"The gentleman from San Francisco" I.A. Bunin The beginning of the 20th century, a time very eventful for Russia with such events as revolutions and wars. Even then, Bunin was called one of the best craftsmen words in Russia. He writes such works as Chang's Dreams, Easy breath”, “Grammar of love”. In 1915, Bunin wrote, perhaps, one of his most striking works, The Gentleman from San Francisco. The story was originally called "Death on Capri". Bunin connected his idea with the story German writer Thomas Mann "Death in Venice", but even more with memories of the unexpected death of an American who came to Capri. However, as Ivan Alekseevich himself admitted, “and San Francisco and everything else” he invented while living on the estate of his cousin in the Yelets district of the Oryol province. + The story begins on the ship Atlantis. The main character is a gentleman from San Francisco. Bunin does not give him a name. This is due to the fact that no one remembered him, that there are many like him. The gentleman goes "to the Old World for two whole years, with his wife and daughter, solely for the sake of entertainment." He has a planned route, money, desires. He feels and behaves like a master in every respect. But is it really so? No. For his fifty-eight years, he never learned to live, love, feel, enjoy life, therefore, no matter how hard he tries, or attends all cultural and entertainment events, he does not get any pleasure. Here he is “pleasant, but bored, like snow-lit museums or cold, wax-smelling churches, in which the same thing is everywhere: a majestic entrance, covered with a heavy leather curtain, and inside - a huge emptiness, silence ... ". So is the master himself: on the outside he is elegant, well-groomed, handsome, but inside is empty, soulless. For him, there is no family, joys or troubles, a beloved woman. There are no surprises or surprises in his life, everything is measured in him, scheduled by day, hour and second. And he pretends to be happy. It is very symbolic love couple, who was paid to pretend to play love for good money on one ship or another. Throughout the story, it can be seen that Bunin uses mainly black, white, red, gold colors in describing the life of rich people. This is no coincidence. After all, it was in these colors that royalty dressed. For example, a red robe with gold embroidered lilies and a black and white ermine. + A gentleman from San Francisco is one of the many passengers on the big ship Atlantis, "a huge hotel with all amenities - with a night bar, with oriental baths, with its own newspaper", - on top of which all the cream of society amuse and have fun, in including the gentleman from San Francisco himself. All this takes place in the middle of the ocean, symbolizing the endlessly flowing life, unpredictable in its turns. He “was scary, but they didn’t think about him,” “the siren on the forecastle kept screaming with furious anger, but few of the diners heard the siren - it was drowned out by the sounds of a beautiful orchestra.” Siren - a symbol of world chaos, "music" - calm harmony. The gentleman arrives in Naples, and nature itself begins to interfere with his plans: the sun "deceived", sowed rain, something terrible happened everywhere. But nothing shakes the master, and he and his family go to Capri. And there, as expected, everyone treats him like a master. He is settled in the most refined hotel, "the most beautiful and skillful maid is assigned", "the most prominent of the lackeys." He gets all the very best, but this is as long as he is able to pay. And so he dies, dies, only having begun to "live". But death does not fit into the image of a rich hotel at all. “If there hadn’t been a German in the reading room, they would have quickly and deftly managed to hush up this terrible incident in the hotel, instantly, in reverse, they would have dashed off by the legs and by the head of the gentleman from San Francisco to hell - and not a single soul from the guests would have known that he did." The master dies in "the smallest, worst, dampest and coldest" room. The story ends in the same place where it began - "Atlantis". Here everyone is still having fun, dancing and having fun, only our master from San Francisco is not there, he does not return home in first class, now he is hidden from human eyes in the womb of the ship - in the hold, he lies in a tarred coffin. + A vision of the Devil arises, observing "a ship, many-tiered, many-pipe, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart."
Each of us remembers his first love throughout his life. But what will these memories be like? Joyful or bitter? What feelings awaken in us when we remember these times? These philosophical reflections form the basis of Ivan Bunin's story "Dark Alleys" from the collection of the same name.
In this work, the author tells about the first and unequal love of Nikolai Alekseevich and Nadezhda. But the problem is that love can be different. Not only giving meaning to life and inspiring, but also ignored, unhappy, unrequited.
In this work, the reader will encounter two different manifestations of love. For example, Nikolai Alekseevich, a retired military man, having met a woman who gave him that very first love, chose to run away from his feelings. He leaves, and on the road his companions are only empty fields and low yellow sun. Imagining this landscape, it immediately becomes dreary and anxious. This road leads to the world of everyday life, routine and indifference. The hero is alone again. The cold autumn sun will never give him "the best moments of his life."
The second kind of love is faithful, inspiring, constant. Probably, the author did not accidentally name main character Hope. For thirty years, this woman hoped for a miracle that would certainly make her happy, she was able to save her feelings, carried them through the years and they did not fade away. Representing Nadezhda, the image of a real Russian woman pops up in her memory, for whom there is nothing more important than love, there are no barriers and boundaries in order to love and keep all the best memories and feelings.
The very title of the story symbolically points both to the darkness of the human soul, and to the uncertainty and uncertainty of the future. How would the fate of the heroes have developed, following Nikolai Petrovich the voice of the heart, and not the traditional ideas of society about relationships? Would they be happy together? Would such a decision be correct? The author does not give a definite answer, he only accompanies the reader on a journey through his dark alley.
In this story, Bunin briefly and aptly describes internal state heroes, their future with the help of the season and expressive landscapes, because the nature of Russia symbolically reflects the soul of a Russian person - disturbing, changeable, sad.
This work touches upon several topics at once: first love, betrayal, the continuous connection between man and nature, and the author was able to masterfully describe the mysterious Russian soul - faithful, loving, but, nevertheless, choosing suffering.
Ekaterina Chizhova shared her review of the story “Dark Alleys”.
Story " Clean Monday is dedicated to the theme of love. Love and death are the two main themes in the work of I. A. Bunin. This story is included in the collection "Dark Alleys". The writer said that in his stories he sought to depict "dark alleys of love." It is precisely such unlit, mysterious, mysterious and incomprehensible manifestations of love that the story “Clean Monday” is dedicated to, which the writer, in his declining years, considered the best of his writings.
The genre of the work is a story. In dictionary literary terms the following definition of a story is given: “a small form of epic prose literature". The term “story” does not have a strictly defined meaning and, in particular, is close to the definitions of “novella” and “essay”.
In addition, the story is very close in genre to the story, but differs in that it presents one episode from the life of the characters, in which the character is revealed fully and multifaceted. The skill of I. A. Bunin lies in the fact that he highlights the personality of the hero and his life story.
The plot of the story “Clean Monday” is the unhappy love of the protagonist, which determines his whole life. Distinctive feature many works of I. A. Bunin - the absence of happy love.
The narration is conducted in the first person, so the feelings and experiences of the narrator, his spiritual world are deeply revealed. The strength of the hero's love for the heroine is visible even from her portrait characteristics: "Fluff on her upper lip was in hoarfrost, the amber of her cheeks turned slightly pink, the blackness of the paradise completely merged with the pupil - I could not take my enthusiastic eyes off her face.
The hero is going through a lot tragic ending their relationship. The following passage confirms this: “For a long time I drank in the dirtiest taverns, sinking more and more in every possible way .... Then I began to recover - indifferently, hopelessly.”
Judging by these two quotes, the hero is very sensitive and emotional person capable of deep feeling. Bunin avoids direct assessments, but allows one to judge by the state of the hero's soul, by skillfully selected external manifestations feelings.
The author uses this method artistic expressiveness like an "oxymoron". He contrasts antiquity with modernity: he mentions the names of temples, monasteries, icons, quotes from prayers. He also mentions the names of the most famous Moscow restaurants of the early 20th century, books contemporary authors. The heroine can't finish reading " Fire Angel". This fact reveals the author's skepticism towards new literary trends: modernity, in his opinion, is not endowed with the spirituality of antiquity.
We look at the heroine through the eyes of a man in love with her. Already at the very beginning of the work, we have her portrait: “She had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a swarthy amber face, magnificent and somewhat sinister in its density hair, softly shining like black sable fur, black like velvet coal, eyes". In the words of the protagonist, a description of the restless soul of the heroine is conveyed, her search for the meaning of life, excitement and doubt, the image of a “spiritual wanderer” is revealed.
The climax of the story is the heroine's decision to enter a monastery. This unexpected turn the plot allows you to understand the undecided soul of this woman.
Very great importance has the title of a story. On the one hand, it is very specific: Clean Monday is the first day of Lent. On the other hand, it is symbolic. There is a cleansing of the soul from everything vain, sinful. Moreover, not only the heroine, who has chosen monastic hermitage, is changing. Her act encourages the hero to introspection, makes him change, cleanse himself.
"Clean Monday" was written by the author during the years of his Parisian emigration. However, Russian reality shines through literally in every line. This is evidenced by landscape sketches: “The evening was peaceful, sunny, with frost on the trees, on the bloody brick walls of the monastery, jackdaws, like nuns, chatted in silence, the chimes now and then sadly played on the bell tower. Creaking in silence through the snow, we entered the gates, ... the sun had just set, it was still quite light, the branches in hoarfrost had long been drawn on the golden enamel of the sunset with gray coral, and the inextinguishable lamps scattered over the graves mysteriously glimmered around with calm lights.
Only a deeply Russian person could write so piercingly, keeping the image of the Motherland in his heart, not alien to nostalgia.
The story was written sixty years ago. For the universe - this is a wave of eyelashes, for the history of the country - whole era… What attracts us contemporary readers, in this story? If you read thoughtfully, you can find answers to eternal philosophical questions: how to love and be loved, what is the meaning of life, what is true values? Bunin was indifferent to everyday life, transient. He is unshakably focused on the sublime and beautiful, on the concrete human destiny.
According to P. B. Struve, "... the main feature of Bunin's talent is an unusually bright and powerful fusion of lyrical talent with the gift of fine and epic"
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- Ivan Bunin is known to many readers as brilliant writer and a poet. For my creative career the writer created a huge number of poems, stories, ...
“The story of I.A. Bunin “Clean Monday” is included in the famous cycle “Dark Alleys”. “All the stories in this book are only about love, about its dark and most often gloomy and cruel alleys,” wrote Bunin. Gloomy and cruel, because love in the "Dark Alleys" is, as a rule, always very short-term; moreover: the stronger, more perfect it is, the sooner it is destined to break off. To break off, but not to perish, but to illuminate the whole memory and life of a person.
The story was written in 1944. According to the memoirs of V.N. Muromtseva - Bunina, the writer wrote it on a piece of paper in one of his sleepless nights, leaving a note: “Thank God that he gave me the opportunity to write Clean Monday.” First appeared in print over forty years ago.
"Clean Monday" is a story about the story of one "strange" love in a "strange" city. This is how the hero of the story understands his relationship with his beloved woman. And the hero of the story He and She do not have a name. The story is built on contrast. And it can be traced already in the story itself. All story line The story is told from the perspective of the hero. But the lyrical, poetic line is based on her spiritual perception of time, history, culture, tradition.
She, who captured the heart of the narrator, is mysterious to him, incomprehensible. Their relationship is also strange for him, the future of these relations is unclear. But at the same time, he was "indescribably happy every hour spent near her."
Every evening at a certain hour he went to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior: she lived against him. Every evening meetings of heroes are defined by words: dinners in Prague, Hermitage, Metropol, theaters, concerts, Yar, Strelnya, skits. He is handsome, rich, in love and obedient to her. She is the "Shamakhani Queen" - an educated and profound woman. One evening he follows her down the street, looking with emotion at her little footprint.
“…She suddenly turned around, feeling it.
"Really, how you love me!" she said with quiet bewilderment, shaking her head.
On Clean Monday, on the first day of Great Lent, when the church especially strictly forbids physical intimacy between a woman and a man, she, with deep respect for Orthodox customs, gives herself to Him. The climax of the story the main idea which is that people do not commit sin if their intimacy is sanctified by spiritual unity, and not by the manifestation of soulless lust.
And here is the denouement. As a rule, unexpected for the reader, but traditional for stories " dark alleys". Love broke off. The beloved leaves for Tver, from there she sends the hero Farewell letter. The "Shamakhani Queen" went to the monastery.
So who is she, strange mysterious woman? Indeed, her mystery is felt already from the first phrase uttered by her. It feels hidden philosophical meaning: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? And a little later, he will also derive his own formula of happiness, so reminiscent of Karataev’s: “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in a delusion: you pull it - it puffed up, but you pull it out - there is nothing.”
The action in the story takes place in Moscow - a contrasting, "strange" city. The appearance of Moscow combines at first glance the incongruous: “ strange city! I said to myself thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed. - Basil the Blessed - and the Savior - on - the forest, Italian cathedrals and something Kyrgyz in the points of the towers and the Kremlin walls…”.
Just as strange as this city, which combines Christian and Muslim beginnings, is the heroine. She seems to embody different worlds, different cultures, different traditions. In her portrait there was "some Indian, Persian" beauty and "quiet light". The singing of an old gypsy in a Cossack coat with galloons is equivalent to Stanislavsky's cancan "with white hair and black eyebrows." She reads by heart an excerpt from the chronicle legend and suddenly expresses a desire to go to the "vulgar skit".
He gave her flowers, brought her boxes of chocolate - and in response he heard only an absent-minded: "Thank you ...". “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, although, nevertheless, she had favorite and unloved flowers, all books ... she read, ate a whole box of chocolate in a day ... "
How many incompatible, inconsistent actions in her behavior. What a mystery, dazzling beauty. All this attracts a young, handsome, rich hero to the Shamakhanskaya Queen. But between them there is a spiritual abyss, it is much larger than from the Red Gates to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. The hero is not interested in her mental life. He doesn’t care how their relationship ends, what their future is. I did not know and tried not to think, not to think. He just enjoyed his feeling.
"You don't know me," she chides him gently. For him final feature separating him from his beloved is physical intimacy. The heroine, on the other hand, weighs her feelings, trying to understand whether it is love or not love: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love ...”. And the narrator himself admits: "... we talked about something extraneous." Incompatible them life aspirations and inner world.
Internal disorder also explains the sometimes inexplicable behavior of the heroine. What does the writer see? true reason this inner disorder? The fact is that the heroine, it turns out, is endowed with historical memory. Her moral searches are intertwined in an internal confrontation with the present and the past.
For the heroine, the present is the past: Russian antiquity, Russian chronicle, Russian legends, which she rereads until she memorizes them. This is the singularity of the "Speech of Gyurei ...", this is Rus', preserved only "in some northern monasteries and in church hymns." For the heroine, the past symbolizes the world where beauty was beauty, goodness was goodness, art was art. In the present - the present for her is one "unforgettable" Pure Monday, the day after Forgiveness Sunday and the first day of Great Lent.
And reality for her is associated not only with the love of a young, “incomparably” handsome young man, but also with the vulgarity of the “skits”, where the most intelligent, educated, talented people dance the cancan.
The title "Clean Monday" is symbolic: it emphasizes the turning point in the fate of the heroine. The element of the Shamakhan Queen will be pre-Petrine Rus, her "beauty and horror", her peace, humility and repentance. The memory of the past put the heroine before a choice. She chose the path of repentance and fasting.
And again, in contrast, a surprisingly bright and clean finale: “all in white, long, thin-faced, in a white obrus with a golden cross sewn on her forehead, tall, slowly, earnestly walking with downcast eyes, with a large candle in her hand, grand duchess... "- a snow-white novice, who has absorbed the purity and freshness of primordial Rus' ...
In the name of supreme idea and the goal the heroine makes her choice, rejecting the only, "unforgettable" Clean Monday - this is the main idea of the story. Hence the "shakyness", "duality" of the character of the heroine and its tragedy, the difficulty of choosing a path.
The idea that in every person lives the “memory of centuries”, the memory of generations, which drives him to bad and good deeds, determines his emotions, motives, inclinations, is informative and interesting for us readers. “Of us, like from a tree, is both a cudgel and an icon, depending on the circumstances, on who“ processes this tree: Sergey Radonezhsky or Emelka Pugachev ”, - the writer gave such a wise thought to every“ young man thinking about life ” .
And about the power of emotional impact, I would say in the words of L.N. Tolstoy: “There is no happiness in life, there are only its lightning, appreciate them, live by them.” Such emotional experiences of happiness, just like a lightning bolt that flared up and disappeared, are also experienced by the reader along with the nameless heroes of Clean Monday.
I. A. Bunin is the brightest representative writers of the turn of the century. Bunin is a fatalist, his works are characterized by the pathos of tragedy and skepticism. His work echoes the concept of modernists about the tragedy of human passion, and Bunin's appeal to eternal themes love, death and nature.
Bunin has long been firmly established as one of the greatest stylists in Russian literature. In his work, an elusive artistic precision and freedom were clearly manifested, and figurative memory, and knowledge vernacular, and amazing figurativeness, and verbal sensuality. All these features are inherent not only in poetry, but also in prose.
From the autumn of 1924 to the autumn of 1925, Bunin creates a cycle of works that, being outwardly unrelated, are united by a deep intercom determined by the peculiarities of the author's approach to the topic underlying them. This theme is love, interpreted as a strong, often fatal shock in a person’s life, like a “sunstroke”, leaving a deep indelible mark on human soul. Five works devoted to this topic - "Mitya's love", " Sunstroke”, “Ida”, “Mordovian sarafan”, “Cornet Elagin’s Case” - these are, as it were, five images of varieties of love feelings, five examples of the amazing effect of love on the mind, will, and heart of a person.
The story "Sunstroke" was written in 1925 in the Alpes-Maritimes. Bunin told about the origin of this story to G. Kuznetsova, who wrote in her diary: “We talked yesterday about writing and about how stories are born. For I.A. (Ivan Alekseevich) it begins with nature, some picture that flashed in the brain, often a fragment. So sunstroke came from the idea of going out on deck after dinner, from light into darkness. summer night on the Volga. And the end came later
Let's get back to the plot. A young officer, a lieutenant, having met a young woman on a Volga steamer, invites her to get off at the pier of the town they are passing by. Young people stay at a hotel, and here they get closer. In the morning, without identifying herself, the woman leaves with the next steamer. The lieutenant, left alone, realizes how inexpressible happiness this seemingly random fleeting meeting was for him and how tragic that he will never see the woman who brought him this happiness again.
An unexpected, sometimes fleeting meeting of "him" and "her", sometimes, as in the story "Sunstroke", not even named, a violent explosion love feelings and the consequences, often fatal and tragic, of this explosion - such is plot basis majority foreign works Bunin dedicated to the theme of love. The author reveals with the utmost force the depth love experiences heroes who, while often remaining quite ordinary in all other areas of life, reveal the originality of their natures precisely in love. A fleeting meeting of two simple, apparently nothing wonderful people(“And what is special about her?” the lieutenant asks himself in bewilderment, and the author says about him that “his face is an ordinary officer’s face”) gives each of them a feeling of such great happiness that both are forced to admit that “never neither one nor the other experienced anything like it in their entire lives.
In my opinion, it is no coincidence that the whole story is permeated by the atmosphere of an unbearably burning summer sun. At night, the lovers enter "a large, but terribly stuffy, hotly heated room during the day by the sun", the next day the woman leaves "at ten o'clock in the morning, sunny, hot, happy." Left alone, the lieutenant is circling "across a small hot and neglected garden", he sits "near the open window, which carried heat", feels "immeasurable happiness, great joy even in this heat", and when, finally, he fully realizes the loss , for him everything turns out to be flooded, "hot, fiery and joyful, but here it seems like an aimless sun."
The lieutenant and the young woman parted quite easily, not yet suspecting that something most important in her had entered into their life, to its end, entered to immediately slip away forever. A young woman leaves for her city, where her husband and three-year-old daughter are waiting for her, and leaves the story forever, but one of the most extraordinary artistic findings of the story is that the tragic experiences of the lieutenant after her departure are undeniable evidence that she also experiences the same pain. And this torment torments the lieutenant with increasing force. He, as it were, ascends the stairs to the Calvary of torment, which becomes unbearable.
The feeling of the lieutenant reaches an extraordinary moral height, he seems to have a second sight. What previously did not stop his attention, seemed ordinary, has now become ugly, unnatural. He becomes frightened at the sight of a portrait of someone in the military, exhibited in the window. With amazement, he also looks at the monotony of the two-story white merchant houses, which line the street like soldiers, aching for the soul.
Bunin's "Sunstroke" ends with a picture tragic loneliness, the despair of a person who finds himself in front of the abyss of lost happiness, and this is confirmed last phrase: "The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older."
It seems to me that within the framework in which this story is written, the theme of love receives a surprisingly strong, vivid and endearing incarnation.
