The theme of love is an eternal theme. It was addressed by poets and writers of different times, and each tried to interpret this multifaceted feeling in their own way.

I. A Bunin gives his vision of the topic in the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys”. The collection includes thirty-eight stories, all of them are about love, but none of them creates a feeling of repetition, and after reading all the works in the cycle there is no feeling of exhaustion of the topic.

At the center of the story “Clean Monday” is the story of a mysterious and mysterious love. Its heroes are a young couple of lovers. Both of them are “rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts” those around them watched them go. But the inner world of the heroes is not so similar.

He is blinded by his love. Every Saturday he brings flowers to his chosen one, every now and then spoils her with boxes of chocolate, tries to please her with new books he brought, every evening he invites her to a restaurant, then to the theater, or to some party. Completely absorbed in the feeling of adoration, he cannot and does not really try to understand what a complex inner world lies behind the beautiful appearance of the one he fell in love with. Repeatedly he thinks about the unusualness and strangeness of their relationship, but never once puts an end to these thoughts. "Odd love!" - he remarks. Another time he says: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...”. He is surprised at why she “once and for all stopped talking about their future”; he is surprised at how she perceives his gifts, how she behaves in moments of rapprochement. Everything about her is a mystery to him.

The image of the hero is devoid of the psychological depth that the heroine is endowed with. There is no logical motivation in her actions. Every day visiting those establishments where a young lover invites her, she one day notices that she wants to go to the Novo Maiden Convent, because “it’s all taverns and taverns.” The hero has no idea where these thoughts come from, what they are for, what suddenly happened to his chosen one. And a little later she declares that there is nothing to be surprised about, that he simply does not know her. It turns out that she often visits the Kremlin cathedrals, and this happens when her lover “doesn’t drag” her around restaurants. There, and not in entertainment establishments, she finds a sense of harmony and peace of mind. She loves “Russian chronicles, Russian legends” and her stories about this are filled with depth. She says she is not fit to be a wife. Thinking about happiness, quotes Platon Karataev. But the hero still cannot understand what is going on in her soul, he is “indescribably happy with every hour spent near her” and that’s all.

As in the other stories of the “Dark Alleys” series, Bunin does not show in “Clean Monday” love that develops into a state of lasting earthly happiness. Love here also does not end with a happy marriage, and we do not find the image of a woman-mother here. The heroine, having entered into a physically intimate relationship with her beloved, silently leaves, begging him not to ask anything, and then informs him by letter of her departure to the monastery. She rushed for a long time between the momentary and the eternal and, on the night of Clean Monday, surrendering to the hero, she made her final choice. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of everything bad. This holiday became a turning point in the relationships between the heroes.

Love in “Clean Monday” is happiness and torment, a great mystery, an incomprehensible riddle. This story is one of the pearls of Bunin’s work, captivating the reader with its rare charm and depth.

At the beginning of the story I.A. Bunin paints a love idyll: a couple of young people have a pleasant time together, enjoy each other, visit theaters, restaurants and courses. They are young and beautiful, and often catch the admiring glances of others. Hiding behind a beautiful facade, their love and relationship is actually difficult to understand.

The main character, being physically present in the relationship, is somewhere far away in her thoughts and soul. Her feelings for the main character are expressed only in the fact that she allows him to look after her and accepts signs of attention. This is not to say that her feelings are not there at all, but they are very different from the feelings of the hero. He is intoxicated by her, so fascinated that he does not notice the strong difference between them. His feelings for her are of a more mundane nature, while the girl in this regard shows the reader a very complex, deep nature.

The hero thinks about the mysterious behavior of his beloved, but does not try to figure out what the point is. Feelings cloud his eyes and prevent him from thinking sensibly. For the most part, he's just happy every minute we spend together. Blind love prevents you from seeing the real claims of your beloved, who prefers cathedrals to taverns. No matter how cold the girl may seem, she does not refuse the usual entertainment of young people, but still she reaches out for something more sublime, truly bright. The main character is surprised to discover religiosity in her. He is baffled by her reluctance to marry, but he continues to believe in a happy ending. Love in “Clean Monday” does not find its logical conclusion - marriage. It becomes the starting point - the beginning of the end. Because on this pure day, which became the culmination of the story, it is customary to cleanse oneself of sinful things. The night the heroes spent together proves that carnal love is not the highest form of their unity.

For her, love is revealed exclusively in serving God; other manifestations of love, although she likes them, still do not satisfy her, “after all, this is not love,” she says. He understands only “earthly” love in the traditional sense of the word: devotion, beautiful courtship, fullness of feelings.

Having lost his beloved, he practically loses the meaning of life and drinks endlessly to drown out the pain. While a girl, having lost her lover, finds true love by becoming the bride of Christ. The decisive meeting in the church, in the temple of spiritual love, dots the i’s. The hero forgives his beloved, but his feelings do not fade away. The spiritual connection between the heroes turns out to be stronger than any other.

Option 2

What is love? Tenderness, loyalty, sincerity? Or maybe pain, passion and desire? It is unpredictable and individual, and also defies any explanation. It connects the destinies of two people, for a moment or an eternity, uniting them into a single and integral mechanism, consisting of burning hearts striving for each other. Intoxicating sweetness can turn into sharp bitterness and vice versa, when you are ready to give your life in the name of this great feeling.

Love in Bunin's story “Clean Monday” also has its own characteristics. The author does not mention the names of the main characters. The girl and the guy are young and rich, full of life, and, most importantly, in love with each other. It would seem that what prevents them from being together? Love is a blinding feeling; when the first explosion passes, insight comes. In this case, the girl was able to understand that her vision of the world does not correspond to the universe of her chosen one. The awareness of this makes her suffer and anticipate the imminence of separation.

The young man does not understand or does not want to see the contradictions within her. He plans a grand wedding, dreams of seeing her as his wife and is optimistic about their common future. The girl kisses him, hugs him, makes it clear that she loves him, but secretly dreams of something else and sees her life in a different light. The guy has absolutely no idea about anything, so her unexpected departure to another city and departure from everyday life into spiritual service comes as a real shock to him. He does not understand what is happening, why the ideal world of happiness and tenderness collapsed overnight and everything cannot return to normal. Resentment does not allow him to try to return his beloved and soon after the last short meeting they part forever.

The love described by Bunin is sad, carries a certain romance of sadness and shouts that a person can love mutually, but this does not at all guarantee him happiness. This feeling, in the author’s understanding, is unbearably beautiful, frighteningly confusing and very often leads into the abyss. “Clean Monday” is an ode to the quiet tragedy that occurred between two uncongenial people, but who sincerely love each other.

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Target: formation of an attitude towards tragic love using the example of the work of I.A. Bunin.

All love is great happiness...

I.A.Bunin

DURING THE CLASSES

1. Organizational moment

2. Teacher's word

Love is a great mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his destiny uniqueness against the background of everyday history, filling his earthly existence with special meaning. Over the centuries, many word artists have dedicated their works to great feeling. More often, probably, than others, I. A. Bunin addressed this topic, who argued that “all love is great happiness...” (referring to the epigraph).

– Can we agree with this statement? (Undoubtedly, since love is a noble, sublime feeling, bright, spiritualizing a person.)

– Remember the previously studied stories of I.A. Bunin. How were they depicting love? (“Easy Breathing”, “Dark Alleys”, “Sunstroke”, which shows unrequited love, tragic, carnal, ending in separation or death.)

– Then tell me, if love is a bright and sublime feeling, then why is it almost always tragic for I. Bunin? Reflection on this question will form the basis of our work in class.

3. The story “Clean Monday”

I.A. Bunin, developing the theme of love in his early stories, developed it in the works of the later period, creating the cycle “Dark Alleys”.

Student message about the history of creation and the meaning of the “Dark Alleys” cycle.

A collection of love stories with the mysterious title “Dark Alleys” was created during the emigration period of creativity in 1937-1945. mainly in Grasse during the years of occupation of France. During the war, I. Bunin’s worries about the fate of Russia intensified, which is why he again turns to the Russian theme. The collection includes 38 stories, which create a sketch of the events of Russian life taking place in Russia of the past. This is the only book of its kind in Russian literature where everything is about love. Diary entries indicate that he wrote this book with concentration and selflessness. In his letters, I. Bunin recalled that he re-read N.P. Ogarev, stopping at a line from his poem: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there was an alley of dark linden trees.” Later he wrote to Teffi that “all the stories in the book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys.” (Deciphering the metaphorical meaning of the statement, i.e. shady, mysterious, inexplicable alleys, according to Yu. Maltsev, about the “tangled labyrinths of love.”)

4. Analytical conversation

– Let’s turn to the artistic world of the story “Clean Monday”, determine the artistic time in the work. The story was written in 1944, but takes us to Moscow at the beginning of the century 1912-1914, in the years preceding World War I, i.e. more than 30 years ago, this is caused primarily by the desire to restore the future by turning to the past. The writer's memory reproduces the smallest details of that era with amazing plastic accuracy.

– What signs of real time can we find in the narrative? (The table is filled in as work progresses.)

– How are the present and the past represented? How do these two worlds interact with each other?

Teacher's word

Against the background of this description, an event takes place in which two people take part - HE and SHE.

– Why doesn’t the author give names to his characters? (To give a generalized meaning, the nomination of heroes is not so important; Bunin explores the culture of Russia, the life of people, their entertainment, everything that occupied their souls, i.e. the spiritual life of people.)

– How do the hero-narrator and heroine perceive these two worlds?
He is a realist, happy with this rich, idle life, loving life. She combines these two worlds: she visits restaurants, skits, concerts, but also goes to churches, cemeteries, and is interested in history.

– What kind of lives do the heroes lead? What are they doing? (Every evening they meet and go to a restaurant for dinner, then go either to a concert, or to the theater, or to a lecture. He visits her often. They are immersed in a real semi-bohemian life, but gradually another one appears next to this familiar and sweet life. )

- Describe the hero. (Compiling a syncwine, Figure 2a, b.)
He is a young man, good-looking, even handsome “for some reason with a hot southern beauty, even indecently handsome. And his character is southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile.” The hero is also the narrator who tells the story of his love for Her. He is happy with everything in the relationship. He does not think about what this relationship will lead to; we can say that he has a certain superficial assessment of events, he is carefree, frivolous, and open.

– Describe the heroine.
She is unusual, she has inexplicable contradictions. On the one hand, “it looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town, although she still had her favorite and least favorite flowers... she read all sorts of books, she loved eat and immediately talked about why people eat in general.” It seemed that she liked the luxurious life: going to restaurants, theaters, concerts. She loved good clothes, velvet, silk, furs. On the other hand, for some reason I took courses, was interested in history, visited churches, the Raskolniche cemetery, etc. The hero admits that she is incomprehensible to him.

– What epithets, in your opinion, will be the main ones? Support with examples from the text. He is happy, in love; She is strange, mysterious, contradictory. “She was mysterious, incomprehensible to me, our relationship was strange... strange love...”
The main thing in the characterization of the hero is love, which gives him exceptional acuteness of sensory perception, through the prism of which the portrait of the heroine and her appearance are presented.

– Let’s turn to the portrait description of the heroine. Find repeating details in the portrait. What signs dominate? (In all portrait characteristics of the heroine, the oriental beauty is emphasized: “dark amber face”, “black hair”, “black eyebrows, black eyes”. Epithets “velvet”, “black”, “amber”. In the portrait itself there is a certain mystery, inconsistency, oriental beauty.)

– Why oriental beauty? (Emphasize her unusualness, dissimilarity, difference from others with unearthly charm.)

Teacher's word

Here are three portraits of paintings by the great artist from the 19th – 20th centuries. M. Vrubel. (“Fortune Teller”, “Girl on the Background of a Persian Carpet”, “Lilac”.)

– Compare the paintings, are there any similar features in all these portraits? What details prove this similarity? (The reproductions depict beautiful, young ladies, oriental beauty is manifested in all external characteristics: black hair, black velvet eyelashes, eyebrows, plump lips, an amber face, a certain mystery in expressions, as if they knew some secrets.)

– It seems that I. Bunin painted the portrait of his heroine from the portraits of M. Vrubel. It can be assumed that this is a kind of artistic device: years later, in the hero’s mind, the appearance of his beloved woman is enriched with impressions and associations of the art of the time he remembers.

5. Student research activities

In the symbolic presentation of the heroine, color and light characteristics perform a special artistic function. You are invited to work independently on the options.
Assignment: find out what artistic function color characteristics perform (option 1), option 2 – light characteristics.

Teacher's word

Outwardly, the hero and heroine are a harmonious couple: “both were rich, healthy, young...”. What about internally? (The characters do not understand each other.)

– What prevents the heroes from being together, from being happy? ( It's all about the heroine, her internal discord, her search for herself. The hero does not see this search. He desires her bodily beauty. But her thoughts and feelings were inaccessible to him. “He tried not to think, not to overthink it.” “It’s you who don’t know me,” she says.)

– What are the sources of the heroine’s internal discord and restlessness? (Search for an ideal, lack of harmony, dissatisfaction with life, concern for the soul.)

– How is this search carried out? ( The heroine is looking for herself in the past and in secular entertainment. It is entirely woven from contradictions, tossing between earthly and heavenly, carnal and spiritual.)

1) On Forgiveness Sunday, the heroine suddenly suggests going to the cemetery (Rogozhskoye, schismatic - the center of the Old Believers, a symbol of the eternal Russian “schism”). Here we, together with the hero, learn that she often goes to Kremlin cathedrals and monasteries, and loves to read handwritten chronicles. It seems to her that they only preserved “the feeling of the homeland, its antiquity.” The heroine is trying to find support.

2) Then they go to the next tavern, which personifies the festival of the flesh, the revelry of Maslenitsa on the physical level: food, pancakes “thick, ruddy.” It is noteworthy that they go to the Yegorov tavern for pancakes after visiting the cemetery of the Novo-Devichy Convent, the graves of Ertel and Chekhov.

3) Suddenly, with a quiet light in her eyes, she reads by heart the chronicle legend about the death of the Murom prince Peter and his wife (a reminiscence of “the story of Peter and Fevronia of Murom”). The parallel is important - the motives of fornication and monasticism are intertwined in history. This parallel is especially significant because The legend is quoted by a woman who is forced to constantly fight temptation, imagining her lover as a tempting serpent. On the other hand, quotation, like other ancient realities, creates a feeling of an unshakable foundation that is preserved in the soul of the Russian person.

4) The next day the heroes go to a carnal skit, etc. All these events, the alternation of the carnal and the spiritual, prepare the culminating act, the peak of the characters’ relationship, when she commits her last sin, giving him a moment of pleasure, a moment of carnal love. She dies to earthly, carnal life and goes to a monastery on Clean Monday. (He leaves for Tver, after 2 weeks he writes a letter in which he announces his intention.)

Teacher's word

Sinful Maslenitsa and Forgiveness Sunday are over. Clean Monday has arrived. If we say that the title reflects the theme, idea or problem of the work, then what is the meaning of the title of the story? (The title evokes the category of threshold, a certain boundary beyond which a new life begins. Having given her lover a moment of carnal love, sacrificing herself, the heroine dies for earthly life and goes into the world of pure spirit. She begins another life, which she has been going towards for a very long time. )

- Why does the heroine go to the monastery? Give reasons. (The heroine has made her decision through hard work; she cannot practically imagine herself in a situation of earthly happiness, since she realizes in advance its impossibility. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it in, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”)

– Therefore, happiness between young people is impossible?

– For whom is love a tragedy? What is the tragedy of heroes? In misunderstanding each other? (For the heroine, meaningful departure to a monastery is not a tragedy; for the hero, the tragedy is parting.)

6. Lesson summary

Researcher N.A. Nikolina argued: “Both the hero and the heroine find themselves above the abyss and seek integrity and overcoming in duality: the hero in the “torment” and “happiness” of earthly love, the heroine in the renunciation of passions and in turning to the eternal.” .

– Do you agree with the scientist’s opinion? The hero says: “Love is still the same torment and the same happiness... still happiness, great happiness...”. Can this love be called happiness? (Having gone through trials and suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero begins to experience the influence of certain irrational forces. The heroine opened the way for him to another world. The hero does not yet realize, but after 2 years he will repeat the route of that long-ago trip and for some reason he will want go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery...)
“All love is great happiness, even if it is not shared,” I. Bunin convinces us of this. “For love... is always very short-lived, the stronger and more perfect it is, the sooner it is destined to end. To break off, but not to disappear, but to illuminate the memory and life of a person” (A. Sahakyants).

7. Homework. Assignment with a short, detailed answer “What is the meaning of the ending of the story “Clean Monday”?

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is the greatest writer of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. He entered literature as a poet and created wonderful poetic works. 1895 ...The first story “To the End of the World” is published. Encouraged by the praise of critics, Bunin begins to engage in literary creativity. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a laureate of various awards, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1933.

In 1944, the writer created one of the most wonderful stories about love, about the most beautiful, significant and lofty thing on Earth - the story “Clean Monday”. Bunin said about this story of his: “I thank God that He gave me to write, Clean Monday.”

In the story “Clean Monday,” the psychologism of Bunin’s prose and the peculiarities of “external depiction” were especially clearly manifested.

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening Moscow life, freed from daytime affairs, flared up, the cabbies' sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how the green stars hissed from the wires - the dimly blackened passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks...” - these are the words with which the author begins his narrative, taking the reader to old Moscow at the beginning of the 20th century. The writer with the greatest detail, without losing sight of the slightest detail, reproduces all the signs of this era. And from the very first lines, the story is given a special sound by the constant mention of details of deep antiquity: about ancient Moscow churches, monasteries, icons (the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the Iveron Church, the Martha and Mary Convent, the icon of the Mother of God of the Three Hands), about the names of outstanding personalities. But next to this antiquity, eternity, we notice signs of a later way of life: the restaurants “Prague”, “Hermitage”, “Metropol”, “Yar”, known and accessible to the wealthiest layers of citizens; books by contemporary authors; “Motla” by Ertel and Chekhov... Judging by how the action unfolds in the story, we can judge that the past for the heroes is extremely clear, the present is vague, and the future is absolutely unclear.

There are two heroes in the story: he and she, a man and a woman. The man, according to the writer, was healthy, rich, young and handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome.” But the most important thing is that the hero is in love, so in love that he is ready to fulfill any whim of the heroine, just not to lose her. But, unfortunately, he cannot and does not try to understand what is going on in the soul of his beloved: he “tried not to think, not to think about it.” The woman is portrayed as mysterious, enigmatic. She is mysterious, just as the soul of a Russian woman with her spirituality, devotion, dedication, self-denial is mysterious in general... The hero himself admits: “She was mysterious, strange to me.” Her whole life is woven from inexplicable contradictions and tossing. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners out of town,” the narrator says, but immediately adds: “Although flowers were still her favorite and unloved, all the books... she always read, she ate a whole box of chocolate a day, at lunches and dinners she ate as much as me...” When going somewhere, she most often did not know where she would go next, what she would do, in a word, she did not know, with by whom, how and where he will spend his time.

The writer tells us quite fully about her origins and her current activities. But in describing the heroine’s life, Bunin very often uses indefinite adverbs (for some reason there was a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hanging above her sofa).

All a woman’s actions are spontaneous, irrational and at the same time as if planned. On the night of Clean Monday, she gives herself to the hero, knowing that in the morning she will go to the monastery, but whether this departure is final is also unclear. Throughout the entire story, the author shows that the heroine does not feel comfortable anywhere, she does not believe in the existence of simple earthly happiness. “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing,” she quotes Platon Karataev.

The emotional impulses of the heroes of “Clean Monday” often defy logical explanation. It seems as if both the man and the woman have no control over themselves, are not able to control their feelings.

The story centers on the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. Forgiveness Sunday is a religious holiday revered by all believers. They ask each other for forgiveness and forgive their loved ones. For the heroine, this is a very special day, not only a day of forgiveness, but also a day of farewell to worldly life. Clean Monday is the first day of Lent, on which a person is cleansed of all filth, when the joy of Maslenitsa gives way to self-contemplation. This day becomes a turning point in the hero's life. Having gone through the suffering associated with the loss of his beloved, the hero experiences the influence of surrounding forces and realizes everything that he had not noticed before, being blinded by his love for the heroine. Two years later, the man, remembering the events of days long gone, will repeat the route of their long-standing joint trip, and “for some reason” he will really want to go to the church of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. What unknown forces draw him towards his beloved? Does he strive for the spiritual world into which she goes? We don’t know this, the author does not lift the veil of secrecy for us. He only shows us humility in the hero’s soul; their last meeting ends with his humble departure, and not with the awakening of his former passions.

The future of the heroes is unclear. Besides everything, the writer does not even directly indicate anywhere that the nun the man met is his former lover. Only one detail - dark eyes - resembles the appearance of the heroine. It is noteworthy that the heroine goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. This monastery is not a monastery, but the Church of the Intercession of Our Lady on Ordynka, which had a community of secular ladies who took care of the orphans who lived at the church and those wounded in the First World War. And this service in the Church of the Intercession of the Mother of God, perhaps, is a spiritual insight for the heroine of “Clean Monday”, because it was the Immaculate Heart of the Mother of God who warned the world against war, death, blood, orphanhood...

Option 1 2012: 02/25/2012: 21.41

Option 6: 02/25/2012: 21.38

Option 7: 02/25/2012: 21.38 The theme of love in I. Bunin’s story “”

The theme of love is an eternal theme. Poets and writers of different times turned to it, and each tried to interpret this multifaceted feeling in their own way.

He gives his vision of the theme in the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys.” A Bunin. The collection includes thirty-eight stories, all of them are about love, but none of them creates a feeling of repetition, and after reading all the works in the cycle there is no feeling of exhaustion of the theme.

At the center of the story “Clean Monday” is a mysterious and enigmatic love story. Its heroes are a young couple of lovers. Both of them are “rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts those around them watched them go. But the inner world of the heroes is not so similar.

He is blinded by his love. Every Saturday he brings flowers to his beloved, every now and then pampers her with boxes of chocolate, tries to please her with new books he brought, every evening he invites her to a restaurant, then to the theater, or to some party. Completely absorbed in the feeling of adoration, he cannot and does not really try to understand what complex inner world lies behind the beautiful appearance of the one he has fallen in love with. Repeatedly he thinks about the unusualness and strangeness of their relationship, but never once puts an end to these thoughts. “Strange love!” he notes. Another time he says: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love.... He is surprised why she “once and for all turned away conversations about their future, he is surprised at how she perceives his gifts, how she behaves in moments of rapprochement... Everything about her is a mystery to him.

The image of the hero is devoid of the psychological depth that the heroine is endowed with. There is no logical motivation in her actions. Every day visiting those establishments where a young lover invites her, she one day notices that she wants to go to the Novo Maiden Convent, because “all taverns are taverns. The hero has no idea where such thoughts come from, what they mean, what suddenly happened to his chosen one. Later she declares that there is nothing to be surprised about, that he simply does not know her. It turns out that she often visits the Kremlin cathedrals, and this happens when her lover “doesn’t drag her to restaurants. There, and not in entertainment venues, she finds a sense of harmony and peace of mind. She loves “Russian chronicles, Russian legends, and her stories about this are full of depth. She says that she is not fit to be a wife. Reflecting on this, she quotes Platon Karataev. But the hero still cannot understand what is going on in her soul, he is “indescribably happy with every an hour spent near her and that's it.

As in the other stories of the “Dark Alleys” series, Bunin does not show in “Clean Monday” love that develops into a state of lasting earthly happiness. Love here also does not end with a happy marriage, and we do not find the image of a woman-mother here. The heroine, having entered into a physically intimate relationship with her beloved, silently leaves, begging him not to ask anything, and then informs him by letter of her departure to the monastery. She rushed for a long time between the momentary and the eternal, and on the night of Clean Monday, surrendering to the hero, she made her final choice. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of everything bad. This holiday became a turning point in the relationship between the heroes.

Love in “Clean Monday” is happiness and torment, a great mystery, an incomprehensible riddle. This story is one of the pearls of Bunin’s work, captivating the reader with its rare charm and depth.

Pure love in the story by I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday"

Man, like no other earthly creature, is lucky to have reason and the ability to choose. A person chooses his whole life. Having taken a step, he is faced with a choice: to the right or to the left - where to go next. He takes another step and chooses again, and so he walks until the end of the path. Some walk faster, others slower, and the result is different: you take a step and either fall into a bottomless abyss, or end up with your foot on an escalator in the sky. A person is free to choose his job, passions, hobbies, thoughts, worldviews, love. Love can be for money, for power, for art, it can be ordinary, earthly love, or it can happen that above all, above all feelings, a person places love for his homeland or for God.

The story “Clean Monday” tells us about a completely different love, thanks to which this story seems to stand apart, differing both in theme and meaning from all of Bunin’s love-romantic works.

The story takes place in 1913. A kind, handsome and frivolous young man shares his memories here. The young people met one day at a lecture in a literary and artistic circle and fell in love with each other.

In this story the heroine is nameless. And this also makes sense to the writer: the name is not important, the name is for the earth, and God knows everyone even without a name. Bunin calls the heroine - she.

From the very beginning she was strange, silent, unusual, as if alien to the whole world around her, looking through it, “I kept thinking about something, it was as if I was mentally delving into something; Lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, she often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of her.” It was like she was from another world.

And at the same time, she indulged in social entertainment and allowed the man to caress her. Even stranger was the parallel fascination with restaurants and theatrical “cabbage shows.” She read a lot, went to the theater, had lunch, dinner, went for walks, and attended courses.

But she was always drawn to something lighter, intangible, to faith, to God, and just as the Church of the Savior was close to the windows of her apartment, so God was close to her heart. She often went to churches, visited monasteries and old cemeteries.

But at the beginning of Lent, on Clean Monday, the heroine finally gives in to the young handsome man who is passionately in love with her. But what next? And then everything is the same: it won’t get any better. The completeness of happiness in earthly life is unattainable, the ideal of love is impossible - then everything will go on as the fading of the experience. There is only one way out: to cut everything off on takeoff, anticipating the fall. The monastery, the pacification of passions, is clearly not a joke.

In the last days of her worldly life, she drank her cup to the bottom, forgave everyone on Forgiveness Sunday and was cleansed of the ashes of this life on Clean Monday.

“No, I’m not fit to be a wife.” She knew from the very beginning that she could not be a wife. She is destined to be an eternal bride, the bride of Christ. It seems to her that she has found her love, chosen her path.

But even after hiding in the monastery, she continues to suffer there from the unattainable. The story doesn’t say anything about this, but in its final lines we feel it when, describing the young nuns in white robes, the young man’s gaze fell on one of them - the one who “suddenly raised her head, covered with a white scarf, blocking the candle with her hand, and fixed her dark eyes on the darkness.” Why into the darkness? After all, the temple was illuminated with candles. Apparently, darkness in Bunin is emptiness, it is the wrong path.

And now we understand: this is not faith, or rather, not only faith, but, most likely, fear of reality. After all, love is not just passion, not just a feeling, but also responsibility, a heavy burden. “No, I’m not fit to be a wife.” The heroine of the story runs away to a monastery because she cannot, does not know how to bear all the hardships of life that love imposes. Therefore, the monastery for her is an escape from life.

The story is masterfully and concisely written. Each stroke has an obvious and hidden meaning. What is the heroine’s latest, sophisticated, secular, black-velvet outfit with her hairstyle like a Shamakhan queen worth? An unexpected and revealing combination. The girl constantly follows different paths, vividly reminiscent of the differences surrounding her. This is the symbolic meaning of the female image. He combines a craving for spiritual achievement and all the wealth of the world, doubts, sacrifice and longing for an ideal.

There is another meaning in the story of the author's reflections. The eternal contradictions of human, more specifically, female nature, love, sublime and earthly, sensual, determined the heroine’s trials. Her courage and ability to go through all the prohibitions and temptations help to reveal the mysterious, irresistible power of instinct. But the warmer and more sympathetic the author’s attitude towards the young woman is, the more she resists completely natural, although painful for her, attractions.

// / The theme of love in Bunin’s story “Clean Monday”

One of the most frequent themes raised in Russian and world literature is the theme of love. The theme of the relationship between a man and a woman, the theme of their feelings and emotional experiences. Many writers and poets wrote about love, and each in their own way tried to show and explain this multifaceted feeling. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was no exception and also shared with us his thoughts on this issue.

The author’s love work is reflected in the collection “Dark Alleys”. This collection consists of 38 stories dedicated to the theme of love. Each of the stories presented is original in its own way. When reading them, we will not come across two identical stories, but after reading them all, we understand that the theme of love is so diverse and multifaceted that we can write about it forever.

The story "" reveals to us a love story between two people. Bunin does not name their names, simply saying - He and She. The heroes of this work were young people who lived in abundance and prosperity. They had everything you wanted. They dined in restaurants, attended theaters, social evenings, and were the center of everyone's attention and admiration. But despite such external similarity and unity, the main characters of the story differed from each other in their inner world.

He was "blind" to his beloved. Every day I tried to please her, inviting her to restaurants, social evenings, and the theater. On weekends He spoiled her with “fresh” flowers, sweets, and new literature. He was blinded by his feelings for her. Feelings of love did not allow him to look into her inner world and understand its versatility. She remained a mystery to him. More than once he was perplexed by her behavior, by their relationship, without ever trying to understand it. He once said about their relationship: “Strange love!” He is surprised by her behavior in moments of intimacy; he does not understand why she constantly rejects conversations about their future.

Bunin does not endow his hero with the depth of emotional experiences that he gives to his heroine. She indifferently accepts all gifts and visits entertainment venues. One day She decides to declare that she wants to visit the Novodevichy Convent, because she is already extremely tired of restaurants. The main character does not understand such thoughts and conversations of his beloved. It turns out that He does not know her at all. Her passion for Russian legends and Russian chronicles becomes a real discovery for him. In her free time from entertainment events, She goes to the Kremlin cathedrals. But all these stories are alien to him; it is important for him to be close to his beloved and enjoy every minute spent with her.

It is characteristic of Bunin’s love lyrics that the author does not show us the further development of the love relationship between two people. They do not end with a happy marriage or a strong family. The main character of “Clean Monday”, sharing a bed with the main character, left without saying a word. She sent him a letter in which she asked him not to look for her and said that she had gone to a monastery. For a long time she could not make a choice between pleasure and harmony. And only Clean Monday finally determined the choice of the main character and became decisive in their relationship.

In “Clean Monday” Bunin showed us love as a feeling, as a test, as a great mystery of the universe.

Direction "Love"

Sample essays in the direction of “Love”

Composition

The theme of love in I. Bunin’s story “Clean Monday”

The theme of love is an eternal theme. Poets and writers of different times turned to it, and each tried to interpret this multifaceted feeling in their own way.

I. A Bunin gives his vision of the topic in the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys”. The collection includes thirty-eight stories, all of them are about love, but none of them creates a feeling of repetition, and after reading all the works in the cycle there is no feeling of exhaustion of the topic.

At the center of the story “Clean Monday” is a mysterious and mysterious love story. Its heroes are a young couple of lovers. Both of them are “rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts” those around them watched them go. But the inner world of the heroes is not so similar.

He is blinded by his love. Every Saturday he brings flowers to his beloved, every now and then pampers her with boxes of chocolate, tries to please her with new books he brought, every evening he invites her to a restaurant, then to the theater, or to some party. Completely absorbed in the feeling of adoration, he cannot and does not really try to understand what complex inner world lies behind the beautiful appearance of the one he has fallen in love with. Repeatedly he thinks about the unusualness and strangeness of their relationship, but never once puts an end to these thoughts. "Odd love!" - he notes. Another time he says: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...”. He is surprised at why she “once and for all stopped talking about their future”; he is surprised at how she perceives his gifts, how she behaves in moments of rapprochement. Everything about her is a mystery to him.

The image of the hero is devoid of the psychological depth that the heroine is endowed with. There is no logical motivation in her actions. Every day visiting those establishments where a young lover invites her, she one day notices that she wants to go to the Novodevichy Convent, because “it’s all taverns and taverns.” The hero has no idea where these thoughts come from, what they are for, what suddenly happened to his chosen one. And a little later she declares that there is nothing to be surprised about, that he simply does not know her. It turns out that she often visits the Kremlin cathedrals, and this happens when her lover “doesn’t drag” her to restaurants. There, and not in entertainment venues, she finds a sense of harmony and peace of mind. She loves “Russian chronicles, Russian legends” and her stories about this are filled with depth. She says she is not fit to be a wife. Thinking about happiness, quotes Platon Karataev. But the hero still cannot understand what is going on in her soul, he is “indescribably happy with every hour spent near her” and that’s all.

As in the other stories of the “Dark Alleys” series, Bunin does not show in “Clean Monday” love that develops into a state of lasting earthly happiness. Love here also does not end with a happy marriage, and we do not find the image of a woman-mother here. The heroine, having entered into a physically intimate relationship with her beloved, silently leaves, begging him not to ask anything, and then informs him by letter of her departure to the monastery. She rushed for a long time between the momentary and the eternal and, on the night of Clean Monday, surrendering to the hero, she made her final choice. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of everything bad. This holiday became a turning point in the relationship between the heroes.

Love in “Clean Monday” is happiness and torment, a great mystery, an incomprehensible riddle. This story is one of the pearls of Bunin's work, captivating the reader with its rare charm and depth.

Nesterova I.A. The theme of the Motherland and love in Bunin’s story Clean Monday // Nesterov Encyclopedia

Comparison of the theme of the Motherland and love in the work “Clean Monday”.

The story was written by Bunin in 1944. At that time, the author was worried about his homeland. “Clean Monday” is not just a story of failed love, it is also the pain and sadness of the author for his homeland.

In the work "Clean Monday" the names of the characters are not mentioned.

The center of the composition of the work, as the focus of all the thoughts and feelings of the narrator, is She.

Since for Bunin the people of the east seemed less corrupt, She was unusual:

The beauty was somehow Indian, Persian: dark-amber face..., eyes black as velvet coal...

It is inextricably linked with Russia, its past and its present. History lessons and the use of quotes from Russian classics in speech emphasize this. She sought to understand Russian art, She visited theaters, She visited Griboyedov’s house. She is the center of the composition, not just because she is connected with Russia, but also because she combines both Western and Eastern origins.

Bunin revered religion, because it was not for nothing that the denouement of the love story took place on Clean Monday, after Forgiveness Sunday. Since for Bunin She personified Russia, the events take place in 1912. It can be assumed that the heroine is Russia, full of contradictions on the eve of the revolution. The main character was never able to understand her. In her soul, the patriarchal, primordially Russian, still prevailed, and this decides the fate of the heroine: she is saved from an unclean life in a monastery.

In his story, Bunin used his characteristic technique - memory. Here we learn about the narrator’s love, fall and return to life, but it was not a complete return: “... began to gradually recover - indifferent, hopeless.” But love for her lived in his heart, probably until the end of his life.

With his story, Bunin expressed hope for the power of his spiritual life, his “unquenchable” fire - the thirst for spiritual purity, faith and sacrificial deeds.

Bunin connects the future of Russia not with revolution or any social upheavals, but with the power of the spiritual roots of the people, thirsting for purity of faith and sacrificial deeds.

The world of falsehood, violence, greed is doomed to death. Salvation lies in getting closer to the outside world, in the naturalness of thoughts, feelings and actions.

Dark alleys - love is always tragic. The reasons may be different, but they are always so powerful that they separate lovers. If there are no social or personal reasons, then fate intervenes.

Even unrequited love will be tragic according to Bunin. This, in his opinion, is the highest manifestation of the human spirit, and for this reason alone it is beautiful and illuminates a person’s entire life with its amazing light.