Bunin sunstroke clean Monday. I. Bunin's prose of the foreign period ("The Life of Arsenyev", "Mitina's Love", "Sunstroke", "Clean Monday", a cycle of stories "Dark Alleys", "The Liberation of Tolstoy" and others)

The theme of love in the works of I.A. Bunin I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday" "Easy breathing" "Sunstroke" "Dark alleys" "Mitina love" "Grammar of love" Author of the work: Deputy Director for UVR, teacher of Russian language and literature Secondary school 924 of the Southern Administrative District of Moscow Meshcheryakova Natalya Alexandrovna

If no one knows why we smile, And no one knows why we cry. If no one knows why we are born, And no one knows why we die... If we move towards the abyss, where we will cease to be, If the night before us is mute and silent... Let's, let's at least love! Perhaps though it will not be in vain... Amado Nervo

"Dark Alleys" () is the highest creative achievement. The collection "Dark Alleys" () I. Bunin considered his highest creative achievement. the world collapses when reality is unbearable - stable, permanent, eternal” “... Most of the stories in this cycle were created during the Second World War. When the world is collapsing, when reality is unbearable, Bunin turns to the theme of love, i.e. stable, permanent, eternal "D. Malysheva

The focus of the author in all the stories of the cycle "Dark Alleys" is the love of a man and a woman, shown through the prism of time.

In each story, I. Bunin finds more and more shades of love feeling: A feeling of adoration ("Natalie") A feeling of adoration ("Natalie") A feigned game-love (Riviera) A feigned game-love (Riviera) Selling love ("Young lady Clara "Selling love ("Lady Clara" Love-enmity ("Saratov steamer") Love-enmity ("Saratov steamer") Love-despair ("Zoyka and Valeria") Love-despair ("Zoyka and Valeria" ) Love-witchcraft ("Iron Wool") Love-witchcraft ("Iron Wool") Love-self-forgetfulness ("Cold Autumn") Love-self-forgetfulness ("Cold Autumn") Love-pity, love-compassion Love-pity, love- compassion (“Three rubles”) (“Three rubles”) Bunin's love is not only spiritual unity, but also physical closeness, and love never lasts, does not develop into a state of lasting earthly bliss

Easy Breath, 1916 Read the three statements about the story and match them. K. Paustovsky: “This is not a story, but an insight, life itself with its awe and love, the writer’s sad and calm reflection is an epitaph for girlish beauty” N. Klyuchevsky: ““Easy breathing” is not just and not only an “epitaph for girlish beauty” , but also - an epitaph to the spiritual "aristocratism" of being, which in life is opposed by the rough and helpless power of the "plebeians". I. Bunin: “... we call it uterine, and I called it light breathing there. Such naivete and lightness in everything, both in impudence and in death, and there is light breathing, “bewilderment” ”How do you explain the meaning of the story’s title? What is the symbolism of the name "Light Breath"?

"Grammar of Love" What is the peculiarity of the title of the story? What event is the story based on? What question does the hero (a certain Ivlev) ask when entering the house of a recently deceased landowner? Did he solve this mystery? And what is this secret? With what mood does the hero observe everything in the house? How does it feel to leave? How to explain why the son of Khvoshchinsky, at first refusing to sell the book, still sells it?

"Dark Alleys" How is the story structured? What is its plot? Why did the love of the heroes of this story not take place? What is the source of the tragedy that accompanies this love? Compare the description of the appearance of the characters. What impression do they make? Re-read the episode of the meeting of heroes. Why did Nadezhda so accurately determine the time during which they did not see each other? Why didn't this beautiful and not yet old woman get married? How do the characters feel after the breakup? What features of the plot and composition can be noted in this story?

Clean Monday, 1944 How is the story structured? What is its plot? In what time period does the story take us, what testifies to this? What is known about the hero and heroine? When do the main events of the story take place? Explain the meaning of the title of the story. Is the conflict in the soul of the characters resolved?

List of used literature and Internet sources: 1. Yandex-images slide N.V. Egorova, I.V. Zolotarev "Lesson developments in Russian literature grade 11". Moscow "Vako" 2003 "Purework developments in Russian literature, grade 11." Moscow "Vako" 2003

"Sunstroke"

They met in the summer, on one of the Volga steamers. He is a lieutenant, She is a lovely little, tanned woman (she said she was coming from Anapa). “... I'm completely drunk,” she laughed. - Actually, I'm completely crazy. Three hours ago, I didn't even know you existed." The lieutenant kissed her hand, and his heart sank blissfully and terribly ...

The steamer approached the pier, the lieutenant muttered pleadingly: "Let's get off ..." And a minute later they got off, on a dusty cab they reached the hotel, went into a large, but terribly stuffy room. And as soon as the footman closed the door behind him, both suffocated in the kiss so frenziedly that for many years they later recalled this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like it in their whole life.

And in the morning she left, she, a little nameless woman, jokingly calling herself "a beautiful stranger", "Tsarist Marya Morevna." In the morning, despite an almost sleepless night, she was as fresh as at seventeen, a little embarrassed, still simple, cheerful, and - already reasonable: “You must stay until the next boat,” she said. - If we go together, everything will be spoiled. I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there won’t be more. It’s as if an eclipse has found me ... Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke ... ”And the lieutenant somehow easily agreed with her , drove to the pier, put him on the ship and kissed him on deck in front of everyone.

Just as easily and carelessly, he returned to the hotel. But something has already changed. The number looked different. He was still full of it - and empty. And the lieutenant's heart suddenly contracted with such tenderness that he hurried to light a cigarette and walked up and down the room several times. - he thought. - And forgive me, and already forever, forever ... After all, I can’t come to this city for no reason at all, where her husband, her three-year-old girl, in general, her whole ordinary life! And the thought struck him. He felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized with horror and despair.

“Yes, what is it with me? It seems not for the first time - and now ... But what is special about her? In fact, just some kind of sunstroke! And how can I spend a whole day in this outback without her? He still remembered all of her, but now the main thing was this completely new and incomprehensible feeling, which had not been there while they were together, which he could not have imagined when starting a funny acquaintance. A feeling that there was no one to talk about now. And how to live this endless day, with these memories, with this insoluble torment?...

He had to save himself, to occupy himself with something, to go somewhere. He went to the market. But at the market everything was so stupid, absurd, that he fled from there. I went into the cathedral, where they sang loudly, with a sense of accomplishment of duty, then circled around the small neglected garden for a long time: “How can you live in peace and generally be simple, careless, indifferent? he thought. - How wild, how absurd everything is everyday, ordinary, when the heart is struck by this terrible "sunstroke", too much love, too much happiness!

Returning to the hotel, the lieutenant went into the dining room, ordered dinner. Everything was fine, but he knew that without hesitation he would have died tomorrow, if by some miracle he could return her, tell her, prove how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her ... Why? He didn't know why, but it was more necessary than life.

What to do now, when it is already impossible to get rid of this unexpected love? The lieutenant got up and resolutely went to the post office with a ready-made telegram phrase, but he stopped in horror at the post office - he did not know either her last name or her first name! And the city, hot, sunny, joyful, so unbearably reminded Anapa that the lieutenant, with his head bowed, staggering and stumbling, walked back.

He returned to the hotel completely broken. The room was already tidied up, devoid of the last traces of her - only one forgotten hairpin lay on the night table! He lay down on the bed, lay with his hands behind his head and stared intently in front of him, then clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, feeling the tears roll down his cheeks, and finally fell asleep ...

When the lieutenant woke up, the evening sun was already turning yellow behind the curtains, and yesterday and this morning were remembered as if they were ten years ago. He got up, washed himself, drank tea with lemon for a long time, paid his bill, got into a cab and drove to the pier.

When the steamer set sail, a summer night was already turning blue over the Volga. The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.

"Life of Arseniev"

Alexey Arseniev was born in the 70s. 19th century in central Russia, in his father's estate, on the Kamenka farm. His childhood years passed in the silence of discreet Russian nature. Endless fields with scents of herbs and flowers in summer, boundless expanses of snow in winter gave rise to a heightened sense of beauty that shaped his inner world and remained for life. For hours he could watch the movement of clouds in the high sky, the work of a beetle entangled in grain ears, the play of sunlight on the living room parquet. People entered the circle of his attention gradually. A special place among them was occupied by his mother: he felt his "inseparability" from her. Father attracted by his love of life, cheerful disposition, breadth of nature and his glorious past (he participated in the Crimean War). The brothers were older, and in children's amusements the younger sister Olya became the boy's girlfriend. Together they examined the secret corners of the garden, the kitchen garden, the manor buildings - everywhere had its own charm.

Then a man named Baskakov appeared in the house, who became Alyosha's first teacher. He had no pedagogical experience, and, having quickly learned the boy to write, read, and even French, he did not really introduce the student to the sciences. His influence was in a different way - in a romantic attitude towards history and literature, in the worship of Pushkin and Lermontov, who forever captured the soul of Alyosha. Everything acquired in communication with Baskakov gave impetus to the imagination and poetic perception of life. These carefree days ended when it was time to enter the gymnasium. Parents took their son to the city and settled with the tradesman Rostovtsev. The atmosphere was miserable, the environment completely alien. Lessons in the gymnasium were conducted by the state, among the teachers there were no people of any interest. During all his gymnasium years, Alyosha lived only with a dream of a vacation, of a trip to his relatives - now in Baturino, the estate of his deceased grandmother, since his father, short of money, sold Kamenka.

When Alyosha moved to the 4th grade, a misfortune happened: brother Georgy was arrested for involvement in the "socialists". He lived for a long time under a false name, hid, and then came to Baturino, where, on the denunciation of the clerk of one of the neighbors, the gendarmes took him. This event was a big shock for Alyosha. A year later, he left the gymnasium and returned to his parental home. The father scolded at first, but then decided that his son’s vocation was not a service and not a household (especially since the household was in complete decline), but “poetry of the soul and life” and that, perhaps, a new Pushkin or Lermontov would come out of him. Alyosha himself dreamed of devoting himself to "verbal creativity." His development was greatly facilitated by long conversations with George, who was released from prison and sent to Baturino under police supervision. From a teenager, Alexei turned into a young man, he matured physically and spiritually, felt in himself growing strength and the joy of being, read a lot, thought about life and death, wandered around the neighborhood, visited neighboring estates.

Soon he experienced his first love, meeting in the house of one of his relatives a young girl Ankhen, who was visiting there, and experienced separation from her as a true grief, because of which even the St. Petersburg magazine received on the day of her departure with the publication of his poems did not bring real joy. But then there followed a slight passion for young ladies who came to neighboring estates, and then a relationship with a married woman who served as a maid on the estate of brother Nikolai. This "madness", as Alexey called his passion, ended due to the fact that Nikolai finally calculated the culprit of the unseemly story.

In Alexei, the desire to leave the almost ruined native nest and start an independent life was ripening more and more tangibly. By this time Georgy had moved to Kharkov, and the younger brother decided to go there as well. From the first day, a lot of new acquaintances and impressions fell upon him. George's environment was very different from the village. Many of the people who were part of it went through student circles and movements, visited prisons and exile. During the meetings, conversations were in full swing about the pressing issues of Russian life, the form of government and the rulers themselves were condemned, the need to fight for the constitution and the republic was proclaimed, and the political positions of literary idols - Korolenko, Chekhov, Tolstoy were discussed. These table conversations and disputes fueled Alexei's desire to write, but at the same time he was tormented by his inability to put it into practice.

A vague mental disorder prompted some changes. He decided to see new places, went to the Crimea, was in Sevastopol, on the banks of the Donets and, having already decided to return to Baturino, stopped by Orel on the way to look at the "city of Leskov and Turgenev" . There he found the editors of Golos, where he had planned to find a job even earlier, met the editor Nadezhda Avilova and received an offer to cooperate in the publication. After talking about business, Avilova invited him to the dining room, received him at home, and introduced her cousin Lika to the guest. Everything was unexpected and pleasant, but he could not even imagine what an important role fate had assigned to this chance acquaintance.

At first there were just cheerful conversations and walks that gave pleasure, but gradually sympathy for Lika turned into a stronger feeling. Captured by him, Alexei constantly rushed between Baturin and Orel, abandoned classes and lived only by meeting with a girl, she either brought him closer to her, then pushed him away, then again called him out on a date. Their relationship could not go unnoticed. One fine day, Lika's father invited Alexei to his place and ended a rather friendly conversation with a decisive disagreement with the marriage with his daughter, explaining that he did not want to see them both languishing in need, for he understood how uncertain the position of the young man.

Upon learning of this, Lika said that she would never go against her father's will. However, nothing has changed. On the contrary, there was a final rapprochement. Alexey moved to Orel under the pretext of working at Golos and lived in a hotel, Lika settled with Avilova under the pretext of studying music. But little by little, the difference in natures began to affect: he wanted to share his memories of a poetic childhood, observations of life, literary passions, and all this was alien to her. He was jealous of her gentlemen at city balls, to partners in amateur performances. There was misunderstanding with each other.

One day Lika's father came to Oryol, accompanied by a rich young tanner Bogomolov, whom he introduced as a contender for his daughter's hand and heart. Lika spent all her time with them. Alex stopped talking to her. She ended up refusing Bogomolov, but nevertheless left Oryol with her father. Alexei was tormented by separation, not knowing how and why to live now. He continued to work in Golos, again began to write and print what was written, but he languished in the squalor of Oryol's life and again decided to embark on wanderings. Having changed several cities, without staying anywhere for a long time, he finally could not stand it and sent a telegram to Lika: “I will be there the day after tomorrow.” They met again. Existence apart for both proved unbearable.

A life together began in a small town, where Georgy moved. Both worked in the administration of Zemstvo statistics, were constantly together, visited Baturino. Relatives reacted to Lika with cordial warmth. Everything seemed to be fine. But the roles gradually changed: now Lika lived only with her feelings for Alexei, and he could no longer live only with her. He went on business trips, met different people, reveled in the feeling of freedom, even entered into casual relationships with women, although he still could not imagine himself without Lika. She saw the changes, languished in loneliness, was jealous, was offended by his indifference to her dream of a wedding and a normal family, and in response to Alexei's assurances of the immutability of his feelings, she somehow said that, apparently, she was something like air for him , without which there is no life, but which you do not notice. Lika could not completely renounce herself and live only by what he lives, and, in despair, having written a farewell note, she left Orel.

Alexei’s letters and telegrams remained unanswered until Lika’s father said that she forbade anyone to open her shelter. Alexei almost shot himself, quit his service, did not show up anywhere. An attempt to see her father was unsuccessful: he was simply not accepted. He returned to Baturino, and a few months later he learned that Lika had come home with pneumonia and died very soon. It was at her request that Alexei was not informed of her death.

He was only twenty years old. There was still a lot to go through, but time did not erase this love from memory - it remained for him the most significant event in his life.

The story "Dark alleys"

On a rainy autumn day, along a broken dirt road to a long hut, in one half of which there was a postal station, and in the other a clean room where one could rest, eat and even spend the night, a mud-covered tarantass with a half-raised top drove up. On the goats of the tarantass sat a strong, serious man in a tightly belted Armenian coat, and in the tarantass - “a slender old military man in a large cap and in a gray Nikolaev overcoat with a beaver stand-up collar, still black-browed, but with a white mustache that connected with the same sideburns; his chin was shaved and his whole appearance had that resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military at the time of his reign; his gaze was also inquiring, stern and at the same time tired.

When the horses stopped, he got out of the carriage, ran up to the porch of the hut and turned left, as the coachman told him. It was warm, dry, and tidy in the upper room, with a sweet smell of cabbage soup because of the stove damper. The newcomer threw down his overcoat on the bench, took off his gloves and cap, and wearily ran his hand through his slightly curly hair. There was no one in the room, he opened the door and called: “Hey, who is there!” “A dark-haired, also black-browed and also still beautiful beyond her age woman entered ... with a dark fluff on her upper lip and along her cheeks, light on the move, but plump, with large breasts under a red blouse, with a triangular belly, like a goose, under a black woolen skirt." She greeted me politely.

The visitor glanced briefly at her rounded shoulders and light legs and asked for a samovar. It turned out that this woman was the owner of the inn. The visitor praised her for her cleanliness. The woman, looking inquisitively at him, said: “I love cleanliness. After all, she grew up under the masters, how not to be able to behave decently, Nikolai Alekseevich. "Hope! You? he said hastily. - My God, my God! .. Who would have thought! How many years have we not seen each other? Thirty-five years?" - "Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich." He is excited, asks her how she lived all these years. How did she live? The Lord gave freedom. She was not married. Why? Yes, because she loved him very much. “Everything passes, my friend,” he muttered. “Love, youth—everything, everything. The story is vulgar, ordinary. It all goes away with the years."

For others, maybe, but not for her. She lived with them all her life. She knew that his former one had long been gone, that it was as if nothing had happened for him, but still she loved. It’s too late to reproach now, but how heartlessly he left her then ... How many times she wanted to lay hands on herself! “And all the poems were deigned to read to me about all sorts of“ dark alleys ”, she added with an unkind smile.” Nikolai Alekseevich recalls how beautiful Nadezhda was. He was also good. “And after all, I gave you my beauty, my fever. How can you forget this.” - "BUT! Everything passes. Everything is forgotten. - "Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten." “Go away,” he said, turning away and going to the window. - Leave, please. Pressing the handkerchief to his eyes, he added: “If only God would forgive me. You seem to have forgiven." No, she did not forgive him and never could forgive him. She can't forgive him.

He ordered the horses to be brought in, moving away from the window already with dry eyes. He, too, was never happy in his life. He married for great love, and she left him even more insultingly than he left Nadezhda. He placed so many hopes on his son, but he grew up a scoundrel, insolent, without honor, without conscience. She came up and kissed his hand, he kissed hers. Already on the road, he remembered this with shame, and he became ashamed of this shame. The coachman says that she looked after them from the window. She is a woman - mind chamber. Gives money in growth, but is fair.

“Yes, of course, the best minutes ... Truly magical! “All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed, there were alleys of dark lindens ...” What if I had not abandoned 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.

"Mitina Love"

Katya is Mitya's beloved (“a sweet, pretty face, a small figure, freshness, youth, where femininity still interfered with childishness”). She studies at a private theater school, goes to the studio of the Art Theater, lives with her mother, “always smoking, always rouged lady with crimson hair”, who has long since left her husband.

Unlike Mitya, Katya is not completely absorbed in love, it is no coincidence that Rilke noticed that Mitya could not live with her anyway - she is too immersed in a theatrical, fake environment. Her hobby is indulged by the director of the school, "a smug actor with impassive and sad eyes", who every summer went on vacation with another student seduced by him. “The director began to fast with K.,” Bunin points out. As in the stories "Clean Monday", "Steamboat" Saratov "", the most important events in the life of the characters correlate with the time of Great Lent. It is on the sixth week of Great Lent, the last before Holy Week, that K. takes the director's examination. In the exam, she is dressed all in white, like a bride, which emphasizes the ambiguity of the situation.

In the spring, important changes take place with Katya - she turns into a "young society lady, […] everything is in a hurry somewhere." Meetings with Mitya are getting shorter and shorter, and Katya's last outburst of feelings coincides with his departure to the village. Contrary to the agreement, Katya writes only two letters to Mitya, and in the second she admits that she cheated on him with the director: “I am bad, I am nasty, spoiled […] but I am madly in love with art! […] I'm leaving - you know with whom ... "This letter becomes the last straw - Mitya decides to commit suicide. Communication with Alyonka only increases his despair.

Mitya (Mitry Palych) is a student, the protagonist of the story. It is in a transitional age, when the masculine principle is intertwined with the childish one, which has not yet completely exfoliated. M. "thin, clumsy" (girls in the village / nicknamed him "borzoi"), doing everything with boyish Awkwardness. He has a big mouth, black coarse hair, “he was from that breed of people with black, as if constantly widened eyes, who almost never grow even in mature years, neither a mustache nor a beard ...” (M.’s beloved, Katya, calls him eyes "Byzantine").

The story of M.'s life and death covers a period of just over six months: starting from December, when he met Katya, and until mid-summer (late June - early July), when he commits suicide. We learn about M.'s past from his own fragmentary memories, one way or another connected with the main themes of the story - the theme of all-encompassing love and the theme of death.

Love seized M. “as early as infancy” as something “inexpressible in human language”, when one day in the garden, next to a young woman (probably a nanny), “something hot wave leaped up in him”, and then in various guises: a neighbor - a schoolgirl, "acute joys and sorrows of sudden love at gymnasium balls." A year ago, when M. fell ill in the countryside, spring became "his first true love." Immersion in the March nature of “moisture-saturated stubble and black arable land” and similar manifestations of “pointless, incorporeal love” accompanied M. until December of the first student winter, when he met Katya and almost immediately fell in love with her.

The time of insane exciting happiness lasts until the ninth of March (“the last happy day”), when Katya talks about the “price” of her reciprocal love: “I still won’t give up art even for you,” i. e. from a theatrical career, which should begin after her graduation from a private theater school this spring. In general, the depiction of the theater in the story is accompanied by an intonation of decadent falsehood - Bunin sharply emphasizes his rejection of modernist art, partly in accordance with the views of Leo Tolstoy. At the final exam, Katya reads Blok's poem "The girl sang in the church choir" - perhaps, from Bunin's point of view, a manifesto of decadent art. M. perceives her reading as "vulgar melodiousness ... and stupidity in every sound", and defines the theme of the poem very harshly: "about some kind of angelically innocent girl."

January and February are a time of uninterrupted happiness, but against the background of the beginning bifurcation in the previously integral feeling, “even then it often seemed that there were two Katyas: one was the one that Mitya demanded persistently, and the other was a genuine, ordinary , painfully different from the first. M. lives in student rooms on Molchanovka, Katya and her mother live on Kislovka. They see each other, their meetings proceed "in a heavy dope of kisses", become more and more ardent. M. becomes more and more jealous of Katya: “manifestations of passion, that very thing that was so blissful and sweet […] when applied to them, Mitya and Katya, became indescribably vile and even […] unnatural when Mitya thought about Katya and about something else man."

Winter gives way to spring, jealousy more and more replaces love, but at the same time (and this is the irrationality of feelings according to Bunin), M.'s passion grows along with jealousy. “You love only my body, not my soul,” Katya tells him. Completely exhausted by the duality and indefinite sensuality of their relationship, M. at the end of April leaves for a village estate - to relax and sort himself out. Before leaving, Katya “became tender and passionate again,” she even cried for the first time, and M. again felt how close she was to him. They agree that in the summer M. will come to the Crimea, where Katya will rest with her mother. In the scene of preparations on the eve of departure, the motive of death again sounds - the second theme of the story. The only friend of M., a certain Protasov, comforting M., quotes Kozma Prutkov: “Junker Schmidt! honestly. Summer will return,” but the reader remembers that the poem also contains the motif of suicide: “Junker Schmitt wants to shoot himself with a pistol!” This motif returns once more when, in the window opposite the Mitya room, a certain student sings A. Rubinstein's romance to the verses of G. Heine: "Having fallen in love, we die." On the train, everything again speaks of love (the smell of Katya's glove, to which M. fell at the last second of parting, the peasants and workers in the car), and later, already on the way to the village, M. is again full of pure affection, thinks "about all that female, to which he approached over the winter with Katya. In the scene of M.'s parting with Katya, an inconspicuous detail is extremely important - the aroma of Katya's glove, which is recalled several times. According to the laws of the melodic composition, opposing leitmotifs are intertwined here: the smell of love (except for the glove - Katya's hairband) and the smell of death (nine years ago, when his father died, Mitya "suddenly felt: there is death in the world!", And in the house there is still for a long time stood “or imagined” “a terrible, vile, sweetish smell”). In the village, M. at first seems to be freed from the suspicions that torment him, but almost immediately a third theme is woven into the fabric of the narrative - love, devoid of a spiritual component. As the hope for a joint future with Katya fades away, M. is more and more seized by pure sensuality: lust at the sight of a “day laborer from the village” washing the window, in a conversation with the maid Parasha, in the garden, where the village girls Sonya and Glasha are flirting with the barchuk. In general, the theme of the village-soil-earth-naturalness (“the saving bosom of mother nature,” according to G. Adamovich) is associated with Bunin’s sensuality and languor, therefore all the village heroes of the story somehow participate in the seduction of M.

The only clue in the fight against carnal temptations is a feeling for Katya. M.'s mother, Olga Petrovna, is busy with housework, sister Anya and brother Kostya have not yet arrived - M. lives in the memory of love, writes passionate letters to Katya, examines her photograph: he is answered by the direct, open look of his beloved. Katya's response letters are rare and laconic. Summer is coming, but Katya still does not write. M.'s torment intensifies: the more beautiful the world, the more unnecessary, meaningless it seems to M.. He recalls the winter, the concert, Katya's silk ribbon, which he took with him to the village - now even he thinks about her with a shudder. To speed up the receipt of news, M. travels for letters himself, but all in vain. Once M. decides: “If there is no letter in a week, I will shoot myself!”

It was at this moment of spiritual decline that the village headman, for a small fee, offers M. to have some fun. At first, M. has the strength to refuse: he sees Katya everywhere - in the surrounding nature, dreams, dreams - she is not only in reality. When the headman again hints at "pleasure", M., unexpectedly for himself, agrees. The headman offers M. Alenka - "a poisonous, young woman, her husband is in the mines […] she has been married for only the second year." Even before the fatal date, M. finds in her something in common with Katya: Alenka is not large, mobile - “female, mixed with something childish.” On Sunday, M. goes to church for mass and meets Alenka on the way to the temple: she, "wagging her back," passes without paying attention to him. M. feels that “it is impossible to see her in the church”, the feeling of sin is still able to keep him.

The next evening, the headman takes M. to the forester, Alenka's father-in-law, with whom she lives. While the headman and the forester are drinking, M. accidentally runs into Alenka in the forest and, no longer in control of himself, agrees on a meeting tomorrow in a hut. At night, M. "saw himself hanging over a huge, dimly lit abyss." And over the course of the next day, the motive of death sounds more and more clearly (in anticipation of M.’s meeting, it seems that the house is “terribly empty”; Antares, a star from the constellation Scorpio, is shining in the evening sky, etc.). M. goes to the hut, soon Alenka appears. M. gives her a crumpled five-rouble note, he is seized by "a terrible force of bodily desire, not turning into ... spiritual." When at last what he wanted so much happens, M. "rose completely stricken with disappointment" - the miracle did not happen.

On Saturday of the same week it rains all day. M. wanders around the garden in tears, rereads yesterday’s letter from Katya: “Forget, forget everything that happened! .. I’m leaving - you know with whom ...” In the evening, thunder drives M. into the house. He climbs in through the window , locks himself from the inside and, in a semi-conscious state, sees in the corridor a “young nanny” carrying a “child with a big white face” - this is how memories of early childhood come back. The nanny turns out to be Katya, in the room she hides the child in a chest of drawers. A gentleman in a tuxedo enters - this is the director with whom Katya left for the Crimea ("I'm madly in love with art!" From yesterday's letter). M. watches how Katya gives herself to him and finally comes to her senses with a feeling of piercing, unbearable pain. There is no and cannot be a return to what was "like paradise". M. takes a revolver out of the drawer of the night table and “having a joyful sigh […] with pleasure” shoots himself.

R. M. Rilke perceptively points to the main cause of the tragedy: “a young man loses […] the ability to expect the course of events and a way out of an unbearable situation and ceases to believe that this suffering […] should be followed by something […] different which, by virtue of its otherness, should have seemed more tolerable and bearable.

"Mitya's Love" caused a lot of conflicting assessments. So, Z. Gippius put the story on a par with Goethe's "The Sufferings of Young Werther", but sees in the feelings of the hero only "grimacing Lust with white eyes." At the same time, the poetess M. V. Karamzina defined the "sacrament of love" in Bunin's story as "a miracle of grace." R. M. Bitsilli in the article “Notes on Tolstoy. Bunin and Tolstoy" finds Tolstoy's influence in "Mitya's Love", namely, a roll call with L. Tolstoy's unfinished story "The Devil".

Bunin himself pointed out that he took advantage of the story of the "fall" of his nephew. V. N. Muromtseva-Bunina names the surname of the prototype: "... the young novel of Nikolai Alekseevich (Pusheshnikov, Bunin's nephew. - Ed.) is touched, but the appearance is taken from [...] brother, Petya." V. S. Yanovsky in his memoirs The Fields of the Champs Elysees confirms the reality of the prototype: “In Mitya’s Love, the hero ends up in a rather banal suicide, while in fact the young man from his story took the veil as a monk and soon became an outstanding priest.” V. V. Nabokov in a letter to 3. Shakhovskaya wrote: “Bunin told me that, starting to“ Mitya’s Love ”, he saw before him the image of Mitya Shakhovsky”, that is, the brother of 3. Shakhovskaya Dmitry Alekseevich, a poet, in 1920s, who was tonsured a monk under the name of Father John.

Preview:

QUESTIONS TO BUNIN'S STORIES

"Sunstroke"

Can you convey in a few words what happened to the characters? What is the mood of the story and the state of the characters at the beginning of the story? What do they set them up for or what questions do the words “and blissfully and terribly sank the heart”; “For many years they later recalled this moment: neither one nor the other had ever experienced anything like this in their entire lives”? Why is the morning of the next day called lucky? What word becomes the key, conveying the state of the lieutenant at parting? When does the break in the story occur? About what “a strange, incomprehensible feeling that did not exist at all while they were together” writes I.A. Bunin? Why did it come only when the heroes parted? What torments the hero the most? What would change if the heroine told the lieutenant her first and last name? Why does the author describe in such detail the day spent by the lieutenant in the county town, waiting for the steamer? Is the hero experiencing happiness or suffering? Why does he feel ten years older at the end of the story? Why, of the two definitions of what happened, given by the heroine (“sunstroke” and “eclipse”), was the first chosen as the title of the story?

"Clean Monday"

Why don't the characters have names? What is the atmosphere of the beginning of the story and by what means is it created? What is the main feeling in the story about the relationship of the characters? What words can be called keywords? What caused the happiness and torment of the hero? How do the episodes related to religion and the life of Moscow bohemia combine in the story? Does the heroine fit equally well into them? Why, deciding on intimacy with her beloved, the heroine “ lifeless ordered” him to release the crew? Why is the hero waiting at the door of the bedroom “with his heart fading as if over an abyss”? What becomes for the heroes of the night spent together? Why, in the morning, when his passion has found a solution, when he has achieved what he so desired, is the hero close to despair? Why I.A. Bunin does not explain the motives of the heroine's act? Does the heroine's act seem paradoxical to you, and what is its paradox? What colors are dominant in this story and how does this help reveal the author's intention of the work? How does their ratio in the depiction of the world and the heroine change throughout the story? Clean Monday - Christian concept symbolism? Did the heroine go to the monastery, and how does the fact that the story is told from the hero's point of view reveal the author's intention? What is the tragic mistake of the heroine?

"Sir from San Francisco"

Why does the story quite unexpectedly end with a seemingly inappropriate and, however, completely “natural”, and by no means allegorical appearance of the Devil

(“The devil was as big as a rock, but the ship was big too…”)? What images in the story are symbolic? In which country does the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" take place? What is hidden behind the description of the life of the Atlantis passengers? What is the meaning of the allusion to the Titanic catastrophe (the name of the ship - "Atlantis" focused two "reminders": about the place of death - in the Atlantic Ocean, the mythical island-state that Plato mentions, and the real unsinkable Titanic in 1912) ? Why does fate (and in her person the author) punish the hero, the gentleman from San Francisco, so cruelly? Why are there so few characters in the story? What remains beyond the control of the modern New Man, according to the author's intention of the story? What is the reaction of the passengers of the Atlantis to the death of a gentleman from San Francisco? What role does the description of the ocean and the dancing couple play in the story? How does the story describe the state of the hero's spirit and how does it correlate with the motive of the impending catastrophe? How does the author interpret the problem of death and the meaning of life? How does the world appear through the eyes of a man without a name (= gentleman from S-F)?

"Easy breath" Why is the novella called "Light Breath"? What light breathing are we talking about here? To whom does it belong? What "this breath" is referred to at the end of the novel? To whom does it belong? Why is this breath "scattered again in the world"? Has it disappeared somewhere from the world? If it disappeared, where and why did it return? Who owns the point of view expressed in the last paragraph? Reproduce (in writing) the sequence of all the main events of the work. You probably noticed that their chronology is violated by the author. Now try to write down all the selected events in chronological order. Compare your reconstruction of events with the author's version of their deployment. Why do you think (for what purpose) does the author tell the story of the life and death of Olya Meshcherskaya in such an unusual way? Why does he refuse a more natural and familiar at first glance, the course of the narrative? By the way, what is the most important event for the author, the heroine, and the reader? Read the first five paragraphs of the novel carefully. Watch for the change in the position of the narrator. Whose point of view is conveyed in his words? Who at the beginning of the novel looks at the grave, cross, photograph of Olya Meshcherskaya, peers into her eyes? And whose point of view is depicted in the fifth paragraph? Try to substantiate your assumptions with text analysis. Why is the story being told from this (and not from another) point of view? You must have already noticed that it is important for the author not to tell about his heroine in general, but somehow in a special way. It is on the ratio of points of view that he manipulates (ie, on the features of the composition of the entire work) that the artistic meaning of "Light Breath" depends. List all the main points of view that illuminate the life of the heroine. To whom do they belong? Why did the author need to correlate so many different points of view in one small work? What role does time play in the story (calendar, natural, biographical)? Using the list of main events in the short story, try to determine the movement of the time of the narrative from the present (at the grave) to the restoration of the past (Oli's gymnasium life) and beyond. Why does Bunin’s time, on the one hand, seem to be stopped (on the grave), and on the other hand, it moves unevenly and even in different directions (set in which ones)? Can it be argued that the author in this work speaks of "lightness" as a liberation, firstly, from the usual course of time in general and, secondly, from the traditional reader's interest, which is usually expressed in questions like "What will happen next? "And" How will it all end? "Justify your point of view. Why does the author break off event connections: he does not tell what the attempted suicide of the high school student Shenshin led to, how the conversation between Olya and the boss, interrupted by the narrator on a dramatic note, ended, what happened to the arrested murderer Olya How did the relationship between Olya and her parents develop with their friend and her seducer Malyutin? What open places of action are connected with the landscapes of the story? How does the life of Olya Meshcherskaya "fit" into these landscapes? What closed places of action form the interiors? How does the life of Olya Meshcherskaya "fit in" in these interiors? Name the portraits and portrait details that you met in this work. What is their role? Why does the narrator pay so much attention to the portrait characteristics of the heroine? How are these characteristics connected with the landscapes of the novel? Find air motifs in the landscapes, interiors and portraits of the novel. / wind // breath. What significance does the author attach to them? List all the episodes of the story, where the crowd is mentioned. In what cases does the narrator pay attention to the fact that Olya Meshcherskaya merges with the crowd, and when to the fact that she stands out from the crowd? What is the significance of the motives of memory // death // of the book word in the short story (see Olya's conversation with her friend about "easy breathing")? How are they related to the above motives? How do the images of the world and man in the realistic works known to you and Bunin's Easy Breath differ from each other?

The theme of love is the main one in the work of the vast majority of Russian writers, including I.A. Bunin with A.I. Kuprin.

But these two writers, friends, peers had completely different concepts of love. According to Bunin, this is a “sunstroke”, a short instant happiness, and according to Kuprin, love is a tragedy. But they both understood that this feeling can bring not only the highest happiness and bliss, but often torment, suffering, grief and even death. This is exactly what the authors want to show us.

A characteristic feature of the works of I.A. Bunin should be called the absence of an even, long and peaceful passing love. The love that I.A. sang Bunin, is a short, fleeting blinding flash. She is distinguished by her sudden appearance and a long and vivid trace in the memories of lovers. People in whose hearts this unexpected and raging feeling flared up are doomed to parting in advance.

It is this phenomenon of bright, crazy, but short-lived passion, a feeling distinguished by its fleeting, but sweet trail of memories, that is the true manifestation of love according to Bunin. He seems to indicate to readers that only a fleeting feeling that will not become the beginning of a new story of a long life together will live in the memory and hearts of people forever.

Love at first sight - fleeting, intoxicating, bewitching - it is precisely this feeling that every word of the stories "" and "" screams about.
In "Sunstroke" the complexity of understanding I.A. Bunin's love lies in the chanting not of sensuality and duration of feeling, but in its transience and brightness, which saturate love with an unknown force.

Leaving, the woman says:

“I give you my word of honor that I am not at all what you might think of me. There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It’s like an eclipse hit me… Or rather, we both got something like a sunstroke…”

In Clean Monday, the story of people who have known the feeling of love is a little different from the story of the heroes of Sunstroke. The young man has been courting the lady for a long time. She reciprocates him. Their love arose unexpectedly, but it had a continuation. But it is precisely this continuation that shows from day to day that lovers in their souls are completely different, even opposite personalities. And this brings them to the inevitable final - parting.

Outwardly similar people have too many differences on a spiritual level. Both heroes attend concerts, skits, theater, read the works of fashionable writers, but the inner world of the heroine is much more complicated. She is not like everyone else. She is special, "chosen".

We see her long search for her place in life among modern, rich people. Unfortunately, the world in which she exists, the world of festivity and fashion, obviously dooms her to death. She will be able to break out of this cage by finding salvation in God. The heroine finds shelter in a church, a monastery. But there is no place for carnal love, despite its strength and purity. The girl takes a decisive step - breaks up with her beloved. This step was not easy for her, but it was she who saved her from a disastrous ending.

Reading the lines of Bunin's works, you understand that love is beautiful, but that is why it is doomed.

A.I. Kuprin was a singer of bright feelings, like I.A. Bunin, but his opinion about them was a little different.

In my opinion, General Anosov from "" fully explains his attitude to love.

“Love must be a tragedy. The greatest tragedy in the world,

General Anosov is of great importance for understanding the whole meaning of the work. It is he who is trying to force Vera Shein to relate to the feeling of the mysterious P.Zh. more seriously. He had the prophetic words:

“... maybe your life path, Verochka, was crossed by exactly the kind of love that women dream of and that men are no longer capable of.”

He slowly but surely brings her to the conclusion that the author himself made a long time ago: in nature, true, holy love is extremely rare and is available only to a few people worthy of it. Apparently, the poor man was just such a person: for eight years this unrequited feeling “flamed” in his heart, which is “strong as death.” He writes letters to her full of love, adoration, passion, but does not hope for reciprocity and is ready to give everything.

Zheltkov's last, dying letter raises the theme of unrequited love to a high tragedy, each of his lines seems to be filled with the deepest meaning. He does not reproach his beloved for not paying attention. No. He thanks her for the feeling that he knew only thanks to her, his deity.

Precisely as a deity, he addresses the Faith with his last words:

"Hallowed be thy name."

Only later, listening to Beethoven's second sonata, Vera Nikolaevna realizes that true love passed a few steps away from her, "which repeats itself once in a thousand years". She whispers words that could only come from Zheltkov's lips. The death of a “little” person seems to awaken Vera Shein herself from a long spiritual sleep, opens up to her a hitherto unknown world of beautiful and pure feelings. Love even for a moment, but connects two souls.

The story "Garnet Bracelet" tells not only about love, which is "strong as death", but also about love that conquered death:

“Do you remember me? Do you remember? Here I feel your tears. Take it easy. I sleep so sweetly, sweetly, sweetly ... "

The whole work is painted with light sadness, quiet sadness, the consciousness of the beauty and greatness of all conquering love.

Love is the most wonderful feeling that exists on earth. When a person loves, the world seems more beautiful to him, even when the object of veneration does not reciprocate, as often happens in the works of A.I. Kuprin. Also, love can develop over the years, but it can also come like a bolt from the blue, as usually happens with I.A. Bunin

The story of the great Russian writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin "Clean Monday" is included in his outstanding book of love stories "Dark Alleys". Like all the works of this collection, this is a story about love, unhappy and tragic. We offer a literary analysis of Bunin's work. The material can be used to prepare for the exam in literature in grade 11.

Brief analysis

Year of writing– 1944

History of creation- Researchers of Bunin's work believe that the reason for writing "Clean Monday" for the author was his first love.

Theme - In "Clean Monday" the main idea of ​​the story is clearly traced- this is the theme of the lack of meaning in life, loneliness in society.

Composition- The composition is divided into three parts, in the first of which there is an acquaintance with the characters, the second part is devoted to the events of Orthodox holidays, and the shortest third is the denouement of the plot.

Genre- "Clean Monday" refers to the genre of "short story".

Direction- Neorealism.

History of creation

The writer emigrated to France, this distracted him from unpleasant moments in life, and he is fruitfully working on his collection "Dark Alleys". According to researchers, in the story Bunin describes his first love, where the prototype of the main character is the author himself, and the prototype of the heroine is V. Pashchenko.

Ivan Alekseevich himself considered the story “Clean Monday” to be one of his best creations, and in his diary he praised God for helping him create this magnificent work.

This is a brief history of the creation of the story, the year of writing is 1944, the first publication of the novel was in the New Journal in New York City.

Topic

In the story "Clean Monday", the analysis of the work reveals a large the theme of love and novel ideas. The work is devoted to the theme of true love, real and all-consuming, but in which there is a problem of misunderstanding by the characters of each other.

Two young people fell in love with each other: this is wonderful, because love pushes a person to noble deeds, thanks to this feeling, a person finds the meaning of life. In Bunin's short story, love is tragic, the main characters do not understand each other, and this is their drama. The heroine found a divine revelation for herself, she was spiritually cleansed, finding her calling in serving God, and went to the monastery. In her understanding, love for the divine turned out to be stronger than physiological love for her chosen one. She realized in time that by connecting her life with a marriage bond with a hero, she would not receive complete happiness. Her spiritual development is much higher than physiological needs, the heroine has higher moral goals. Having made her choice, she left the worldly fuss, surrendering to the service of God.

The hero loves his chosen one, loves sincerely, but he is unable to understand the tossings of her soul. He cannot find an explanation for her reckless and eccentric actions. In Bunin's story, the heroine looks like a more living person, she somehow, through trial and error, is looking for her meaning in life. She rushes about, rushes from one extreme to another, but, in the end, she finds her way.

The main character, throughout all these relationships, simply remains an outside observer. He, in fact, has no aspirations, everything is convenient and comfortable for him when the heroine is nearby. He cannot understand her thoughts, most likely, he does not make an attempt to understand. He simply accepts everything that his chosen one does, and that's enough for him. From this follows the conclusion that every person has the right to choose, whatever he may be. The main thing for a person is to decide what you are, who, and where you are going, and you should not look around, fearing that someone will condemn your decision. Confidence in yourself, and in your own abilities, will help you find the right decision and make the right choice.

Composition

The work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin includes not only prose, but also poetry. Bunin himself considered himself a poet, which is especially felt in his prose story "Clean Monday". His expressive artistic means, unusual epithets and comparisons, various metaphors, his special poetic style of narration, give this work lightness and sensuality.

The title of the story gives a lot of meaning to the story. The concept of “clean” speaks of the purification of the soul, and Monday is the beginning of a new one. It is symbolic that the culmination of events takes place on this day.

Composition structure The story is in three parts. The first part introduces the characters and their relationships. The masterful use of expressive means gives a deep emotional coloring to the image of the characters, their pastime.

The second part of the composition is more built on dialogues. In this part of the story, the author brings the reader to the very idea of ​​the story. The writer is talking here about the choice of the heroine, about her dreams of the divine. The heroine expresses her hidden desire to leave a luxurious secular life, and retire into the shadow of the monastery walls.

Climax is the night after Pure Monday, when the heroine is determined to become a novice, and the inevitable separation of the heroes occurs.

The third part comes to the denouement of the plot. The heroine has found her purpose in life, she serves in the monastery. The hero, after separation from his beloved, led a dissolute life for two years, mired in drunkenness and revelry. Over time, he comes to his senses, and leads a quiet, calm life, in complete indifference and indifference to everything. One day fate gives him a chance, he sees his beloved among the novices of God's temple. Meeting her gaze, he turns and walks away. Who knows, maybe he realized the whole pointlessness of his existence, and went to a new life.

main characters

Genre

Bunin's work was written in novelistic genre, which is characterized by a sharp turn of events. In this story, this is exactly what happens: the main character changes her worldview, and abruptly breaks with her past life, changing it in the most radical way.

The short story is written in the direction of realism, but only the great Russian poet and prose writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin could write about love in such words.

Artwork test

Analysis Rating

Average rating: 4.3. Total ratings received: 541.