The main character of the story is Clean Monday. Clean Monday - Langue et littérature russes. Student research activities

Bunin's story describes the relationship between two young rich people. A comparative description of the characters in the story “Clean Monday” will help to understand the problems covered in the work. Spirituality or love is a difficult choice between one of the ideal pair.

Young man

The main character is a handsome rich young man. He is handsome, confident and educated. Having fallen in love with a girl, he behaves like a gallant gentleman. The young man does not rush the beauty to answer, he waits for her decision. It’s hard for him from misunderstanding and refusal to join in marriage, but there is no feeling of anger or resentment. Strange unrequited love brings happiness, it calms the young man. Sometimes “incomplete intimacy” became unbearable, but respect for the woman prevailed, love restrained impulses. The young man tries to fulfill all the wishes of his beloved. He goes with her to the cathedral, visits theater skits. A man tries to understand the one he loves, but she remains a mystery to him until the last letter. The meaning of life is lost. The young man begins to drink. This is a common decision among men of all ages. He drowns the grief of parting with wine. Gradually the young man comes to his senses, but love remains in his heart. He sees her among the choir of nuns, leaves the cathedral and says goodbye to his dream. The words of the old woman in the church become medicine: to suffer like this is a sin. A man cannot be concerned only with his soul; he should have understood the girl’s feelings much earlier. The deep spiritual world of his companion remained a secret, inexplicable and incomprehensible riddle for him.

Strange beauty

The girl with whom the young man is in love surprises and intrigues from the first lines. Her appearance is bright and unusual: she is beautiful like Persian and Indian girls. The heroine is rich, and so is her lover. An ideal relationship should have interested the beauty, but she diverts the conversation when it comes to marriage. The beauty lives independently, but this is not a reason to start a real relationship with a man. She, on the contrary, holds the young man

“in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation...”

The girl does not deny herself entertainment: she goes to restaurants, attends theaters, concerts, and loves gypsy performances. The author calls love between young people strange. The reader notices oddities, but only on the part of the woman.

The beauty loves expensive, stylish clothes, can eat a whole box of chocolate, eats a lot at lunch, and does not deprive herself of dinner. The heroine is often silent, does not leave the house for three days, carried away by reading books. The heroine's behavior is interesting. She carries herself with dignity, aware of her intelligence and attractiveness. The girl speaks slowly, evenly, quietly, evaluating every word spoken.

The strangeness intensifies when the author talks about her hobby of visiting cathedrals. At the end of the story, when everything was already foreshadowing the close ties between the lovers, the girl goes to the monastery. Prosperity and happiness with her loved one cannot replace her desire to unite with God. The soul makes its choice: secular pleasures and expensive fashionable outfits remain a thing of the past. The soul seeks peace in prayers and chants.

Article imprint: Dmitrievskaya L.N. Portrait of the heroine of “Clean Monday” by I.A. Bunin as the key to understanding the “secret” of character// Philological traditions in modern literary and linguistic education. Sat. scientific Articles. Issue 7. T.1. M.: MGPI, 2008. p.55-59.

“A portrait in a literary work is one of the means of creating the image of a hero, reflecting his personality, inner essence through the image (portrait) of his external appearance, which is a special form of comprehension of reality and a characteristic feature of the writer’s individual style.”
The female portrait in painting and literature is especially interesting, since it is associated with the semantics of beauty, love, motherhood, as well as suffering and death, eroticism and mysticism... The fatal, tragic in female beauty was discovered by Russian classics throughout the 19th century. “Radiant-indifferent” beauty of A.S. Pushkin, “defiant” - M.Yu. Lermontov, suffering and demonic - N.V. Gogol, “imperious” and “depriving of will” - I.S. Turgeneva, suffering, passionately cynical, “evilly calculating” - M.F. Dostoevsky (the epithets in quotation marks belong to I. Annensky, “Symbols of Beauty among Russian Writers”) predetermined the appearance of frightening and alluring, tempting and redeeming female beauty among the Symbolists at the turn of the century. Symbolist works embody the cult of a demonic woman, who combines innocence and “seductiveness,” devotion and betrayal, honesty and treachery. Here you can remember Renata from the novel by V.Ya. Bryusov’s “Fire Angel” (1907) and women from his stories, Tsarevich Alexei’s girlfriend Euphrosyne from the novel by D.S. Merezhkovsky's "Antichrist (Peter and Alexey)" (1904), the gardener's daughter Zorenka from the fairy tale "The Bush" (1906), the cook from the story "Adam" (1908), Matryona from "The Silver Dove" (1909) by A. Bely and etc.
Among the mysterious, contradictory female images of Russian literature is the heroine of “Clean Monday” I.A. Bunina. The author (author-narrator) presents the heroine as an incomprehensible, incomprehensible woman, unsolved by him.
The story begins with the words of Tolstoy’s hero Platon Karataev: “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” (2; 614). Breden is a seine that is pulled together wade along the river. The river is a symbol of life, so the popular proverb becomes a metaphor for life, partly explaining the impossibility of happiness and love between the heroes of Clean Monday. He pulls this net alone, and she (being the exponent of the author’s philosophy) is not looking for happiness in life. She “kept thinking about something, she seemed to be delving into something mentally,” he, not understanding her, waved it off: “Oh, God be with her, with this eastern wisdom.”
The hero, even at the beginning of his narrative-memory, says “<…>she was mysterious, incomprehensible to me<…>"(2; 611).
Let's try to comprehend the mystery of the heroine's image, which the hero-narrator cannot understand. But her image is clear to the author, and he, of course, left traces to unravel the tangle of mysterious details.
Details related to the east were studied by L.K. Dolgopolov (3), with Orthodoxy - I.G. Mineralova (4, 5, 6). We will devote our research to the details of the portrait of the heroine of the story.
The narrator gives the first description of the heroine’s appearance in comparison with herself: “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts people looked at us. I …(let’s skip the hero’s self-portrait, recalling only his southern, hot beauty - L.D.). And she had some kind of beauty Indian, Persian: dark amber face, magnificent and somewhat sinister in their thick blackness hair, softly shiny, like black sable fur, eyebrows, black like velvet coal, eyes; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff<…>» (italics here and in other places are ours - L.D.) (2; 612).

Vrubel “Lilac” (1900), Tretyakov Gallery

The portrait of the heroine is reminiscent of Vrubel’s oriental beauties (“Fortune Teller” (1895), “Girl against the Background of a Persian Carpet” (1886), “Tamara and the Demon”, “Lilac” (1900), etc.). This can also be regarded as an artistic device: years later, in the hero’s mind, the image of his beloved woman is enriched with impressions and associations from the art of the time he remembers.
«<…>When leaving, she most often wore pomegranate velvet dress and matching shoes gold clasps (and I went to courses as a modest student, had breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat)<…>» (2; 612). The portrait is very specific: it has regal colors and matter. Let us remember the ceremonial portraits of empresses: the same colors, the same image of a strong, strong-willed woman. The antithesis (royal and simple) in this portrait of the heroine explains one of the mysteries in her life: above the sofa “...for some reason there was a portrait hanging barefoot Tolstoy"(2; 611). Count (barefoot - that would be an oxymoron if it were not reality) L.N. Tolstoy, seeking truth from the people, with his idea of ​​simplification, was one of the paths along which she was also looking for something. Her lunch in a vegetarian canteen and the image of a poor student (although, let us remember: “we were both rich”) is probably nothing more than following the ideas of the Tolstoyan philosophy that was fashionable at the turn of the century.

Kramskoy I.N. Unknown, 1883, Tretyakov Gallery

In the following portraits, black plays a special role: “I arrived and she met me already dressed, in a short astrakhan fur coat, in astrakhan hat, in black felt boots.
- All black! - I said, entering, as always, joyfully.<…>
- After all, tomorrow is already clean Monday,” she answered, taking out astrakhan clutches and giving me your hand in black kid glove" (2; 615).
“Black” and “pure” - the ambiguity allows us to perceive these words as antonyms, but the heroine justifies her black with Clean Monday, because black is also the color of sorrow, a sign of humility and recognition of one’s sinfulness. This associative line is continued by the astrakhan fur coat, hat and muff. Karakul - sheep, flock, lamb of God. The day before she was at the Rogozhsky (“famous schismatic”) cemetery - the center of the Moscow community of Old Believers (3; 110) - and on Forgiveness Sunday they again go to the cemetery of the Novodevichy Convent. “On Forgiveness Sunday, it is customary to ask each other for forgiveness, as well as to go to the graves of the dead for the same purpose.”(1; 548). At this time, penitential canons about death, the approaching end, repentance and forgiveness are read in churches (more details in the commentary: 3; 109).
At the cemetery at Chekhov’s grave, the heroine remembers A.S. Griboyedov, and they “...for some reason we went to Ordynka<…>, but who could tell us in which house Griboyedov lived?(2; 617). The next “why” is psychologically explainable: “a nasty mixture of Russian leaf style and the Art Theater”(2; 617) on Chekhov’s grave, in contrast, reminds of the tragic death in Persia and the grave of A.S. Griboedova. His knowledge of Moscow society, reflected in the famous comedy, life and death in the east - everything was close to her. After all, looking at her and inhaling “some slightly spicy smell of her hair,” the hero thinks: “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!” Why is he looking for this house on Ordynka? Probably, in order, as it should be on this day, to ask forgiveness from the author of “Woe from Wit” for the unchanged Moscow morals.
The house was not found; We drove past the Marfo-Maryinsky monastery without turning around and stopped at the Yegorov tavern in Okhotny Ryad. “We went into the second room, where in the corner, in front black board of the icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands, a lamp was burning, they sat down at a long table on black leather sofa... The fluff on the upper lip was frosted, the amber of the cheeks turned slightly pink, black Rayka completely merged with the pupil - I could not take my eyes off her face.” (2; 617).
Portrait in the interior: she is all in black sitting on a black sofa next to a black icon board. Thanks to the icon, the black motif in the image of the heroine is brought to the sacred level. The heroine, with her Indian, Persian beauty, is also associated with the Mother of God through oriental features:
"- Fine! There are wild men below, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India! You are a gentleman, you cannot understand this whole Moscow the way I do.” (2; 617).
From the last exclamation one can understand that in Moscow for the heroine (and the author, as is known), West - East - Asia merge: these are wild men, and pancakes with champagne, and the Mother of God, and India... Previously this “Basily the Blessed and Spas-on-Boru, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls...”(2; 614). The same fusion exists in her image. Here is the following portrait description:
“...She stood straight and theatrically near the piano in black velvet dress. Making her thinner, shining with his elegance, festive attire Smolny hair, the dark amber of bare arms, shoulders, the tender, full beginning of the breasts, the sparkle of diamond earrings along slightly powdered cheeks, coal velvet eyes and velvety purple lips; at the temples they curved in half rings towards the eyes black glossy braids, giving her the look of an oriental beauty from a popular print" (2; 619).
As before, through the color black, the motif of sorrow for her sinful essence is conveyed, in which the heroine is recognized by the lines of an ancient Russian legend: “And the devil instilled in his wife a flying serpent for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, extremely beautiful...” (1; 618).
The oriental beauty appears in theatrical and royal splendor and with a theatrical pose near the piano, on which she has just played the beginning of the Moonlight Sonata. The sacred meaning of the heroine’s oriental features, which arose in comparison with the icon, is destroyed, and the image of the oriental beauty is exaggerated into a popular print.
At the “cabbage party” of the Art Theater she “deftly, briefly stamping, sparkling earrings, with his blackness and bare shoulders and arms"(2; 620) danced a polka with a drunken Sulerzhitsky, who at the same time “screamed like a goat.” “The Cabbage Man” is reminiscent of a Sabbath, and the heroine displays almost demonic traits - she has given free rein to her sinful, long-conscious essence. And this is all the more unexpected because just recently the reader was offered the holy face of the Mother of God in parallel to her image.
The aura of mystery and unpredictability of the heroine can again be dispelled by a psychological analysis of her actions. The decision to go to the cabbage party, to surrender for the last, and perhaps the only time, to the unbridled passion of my nature, and then to spend the night with the one about whom I thought: “A serpent in human nature, extremely beautiful...” arose after it became stronger decision: “Oh, I’ll go somewhere to a monastery, some very remote one, in Vologda, Vyatka!” How not to test yourself, check the correctness of your decision, say goodbye to the world, taste sin for the last time before complete renunciation? But is it faith that drives her, how sincere is her repentance, if she calmly admits before that it is not religiosity that draws her to monasteries, but “I don’t know what...”
“Clean Monday” ends with a portrait of the heroine in a general procession of nuns following the Grand Duchess: «<…>icons and banners, carried in their hands, appeared from the church, behind them, all in white, long, thin-faced, in white obrus with a gold cross sewn on his forehead, tall, slowly, earnestly walking with downcast eyes, with a large candle in her hand, the Grand Duchess; and the same one was trailing behind her white a string of singing nuns or sisters with candle lights on their faces<…>And then one of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered white with her hand, blocking the candle with her hand, she fixed her gaze black eyes into the darkness, as if right at me..."(2; 623).
I.A. In exile, Bunin already knew about the fate that befell the royal family and the Grand Duchess, so her portrait is like an icon - it contains a face (“thin-faced”), the image of a saint.
Among the pure white procession, under a white cloth - she, who, although she became “one of” and not the Shamakhan queen, as she was before, still could not hide the pitch blackness of her hair, the look of her black eyes and her searching for something. then in kind. The last portrait of the heroine can be interpreted in different ways, but for Bunin, rather, the idea of ​​the irrepressible power of human nature, which cannot be hidden or defeated, was important. This was the case in “Easy Breathing,” a story from 1916, and the same in “Clean Monday,” written in 1944.

LITERATURE
1. Bulgakov S.V. Handbook for sacred church ministers. - M., 1993. - Part 1.
2. Bunin I.A. Clean Monday
3. Dolgopolov L.K. At the turn of the century: On Russian literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. - L., 1985.
4. Mineralova I.G. Comments // In the book: A.P. Chekhov Lady with a Dog. I.A. Bunin Clean Monday. A.I. Kuprin Shulamith: Texts, comments, research, materials for independent work, lesson modeling M., 2000. P.102-119.
5. Mineralova I.G. Poetic portrait of the era // Ibid. P.129-134.
6. Mineralova I.G. Word. Colors, sounds... (style of I.A. Bunin) // Ibid. P.134-145.

A shorter version of the article was published here:

Portrait of the heroine of “Clean Monday” by I.A. Bunina // National and regional “cosmo-psycho-logos” in the artistic world of writers of the Russian substeppe (I.A. Bunin, E.I. Zamyatin, M.M. Prishvin). Yelets, 2006, pp.91-96.

"Clean Monday" was written on May 12, 1944, when Bunin was in exile in France. It was there, already in old age, that he created the cycle “Dark Alleys,” which includes the story.

"Clean Monday" I.A. Bunin considered one of the best stories: "I thank God for giving me the opportunity to write Clean Monday."

The dictionary explains Clean Monday as the first day of Lent, which comes after the riotous Maslenitsa and Forgiveness Sunday. Based on the adjective “pure,” it can be assumed that the story is about cleansing, perhaps from sin, or about the cleansing of the soul.

Composition

2. Climax: Clean Monday (the first day of Lent), love union on the first day of Lent - a great sin (motive of sin), the meaning of the title.

3. Time:

– focus on the future (“change”, “hope for time”);

– repetition (“all the same”, “and again”);

– past (“like then”, “like that one”) and “proto-memory”:

" What an ancient sound, something tin and cast iron. And just like that, with the same sound, three o’clock in the morning struck in the fifteenth century "

– incompleteness (only the beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata”),

– initiality, novelty (new flowers, new books, new clothes).

Main motives

– darkness and light (twilight, evening; cathedral, cemetery – light); frost and warmth:

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up...”

2. Theme of fire, heat – h u v s t v o (“hot dope”):

– the meaning of sensual, physical;

– he is the embodiment of the sensory world; excessive manifestation of feelings is a sin ( "Oh, don't kill yourself, don't kill yourself like that! Sin, sin!");

– love: torment and happiness, beauty and horror: "Still the same torment and the same happiness...";

– transience of love (deception: Karataev’s words); impossibility of marriage.

3. Physical world:

– wealth, youth;

4. Moscow realities:

– the unification of the West and the East (southern, eastern in the heroes; South and East are equated: "...something Kyrgyz in the points of the towers on the Kremlin walls", about the striking of the clock on the Spasskaya Tower: “And in Florence there is exactly the same battle, it reminds me of Moscow there...”, “Moscow, Astrakhan, Persia, India!”);

– the realities of that time: “cabbage makers”, Andrei Bely, modern literature, etc.;

– movement – ​​taverns and “cabbage shops”: “flying”, “and swinging sleigh”; cemetery, Ordynka - calm, leisurely: “entered”, “walked”, “But not too much”;

– he is in a hurry, she is leisurely.

5. The unattractiveness of the surrounding world:

– theatricality, affectation;

– the vulgarity of the world (literature: the opposition of “new books” to Tolstoy, Karataev – “eastern wisdom”, the predominance of the West: “All Right”, “yellow-haired Rus'”, “a nasty mixture of leafy Russian style and the Art Theater”);

– impending historical tragedy, motive of death: “brick and bloody walls of the monastery”, “luminous skull”.

6. The main characters of the story:

– lack of names (typing);

– Beloved in “Clean Monday” - completely different people.

HE: despite his attractiveness and education, he is an ordinary person, not distinguished by any special strength of character.

SHE: the heroine is nameless. Bunin calls the heroine - she.

a) mystery, mystery;

b) desire for solitude;

c) a question to the world, surprise: “why”, “I don’t understand”, “she looked questioningly”, “who knows”, “bewilderment”; final – gaining knowledge (knowledge = feeling): “see in the dark”, “feel”;

d) strangeness "odd love";

d) she seems to be from another world: he doesn’t understand her, he’s a stranger to her (she talks about him in the third person, love intimacy is a sacrifice, she doesn’t need it: “It looked like she didn’t need anything.”);

f) a feeling of the homeland, its antiquity; Rus' survived only in life; leaving for a monastery meant a transition to the outside world.

“I kept thinking about something, I always seemed to be delving into something mentally; lying on the sofa with a book in my hands, I often lowered it and looked questioningly in front of me.”

This is an integral, rare “chosen” nature. And she is concerned about serious moral questions, the problem of choosing her future life. She renounces worldly life, entertainment, social society and, most importantly, her love, and goes to the monastery on “Clean Monday”.

She walked towards her goal for a very long time. Only in contact with the eternal, spiritual did she feel in her place. It may seem strange that she combined these activities with going to theaters, restaurants, reading fashionable books, and communicating with bohemian society. This can be explained by her youth, which is characterized by the search for herself, her place in life. Her consciousness is torn, the harmony of her soul is disrupted. She is intensely looking for something of her own, whole, heroic, selfless, and finds her ideal in serving God. The present seems pitiful and untenable to her, and even love for a young man cannot keep her in worldly life.

In the last days of her worldly life, she drank her cup to the bottom, forgave everyone on Forgiveness Sunday and cleansed herself of the ashes of this life on “Clean Monday”: she went to a monastery. "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. She found her love, she chose her path. You might think that she left home, but in fact she went home. And even her earthly lover forgave her for this. I forgave, although I did not understand. He couldn't understand what now "she can see in the dark", And "came out of the gate" someone else's monastery.

The hero desired her bodily feminine beauty. His gaze captured her lips, “dark fluff above them”, “body amazing in its smoothness”. But her thoughts and feelings were inaccessible to him. Incomprehensible to her lover, incomprehensible to herself, she “for some reason I took a course”. “Do we understand anything in our actions? - she said. She liked"the smell of winter air""inexplicably"; for some reason she was learning“The slow, somnambulist-beautiful beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” is only one beginning...”

In the text, everything takes on a certain symbolic meaning. Thus, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” has its own hidden meaning. She symbolizes the beginning of a different path for the heroine, a different path for Russia; something that is not yet conscious, but what the soul strives for, and the sound of a “sublimely prayerful, imbued with deep lyricism” of the work fills Bunin’s text with a premonition of this.

8. Color:

– red, purple and gold (her dress, evening dawn, domes);

– black and white (twilight, night, lights, lamps, white clothes of the singers, her black clothes);

The story traces transition from dark to light tones. At the very beginning of the work, the author uses words meaning dark shades eight times in describing a winter Moscow evening. From the first lines, I.A. Bunin prepares us for the tragedy of two loving people. But in describing the main character, the writer also continues to use the color black:

“And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, eyebrows softly shining like black sable fur, eyes black like velvet coal; captivating with velvety crimson lips the mouth was shaded with dark fluff..."

The text traces the heroine’s vacillation between purification and the fall. We can see this in the description of lips and cheeks: "Black fluff above the lip and pink amber cheeks". At first it seems that the heroine is just thinking about joining a monastery, visits restaurants, drinks, smokes, but then abruptly changes her views and unexpectedly goes to serve God. The monastery is associated with spiritual purity, renunciation of the sinful world, the world of immorality. It is known that white color symbolizes purity. Therefore, after the heroine leaves for the monastery, the writer gives preference to this particular color shade, indicating purification and rebirth of the soul. In the last paragraph, the word “white” is used four times, indicating the idea of ​​the story, that is, the rebirth of the soul, the transition from sin, the blackness of life to spiritual, moral purity. The movement from “black” to “white” is a movement from sin to purity.

I.A. Bunin conveys the concept and idea of ​​the story with color shades. Using light and dark shades, their alternation and combination, the writer depicts the rebirth of the soul of the main character of “Clean Monday”.

9. Final:

– letter – destruction of hopes (traditional motive);

- predestination, fate ( "for some reason I wanted to");

– I. Turgenev, “The Noble Nest.”

CONCLUSIONS:

Like most of Bunin’s works, “Clean Monday” is the author’s attempt to describe and convey to the reader his understanding of love. For Bunin, any true, sincere love is great happiness, even if it ends in death or separation.

But the story “Clean Monday” is not only a story about love, but also about morality, the need for life choices, and honesty with oneself. Bunin paints young people as beautiful, self-confident: “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts they looked at us.” However, the author emphasizes that material and physical well-being is by no means a guarantee of happiness. Happiness is in a person’s soul, in his self-awareness and attitude. “Our happiness, my friend,” the heroine quotes Platon Karataev’s words, “is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”

The narration in the story, for all its apparent emphasis on objectivity, materiality, and objective perception, is still not hero-centric. The author in “Clean Monday”, as a bearer of culture, through the cultural and verbal existence of the hero-storyteller orients the reader to his own worldview, which is “nuanced” by the hero’s monologues and inner speech. Therefore, it is often it is difficult to isolate where the hero’s speech is and where the author’s, as, for example, in this reflection of the hero, which can equally be attributed to the author:

“Strange city! - I said to myself, thinking about Okhotny Ryad, about Iverskaya, about St. Basil the Blessed. – “Basily the Blessed and Spas-on-Boru, Italian cathedrals – and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls...”

The main characters and their characteristics in Bunin's story "Clean Monday". and got the best answer

Answer from Darling ***[guru]
The heroes of Bunin's story "Clean Monday" evoke sympathy in the reader, and the reader worries about them. We don't know their names, but that doesn't matter. The writer gives the young people who fell in love with each other precise characteristics, and the narration is told from the perspective of the hero, who is trying to be objective when talking about his life drama. Both of them are beautiful: “Being from the Penza province, at that time I was handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty, I was even “indecently handsome,” as one famous actor once told me...” His beloved was also amazingly beautiful: “And she had some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: - a dark-amber face, magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness, softly shining like black sable fur, eyebrows as black as velvet coal, eyes; the mouth, captivating with velvety crimson lips, was shaded with dark fluff; When going out, she most often put on a garnet velvet dress and the same shoes with gold buckles (and she went to courses as a modest student, ate breakfast for thirty kopecks in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat) ... "
The hero appears before us as a completely down-to-earth person who has simple ideas about happiness with a loved one, he wants to start a family with her, to be always together. But the heroine, her inner world, seems to us more complex. The hero himself talks about this difference between them, noting the differences in external behavior: “As much as I was inclined to talkativeness, to simple-hearted gaiety, she was most often silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be 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...” That is, from the very beginning she looked strange, unusual, as if alien to the entire surrounding reality. She herself says that she feels not created for the joys of life that are familiar in the minds of many people: “No, I’m not fit to be a wife. I’m not suitable, I’m not suitable...” Indeed, as the narrative develops, we see that she is quite sincere about the hero, she sincerely loves him, but there is something in her that worries her, prevents her from making an unambiguous decision.
The girl amazes with her inconstancy in her hobbies and interests, as if there are several people in her, she constantly follows different paths. The lover is unable to fully understand her, because he sees how incompatible things are united in her. So, at times she behaves like an ordinary girl of her age and circle: attends courses, goes for walks, to the theater, dines in restaurants. And it becomes unclear why she took the course, why she learned the beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata,” why she hung a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy over the sofa. When her lover asked her the question “why?”, she shrugged her shoulders: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions? But in her soul the heroine is internally alien to all this. “It looked like she didn’t need anything: no flowers, no books, no dinners, no theaters, no dinners out of town...”
The heroine fully reveals herself when she suddenly offers to go to the cemetery, and we, together with the hero, learn that she often goes to Kremlin cathedrals, monasteries, and loves to read Russian chronicles. In her soul, a craving for the divine and for all the richness of the cosmos, hesitation and longing for the ideal coincided. It seems to her that only in monasteries and spiritual chants has the “feeling of the homeland, its antiquity,” and spirituality been preserved. But it cannot be said that the heroine does not try to find meaning in the world around her; it is no coincidence that her range of hobbies is so wide. Yes, she completely surrenders to the feeling of love, and she does not doubt her feelings, but she is absolutely sure that earthly happiness is not what she needs.
The girl leaves Moscow, explaining her departure this way: “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then

What is Ivan Alekseevich Bunin’s story “Clean Monday” about? About love? Yes, and also about what forms love can have, about the fact that it is worth giving up on it for it to live. About our great beautiful capital? Yes, about its people and morals, about the peculiarities of architecture, about the mixture of styles and colors. About the time? Yes. About that poetic time when

The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the shop windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up: the cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the darkness it was already visible how Green stars fell from the wires with a hiss - dull black passers-by hurried more animatedly along the snowy sidewalks...

There is so much poetry in this enchanting, bewitching description! Already in the first paragraph you can find the main principle of the story - opposition: it got dark - it lit up; cold - warm; evening - daytime; they rushed more vigorously - they thundered more heavily; snowy sidewalks - blackened passers-by. All accents have shifted, and the stars are pouring out with a hiss. This is both discontent and the sound of champagne... Everything is mixed up.

Love seems somehow strange: like love and like coldness. He loves, but who? There is so much narcissism in every word of his description of himself: he “was handsome at that time for some reason, with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome.” And this: “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts people looked at us.” Yes, apparently, it’s nice when people look at you and your companion. But there is such self-confidence in this. So he loves a girl he doesn’t know at all. He constantly repeats that all their relationships are strange, and why are they together? She immediately dismissed conversations about the future, saying that she was not fit to be a wife. Why then prolong this tedious, exhausting relationship?

The girl, unlike the hero, lives a deep inner life. She doesn’t advertise it (this life), she’s not proud of attending courses in a modest uniform dress, or of having lunch in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat for thirty kopecks. All this is hidden somewhere deep inside the soul of this exquisite, at first glance, spoiled beauty. Unlike her talkative friend, she is always silent, but on the eve of that very day indicated in the title of the story, she begins to speak. In her speech there are excerpts from Platon Karataev, and quotes from chronicles and scripture. And the description of the funeral procession that she observed at the Rogozhskoye cemetery? Delight in the deacons' chants on the hooks?! She talks about this with undisguised joy and pride. In all this, the real feeling is Love! She loves Orthodox Rus', wants to devote herself to God and serving people. And here it becomes clear that everything converges at this important point for her: the apartment overlooking the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and the portrait of barefoot Leo Tolstoy on the wall in the hall, and the courses, and silence. She is preparing herself to become a nun. How can a person who loves her understand this step? Having spent the last night “in peace” with her beloved, she seems to cut the thread connecting them, announcing her decision. One day spent with the girl takes up the entire story; two lines are devoted to the two years that have passed without her. The world without a beloved seems to have ceased to exist.

Two years later, he follows the same route that they took together then, on that clean Monday. And he meets her. Her or not? Is it possible to guess this? No. But he understood and forgave his beloved, which means he let her go.