringing not only joy, but also grief and loss. This is evidenced by such stories of the Russian writer as "In Paris", "Cold Autumn", "Heinrich".
In his works, Bunin pays great attention to the internal, psychological state of the characters. Often, as a result of their love story, they conclude that fate, fate, is gravitating over love, that this feeling is doomed to a sad ending (“Three rubles”).
The characters of Bunin's stories included in the "Dark Alleys" are outwardly diverse, but they are all people of the same destiny. Students, writers, artists, army officers - they are all lonely. They are not interested in the outer life, they are focused on the inner. The meaning of the life of these people is not in external circumstances: they are all united by internal emptiness, the lack of meaning, the “price” of life. Heroes are looking for this meaning in love, in memories of the past. They have no future, although outwardly these heroes are very prosperous.
Bunin's "Dark Alleys" are distinguished by lyricism and a subjective vision of the world. The plot of the stories in this collection is usually simple, uncomplicated. Often the heroes' memories of the past are wedged into the development of the action, which are of great importance for understanding the heroes and stories in general. These memories are painted, as a rule, in hopeless, tragic tones. We can say that the lyricism of Bunin's stories is connected with the theme of memory, an appeal to the past, the past. The heroes of "Dark Alleys" are inextricably linked with their memories, they live in the past, which cannot be returned. Hence the tragic sound of the writer's stories.
It is important to note that Bunin's love never ends in marriage, it is always like a flash. This surge of feelings is so vivid that the hero can live in memory of him for the rest of his life. Happy love, according to Bunin, gives rise to a habit that only defiles this holy feeling.
In the story “Cold Autumn”, the heroine, who tells about her life, at the beginning of the First World War, lost a man whom she dearly loved and with whom she was engaged. Remembering many years later the last meeting with him, she comes to the conclusion: "And that's all that was in my life - the rest is an unnecessary dream."
I would like to note that in the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" Bunin does not tell love stories at all. All stories merge into a single picture, where each work is a separate link in the chain, without which it is impossible to understand the whole, to realize the author's intention. Bunin's love is both a punishment, a test, and a reward. It seems to me that Bunin's understanding of love is very tragic and at the same time very subtle, psychologically deep. Love, according to Bunin, is colored with sublime sadness, it is beautiful and sad at the same time.
I think before I.A. Bunin in Russian literature, no one has yet managed to convey the psychological state of a person at the moment of experiencing a love feeling so sublimely, sadly and subtly, to create such an interesting and original philosophy of love.
The prose of I.A. Bunin is considered a synthesis of prose and poetry. It has an unusually strong confessional beginning ("Antonov apples"). Often, the lyrics replace the plot basis, and as a result, a portrait-story ("Lirnik Rodion") appears.
Among Bunin's works there are stories in which the epic, romantic beginning is expanded - the whole life of the hero falls into the writer's field of vision ("The Cup of Life"). Bunin is a fatalist, an irrationalist, pathos of tragedy and skepticism are characteristic of his works. His work echoes the concept of modernists about the tragedy of human passion. Like the Symbolists, Bunin's attention to the eternal themes of love, death and nature comes to the fore. The cosmic coloring of the writer's works, the permeation of his images with the voices of the Universe bring his work closer to Buddhist ideas. Bunin's works synthesize all these concepts.
Bunin's concept of love is tragic. Moments of love, according to Bunin, become the pinnacle of a person's life. Only by falling in love can a person truly feel another person, only a feeling justifies high demands on himself and his neighbor, only a lover is able to overcome his egoism. The state of love is not fruitless for Bunin's heroes, it elevates souls. One example of an unusual interpretation of the theme of love is the story "Chang's Dreams", which is written in the form of a dog's memories. The dog feels the inner devastation of the captain, his master. The image of "distant working people" (Germans) appears in the story. Based on a comparison with their way of life, the writer talks about the possible ways of human happiness: firstly, labor in order to live and multiply, without knowing the fullness of life; secondly, infinite love, which is hardly worth devoting oneself to, since there is always the possibility of betrayal; thirdly, the path of eternal thirst, the search, in which, however (according to Bunin) there is no happiness either.
The plot of the story seems to oppose the mood of the hero. True memory breaks through real facts like a dog, when there was peace in the soul, when the captain and the dog were happy. Moments of happiness are highlighted. Chang carries the idea of loyalty and gratitude. This, according to the writer, is the meaning of life that a person is looking for.
Bunin's love is most often sad, tragic. A person is not able to resist it, the arguments of reason are powerless before it, because there is nothing like love in strength and beauty. The writer defines love surprisingly accurately, comparing it with a sunstroke. This is the title of a story about an unexpected, impetuous, "crazy" affair of a lieutenant with a woman who accidentally met on the ship, who does not give her name or address. The woman leaves, saying goodbye forever to the lieutenant, who at first perceives this story as an accidental, non-binding affair, a lovely road accident. Only with time does he begin to feel "insoluble torment", experiencing a sense of bereavement. He tries to deal with his condition, performs some actions, perfectly aware of their absurdity and uselessness. He is ready to die only in order to miraculously bring her back, to spend another day with her.
At the end of the story, the lieutenant, sitting under a canopy on the deck, feels ten years older. In a wonderful story by Bunin, the uniqueness and beauty of love, which a person often does not suspect, is expressed with great force. Love is a sunstroke, the greatest shock that can radically change a person's life, make him either the happiest or the most unhappy.
Bunin's work is characterized by an interest in ordinary life, the ability to reveal its tragedy, the saturation of the narrative with details. Bunin is considered to be the successor of Chekhov's realism, but his realism differs from Chekhov's in its extreme sensitivity. Like Chekhov, Bunin addresses eternal themes. Nature is important to him, however, in his opinion, the highest judge of a person is human memory. It is the memory that protects Bunin's heroes from inexorable time, from death.
Bunin's favorite heroes are endowed with an innate sense of the beauty of the earth, an unconscious desire for harmony with the world around them and with themselves. Such is the dying Averky from the story "Thin Grass". Having worked all his life as a farm laborer, having experienced a lot of torment, grief and anxiety, this peasant did not lose his kindness, the ability to perceive the beauty of nature, a sense of the high meaning of life. Memory constantly brings Averky back to those "distant twilight on the river" when he was destined to meet "that young, sweet, who now looked at him with indifferent, pitiful eyes with senile eyes." A short playful conversation with a girl, full of deep meaning for them, could not erase from their memory either the years lived or the trials they had endured.
Love is the most beautiful and bright thing that the hero had throughout his long, laborious life. But, thinking about this, Averky recalls both the "soft dusk in the meadow", and the shallow backwater, turning pink from the dawn, against which the girl's camp is barely visible, surprisingly in harmony with the charm of the starry night. Nature, as it were, participates in the life of the hero, accompanying him both in joy and in sorrow. Distant twilight on the river at the very beginning of life is replaced by autumn melancholy, the expectation of imminent death. The state of Averky is close to the picture of fading nature. "Dying, the grasses dried up and rotted. The threshing floor became empty and bare. A mill in a homeless field became visible through the vines. The rain sometimes changed to snow, the wind hummed in the holes of the barn, evil and cold."
For ten years (1939 - 1949), Bunin wrote the book "Dark Alleys" - stories about love, as he himself said, "about her" dark "and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys." This book, according to Bunin, "talks about the tragic and about many things that are tender and beautiful - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life."
Bunin went his own way, did not join any fashionable literary movements or groups, in his words, "did not throw out any banners" and did not proclaim any slogans. Criticism noted the powerful language of Bunin, his art of raising "everyday phenomena of life" into the world of poetry. There were no "low" topics unworthy of the poet's attention for him.
Shortly before his death, Bunin wrote in his memoirs: “I was born too late. If I had been born earlier, my writing memories would not have been like that. and its continuation, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler... How not to envy our forefather Noah! Just one flood fell to his lot..."
“You are a thought, you are a dream. Through the smoky blizzard
Crosses run - outstretched arms.
I listen to the pensive spruce -
Singing call...
Everything is just thought and sounds!
What lies in the grave, are you?
Parting, sadness was marked
your hard way. Now they are gone.
Crosses Store only ashes.
Now you are a thought. You are eternal. »
The recognized master of the artistic word Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in works about love appears before us as a psychologist who knows how to amazingly subtly convey the state of the soul wounded by this wonderful feeling. Possessing a rare talent, the ability to love, the writer professes his own philosophy of love in his work.
Reading the stories of I.A. Bunin, we notice that the author's love does not exist in marriage and family, and he is not attracted to quiet family happiness. For him, it is not so much long and cloudless love that is important, but short-term, like lightning that flared up in the darkness and went out, but left its deep imprint in the soul. Love in the writer's stories is a tragedy, madness, a catastrophe, a great feeling that can elevate or destroy a person. A sudden “flash” of love can happen to anyone and at any moment.
Love is passion. We come to this conclusion after getting acquainted with the story "Sunstroke", the heroes of which were suddenly overtaken by love. Love, which has no past and future - there is only the present, only "now". A woman and a man do not even have names - just She and He. For the author (and the reader) it does not matter at all.
Without talking about the experiences of the heroine after leaving, the writer describes in detail the state of mind of the hero. An accidental meeting with a “charming, light, little creature”, an unexpected strong feeling, an absurd parting ... And then misunderstanding and mental anguish ... “... a completely new feeling ... that didn’t exist at all when they were together”, appeared in the soul of the lieutenant after that , as he at first thought, "a funny acquaintance." What some people learn in years, he happened to experience in one day.
Perhaps this day turned out to be one of the most difficult in the life of the protagonist. The enormous power of love, like a sunstroke, suddenly “struck” him. The lieutenant leaves the city as if he were a different person. There is no longer any passion, no hatred, no love in his soul, but, having experienced confusion, horror, despair, he now feels "ten years older."
"Truly magical" moments of life gives a person love, warms the soul with bright memories. But love also has its own "dark alleys", so it often dooms Bunin's heroes to suffering, does not lead them to happiness.
The happiness of the main character of the short story "Dark Alleys" did not take place. Hope's boundless love for her master forever made her lonely. A woman who has preserved her former beauty even now remembers the past, lives with memories of it. The love in her soul did not go out for many years. “Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter,” she admits indifferently to Nikolai Alekseevich, who left her thirty years ago. “There was ... nothing more expensive ... in the world at that time, and then” for Nadezhda, therefore she “never could” forgive her offender.
Despite the fact that it is difficult for the indecisive and conceited Nikolai Alekseevich, prone to class prejudices, to imagine Nadezhda, the keeper of the inn, as his wife, he becomes sad after an unexpected meeting with her. The sixty-year-old military man understands that this once slender young beauty gave him the best moments of his life. Probably, for the first time he thought about happiness, about responsibility for committed actions. The life that Nikolai Alekseevich had long abandoned will now remain with him only in his memories.
Love for I.A. Bunin is that illusory happiness that a person strives for, but, unfortunately, very often misses. In it, as in life, light and dark principles always oppose. But the author, who gave us wonderful works about love, was convinced: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not shared."
I. A. Bunin - the theme of love
In the theme of love, Bunin reveals himself as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul, wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many artists of the word dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them found something unique, individual to this theme. It seems to me that the peculiarity of Bunin the artist is that he considers love a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of both infinitely elevating and destroying a person.
Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person's life, giving his fate a uniqueness against the background of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with a special meaning.
This mystery of being becomes the theme of Bunin's story "Grammar of Love" (1915). The hero of the work, a certain Ivlev, having stopped on his way to the house of the recently deceased landowner Khvoshchinsky, reflects on “incomprehensible love, which turned a whole human life into some kind of ecstatic life, which, perhaps, should have been the most ordinary life”, if not for the strange charm of the maid Lushki. It seems to me that the mystery lies not in the appearance of Lushka, who “was not at all good in herself,” but in the character of the landowner himself, who idolized his beloved. “But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some kind of dazed, all-on-one soul?” According to neighbors-landlords. Khvoshchinsky “was known in the county as a rare clever man. And suddenly this love fell on him, this Lushka, then her unexpected death, - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and sat on her bed for more than twenty years ... ” Is this twenty years of seclusion? Madness? For Bunin, the answer to this question is not at all unambiguous.
The fate of Khvoshchinsky strangely fascinates and worries Ivlev. He understands that Lushka entered his life forever, awakened in him “a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in an Italian town when looking at the relics of one saint.” What made Ivlev buy from the heir of Khvoshchinsky “for a high price” a small book “Grammar of Love”, with which the old landowner did not part, cherishing the memories of Lushka? Ivlev would like to understand what the life of a madman in love was filled with, what his orphaned soul fed for many years. And following the hero of the story, “grandchildren and great-grandchildren” who heard “voluptuous legend about the hearts of those who loved” will try to uncover the secret of this inexplicable feeling, and with them the reader of Bunin’s work.
An attempt to understand the nature of love feelings by the author in the story “Sunstroke” (1925). “A strange adventure”, shakes the soul of the lieutenant. After parting with a beautiful stranger, he cannot find peace. At the thought of the impossibility of meeting this woman again, “he felt such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror and despair.” The author convinces the reader of the seriousness of the feelings experienced by the hero of the story. The lieutenant feels "terribly unhappy in this city." "Where to go? What to do?" he thinks lostly. The depth of the hero's spiritual insight is clearly expressed in the final phrase of the story: "The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older." How to explain what happened to him? Maybe the hero came into contact with that great feeling that people call love, and the feeling of the impossibility of loss led him to realize the tragedy of being?
The torment of a loving soul, the bitterness of loss, the sweet pain of memories - such unhealed wounds are left in the fate of Bunin's heroes by love, and time has no power over it.
The story "Dark Alleys" (1935) depicts a chance meeting of people who loved each other thirty years ago. The situation is rather ordinary: the young nobleman easily broke up with the serf girl Nadezhda, who was in love with him, and married a woman of his circle. And Nadezhda, having received freedom from the masters, became the mistress of the inn and never married, had no family, children, did not recognize ordinary worldly happiness. “No matter how much time passed, she lived all the same,” she admits to Nikolai Alekseevich. - Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten ... I could never forgive you. Just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have it later. ” She could not change herself, her feeling. And Nikolai Alekseevich realized that he had lost in Nadezhda "the most precious thing that he had in life." But this is a momentary insight. Leaving the inn, he “remembered with shame his last words and the fact that he had kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame.” And yet it is difficult for him to imagine Nadezhda as his wife, the mistress of the Petegbug house, the mother of his children ... This gentleman attaches too much importance to class prejudices to prefer genuine feeling to them. But he paid for his cowardice with a lack of personal happiness.
How differently the heroes of the story comprehend what happened to them! For Nikolai Alekseevich, this is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” but for Nadezhda, it is undying memories, long-term devotion to love.
Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal riddle, and each reader of Bunin's works is looking for his own answers, reflecting on the secrets of love. The perception of this feeling is very personal, and therefore someone will treat what is depicted in the book as a “vulgar story”, and someone will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a poet or musician, is not given to everyone. But one thing is certain: Bunin's stories, which tell about the most secret, will not leave indifferent readers of the end of the 20th century. Every young person will find in Bunin's works something consonant with their own thoughts and feelings, they will touch the great secret of love. This is what makes the author of Sunstroke always a contemporary writer of deep reader interest.
Bunin is a unique creative personality in the history of Russian literature of the late 19th - first half of the 20th century. His brilliant talent, the skill of a poet and prose writer, which has become a classic, amazed his contemporaries and conquers us, living today. In his works, the real Russian literary language, which is now lost, is preserved.
A large place in the work of Bunin in exile is occupied by works about love. The writer has always been concerned about the mystery of this strongest of human feelings. In 1924, he wrote the story "Mitya's Love", the following year - "The Cornet Elagin Case" and "Sunstroke". And in the late 30s and during World War II, Bunin created 38 short stories about love, which made up his book “Dark Alleys”, published in 1946. Bunin considered this book to be his “best work in terms of conciseness, painting and literary skill ".
Love in the image of Bunin is striking not only by the power of artistic depiction, but also by its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. Infrequently they break through to the surface: most people will not experience their fatal effects until the end of their days. Such an image of love unexpectedly gives Bunin's sober, "merciless" talent a romantic glow. The closeness of love and death, their conjugation were obvious facts for Bunin, they were never in doubt. However, the catastrophic nature of being, the fragility of human relations and existence itself - all these favorite Bunin themes after the gigantic social cataclysms that shook Russia, were filled with a new formidable meaning, as can be seen, for example, in the story "Mitya's Love". "Love is beautiful" and "Love is doomed" - these concepts, finally combined, coincided, carrying in the depths, in the grain of each story, the personal grief of Bunin the emigrant.
Bunin's love lyrics are not large quantitatively. It reflects the poet's confused thoughts and feelings about the mystery of love... One of the main motives of love lyrics is loneliness, inaccessibility or impossibility of happiness. For example, “How bright, how elegant spring is! ..”, “A calm look, similar to the look of a doe ...”, “At a late hour we were with her in the field ...”, “Loneliness”, “The sadness of eyelashes, shining and black ...” and etc.
Bunin's love lyrics are passionate, sensual, saturated with a thirst for love and are always full of tragedy, unfulfilled hopes, memories of past youth and departed love.
I.A. Bunin has a very peculiar view of love relationships that distinguishes him from many other writers of that time.
In Russian classical literature of that time, the theme of love has always occupied an important place, and preference was given to spiritual, "platonic" love.
before sensuality, carnal, physical passion, which was often debunked. The purity of Turgenev's women has become a household word. Russian literature is predominantly the literature of "first love".
The image of love in Bunin's work is a special synthesis of spirit and flesh. According to Bunin, the spirit cannot be comprehended without knowing the flesh. I. Bunin defended in his works a pure attitude towards the carnal and bodily. He did not have the concept of female sin, as in Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Kreutzer Sonata by L.N. Tolstoy, there was no wary, hostile attitude towards the feminine, characteristic of N.V. Gogol, but there was no vulgarization of love. His love is an earthly joy, a mysterious attraction of one sex to another.
The theme of love and death (often in contact with Bunin) is devoted to works - “Grammar of Love”, “Light Breath”, “Mitina Love”, “Caucasus”, “In Paris”, “Galya Ganskaya”, “Heinrich”, “Natalie”, "Cold Autumn", etc. It has long been and very correctly noted that love in Bunin's work is tragic. The writer is trying to unravel the mystery of love and the mystery of death, why they often come into contact in life, what is the meaning of this. Why does the nobleman Khvoshchinsky go crazy after the death of his beloved, the peasant woman Lushka, and then almost deifies her image (“Grammar of Love”). Why does the young high school student Olya Meshcherskaya, who, as it seemed to her, have an amazing gift of “easy breathing” die, just starting to blossom? The author does not answer these questions, but through his works he makes it clear that there is a certain meaning to human earthly life in this.
The complex emotional experiences of the hero of the story "Mitya's Love" are described by Bunin with brilliance and tremendous psychological stress. This story caused controversy, the writer was reproached for excessive descriptions of nature, for the implausibility of Mitya's behavior. But we already know that Bunin's nature is not a background, not a decoration, but one of the main characters, and especially in "Mitya's Love". Through the depiction of the state of nature, the author surprisingly accurately conveys Mitya's feelings, his mood and feelings.
You can call "Mitya's Love" a psychological story in which the author accurately and correctly embodied Mitya's confused feelings and the tragic end of his life.
An encyclopedia of love dramas can be called "Dark Alleys" - a book of stories about love. “She speaks of the tragic and of many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing that I wrote in my life ...” Bunin admitted to Teleshov in 1947.
The heroes of "Dark Alleys" do not oppose nature, often their actions are absolutely illogical and contrary to generally accepted morality (an example of this is the sudden passion of the heroes in the story "Sunstroke"). Bunin's love "on the verge" is almost a transgression of the norm, going beyond the ordinary. This immorality for Bunin, one might even say, is a certain sign of the authenticity of love, since ordinary morality turns out, like everything established by people, to be a conditional scheme that does not fit into the elements of natural, living life.
When describing risky details related to the body, when the author must be impartial so as not to cross the fragile line that separates art from pornography, Bunin, on the contrary, worries too much - to a spasm in the throat, to a passionate trembling: “... it just went dark in eyes at the sight of her pinkish body with a tan on her shiny shoulders ... her eyes turned black and widened even more, her lips parted feverishly ”(“ Galya Ganskaya ”). For Bunin, everything connected with sex is pure and significant, everything is shrouded in mystery and even holiness.
As a rule, the happiness of love in "Dark Alleys" is followed by parting or death. Heroes revel in intimacy, but
it leads to separation, death, murder. Happiness cannot be eternal. Natalie "died on Lake Geneva in a premature birth". Galya Ganskaya was poisoned. In the story “Dark Alleys”, the master Nikolai Alekseevich abandons the peasant girl Nadezhda - for him this story is vulgar and ordinary, and she loved him “all century”. In the story "Rusya", the lovers are separated by the hysterical mother of Rusya.
Bunin allows his heroes only to taste the forbidden fruit, to enjoy it - and then deprives them of happiness, hopes, joys, even life. The hero of the story "Natalie" loved two at once, but did not find family happiness with any of them. In the story "Heinrich" - an abundance of female images for every taste. But the hero remains alone and free from the "wives of men."
Bunin's love does not go into a family channel, it is not resolved by a happy marriage. Bunin deprives his heroes of eternal happiness, deprives them because they get used to it, and the habit leads to the loss of love. Love out of habit cannot be better than lightning-fast love, but sincere. The hero of the story "Dark Alleys" cannot bind himself by family ties with the peasant woman Nadezhda, but by marrying another woman of his circle, he does not find family happiness. The wife cheated, the son is a wast and a scoundrel, the family itself turned out to be "the most ordinary vulgar story." However, despite the short duration, love still remains eternal: it is eternal in the memory of the hero precisely because it is fleeting in life.
A distinctive feature of love in the image of Bunin is a combination of seemingly incompatible things. It is no coincidence that Bunin once wrote in his diary: “And again, again, such indescribably - sweet sadness from that eternal deception of another spring, hopes and love for the whole world, which you want with tears
gratitude to kiss the earth. Lord, Lord, why do you torment us like this.
The strange connection between love and death is constantly emphasized by Bunin, and therefore it is no coincidence that the title of the collection "Dark Alleys" here does not mean "shady" at all - these are dark, tragic, intricate labyrinths of love.
G. Adamovich rightly wrote about the book of stories “Dark Alleys”: “All love is a great happiness, a gift of the gods, even if it is not shared. That is why Bunin's book breathes with happiness, that is why it is imbued with gratitude for life, for the world in which, for all its imperfections, this happiness happens.
True love is a great happiness, even if it ends in separation, death, tragedy. To this conclusion, albeit late, but many Bunin's heroes come, who have lost, overlooked or destroyed their love themselves. In this late repentance, late spiritual resurrection, the enlightenment of heroes, there lies that all-cleansing melody that speaks of the imperfection of people who have not yet learned to live, recognize and value real feelings, and of the imperfection of life itself, social conditions, the environment, circumstances that often interfere with truly human relationships, and most importantly - about those high emotions that leave an unfading trace of spiritual beauty, generosity, devotion and purity.
Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person's life, giving his fate a uniqueness against the background of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with a special meaning.
This mystery of being becomes the theme of Bunin's story "Grammar of Love" (1915). The hero of the work, a certain Ivlev, having stopped on his way to the house of the recently deceased landowner Khvoshchinsky, reflects on “incomprehensible love, which turned a whole human life into some kind of ecstatic life, which, perhaps, should have been the most ordinary life”, if not for the strange charm of the maid Lushki. It seems to me that the mystery lies not in the appearance of Lushka, who “was not at all good in herself,” but in the character of the landowner himself, who idolized his beloved. “But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some kind of dazed, all-on-one soul?” According to neighbors-landlords. Khvoshchinsky “was known in the county as a rare clever man. And suddenly this love fell on him, this Lushka, then her unexpected death, - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and sat on her bed for more than twenty years ... ” Is this twenty years of seclusion? Madness? For Bunin, the answer to this question is not at all unambiguous.
The fate of Khvoshchinsky strangely fascinates and worries Ivlev. He understands that Lushka entered his life forever, awakened in him “a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in an Italian town when looking at the relics of one saint.” What made Ivlev buy from the heir of Khvoshchinsky “for a high price” a small book “Grammar of Love”, with which the old landowner did not part, cherishing the memories of Lushka? Ivlev would like to understand what the life of a madman in love was filled with, what his orphaned soul fed for many years. And following the hero of the story, the “grandchildren and great-grandchildren” who heard the “voluptuous legend about the hearts of those who loved” will try to uncover the secret of this inexplicable feeling, and with them the reader of Bunin’s work.
An attempt to understand the nature of love feelings by the author in the story “Sunstroke” (1925). “A strange adventure”, shakes the soul of the lieutenant. After parting with a beautiful stranger, he cannot find peace. At the thought of the impossibility of meeting this woman again, “he felt such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror and despair.” The author convinces the reader of the seriousness of the feelings experienced by the hero of the story. The lieutenant feels "terribly unhappy in this city." "Where to go? What to do?" he thinks lostly. The depth of the hero's spiritual insight is clearly expressed in the final phrase of the story: "The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older." How to explain what happened to him? Maybe the hero came into contact with that great feeling that people call love, and the feeling of the impossibility of loss led him to realize the tragedy of being?
The torment of a loving soul, the bitterness of loss, the sweet pain of memories - such unhealed wounds are left in the fate of Bunin's heroes by love, and time has no power over it.
The story "Dark Alleys" (1935) depicts a chance meeting of people who loved each other thirty years ago. The situation is rather ordinary: the young nobleman easily broke up with the serf girl Nadezhda, who was in love with him, and married a woman of his circle. And Nadezhda, having received freedom from the masters, became the mistress of the inn and never married, had no family, children, did not recognize ordinary worldly happiness. “No matter how much time passed, she lived all the same,” she admits to Nikolai Alekseevich. - Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten ... I could never forgive you. Just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have it later. ” She could not change herself, her feeling. And Nikolai Alekseevich realized that he had lost in Nadezhda "the most precious thing that he had in life." But this is a momentary insight. Leaving the inn, he “remembered with shame his last words and the fact that he had kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame.” And yet it is difficult for him to imagine Nadezhda as his wife, the mistress of the Petegbug house, the mother of his children ... This gentleman attaches too much importance to class prejudices to prefer genuine feeling to them. But he paid for his cowardice with a lack of personal happiness.
How differently the heroes of the story comprehend what happened to them! For Nikolai Alekseevich, this is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” but for Nadezhda, it is undying memories, long-term devotion to love.
A passionate and deep feeling permeates the last, fifth book of the novel "The Life of Arseniev" - "Lika". It was based on the transformed experiences of Bunin himself, his youthful love for V.V. Pashchenko. In the novel, death and oblivion recede before the power of love, before the heightened feeling - the hero and the author - of life.
In the theme of love, Bunin reveals himself as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul, wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many artists of the word dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them found something unique, individual to this theme. It seems to me that the peculiarity of Bunin the artist is that he considers love a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of both infinitely elevating and destroying a person.
Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal riddle, and each reader of Bunin's works is looking for his own answers, reflecting on the secrets of love. The perception of this feeling is very personal, and therefore someone will treat what is depicted in the book as a “vulgar story”, and someone will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a poet or musician, is not given to everyone. But one thing is certain: Bunin's stories, which tell about the most secret, will not leave readers indifferent. Every young person will find in Bunin's works something consonant with their own thoughts and feelings, they will touch the great secret of love. This is what makes the author of Sunstroke always a contemporary writer of deep reader interest.
Literature abstract
Topic: “The theme of love in the works of Bunin”
Fulfilled
Student “” class
Moscow 2004
Bibliography
1. O.N.Mikhailov - “Russian literature of the XX century”
2. S.N.Morozov - “The life of Arseniev. Stories”
3. B.K.Zaitsev - "Youth - Ivan Bunin"
4. Literary-critical articles.
