Yulia Yuryevna Chernokozova is a teacher of literature at the Novocherkassk Pedagogical College.

Analysis of the story by I.A. Bunin "Dark Alleys" at a literature lesson in the senior class

“All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...”

In accordance with the program, acquaintance of students with the work of I.A. Bunin is carried out gradually. In elementary school, they get an idea of ​​his poetic work, read and analyze epic works - "Clean Monday", "Sunstroke". In the eleventh grade, when studying a monographic topic on the writer's work, it is necessary to systematize the existing knowledge, help high school students in comprehending the peculiarities of the writer's worldview and skill. It is important to consider each small work chosen for study as part of an integral artistic world containing unique features of the author's individuality. Therefore, when starting to work on the story “Dark Alleys”, we set as our goal the creation of conditions not only for the students to fully interpret the text, but also for them to comprehend the artistic concept of the entire cycle. Given that for eleventh graders, of course, the appeal to the theme of love is personally significant, in the process of analyzing Bunin's work, we tried to arouse in them a desire to deeply comprehend the author's concept of love, to determine their attitude to it. The story of I. Bunin is harmonious, with a small volume and a folded plot, it is unusually meaningful, truly “the best words in the best order”. This allows the lesson to successfully solve another problem - to develop the skills of students through the consideration of the elements of the form (in this case, through the relationship between the plot and the plot) to come to empathy with the author.

As an epigraph to the dialogue with students, we choose the words of the writer himself: “We live by everything that we live, only to the extent that we comprehend the value of what we live. Usually this price is very small: it rises only in moments of delight - the delight of happiness or unhappiness, a vivid consciousness of gain or loss; more - in moments of poetic transformation of the past in memory.

In anticipation of working with the text, we recall with the students what works about love they know, we analyze the reader's impressions of the stories I. Bunin read (as homework, it was proposed to read not only "Dark Alleys", but also two or three other stories from this cycle) and note that by the beginning of the 20th century, it seems that everything that could be said about love had already been said. However, I. Bunin talks about this feeling in his own way. For the heroes of his works, love is a moment of happiness, which is tragic only because it is irrevocable. The price of this irretrievable moment is realized not at the moment of absorption by the feeling, but later. “Later” can come fifteen minutes after parting with a loved one (“Sunstroke”), and thirty years later (“Dark Alleys”). Bunin's feeling of love is devoid of vulgarity, even purely physical intimacy is exclusively spiritual. These are always “truly magical” minutes.

The story that interests us belongs to the late period of I.A. Bunin. At this time, according to the fair remark of the researcher of the writer L.A. Kolobaeva, in connection with the tendency to expand the epic beginning in the works of Bunin, such a genre structure of the story appears, which, as if exceeding its own nature, reaches out to the story and even to the novel, takes on its tasks - through the “instant” of life to look through the beginnings and ends , the history of the personality as a whole, its fate, the whole “chalice of life”. It is from this point of view that the story "Dark Alleys" is interesting. His analysis should show high school students how "a vulgar, ordinary story" is transformed into "a light breath of Bunin's story."

At the very beginning of the analytical conversation on the text, we find out what this small (only four pages) work of I. Bunin is about, which gave the name to the whole cycle. Usually there are answers: about love, about a meeting, about the life of two people. What is unusual about the love story of Nikolai Alekseevich and Nadezhda? How does the hero himself respond to her? We conclude that in itself the history of the relationship between two people is no different. Nikolai Alekseevich himself evaluates it as “vulgar and ordinary”. However, it was interesting to read, the feeling of banality did not arise. Why?

Let's try to retell the work, highlighting the main events. It is possible that some student will try to build his retelling in chronological order: love and parting - a thirty-year separation - a meeting at the post station. If the story matches the plot, high school students can be invited to determine the temporal correlation of events and compare them with how the author tells about them. At the same time, we depict this schematically on the board and in notebooks.

What are the similarities and differences between the schemes?

Which version of the story grabs our attention the most? Why?

Together with the students, we note that in both schemes the episodes that make up the story are highlighted. However, the first scheme is a list of episodes in their chronological sequence, and the second is the same set of episodes, but they are arranged differently, according to the laws of the story's artistic time: present - past - future. The reader is more attracted to the second option, since we are interested in the moment of recognition, which motivates attention to the conversation following it, the memory of former lovers. It makes us feel surprised, gives rise to a desire to learn about what happened in the past, encourages empathy.

We update the knowledge of eleventh graders about the plot and the plot, we propose to correlate these concepts with the diagrams depicted on the board, we help to come to the conclusion that reflections on the features of the plot construction in the work help to better understand the author’s intention, in this case, through one life situation to show the whole human a life.

What events from the life of the characters did the author choose to tell us the story of the life of two people? Only meager facts: love that arose thirty years ago, a meeting at the station, the family life of Nikolai Alekseevich, about which he told Nadezhda in five sentences.

Were these only events in the life of forty-eight-year-old Nadezhda and sixty-year-old Nikolai Alekseevich? Of course not. But why did the writer choose them? Probably, they were the main ones in the fate of the heroes. Let's find confirmation of this in the text.

Nikolai Alekseevich:“I think that I have lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life.” “Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but magical!”

Hope:“Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter.” “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” “No matter how much time passed, everything lived by one.” There were many events in the life of Nadezhda: "It's a long story, sir." But lived she only love for Nikolai Alekseevich.

Why didn’t I. Bunin tell us the story of Nikolai Alekseevich’s family life in more detail, because this could have turned out to be a fascinating novel? (I loved my wife without memory. - I left it. - I adored my son. - A scoundrel grew up.) Because in such a small work, only the most important thing had to be revealed, explaining everything in the fate of people. This main thing turned out to be an old love. And although the content of the story is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” the reading evokes a special lyrical mood: “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” The atmosphere of the story is as light and harmonious as the tetrameter iambic of these poetic lines. The memory of Nikolai Alekseevich poetically transformed the moments of departed love, showed the real value of this feeling.

For the hero, love is a wonderful moment, but for Nadezhda? We suggest finding words in the text confirming that Nadezhda has retained her feelings for many years. For her, love is her whole life.

In conclusion, we turn to the epigraph, to the words of I. Bunin, revealing “the main creative aspirations of the writer - his pathos, the principles of selection and artistic transformation of life material” . What is the epigraph about? How does it relate to the analyzed story? What moments in a person's life make it possible to comprehend the price of what he lives by? Discussion of questions helps to comprehend the story in a lyrical and philosophical way, when the main characters are three elements: love, time and memory. Love is a state when “the whole world was in the soul”, and the person is ideal. Time inexorably pulls away and makes you forget everything. Memory selects and poetically transforms moments of the past - love. The circle, having begun with love, closes with it. I. Bunin suggested in his story "Dark Alleys" just such a situation, when the memory of an aging hero allows him to realize the already forgotten love as the "best", the only "truly magical" minutes of life.

Feedback on the work of I.A. Bunin "Dark Alleys"

Oh, those dark alleys...
Silent corners of the soul

***
“All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed,
There were alleys of dark lindens.
I walked in anticipation of the sweet
To the beautiful, fiery Venus.

The taste of ripe lips, alluring look
Datura daring heart warmed
All the tenderness of dreams is a deadly poison.
Desire took over.

I am a prisoner of the spell, at your feet
I'm waiting for the verdict or ... affection.
Moments of happiness for two
We will share with you without publicity ... "

***
What a beautiful start.
Circling youth in a resounding waltz.
Blind love was born
In a rich house: overweight, boring.

One day a young master
Fell in love with a simple girl.
He was handsome, good-looking.
And I found a couple:

Blush cheeks, thin camp.
Resin eyes sparkle ...
Who could find a flaw in it?
Only the blind will pass by.

She was loved...
She was a happy maid.
And it was alien to them then,
That he is a gentleman, she is a peasant woman.

***
But time moves on.
Vile treason is stealing ...
The scarlet rosehip is blooming again.
Only the linden alley was empty ..

Cold look and proud look.
Arrogance is caustic in the eyes.
Self-loving "heart thief"
Her fate is in his hands.

***
Such was the master - bold and ardent.
His whole life is a continuous jerk.
From the inevitable paws of mistakes
Unfortunately, he couldn't escape.

Dear Nikolai has left,
Leaving the burden of parting.
The wild rose paradise has faded:
Said goodbye, not goodbye.

Parted their ways
Hope is free.
But love has no freedom!
Such a girl's fate.

The tavern has become a substitute for love.
I wanted to forget - I couldn't
She waited for him and suffered so much.
She lived only for him.

***
“…but the best minutes.
She gave me life...
And yet morals are now cool!
Or maybe ... still loved?

***
As you can see, something went wrong.
The simpleton has become not cute ...
And why did it happen?
The truth is not tricky at all.

What could be stronger than love?
More tender than an early forget-me-not?
What could be wiser than hearts?
The nobles have stingy prejudices.

Reviews

Alexander, thank you)
In my school years, I was drawn to such retellings)
Emotions, impressions, experiences ... - the world of literary heroes seemed to be a real world) And Buninskaya village - an echo of childhood memories. Centuries are different, but the essence is one. And the smell, taste, color, timbre, mood, colors, landscapes, orders, characters, people ... - time, the worlds, although parallel, but intersect)

The daily audience of the Potihi.ru portal is about 200 thousand visitors, who in total view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

When the dark heavy days of autumn come, the rain is annoyingly knocking on the windows, I usually read Bunin.
So yesterday I accidentally opened an unfamiliar folder on the desktop of my computer, and in it was Bunin's Diary for 1939-1945. According to his notes, you can trace all the key moments of the Second World War, find out how hard it was for him in those years. But something else surprises me, how much he wrote in that difficult time of hunger, already middle-aged, sick
. All the brightest stories were written at that time and they made up his most famous and beloved by readers collection "Dark Alleys".
And the name for the collection and, perhaps, the very idea of ​​​​writing such a collection was suggested to Ivan Alekseevich by Ogaryov’s poem:

ORDINARY STORY

It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
The river was quiet, clear
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
Stretched for the river dol,
Quietly, luxuriantly green;
Near the wild rose scarlet blossomed,
There was an alley of dark lindens.

It's been a wonderful spring!
They were sitting on the beach
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if anyone could see them
Then, at their morning meeting,
And I would look out for their faces
Or eavesdrop on their speeches -
How sweet his tongue would be,
The original love language!
He would surely b himself, at this moment,
Blossomed at the bottom of a sad soul! ..
I met them in the light later:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight;
There was peace on their faces.
Their life flowed lightly and evenly,
They meet each other
Could laugh in cold blood...
And there, along the river,
Where the scarlet rose hips then bloomed,
Some simple fishermen
Went to the dilapidated boat
And they sang songs - and it's dark
The rest is closed to people
What was said there
And how much has been forgotten.

At the end of the short story "Dark Alleys", which gave the name to the entire collection, Bunin quotes two lines from this poem:

“The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields, the horses evenly spanked through the puddles. He looked at the flashing horseshoes, knitting his black eyebrows, and thought:
“Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” But, my God, what would happen next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the keeper of the inn, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children? And closing his eyes, he shook his head.
October 20, 1938

Tsvetaeva dreamed of having a garden in her declining days, she wrote:
For this hell
For this nonsense
send me a garden
For old age."

But Bunin had it. . .

From his diaries:

6.9.1940
I write and look into the sunny "lantern" of my room, at its five windows, behind which there is a light fog of everything that lies around us with such beauty and spaciousness, and a huge whitish-sunny sky. And in the midst of all this is my lonely, eternally sad self.

(They brought a newspaper. [...] Churchill's speech devant la chambre des communes. In the last 2 months, England lost 558 aircraft. In August, 1,075 people died among the civilian population, 800 houses were destroyed. The German attacks in September will intensify [. ..])

21.4.1940
2 1/2 hours Walked in the garden - the second platform (from the lower road) was already overgrown with tall grass. Still blooming pale pink, light, delicate, v. femininity. flowers of some special kind of cherry, 2 clumsy apple trees bloom with white (also pinkish in buds) flowers. Irises are blooming, I found a blossoming rosehip branch (a light scarlet color with yellow pollen in the middle), some flowers, like poppies - the lightest, but bright orange ... I sat on a crumbling wicker chair, looked at the mountains behind Nice... Paradise! And for how many years I have seen him, I feel him!
Lonely, uncomfortable, but to move near Paris ... the insignificance of nature, the vile climate!
As always, almost exactly the same in the whole house. [...]
A bright day, a holiday, the sea seems to be emptyer - and they call, they call in the city ... I don’t know how to express what is behind all this.
A lot of moths curl around the color of lilac - white with a greenish tint, transparent. And again, bees, bumblebees, flies are born ...

23.5.42
Again I thought today: there is nothing more beautiful than flowers and birds in the world. More butterflies.

30.4.40
Night, a dark strip of forest in the distance and above it a star - humble, charming. It was somewhere, once upon a time, that struck me as a child for the rest of my life... My God, my God! I once had a childhood, the first days of my life on earth! I just can't believe it! Now just the thought that they were. And here come the last ones. [...]

7.5.40
Somehow, to me - as happens most often for no reason at all, it seemed to me: the evening after a thunderstorm and a downpour on the road to st. Babrykina. And heaven and earth - everything is already darkening gloomily. In the distance, above the dark strip of the forest, it still flares up. Someone is standing on the porch of an inn near the highway, cleaning the mud off their tops with a whip. There is a dog near him... From here "Styopa" came out.

30.7.40
Suddenly I remembered: Moscow, the Maly Theatre, stairs - and sometimes very warm, sometimes icy drafts.

20.IX. 40.
Started Rus. 22.IX. 40. Wrote "Mother's Chest" and "Along Pavement Street". 27.IX. 40. Finished "Rus". 29.IX. 40. Sketched "Wolves". 2. X. 40. Wrote "Antigone". Z.X.40. Wrote "Pasha" and "Smaragd". 5.X.40. Yesterday and today I wrote "Business cards". 7.X.40. Rewrote and corrected "Wolves". 10, 11, 12, 13. X. 40. Wrote and finished (at 3.15) "Zoyka and Valery". 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22. X. 40. Wrote and finished (at 5 o'clock) "Tanya". 25 and 26. X. 40. Wrote "In Paris" (first pages - 24. X. 40). 27 and 28 X. 40. Wrote "Galya Ganskaya" (finished at 4:40 p.m. on 28.10.

7.5.40
"A man and his body are two... When the body desires something, think about whether You really desire it. For You are God... Penetrate yourself to find God in yourself... Do not take your body for yourself ... Do not succumb to the incessant anxiety about the little things in which many spend most of their time ... "
"One of those who have no rest.
From the thirst for happiness ... "
Seems like me, for my whole life (even to this day).

30.7.40
“I read about the experience that two Viennese students made a few years ago: they decided to hang themselves so that they could be taken out of the loop a moment before death and they could tell what they experienced. It turned out that they experienced a blinding light and a roar of thunder.

16. VI. 41. Monday, evening.

The contempt of the first Christians for life, their disgust from it, from its rigidity, rudeness, bestiality. Then the barbarians. And going into caves, into crypts, foundation of monasteries... Will it be the same in the 20th, in the 21st century?

28. VII. Sunday.
I am reading Krasnov's novel "God is with us". I did not expect that he was so capable, knew so much and was so busy. [...]
2 hours. Yes, I live in paradise. I still can’t get used to such days, to such a sight. Today is a particularly great day. He looked through the windows of his lantern. All the valleys and mountains around in a sunny blue haze. In the direction of Nice over the mountains, wonderful thunderclouds. To the right, in the pine forest above them, the beauty of heat, dryness, through the tops of the sky. To the right, along our stone staircase, two oleanders with their small, sharp leaves bloom with small pink flowers. And loneliness, loneliness, as always! And the agonizing expectation of resolving the fate of England. I'm afraid to open the newspaper in the morning.
Since ancient times, Jews have been prescribed: always (and especially on happy days) to think about death.
Belligerants. It can be translated by an old Russian word: opponents.
Lighthouses were lit. Seen from here for the first time (with "Jeannette")

22.6.41
From a new page I am writing the continuation of this day - a great event Germany this morning declared war on Russia - and the Finns and Romanians have already "invaded" its "limits".
After breakfast (naked soup of mashed peas and salad) I lay down to continue reading Flaubert's letters (letter from Rome to his mother dated April 8, 1851), when suddenly Zurov shouted: "I.A., German. declared war on Russia!" I thought he was joking, but Bahr shouted the same thing from below. I ran to the dining room to the radio - yes! We are terribly excited. [...]
Quiet, cloudy day. . .
***
The day before yesterday M. rewrote "Ballad". No one believes that I almost always make everything up - everything, everything. It's a shame! The "Ballad" is all invented, from word to word - and at once at one o'clock: somehow I woke up in Paris with the thought that I absolutely must [send] something to the "Envoy. N.", it must be there; drank coffee, sat down at the table - and suddenly, for no apparent reason, he began to write, not knowing what would happen next. And the story is wonderful.

From 8 to 9. V. 44.
The hour of the night. I got up from the table - it remains to add several. lines of Clean Monday. Turned off the light, opened the window to ventilate the room - not the slightest. air movement; the full moon, the night is not bright, the whole valley is in the thinnest fog, far on the horizon is the obscure pinkish gleam of the sea, silence, the soft freshness of young woody greenery, here and there the first nightingales chirping ... Lord, prolong my strength for my lonely, poor life in this beauty and at work!

14. 5. 44.
21/2 o'clock in the morning (which means that it is no longer May 14, but May 15).
During the evening he wrote "Steamboat Saratov". He opened the window, darkness, silence, in some places muddy. stars, raw freshness.

23. 5. 44.
In the evening I wrote "Camargue". Pts. cold night. . .

20.I. 44g.
Again excellent. day. Was at Kl[yagin's].
Take Novgorod.
The nights are starry, clear, cold. Whatever you remember (and snippets are replayed every minute), everything is painful, sad. Sometimes I sleep for 9 hours or more. And almost every. morning, as soon as you open your eyes, some kind of sadness - aimlessness, the end of everything (for me).
I looked through my notes on the former Russia. I keep thinking that if I could live, I would end up in Russia! What for? The old age of the survivors (and the women with whom once), the cemetery of everything that once lived ...

25.I. 44g.
[...] Suddenly remembered Gagarinsk. the alley, my youth, a fictitious love for Lop[atin] - who now for some reason (5 kilometers from me) lies in a grave in some Valbona. Isn't that wild!

27.1. 44g.
Without 1/4 6. I'm sitting at the window to the west. On the horizon, the sky is green - the sun has just set - closer is the whole part of the sky (in front of me) in a solid cloud, under which (inaudible. - O. M.) is like a fleece and is colored orange-copper.
Now its color is getting redder, the forest valley towards Draguignan in purple steam.
Around - to Nice, to Cannes - everything is in moderation, rudely flowery, it's true, tomorrow there will be bad weather.
Today, after breakfast, great vivacity - steak with curry, real coffee and lemon?
Received 2 Swedish. parcels.

The story “Dark Alleys” opens, perhaps, the most famous Bunin cycle of stories, which got its name from this first, “title” work. It is known what importance the writer attached to the initial sound, the first “note” of the narrative, the timbre of which was to determine the entire sound palette of the work. A kind of "beginning", creating a special lyrical atmosphere of the story, were the lines from N. Ogarev's poem "An Ordinary Tale":

It was a wonderful spring
They were sitting on the beach
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Around the wild rose scarlet bloomed,
There was an alley of dark lindens...

Ho, as always with Bunin, “sound” is inseparable from “image”. To him, as he wrote in the notes “The Origin of My Stories”, at the beginning of work on the story, “some kind of big road, a troika harnessed to a tarantass, and autumn bad weather” presented themselves. It is necessary to add to this a literary impulse, which also played a role: Bunin named “Resurrection” by L.N. Tolstoy, the heroes of this novel are the young Nekhlyudov and Katyusha Maslova. All this came together in the writer's imagination, and a story was born about lost happiness, about the irretrievability of time, about lost illusions and about the power of the past over a person.

The meeting of the heroes, united once in their youth by an ardent love feeling, takes place many years later in the most ordinary, perhaps even nondescript environment: in a mudslide, in an inn lying on a large roadway. Bunin does not skimp on “prosaic” details: “a tarantass thrown with mud”, “simple horses”, “tails tied up from slush”. On the other hand, the portrait of the arrived man is given a detailed one, obviously calculated to arouse sympathy: “a slender old military man”, with black eyebrows, a white mustache, and a shaved chin. His appearance speaks of nobility, and a strict but tired look contrasts with the liveliness of his movements (the author notices how he “thrown” his leg out of the tarantass, “ran up” to the porch). Bunin clearly wants to emphasize the connection in the hero of vivacity and maturity, youthfulness and sedateness, which is very important for the overall idea of ​​​​the story, implicated in the desire to collide the past and the present, to strike a spark of memories that will illuminate the past with a bright light and incinerate, turn into ashes what exists today.

The writer deliberately drags out the exposition: out of the three and a half pages given to the story, almost a page is occupied by the “introduction”. In addition to describing the rainy day, the appearance of the hero (and at the same time a detailed description of the appearance of the coachman), which is supplemented with new details as the hero is freed from outer clothing, it also contains a detailed description of the room where the visitor found himself. Moreover, the refrain of this description is an indication of cleanliness and tidiness: a clean tablecloth on the table, cleanly washed benches, a recently whitewashed stove, a new image in the corner ... The author focuses on this, since it is known that the owners of Russian inns and hotels were not neat and cockroaches and dim windows infested with flies were a constant feature of these places. Therefore, he wants to draw our attention to the almost uniqueness of how this institution is maintained by its owners, or rather, as we will soon find out, by its owner.

Ho the hero remains indifferent to the environment, although later he notes cleanliness and tidiness. It can be seen from his behavior and gestures that he is annoyed, tired (Bunin uses the epithet tired for the second time, now in relation to the whole appearance of the officer who arrived), perhaps not very healthy (“pale thin hand”), hostile to everything that happens (“ hostilely” called the owners), absent-minded (“inattentively” answers the questions of the hostess who appeared). And only the unexpected address of this woman to him: “Nikolai Alekseevich,” makes him seem to wake up. After all, before that, he asked her questions purely mechanically, without thinking, although he managed to take a look at her figure, note rounded shoulders, light legs in worn Tatar shoes.

The author himself, as if in addition to the “unseeing” look of the hero, gives a much more sharply expressive, unexpected, juicy portrait of the woman who entered: not very young, but still beautiful, like a gypsy, plump, but not heavy woman. Bunin deliberately resorts to naturalistic, almost anti-aesthetic details: large breasts, a triangular belly, like a goose's. But the defiant anti-aestheticism of the image is “removed”: the breasts are hidden under a red blouse (the diminutive suffix is ​​intended to convey a feeling of lightness), and the belly is hidden by a black skirt. In general, the combination of black and red in clothes, fluff above the lip (a sign of passion), zoomorphic comparison are aimed at emphasizing the carnal, earthly beginnings in the heroine.

However, it is she who will manifest - as we will see a little later - the beginning of the spiritual, as opposed to that mundane existence, which, without realizing it, the hero drags out, without thinking or peering into his past. Therefore, she is the first! - recognizes him. No wonder she “all the time looked inquisitively at him, squinting slightly,” and he peers at her only after she turns to him by name and patronymic. She - and not he - will name the exact number when it comes to the years that they did not see each other: not thirty-five, but thirty. She will tell you how old he is now. It means that everything was scrupulously calculated by her, which means that every year left a notch in her memory! And this is at a time when it was he who should never forget what connected them, because in the past he had - no less - a dishonorable act, however, quite common at that time - fun with a serf girl when visiting friends' estates, a sudden departure...

In a mean dialogue between Nadezhda (that is the name of the hostess of the inn) and Nikolai Alekseevich, the details of this story are restored. And most importantly - the different attitude of the characters to the past. If for Nikolai Alekseevich everything that happened is “a vulgar, ordinary story” (however, he is ready to bring everything in his life under this measure, as if removing the burden of responsibility for his actions from a person), then for Nadezhda her love became and a great trial, and a great event, the only one of significance in her life. “Just as I didn’t have anything more precious than you in the world at that time, so then it wasn’t,” she says.

For Nikolai Alekseevich, the love of a serf was only one of the episodes of his life (Nadezhda directly declares this to him: “It was as if nothing had happened for you”). She, on the other hand, several times “wanted to lay hands on herself”, never married, despite her extraordinary beauty, and never managed to forget her first love. Therefore, she refutes Nikolai Alekseevich’s statement that “everything passes over the years” (he, as if trying to convince himself of this, repeats the formula that “everything passes” several times: after all, he really wants to brush aside the past, to imagine everything is not enough significant event), with the words: “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” And she will pronounce them with unshakable confidence. However, Bunin almost never comments on her words, limiting herself to the monosyllabic “answered”, “came up”, “suspended”. Only once does he slip an indication of an “evil smile”, with which Nadezhda utters a phrase addressed to her seducer: “I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of“ dark alleys ””.

The writer is just as stingy with “historical details”. Only from the words of the heroine of the work: “The gentlemen gave me freedom soon after you,” and from the mention of the hero’s appearance, which had “a resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military at the time of his reign,” we can get an idea that The action of the story takes place, apparently, in the 60s or 70s of the XIX century.

On the other hand, Bunin is unusually generous in commenting on the state of Nikolai Alekseevich, for whom a meeting with Nadezhda becomes a meeting with both his past and his conscience. The writer is here a "secret psychologist" in all its brilliance, making it clear through gestures, intonation of voice, the behavior of the hero, what is happening in his soul. If at first the only thing that interests the visitor at the inn is that “because of the stove damper, there was a sweet smell of cabbage soup” (Bunin even adds such a detail: the smell of “boiled cabbage, beef and bay leaf” was felt, from which we can conclude that the guest is clearly hungry), then when he meets Nadezhda, when he recognizes her, when he further talks with her, fatigue and distraction instantly fly off him, he begins to look fussy, worried, talking a lot and stupidly (“mumbled”, “added a patter” , “said hastily”), which is in sharp contrast to the calm majesty of Nadezhda. Bunin three times indicates the reaction of Nikolai Alekseevich's embarrassment: “quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed”, “stopped and, blushing through his gray hair, began to speak”, “blushed to tears”; emphasizes his dissatisfaction with himself by abrupt changes in position: “resolutely walked around the room”, “frowning, he walked again”, “stopping, painfully grinned”.

All this testifies to what a difficult, painful process takes place in him. But at first, nothing pops up in his memory except the divine beauty of a young girl (“How good you were! ... What a camp, what eyes! ... How everyone looked at you”) and the romantic atmosphere of their rapprochement, and he is inclined brush aside what he heard, hoping to turn the conversation, if not in jest, then into the mainstream of “whoever remembers the old, to that ...” However, after he heard that Nadezhda could never forgive him, because you can’t forgive someone who took away the most dear - the soul, who killed her, he seemed to see clearly. He is especially shocked, apparently, by the fact that, to explain her feeling, she resorts to the saying (obviously, especially beloved by Bunin, already once used by him in the story “The Village”) “they don’t carry the dead from the graveyard.” This means that she feels dead, that she never came to life after those happy spring days, and that for her, who knew the great power of love, it was not for nothing that he answered his question-exclamation: “After all, you couldn’t love me all the time!” - she replies firmly: “So she could. No matter how much time passed, she lived all the same, ”there is no return to the life of ordinary people. Her love turned out to be not just stronger than death, but stronger than the life that came after what happened and which she, as a Christian, had to continue, no matter what.

And what kind of life this is, we learn from a few remarks exchanged between Nikolai Alekseevich, who is leaving the short shelter, and the coachman Klim, who says that the landlady of the inn has a “mind chamber”, that she is “getting richer”, because “she gives money at interest”, that she is “cool”, but “fair”, which means that she enjoys both respect and honor. Ho, we understand how small and insignificant for her, who fell in love once and for all, all this mercantile flickering, how inconsistent it is with what is happening in her soul. For Nadezhda, her love is from God. No wonder she says: “What God gives to whom ... Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter.” That is why her unpreparedness for forgiveness, while Nikolai Alekseevich really wants and hopes that God will forgive him, and even more so Nadezhda will forgive him, because, by all standards, he committed not such a great sin, is not condemned by the author. Although such a maximalist position is contrary to Christian doctrine. Ho, according to Bunin, a crime against love, against memory - is much more serious than the sin of "vindictiveness". And just the memory of love, of the past, in his opinion, justifies a lot.

And the fact that a true understanding of what happened gradually awakens in the mind of the hero speaks in his favor. After all, at first the words he said: “I think that I also lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life,” and the deed - kissed Nadezhda’s hand goodbye - cause him nothing but shame, and even more - the shame of this shame, are perceived by them as false, ostentatious. But then he begins to understand that what escaped by chance, in a hurry, perhaps even for a red word, is the most genuine “diagnosis” of the past. His internal dialogue, reflecting hesitation and doubt: “Isn’t it true that she gave me the best moments of my life?” - ends with an unshakable: “Yes, of course, the best minutes. And not the best, but truly magical.” But right there - and here Bunin acts as a realist who does not believe in romantic transformations and repentance - another, sobering voice told him that all these thoughts were “nonsense”, that he could not do otherwise, that even then it was impossible to fix anything , not now.

So Bunin, in the very first story of the cycle, gives an idea of ​​​​the unattainable height to which the most ordinary person is able to rise if his life is illuminated, albeit tragic, but with love. And the short moments of this love are able to “outweigh” all the material benefits of future well-being, all the pleasures of love interests that do not rise above the level of ordinary intrigues, in general, all subsequent life with its ups and downs.

Bunin draws the subtlest modulations of the states of the characters, relying on the sound “echo”, the consonance of phrases that are born, often in addition to meaning, in response to the spoken words. So, the words of the coachman Klim that if you don’t give Nadezhda the money on time, then “blame it on yourself”, they respond, like echolalia, when Nikolai Alekseevich says them aloud: “Yes, yes, blame yourself.” And then in his soul they will continue to sound like words “crucifying” him. “Yes, blame yourself,” he thinks, realizing what kind of fault lies with him. And the ingenious formula created by the author, put into the mouth of the heroine: “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten,” was born in response to the phrase of Nikolai Alekseevich: “Everything passes. Everything is forgotten”, - earlier, as if confirmed in a quote from the book of Job - “as you will remember the water that has flowed”. And more than once during the story there will be words that refer us to the past, to memory: “Everything passes with age”; “youth is passing away for everyone”; “I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me how”; “remember how everyone looked at you”, “how can you forget this”, “well, what to remember”. These echoing phrases seem to weave a carpet on which Bunin's formula about the omnipotence of memory will be imprinted forever.

It is impossible not to catch the obvious similarity of this story with Turgenev's Asya. As we remember, even there the hero at the end tries to convince himself that "fate disposed well, not connecting him with Asya." He consoles himself with the thought that "probably he would not be happy with such a wife." It would seem that the situations are similar: both here and there the idea of ​​misalliance, i.e. the possibility of marrying a woman of a lower class is initially rejected. Ho what is the result of this, it would seem, from the point of view of the attitudes of the correct decision adopted in society? The hero of "Asia" turned out to be condemned forever to remain a "familyless bobyl", dragging out "boring" years of utter loneliness. He's all in the past.

Nikolai Alekseevich from “Dark Alleys” had a different life: he reached a position in society, was surrounded by a family, he had a wife and children. True, as he admits to Nadezhda, he was never happy: the wife whom he loved "without memory" cheated and left him, the son, on whom high hopes were placed, turned out to be "a scoundrel, a waste, an insolent person without a heart, without honor, without conscience ...”. Of course, it can be assumed that Nikolai Alekseevich somewhat exaggerates his feeling of bitterness, his feelings, in order to somehow make amends for Nadezhda, so that it would not be so painful for her to realize the difference in their states, different assessments of the past. Moreover, at the end of the story, when he tries to “learn a lesson” from an unexpected meeting, to sum up what he has lived, he, reflecting, comes to the conclusion that it would still be impossible to imagine Nadezhda as the mistress of his St. Petersburg house, the mother of his children. Therefore, we understand that his wife, apparently, returned to him, and besides the scoundrel son, there are other children. But why, then, is he so initially irritated, bilious, gloomy, why does he have a strict and at the same time tired look? Why is this look “questioning”? Perhaps this is a subconscious desire to still be aware of how he lives? And why does he shake his head in bewilderment, as if driving away doubts from himself ... Yes, all because the meeting with Nadezhda brightly illuminated his past life. And it became clear to him that there had never been anything in his life better than those “truly magical” moments when “the scarlet rose hips bloomed, an alley of dark lindens stood”, when he passionately loved passionate Nadezhda, and she recklessly gave herself to him with all recklessness youth.

And the hero of Turgenev's "Asia" cannot remember anything brighter than that "burning, tender, deep feeling" that a childish and serious girl gave him ...

Both of them have only “flowers of memories” left from the past - a dried geranium flower thrown from Asya's window, a scarlet wild rose from Ogarev's poem that accompanied the love story of Nikolai Alekseevich and Nadezhda. Only for the latter is a flower that inflicted non-healing wounds with its thorns.

So, following Turgenev, Bunin draws the greatness of the female soul, capable of loving and remembering, in contrast to the male, burdened with doubts, entangled in petty predilections, subject to social conventions. So already the first story of the cycle consolidates the leading motifs of Bunin's late work - memory, the omnipotence of the past, the significance of a single moment compared to the dull succession of everyday life.