This article will focus on his work called “Clean Monday,” which was written in 1944. This story was included in famous collection“Dark Alleys”, which reveals to the reader a special world where, even in a gloomy space, there is a place for love. But notes of love are not the only attractive effect. With his stories, the author tried to show as accurately as possible the life of Russia, both in pre-revolutionary times and after great events, which for some were constructive, and for others destructive.
In the story, written in the first person, every evening the hero visits one apartment, which is located opposite the temple. In this place lives a girl with whom he is madly in love. He goes out with her a lot, takes her to various taverns and theaters, showers her with various gifts, but until the very end he cannot understand how it will all end. The girl is silent about the future and her intentions.
And although the main characters do not intimacy, the young man is already truly happy next to his beloved.
The girl is taking a history course, she lives alone, her father is a merchant on the road. She accepts gifts from the hero, thanks him, but it seems that she is completely indifferent.
It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town.
She, like every girl, has her favorite flowers, she loves sweets. However, her real passion lies in chic clothes. According to the work, the hero himself and his girlfriend are young and beautiful. He looks somewhat like an Italian, and she looks like a Persian princess. By nature, the hero is talkative and cheerful, but she is quite the opposite, silent and very tactful.
The main character often recalls how he met his beloved. This happened during a lecture when the teacher was running around the audience and singing songs. Then this amused the guy so much that he laughed uncontrollably, and the girl was very attracted to this. From the first meetings, the young man felt charmed and was happy, although the desire to be even closer with the girl did not leave him.
All this happens in the same tone over several months. Maslenitsa has passed and the girl asks the hero to come to her earlier than usual. Afterwards they go together to the monastery, where along the way she told about the burial ceremony of the archbishop. Then the hero was very surprised. He realized that he didn’t know her well since he had not noticed such a strong passion for religion.
Near the monastery they visit a cemetery, where they walk for a long time among the graves. The hero looks at her so lovingly that the girl understands that this is not a simple hobby, it is probably love. When, having wandered, they find themselves in a tavern, the heroine continued to talk about monasteries and expressed a desire to happily leave to serve God. However, the narrator admires her so much that he does not notice what she is saying and does not take her words seriously.
A day later, she asks the hero to bring her to the theater for a skit. She drank champagne and danced all evening. Afterwards the hero took her home, and she asked him to come up to her. Later they made love, and the next morning she said that she was leaving for Tver forever and asked not to look for her, she would write herself. The letter said this:
I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then maybe I’ll decide to take monastic vows... May God give me the strength not to answer me - it’s useless to prolong and increase our torment...
The hero was in despair, began to drink a lot, and completely lost faith in himself and in life. Two years later, he again remembered his beloved and repeated the path that he had once taken with her on Forgiveness Sunday. Inside there was a service for the princess and prince, the hero, handing some money to the janitor, went there. A religious procession takes place here. The princess goes first, followed by the sisters with candles. One of them raised her eyes and looked straight at the hero, but he turned and left.
Analysis of the story “Clean Monday”
Name this story invented for a reason, Clean Monday is the date of the first week during Lent. There is also another meaning here; you can consider that the actions take place on the last holiday before the war in Moscow. The work has a strong and varied atmosphere, perhaps this is all due to the fact that the work itself is written in the first person. Everything is described here quite simply, everything happens in a strange city, where the hero suffers from an incomprehensible love for a mysterious girl. The hero doesn’t even think about the future; he doesn’t care what happens. The story is written using a refrain that enhances the sensations of a waking dream.
“And why, why do you have to torture me and yourself so cruelly?”
Life in Moscow is described in great detail; the story contains a lot of specifics. For example, the fact that the author’s morning smells of both snow and the smell of bakeries, but the day is damp - this also deserves special attention. There are also many detailed descriptions here, here are some of them: “gray coral branches in the frost”, “crowded, diving trams”, “snowy sidewalks dimly blackening passers-by”. As you can see, life in the Soviet metropolis is described in detail, the reader is imbued with the work and it already seems that he himself is present at the scene of events and feels all these smells.
The city is described surprisingly accurately. The story shows many sights of Moscow. The author, without being lazy, describes both monasteries and cathedrals, taverns and restaurants. Even restaurant menus are described quite colorfully. The main characters either eat pink hazel grouse in fried sour cream or pancakes with homemade herbal tea.
When you read this work, you get the feeling that there is eternal movement going on here. The hero himself came from what is now Penza, so he is already in Moscow and falls in love, and the girl herself is not from Moscow either, she is from Tver. The characters, having met, are constantly doing something, reading and discussing books, going to theaters, attending concerts and not forgetting about lectures.
Even the place where they live is remarkable. So the man lives at the Red Gate, and she lives near the temple. All this points to the temperament of the heroes. And although their appearance and characters were different, they were drawn to each other.
“I was handsome for some reason, with a southern, hot beauty...”, “And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty...”
The story describes everything clearly and in detail. Everything is captured in the work: meeting places, conversations, the mood of the characters, it is even described in detail how certain objects are located in the apartment. Their love is called strange and mysterious, somewhat incomprehensible. Then there is this separation, the girl goes to the monastery and, most likely, will give lunch.
IN this work emphasized not only psychological aspect, there's a lot of philosophy and history here. On specific example shows all the dullness of everyday life in Russia. There is melancholy all around and there is no hope for a bright future, only mystery and a fatal premonition. You read this work and want to think about Mother Russia.
It is interesting that, unlike Bunin’s other stories, there is a specific time frame here. The action takes place at the end of Maslenitsa and at the beginning of Lent. Although the work is small in volume, the time range here is quite wide. There are several dates, for example, events developed in 1912, and already last meeting they occurred in 1914.
You can observe the hero’s inner experiences by several things, such as movement in time and real historical events. So he fell in love, his life seemed to have found new meaning, more sublime, but there is the tragedy of that time all around. The writer very subtly emphasized the details of that era, the lyrics here are drawn through the epic narrative.
Although the story is filled with many details and descriptions of that era, all the lyricism and tragedy of the work is clearly visible here. What’s interesting is that the heroes break up not because something obliges them. It’s just that their habit of each other began to develop into love, and this is the reason for the separation. In this case, love did not bring the couple together, but separated them.
Like most of Bunin's stories, love is a flash that does not lead to anything good, and this work was no exception. The choice has been made, and everyone has chosen their own path.
Every evening in the winter of 1912, the narrator visits the same apartment opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. There lives a woman whom he loves madly. The narrator takes her to luxury restaurants, gives her books, chocolate and fresh flowers, but does not know how it will all end. She doesn't want to talk about the future. There has not yet been real, final intimacy between them, and this keeps the narrator “in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation.” Despite this, he is happy next to her.
She is studying history courses and lives alone - her father, a widowed enlightened merchant, settled “in retirement in Tver.” She accepts all the narrator's gifts carelessly and absent-mindedly.
It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town.
She has her favorite flowers, she reads books, she eats chocolate and dines with great pleasure, but her only real weakness is “good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur.”
Both the narrator and his lover are young and very beautiful. The narrator looks like an Italian, is bright and active. She is dark and dark-eyed like a Persian. He is “prone to talkativeness and simple-hearted gaiety,” she is always reserved and silent.
The narrator often recalls how they met at a lecture by Andrei Bely. The writer did not give a lecture, but sang it, running around the stage. The narrator “twirled and laughed so much” that he attracted the attention of the girl sitting in the next chair, and she laughed with him.
Sometimes she silently, but without resisting, allows the narrator to kiss “her arms, legs, her body, amazing in its smoothness.” Feeling that he can no longer control himself, she pulls away and leaves. She says that she is not fit for marriage, and the narrator does not speak to her about it again.
Our incomplete intimacy sometimes seemed unbearable, but even here, what was left for me except hope for time?
The fact that he looks at her and accompanies her to restaurants and theaters constitutes torment and happiness for the narrator.
This is how the narrator spends January and February. Maslenitsa is coming. On Forgiveness Sunday, she orders you to pick her up earlier than usual. They go to the Novodevichy Convent. On the way, she says that yesterday morning she was at the schismatic cemetery where their archbishop was buried, and recalls the whole ceremony with delight. The narrator is surprised - until now he had not noticed that she was so religious.
They come to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent and walk for a long time between the graves. The narrator looks at her with adoration. She notices this and is sincerely surprised: he really loves her so much! In the evening they eat pancakes in the Okhotny Ryad tavern, she again tells him with admiration about the monasteries that she managed to see, and threatens to go to the most remote of them. The narrator does not take her words seriously.
The next evening, she asks the narrator to take her to a theater skit, although she considers such gatherings extremely vulgar. She drinks champagne all evening, watches the antics of the actors, and then dashingly dances the polka with one of them.
In the dead of night, the narrator brings her home. To his surprise, she asks him to let the coachman go and go up to her apartment - she didn’t allow this before. They are finally getting closer. In the morning she tells the narrator that she is leaving for Tver, promises to write and asks to leave her now.
The narrator receives the letter two weeks later. She says goodbye to him and asks him not to wait and not look for her.
I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then maybe I’ll decide to take monastic vows... May God give me the strength not to answer me - it’s useless to prolong and increase our torment...
The narrator fulfills her request. He begins to disappear through the dirtiest taverns, gradually losing his human appearance, then for a long time, indifferently and hopelessly, he comes to his senses.
Two years pass. Under New Year the narrator, with tears in his eyes, repeats the path he once took with his beloved on Forgiveness Sunday. Then he stops at the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery and wants to enter. The janitor does not let the narrator in: inside there is a service for the Grand Duchess and the Grand Duke. The narrator still comes in, handing the janitor a ruble.
In the courtyard of the monastery, the narrator sees a religious procession. Headed by him Grand Duchess, followed by a line of singing nuns or sisters with candles near their pale faces. One of the sisters suddenly raises her black eyes and looks straight at the narrator, as if sensing his presence in the darkness. The narrator turns and quietly leaves the gate.
In 1937, Ivan Bunin began work on his best book. The collection “Dark Alleys” was first published after the end of World War II. This book is a collection of short tragic stories about love. One of the most famous stories Bunina - “Clean Monday”. An analysis and summary of the work is presented in today's article.
"Dark alleys"
The analysis of Bunin’s “Clean Monday” should begin with brief history creation of a work. This is one of latest stories, included in the collection “Dark Alleys”. Bunin completed work on the work “Clean Monday” on May 12, 1944. The story was first published in New York.
The writer was probably pleased with this essay. After all, in his diary, Bunin wrote: “I thank God for the opportunity to create Clean Monday.”
Bunin, in each of his works included in the collection “Dark Alleys,” reveals to the reader the tragedy and catastrophism of love. This feeling is beyond human control. It suddenly comes into his life, gives fleeting happiness, and then certainly causes unbearable pain.
The narration in the story “Clean Monday” by Bunin is told in the first person. The author does not name the names of his heroes. Love breaks out between two young people. They are both beautiful, rich, healthy and seemingly full of energy. But something is missing in their relationship.
They visit restaurants, concerts, theaters. They discuss books and plays. True, the girl often shows indifference, even hostility. “You don’t like everything,” he once says main character, but he himself does not attach importance to his words. A passionate romance is followed by a sudden separation - unexpected for young man, not for her. The ending is typical of Bunin's style. What caused the break between the lovers?
On the eve of the Orthodox holiday
The story describes their first meeting, but the narrative begins with events that occur some time after they met. The girl attends courses, reads a lot, and otherwise leads an idle lifestyle. And she seems quite happy with everything. But this is only at first glance. He is so absorbed in his feeling, his love for her, that he is not even aware of the other side of her soul.
It is worth paying attention to the title of the story - “Clean Monday”. The meaning of Bunin's story is quite deep. On the eve of the holy day, the lovers have their first conversation about religiosity. Before this, the main character had no idea that the girl was attracted to everything connected with the church. In his absence, she visits Moscow monasteries, moreover, she is thinking about becoming a monk.
Clean Monday is the beginning of Lent. On this day, cleansing rituals are carried out, the transition from fast food to Lenten restrictions.
Parting
One day they go to the Novodevichy Convent. By the way, this is a rather unusual route for him. Previously, they spent time exclusively in entertainment establishments. The visit to the monastery is, of course, the idea of the protagonist's beloved.
The next day, intimacy occurs between them for the first time. And then the girl leaves for Tver, from there she sends a letter to her lover. In this message she asks not to wait for her. She became a novice in one of the Tver monasteries, and perhaps she will decide to take monastic vows. He will never see her again.
After receiving from my beloved last letter, the hero began to drink, go downhill, and then finally came to his senses. One day, after a long time, I saw a nun in a Moscow church, in whom I recognized my former beloved. Perhaps the image of his beloved was too firmly entrenched in his mind, and it was not her at all? He didn't tell her anything. He turned and walked out of the temple gates. This is the summary of Bunin’s “Clean Monday”.
Love and tragedy
Bunin's heroes do not find happiness. In "Clean Monday", as in other works of the Russian classic, we are talking about love, which brings only bitterness and disappointment. What is the tragedy of the heroes of this story?
Probably the fact that, being close, they did not know each other at all. Each person is a whole Universe. AND inner world Sometimes even those close to you cannot figure it out. Bunin spoke about loneliness among people, about love, which is impossible without complete mutual understanding. Analysis work of art cannot be done without characterizing the main characters. What do we know about the girl who, living in prosperity and being loved, went to a monastery?
main character
When analyzing Bunin’s “Clean Monday”, it is worth paying attention to the portrait of a nameless girl that the author creates at the beginning of the work. She led an idle life. She read a lot, studied music, and loved visiting restaurants. But she did all this somehow indifferently, without much interest.
She is educated, well-read, and enjoys immersing herself in the world of luxury. social life. She likes good cuisine, but she wonders “how people don’t get bored having lunch and dinner every day”? She calls acting skits vulgar, while she ends the relationship with her lover by visiting the theater. Bunin's heroine cannot understand what his purpose in this life is. She is not one of those who is content to live in luxury and talk about literature and art.
The inner world of the main character is very rich. She constantly thinks, is in spiritual search. The girl is attracted to surrounding reality, but at the same time frightening. Love becomes not a salvation for her, but a problem that terribly burdens her, forcing her to make the only correct sudden decision.
main character refuses worldly joys, and this is where her strong nature. “Clean Monday” is not the only story from the collection “Dark Alleys” in which the author paid a lot of attention to the female image.
Bunin brought to the fore the hero's experiences. At the same time, it showed a rather contradictory female character. The heroine is satisfied with the lifestyle she leads, but all sorts of details, little things, depress her. Finally, she decides to go to a monastery, thereby destroying the life of the man who loves her. True, by doing this she causes suffering to herself. After all, in the letter that the girl sends to her lover there are the words: “May God give me the strength not to answer you.”
Main character
About how it turned out further fate young man, little is known. He had a hard time being separated from his beloved. He disappeared into the dirtiest taverns, drank and became miserable. But still he came to his senses and returned to his previous way of life. It can be assumed that the pain that this strange, extraordinary and somewhat exalted girl inflicted on him will never subside.
In order to find out who the writer was during his lifetime, you just need to read his books. But is the biography of Ivan Bunin really so tragic? Was there true love in his life?
Ivan Bunin
The writer's first wife, Anna Tsakni, was the daughter of an Odessa Greek, editor of a popular magazine at that time. They got married in 1898. Soon a son was born, who did not live even five years. The child died of meningitis. Bunin took the death of his son very hard. The relationship between the spouses went wrong, but his wife did not give him a divorce for a long time. Even after he connected his life with Vera Muromtseva.
The writer's second wife became his "patient shadow." Muromtseva replaced his secretary, mother, and friend. She did not leave him even when he started an affair with Galina Kuznetsova. Still, it was Galina Muromtseva who was next to the writer in last days his life. The creator of “Dark Alleys” was not deprived of love.
Bunin’s story “Clean Monday” was written in 1944 and was included in the author’s collection dedicated to the theme of love “Dark Alleys”. The work refers to literary direction neorealism. Leading artistic device the story is an antithesis - the author contrasts the images of the hero and heroine, everyday life and spirituality, the city and the monastery, etc., leading the reader to central problem works - the problem of Russian national character, revealed through the image of the main character.
Main characters
Hero-storyteller- a young man in love from Penza province. He was outwardly “indecently handsome”, with a “southern”, lively, attractive character. The story is told on his behalf.
Heroine- the narrator’s beloved, a girl with a bright appearance - a dark-amber face, thick black hair and eyes black as velvet coal. One rents an apartment in Moscow, and at the end of the work she goes to a monastery.
Every winter evening the narrator traveled “from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior,” opposite which his beloved lived. Every day he took her to restaurants, theaters, and concerts.
The narrator's beloved studied history courses, although she rarely attended them. Her father is a widower, a man of “noble merchant family, lived alone in Tver,” and the girl herself rented a corner apartment on the fifth floor for the sake of picturesque view to Moscow. Her apartment had two rooms. In the first there was a Turkish sofa (a portrait of Tolstoy hung above it) and an expensive piano, on which the heroine was learning the beginning of “ Moonlight Sonata» .
The hero constantly gave his beloved flowers, books, chocolate. The girl received them casually and absent-mindedly, lying on the sofa, but always thanked them. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners out of town,” although she had her own opinion about everything and loved to eat deliciously. “Her obvious weakness was only good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...”.
They made a brilliant couple. The young man looked like an Italian; the girl had “some kind of Indian, Persian” beauty. As much as the hero “was prone to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety,” the heroine is silent, she read a lot.
They met in December at a lecture by Andrei Bely, who sang his lecture while running around the stage. The narrator “twirled and laughed” so much that the girl, who happened to sit next to him, became amused herself.
Sometimes, not seeing reciprocity, the young man reproached his beloved for indifference. The girl replied that she had no one except her father and him: “you are my first and last.” She did not resist his caresses, but last moment pulled me away, went into another room and returned already dressed for evening walks. One day the hero started talking to her about marriage. The girl replied that she was not fit to be a wife. The hero understood that he could only hope, although the existing order of things was sometimes unbearable for him.
January, February, the beginning and end of Maslenitsa were a happy period for the hero - he took his beloved to restaurants and theaters, admiring his companion. On Forgiveness Sunday, on the initiative of the heroine, they go to the Novodevichy Convent. The girl says that yesterday morning she was at the Rogozhskoye cemetery, where the archbishop was buried, and enthusiastically recalls what happened. The young man was surprised how she knew so much about the church and church orders, to which the heroine replied that in the mornings, when he “doesn’t drag her to restaurants,” she goes to the Kremlin cathedrals.
While walking, they entered the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. At some point, the heroine notices the adoring gaze of the young man and, turning around, says with quiet bewilderment: “It’s true, how you love me.” In the evening, “over pancakes” in Yegorov’s tavern, the girl “with a quiet light in her eyes” talks about monasteries and chronicles, casually mentioning that perhaps she herself will go “to some of the most remote, Vologda, Vyatka” monasteries. Her words worried the hero.
The next day the heroine asks to take her to the cabbage party. Art Theater. Arriving to her in the evening, the hero was surprised that in the girl’s hallway it was unusually light, “and the piano sounded like the beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” - increasingly rising, sounding the further, the more weary, inviting, in somnambulistic, blissful sadness.” When he slammed the door, the piano fell silent, and the girl came out to him in a black velvet dress.
At the cabbage party, the heroine smoked a lot, constantly drank champagne, then danced a polka with one of the actors. They returned home at three o'clock in the morning. To the young man’s surprise, the girl told him to let the coachman go, and the two of them went up to her apartment. At dawn, waking up the young man, the girl reports that she is leaving for Tver in the evening and, crying, asks to leave her alone.
Two weeks later, the hero received a letter: “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then maybe I’ll decide to take monastic vows... May God give me the strength not to answer me - it’s useless to prolong and increase our torment...”. The young man fulfilled her request. Having a hard time experiencing what had happened, he disappeared through “the dirtiest taverns,” but then, “indifferently, hopelessly,” he began to “little by little recover.”
Almost two years after that Clean Monday, “in the fourteenth year, on New Year’s Eve,” the hero visits the Archangel Cathedral, where he stands for a long time without praying. Driving through their places, the young man could not hold back his tears. Stopping at the gates of the Marfo-Mariinskaya Convent, the hero heard the singing of a girls’ choir. Having slipped a ruble to the janitor, the young man goes inside the yard and becomes a witness. procession: the princess came out of the church, and behind her “a white line of singers, with candle lights on their faces, nuns or sisters.” One of those walking suddenly raised her head and looked with dark eyes into the darkness, as if sensing the presence of a hero there. He “turned and quietly walked out of the gate.”
Conclusion
Bunin, reflecting on his story, wrote: “I thank God that he gave me the opportunity to write “Clean Monday.” Indeed, the story amazes with the depth of its themes, making you think about the most important issues in our lives: questions of choice between “worldly”, human happiness and spirituality, the desire for God, self-knowledge. The main character makes a choice in favor of the latter, explaining her choice in the words of Tolstoy’s character, Platon Karataev: “Happiness [“worldly”] is ours, my friend, like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”
The retelling of the work “Clean Monday” presented on the site will be useful for schoolchildren, students and anyone who wants to familiarize themselves with the plot of the story.
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I. A. Bunin's story "Clean Monday" was written on May 12, 1944, when it was already clear to the whole world. What Soviet army wins over Nazi Germany. It was then that Bunin reconsidered his attitude towards Soviet Russia, which he did not accept after October revolution, as a result of which he went abroad. The writer had a desire to turn to the origins, the beginning of all the disasters that befell Russia.
The story is included in the collection " Dark alleys", but is distinguished by its originality. Bunin himself considered this story the best of all that he wrote. The author’s diary contains an entry from 1944 on the night of May 8-9: “It’s one o’clock in the morning. I got up from the table - I just had to finish writing a few pages of “Clean Monday”. He turned off the light, opened the window to ventilate the room - not the slightest movement of air..." He asks the Lord to give him the strength to complete the story. This means that the writer attached great importance to this work. And already on May 12, he makes an entry in his diary, where thanks God for allowing him to write “Clean Monday.”
Before us is a poetic portrait of the era Silver Age with his ideological confusion and spiritual quest. Let's try to follow the author step by step to understand what makes this work unique.
The story opens with a city sketch.
“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up...” Already in one sentence there are epithets: “warm” - “cold”, perhaps indicating on complex and contradictory phenomena and characters. The Moscow evening bustle is emphasized by many details and comparisons: “the cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily,” “green stars fell from the wires with a hiss.” ..Before us, life is vanity, life is temptation and seduction, it is not without reason that when describing the sparks falling from the wires of a tram, the author uses not only the metaphor “green stars”, but also the epithet “with hissing”, which associatively evokes the image of the serpent - the tempter in biblical garden. The motives of vanity and temptation are leading in the story.
The narration comes from the perspective of the hero, not the heroine, which is very important. It is enigmatic, mysterious and incomprehensible, complex and contradictory, and remains so until the end of the story - not fully explained. He is simple, understandable, easy to communicate, and does not have the heroine’s reflection. There are no names, perhaps because young people personify the pre-revolutionary era and their images carry some kind of symbolic subtext, which we will try to identify.
The text is full of many historical and cultural details that require special comment. A young man lives at the Red Gate. This is a monument to the Elizabethan Baroque. At the beginning of the 18th century - the Triumphal Gate for the ceremonial entry of Peter the Great. Because of their beauty they began to be called Red. In 1927, the gates were dismantled to streamline traffic. The name of the metro station "Red Gate" has been preserved. I think the hero’s place of residence is associated with celebration and celebration. And the heroine lives near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was conceived by Alexander the First as gratitude to God for intercession for Russia and a monument to the glorious deeds of the Russian people in Patriotic War 1812. The main altar is dedicated to the Nativity of Christ - December 25 - on this day the enemy was expelled from Russia. The temple was destroyed by the Bolsheviks on December 5, 1931, and has now been restored. For a long time on the site of the temple there was a swimming pool "Moscow".
Every evening the hero races on a stretching trotter from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. He has his own coachman, who alone in the story has a name: his name is Fedor. But the text is filled with the names of writers and cultural figures of the Silver Age, which accurately and in detail recreates the atmosphere of that time. Every evening the hero takes his beloved to dine at fashionable and expensive restaurants: to Prague, to the Hermitage, to Metropol, then the young people visit theaters, concerts, and after events they go to restaurants again: to Yar (the restaurant on the corner Kuznetsky Most and Neglinnaya Street), to "Strelna" - a country restaurant in Moscow with a huge winter garden.
The young man calls his relationship with the heroine strange: the girl avoided all conversations about the future, was mysterious and incomprehensible to him, they were not close to the end, and this kept the hero “in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation,” but the young man was “incredibly happy every hour spent near her."
An important role in the characterization of the heroine is played by the interior, which combines both eastern and western details. For example, a wide Turkish sofa (East) and an expensive piano (West). The girl was learning the “slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning of the Moonlight Sonata.” The heroine herself is only at the beginning of her path, she is at a crossroads, she can’t decide where to go, what to strive for. But the hero doesn’t ask himself any questions, he just lives and enjoys every moment, rejoices at every moment. It would seem that there is nothing to be sad about? Both are rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that they are followed with envious glances everywhere.
It is no coincidence that a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hangs above the heroine’s sofa. At the end of his life, the great old man left home to begin new life, striving for moral self-improvement. Therefore, the heroine’s departure from worldly life to enter a monastery at the end of the story does not seem so unexpected.
Portraits of heroes are of no small importance in the story. He, originally from the Penza province, is handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty. "Some kind of Sicilian." And the young man’s character is southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for good joke. In general, he personifies the West with its focus on success and personal happiness. The girl has “some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face; magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness; eyebrows softly shining like black sable fur; eyes black as velvet coal; captivating mouth with velvety crimson lips it was shaded with dark fluff..." The heroine's obvious weakness was good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur. Most often, she wore a garnet velvet dress and matching shoes with gold clasps. But she attended the courses as a modest student and had breakfast in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat for 30 kopecks. the heroine seems to be choosing between luxury and simplicity, she constantly thinks about something, reads a lot, sometimes does not leave the house for three or four days.
The story of how the young people met is interesting. In December 1912, they attended a lecture by Andrei Bely at the Art Circle. Here Bunin deliberately violates chronological accuracy. The fact is that in 1912-1913 Bely was not in Moscow, but in Germany. But it is more important for the author to recreate the very spirit of the era, its diversity. Other cultural figures of the Silver Age are also mentioned. In particular, the story by Valery Bryusov is mentioned " Fire Angel", which the heroine did not finish reading because of its stiltedness. She also left Chaliapin’s concert, considering that famous singer"I was too daring." She has her own opinion on everything, her likes and dislikes. At the beginning of the story they mention fashion writers of that time, which the girl reads: Hofmannsthal, Pshebyshevsky. Schnitzler, Tetmeyer.
It is worth paying attention to the description of Moscow, visible from the heroine’s window. She settled on the fifth floor of a corner room opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior solely for the view from the window: “...behind one window lay low in the distance huge picture across the river in the snow-gray blue of Moscow, in the other, to the left, part of the Kremlin was visible; on the contrary, somehow too close, the too-new bulk of Christ the Savior was white, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws that were forever hovering around it were reflected with bluish spots. .." " Strange town"- the hero thinks. What strange thing did he see in Moscow? Two origins: eastern and western. "Basily the Blessed and Savior on Bor, Italian cathedrals- and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on Kremlin walls..." - this is how the young man thinks.
Another “talking” detail in the characterization of the heroine is her silk arkhaluk - the inheritance of her Astrakhan grandmother, again an oriental motif.
Love and happiness... The heroes disagree on these philosophical issues. For him, love is happiness. She claims that she is not suitable for marriage, and in response to his phrase: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...” - responds from the darkness: “Maybe. Who knows what happiness is?” She quotes the words of Platon Karataev from Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”: “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.” The hero calls these words eastern wisdom.
Two days in the life of the heroes are described in detail. The first is Forgiveness Sunday. On this day, the young man learned a lot about his beloved. She quotes a line from the Lenten prayer of Efim the Syrian: “Lord, master of my life...” - and invites the hero to the Novodevichy Convent, and also reports that she was at the Rogozhskoye cemetery - the famous, schismatic one, and was present at the funeral of the archbishop. knows words such as "ripids", "triciria". The young man is amazed: he did not know that she was so religious. But the girl objects: “This is not religiosity.” She herself doesn’t know what it is. The girl is delighted with the church services in the Kremlin cathedrals, deacons and singers church choir, compares them with the heroes of the Battle of Kulikovo, the monks sent by St. Sergius of Radonezh to help Dmitry Donskoy in the confrontation with the Golden Horde. Think. the names of Peresvet and Oslyabi have symbolic connotations. Former warriors- the heroes go to the monastery, and then again commit military feat. After all, the girl is also preparing for a spiritual feat.
Let's consider the landscape given at the time the heroes visited the Novodevichy Convent. Some details emphasize the beauty of this “peaceful, sunny” evening: frost on the trees, the creaking of steps in silence in the snow, the golden enamel of the sunset, the gray corals of branches in frost. Everything is filled with peace, silence and harmony, some kind of warm sadness. A feeling of anxiety is caused by the “brick and bloody walls of the monastery, chatty jackdaws that look like nuns. For some reason the heroes went to Ordynka, looked for Griboyedov’s house, but never found it. Griboedov’s name is not mentioned by chance. A Westerner in his views, he died in embassy in the East in Persia at the hands of an angry, fanatical crowd.
The next episode of this evening takes place in the famous Yegorov tavern in Okhotny Ryad, where Old Testament merchants washed down fiery pancakes with grainy caviar with frozen champagne (pancakes are a symbol of Russian Maslenitsa, champagne is a symbol Western culture). Here the heroine draws attention to the icon of the Mother of God of the Three Hands and says with admiration: “Good! Below wild men, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India!" The heroine is mistaken, of course. The three-handed woman has nothing to do with Indian god Shiva, but the rapprochement with the East is symbolic. The girl quotes lines from Russian chronicles, remembers how she went to the Chudov Monastery on Strastnaya last year: “Oh, how good it was! There were puddles everywhere, the air was already soft, spring-like, my soul was somehow tender, sad, and all the time there was a feeling of homeland, her antiquities..." With a quiet light in her eyes she says, "I love Russian chronicles, I love Russian legends so much that I keep re-reading what I especially like until I memorize it by heart." The heroine retells "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia." Bunin deliberately combines two episodes of this ancient Russian story. In one, a snake “in human nature, exceedingly beautiful” began to appear to the wife of the autocratic noble Prince of Murom Pavel. Devilish temptation and seduction - this is exactly how the girl perceives the young man. And the second episode is connected with the images of the holy believers Peter and Fevronia, who went to the monastery and reposed on the same day and hour.
Now let’s analyze the episode “On Clean Monday”. The heroine invites a young man to the “cabbage party” of the Art Theater. The young man perceives this invitation as just another “Moscow quirk.” because used to be a girl I considered these skits vulgar, but still answered cheerfully and in English: “All right!” I think that this is also a characteristic of a hero associated with the West. By the way, Bunin himself also did not like the skits and had never been there, so in a letter to B. Zaitsev he asked whether he accurately recreated the atmosphere of the skits; it was important for him to be accurate in all the details.
The episode opens with a description of the heroine's apartment. The young man opened the door with his key, but did not immediately enter from the dark hallway. He was amazed bright light, everything was lit: chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under a light lampshade behind the head of the sofa. The beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” sounded - increasingly rising, sounding the further, the more languid, more inviting, in somnambulist-blissful sadness.
A parallel can be drawn with Margarita’s preparations for Satan’s Ball at Bulgakov’s. All the lights were on in Margarita’s bedroom. The three-leaf window glowed with furious electric fire. A mirror is also mentioned - a dressing table as a way of passing from one world to another.
Recreated in detail appearance the heroines: an upright and somewhat theatrical pose, a black velvet dress that made her look thinner, a festive headdress of jet-black hair, the dark amber color of her bare arms, shoulders, the tender and full beginning of her breasts, the sparkle of diamond earrings along her slightly powdered cheeks, the velvety purple of her lips; at her temples, black shiny braids curled in half rings towards her eyes, giving her the appearance of an oriental beauty with popular print. The hero is amazed by such a brilliant beauty of his beloved, he has a confused face, and she slight irony refers to her appearance: “Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage... I would respond to applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and to the stalls, and I would imperceptibly but carefully push away the train with my foot, so as not to step on it..."
“The Cabbage Man” is Satan’s ball, where the heroine succumbed to all temptations: she smoked a lot and kept sipping champagne, watching intently as the big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and the stocky Moskvin in pince-nez on his trough-shaped face performed a desperate cancan to the laughter of the audience.. ." Kachalov called the heroine “the tsar-maiden, the Shamakhan queen,” and this definition emphasizes both the Russian and oriental beauty of the heroine.
All this carnival action takes place on Clean Monday, the beginning of Lent. This means that there was no Clean Monday in the religious sense. It was on this night that the heroine leaves the young man with her for the first time. And at dawn, quietly and evenly, she tells him that she is leaving for Tver for an indefinite time, but promises to write about the future.
The young man walked home through the sticky snow past the Iveron Chapel. "the inside of which was burning hotly and shining with whole bonfires of candles. Here, too, there is a bright light, but this is a different light - the light of fasting and repentance, the light of prayers. He stood in the crowd of old women and the beggar, trampled on his knees, took off his hat. Some unfortunate old woman said to him, wincing from pitiful tears: “Oh, don’t kill yourself like that! Sin! Sin!"
Two weeks later he received a letter with a gentle but firm request not to look for her. she decided to go to obedience and hopes to decide to take monastic vows.
The hero's life turned into absolute hell: he disappeared into the dirtiest taverns, became an alcoholic, and sank lower and lower. Then he gradually began to recover - indifferent, hopeless. Two years have passed since that Clean Monday. In 14, on New Year's Eve, the hero goes to the Kremlin, drives into the empty Archangel Cathedral, stands for a long time, without praying, as if expecting something. Driving along Ordynka, he remembered his past happiness and cried and cried. .. The hero stopped at the gates of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery, where they did not want to let him in because of the service, where Elizaveta Fedorovna was present. Having given the watchman a ruble, he entered the courtyard and saw how icons and banners were being carried out of the church, and behind them, all in white, long, thin-faced, tall, slowly, earnestly walking with lowered eyes, with a large candle in her hand, the Grand Duchess, and behind her is a white line of nuns. One of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered with a white shawl, and fixed her dark eyes on the darkness, as if she felt his presence. Thus ends this amazing story.
