Why is love in Bunin’s works a tragic feeling (Bunin I.A.). Essay on the theme of love in Bunin's stories What kind of love is in Bunin's works

Love in the works of Bunin

Bunin is a unique creative personality in the history of Russian literature of the late 19th – first half of the 20th centuries. His genius talent, skill as a poet and prose writer, which became classic, amazed his contemporaries and captivates us living today. His works preserve the real Russian literary language, which is now lost.

Works about love occupy a large place in Bunin’s work in exile. The writer has always been worried about the mystery of this strongest of human feelings. In 1924 he wrote the story “Mitya’s Love”, the following year - “The Case of Cornet Elagin” and “Sunstroke”. And in the late 30s and during the Second World War, Bunin created 38 short stories about love, which made up his book “Dark Alleys,” published in 1946. Bunin considered this book his “best work in terms of conciseness, painting and literary skill "

Love in Bunin’s depiction amazes not only with the power of artistic representation, but also with its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. They rarely break through to the surface: most people will not experience their fatal effects until the end of their days. Such a depiction of love unexpectedly gives Bunin’s sober, “merciless” talent a romantic glow. The proximity of love and death, their conjugation were obvious facts for Bunin and were never subject to doubt. However, the catastrophic nature of existence, the fragility of human relationships and existence itself - all these favorite Bunin themes after the gigantic social cataclysms that shook Russia were filled with a new formidable meaning, as can be seen, for example, in the story “Mitya’s Love”. “Love is beautiful” and “Love is doomed” - these concepts, having finally come together, coincided, carrying in the depths, in the grain of each story, the personal grief of Bunin the emigrant.

Bunin's love lyrics are not great in quantity. It reflects the poet's confused thoughts and feelings about the mystery of love... One of the main motives of love lyrics is loneliness, unattainability or the impossibility of happiness. For example, “How bright, how elegant spring is!..”, “A calm gaze, like the gaze of a doe...”, “At a late hour we were in the field with her...”, “Loneliness”, “Sadness of eyelashes, shining and black...” and etc.

Bunin's love lyrics are passionate, sensual, saturated with a thirst for love and are always filled with tragedy, unfulfilled hopes, memories of past youth and lost love.

I.A. Bunin has a very unique view of love relationships that distinguishes him from many other writers of that time.

In Russian classical literature of that time, the theme of love always occupied an important place, with preference given to spiritual, “platonic” love

before sensuality, carnal, physical passion, which was often debunked. The purity of Turgenev's women became a household name. Russian literature is predominantly the literature of “first love”.

The image of love in Bunin’s work is a special synthesis of spirit and flesh. According to Bunin, the spirit cannot be comprehended without knowing the flesh. I. Bunin defended in his works a pure attitude towards the carnal and physical. He did not have the concept of female sin, as in “Anna Karenina”, “War and Peace”, “The Kreutzer Sonata” by L.N. Tolstoy, there was no wary, hostile attitude towards the feminine, characteristic of N.V. Gogol, but there was no vulgarization of love. His love is an earthly joy, a mysterious attraction of one sex to another.

The works devoted to the theme of love and death (often touching in Bunin’s works) are “The Grammar of Love”, “Easy Breathing”, “Mitya’s Love”, “Caucasus”, “In Paris”, “Galya Ganskaya”, “Henry”, “Natalie”, “Cold Autumn”, etc. It has long been and very correctly noted that love in Bunin’s work is tragic. The writer is trying to unravel the mystery of love and the mystery of death, why they often come into contact in life, what is the meaning of this. Why does the nobleman Khvoshchinsky go crazy after the death of his beloved, the peasant woman Lushka, and then almost deifies her image (“The Grammar of Love”). Why does the young high school student Olya Meshcherskaya, who, as it seemed to her, have the amazing gift of “easy breathing”, die, just starting to blossom? The author does not answer these questions, but through his works he makes it clear that this has a certain meaning in human earthly life.

The complex emotional experiences of the hero of the story “Mitya’s Love” are described with brilliance and stunning psychological tension by Bunin. This story caused controversy; the writer was reproached for excessive descriptions of nature and for the implausibility of Mitya’s behavior. But we already know that Bunin’s nature is not a background, not a decoration, but one of the main characters, and especially in Mitya’s Love. Through the depiction of the state of nature, the author surprisingly accurately conveys Mitya’s feelings, mood and experiences.

One can call “Mitya’s Love” a psychological story in which the author accurately and faithfully embodied Mitya’s confused feelings and the tragic end of his life.

“Dark Alleys,” a book of stories about love, can be called an encyclopedia of love dramas. “She talks about the tragic and about many tender and beautiful things - I think that this is the best and most original thing I have written in my life...” - Bunin admitted to Teleshov in 1947.

The heroes of “Dark Alleys” do not resist nature; often their actions are completely illogical and contradict generally accepted morality (an example of this is the sudden passion of the heroes in the story “Sunstroke”). Bunin’s love “on the brink” is almost a violation of the norm, going beyond the boundaries of everyday life. For Bunin, this immorality can even be said to be a certain sign of the authenticity of love, since ordinary morality turns out, like everything established by people, to be a conventional scheme into which the elements of natural, living life do not fit.

When describing risky details related to the body, when the author must be impartial so as not to cross the fragile line separating art from pornography, Bunin, on the contrary, worries too much - to the point of spasm in the throat, to the point of passionate trembling: “... it just went dark in the eyes at the sight of her pinkish body with a tan on shiny shoulders... her eyes turned black and widened even more, her lips parted feverishly” (“Galya Ganskaya”). For Bunin, everything connected with gender is pure and significant, everything is shrouded in mystery and even holiness.

As a rule, the happiness of love in “Dark Alleys” is followed by separation or death. The heroes revel in intimacy, but

it leads to separation, death, murder. Happiness cannot last forever. Natalie "died on Lake Geneva in premature birth." Galya Ganskaya was poisoned. In the story “Dark Alleys,” the master Nikolai Alekseevich abandons the peasant girl Nadezhda - for him this story is vulgar and ordinary, but she loved him “all century.” In the story "Rusya", the lovers are separated by the hysterical mother of Rusya.

Bunin allows his heroes only to taste the forbidden fruit, to enjoy it - and then deprives them of happiness, hopes, joys, even life. The hero of the story “Natalie” loved two people at once, but did not find family happiness with either one. In the story “Henry” there is an abundance of female characters for every taste. But the hero remains lonely and free from the “women of men.”

Bunin's love does not go into the family channel and is not resolved by a happy marriage. Bunin deprives his heroes of eternal happiness, deprives them because they get used to it, and habit leads to loss of love. Love out of habit cannot be better than lightning-fast but sincere love. The hero of the story “Dark Alleys” cannot tie himself into family ties with the peasant woman Nadezhda, but having married another woman from his circle, he does not find family happiness. The wife cheated, the son was a spendthrift and a scoundrel, the family itself turned out to be “the most ordinary vulgar story.” However, despite its short duration, love still remains eternal: it is eternal in the hero’s memory precisely because it is fleeting in life.

A distinctive feature of love in Bunin’s depiction is the combination of seemingly incompatible things. It is no coincidence that Bunin once wrote in his diary: “And again, again such an unspeakable - sweet sadness from that eternal deception of another spring, hopes and love for the whole world that you want with tears

gratitude to kiss the ground. Lord, Lord, why are you torturing us like this?”

The strange connection between love and death is constantly emphasized by Bunin, and therefore it is no coincidence that the title of the collection “Dark Alleys” here does not mean “shady” at all - these are dark, tragic, tangled labyrinths of love.

About the book of stories “Dark Alleys” G. Adamovich rightly wrote: “All love is great happiness, a “gift of the gods,” even if it is not shared. That’s why Bunin’s book exudes happiness, that’s why it’s imbued with gratitude to life, to the world in which, despite all its imperfections, happiness can happen.”

True love is great happiness, even if it ends in separation, death, and tragedy. This conclusion, albeit late, is reached by many of Bunin’s heroes who have lost, overlooked, or destroyed their love. In this late repentance, late spiritual resurrection, enlightenment of the heroes lies that all-purifying melody, which speaks of the imperfection of people who have not yet learned to live, recognize and value real feelings, and of the imperfection of life itself, social conditions, the environment, circumstances that often interfere with truly human relationships, and most importantly - about those high emotions that leave an unfading trace of spiritual beauty, generosity, devotion and purity.

Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his destiny uniqueness against the background of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with special meaning.

This mystery of existence becomes the theme of Bunin’s story “The Grammar of Love” (1915). The hero of the work, a certain Ivlev, having stopped on the way to the house of the recently deceased landowner Khvoshchinsky, reflects on “an incomprehensible love that turned an entire human life into some kind of ecstatic life, which, perhaps, should have been the most ordinary life,” if not for the strange charm of the maid Lushki. It seems to me that the mystery lies not in the appearance of Lushka, who “was not at all good-looking,” but in the character of the landowner himself, who idolized his beloved. “But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some dazed, focused soul?” According to neighboring landowners. Khvoshchinsky “was known in the district as a rare clever man. And suddenly this love fell on him, this Lushka, then her unexpected death - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and sat on her bed for more than twenty years...” What can you call it? is this a twenty year seclusion? Insanity? For Bunin, the answer to this question is not at all clear.

The fate of Khvoshchinsky strangely fascinates and worries Ivlev. He understands that Lushka entered his life forever, awakening in him “a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in an Italian town when looking at the relics of a saint.” What made Ivlev buy from Khvoshchinsky’s heir “at an expensive price” a small book “The Grammar of Love”, which the old landowner did not part with, cherishing the memories of Lushka? Ivlev would like to understand what the life of a madman in love was filled with, what his orphaned soul was fed for many years. And following the hero of the story, the “grandchildren and great-grandsons” who have heard the “voluptuous legend about the hearts of those who loved,” and along with them the reader of Bunin’s work, will try to reveal the secret of this inexplicable feeling.

An attempt to understand the nature of love feelings by the author in the story “Sunstroke” (1925). “A strange adventure” shakes the lieutenant’s soul. Having parted with a beautiful stranger, he cannot find peace. At the thought of the impossibility of meeting this woman again, “he felt such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was overcome by horror and despair.” The author convinces the reader of the seriousness of the feelings experienced by the hero of the story. The lieutenant feels “terribly unhappy in this city.” "Where to go? What to do?" - he thinks lost. The depth of the hero’s spiritual insight is clearly expressed in the final phrase of the story: “The lieutenant was sitting under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.” How to explain what happened to him? Maybe the hero came into contact with that great feeling that people call love, and the feeling of the impossibility of loss led him to realize the tragedy of existence?

The torment of a loving soul, the bitterness of loss, the sweet pain of memories - such unhealed wounds are left in the destinies of Bunin's heroes by love, and time has no power over it.

The story “Dark Alleys” (1935) depicts a chance meeting of people who loved each other thirty years ago. The situation is quite ordinary: a young nobleman easily parted with the serf girl Nadezhda who was in love with him and married a woman of his circle. And Nadezhda, having received her freedom from the masters, became the owner of an inn and never got married, had no family, no children, and did not know ordinary everyday happiness. “No matter how much time passed, she lived alone,” she admits to Nikolai Alekseevich. – Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten... I could never forgive you. Just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have anything later.” She could not change herself, her feelings. And Nikolai Alekseevich realized that in Nadezhda he had lost “the most precious thing he had in life.” But this is a momentary epiphany. Leaving the inn, he “remembered with shame his last words and the fact that he kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame.” And yet it is difficult for him to imagine Nadezhda as his wife, the mistress of the Petegbug house, the mother of his children... This gentleman attaches too much importance to class prejudices to prefer genuine feelings to them. But he paid for his cowardice with a lack of personal happiness.

How differently the characters in the story interpret what happened to them! For Nikolai Alekseevich this is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” but for Nadezhda it is not dying memories, many years of devotion to love.

A passionate and deep feeling permeates the last, fifth book of the novel “The Life of Arsenyev” - “Lika”. It was based on the transformed experiences of Bunin himself, his youthful love for V.V. Pashchenko. In the novel, death and oblivion recede before the power of love, before the heightened sense - of the hero and the author - of life.

In the theme of love, Bunin reveals himself as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many literary artists have dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them found something unique and individual about this topic. It seems to me that the peculiarity of Bunin the artist is that he considers love to be a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of both infinitely elevating and destroying a person.

Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal mystery, and every reader of Bunin’s works seeks his own answers, reflecting on the mysteries of love. The perception of this feeling is very personal, and therefore someone will treat what is depicted in the book as a “vulgar story,” while others will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a poet or musician, is not given to everyone. But one thing is certain: Bunin’s stories telling about the most intimate things will not leave readers indifferent. Every young person will find in Bunin’s works something consonant with his own thoughts and experiences, and will touch the great mystery of love. This is what makes the author of “Sunstroke” always a modern writer who arouses deep reader interest.

Abstract on literature

Topic: “The theme of love in the works of Bunin”

Completed

Student of the “” class

Moscow 2004

Bibliography

1. O.N. Mikhailov – “Russian literature of the 20th century”

2. S.N. Morozov - “The Life of Arsenyev. Stories"

3. B.K. Zaitsev - “Youth - Ivan Bunin”

4. Literary critical articles.

For the first time in the history of Russian literature, the theme of love in Bunin’s works reveals not only the platonic, but also the physical side of love relationships. The writer in his work tries to correlate what is going on in a person’s heart with the demands that society places on him, whose life is built on the relationship of purchase and sale and in which dark, wild instincts often come to the fore. Nevertheless, the author touches on the intimate side of relationships between people with extraordinary tact.

The theme of love in Bunin's works is the first bold statement that physical passion does not always come after an impulse of the soul, which in life sometimes happens the other way around. For example, this happens with the heroes of his story “Sunstroke.” Ivan Alekseevich in his works describes love in all its versatility - sometimes it appears in the guise of great joy, sometimes it turns into severe disappointment, at the same time it is both spring and autumn in a person’s life.

Early creativity

The theme of love in Bunin’s works of the early period of his work cannot leave anyone indifferent. The stories “Dawn All Night”, “In August”, “In Autumn” and several others are very short, simple, but significant. The feelings experienced by the heroes are most often ambivalent. Rarely do Bunin's characters come to harmonious relationships - their impulses much more often disappear before they really have time to arise. However, the thirst for love continues to burn in their hearts. A sad farewell to a beloved ends in dreams (“In August”), a date leaves a strong imprint on the memory, because it testifies to a touch of real feeling (“In Autumn”). And, for example, the heroine of the story “Dawn All Night” is imbued with a premonition of strong love that a young girl is ready to pour out on her future chosen one. However, disappointment comes to the young heroes as quickly as the hobby itself. Bunin is extremely talented in revealing this difference between reality and dreams. After the full singing of nightingales and the spring-like tender trembling of the night in the garden, the sounds of gunfire reach Tata through his sleep. Her fiancé shoots a jackdaw, and the girl suddenly realizes that she is not capable of loving this ordinary, down-to-earth person.

“Mitya’s Love” (1924) - one of Bunin’s best works about love

In the 20s, during the period of the writer’s emigration, the theme of love in Bunin’s works was enriched with new shades. In his story “Mitya’s Love” (1924), the author consistently talks about how the spiritual development of the main character is gradually carried out, how life leads him from love to collapse. The sublime feelings in this story closely resonate with reality. Mitya's love for Katya and his bright hopes seem to be shrouded in a vague feeling of anxiety. A girl dreaming of becoming a great actress finds herself in the midst of fake metropolitan life and cheats on her lover. Even a connection with another woman - the down-to-earth, albeit prominent Alyonka - failed to alleviate Mitya’s spiritual torment. As a result, the hero, unprotected and unprepared to face the cruel reality, decides to commit suicide.

The theme of love triangles in the works of I. Bunin

Sometimes the theme of love in Bunin’s works is revealed from the other side; they show the eternal problem of love triangles (husband-wife-lover). Vivid examples of such stories are “The Caucasus”, “Ida”, “The Fairest of the Sun”. Marriage in these works becomes an insurmountable obstacle to the desired happiness. It is in these stories that the image of love as a “sunstroke” first appears, which finds its further development in the “Dark Alleys” cycle.

“Dark Alleys” is the writer’s most famous series of stories

The theme of love in this cycle (“Dark Alleys”, “Tanya”, “Late Hour”, “Russia”, “Business Cards”, etc.) is a momentary flash, bodily pleasures, to which the heroes are driven by genuine hot passion. But it doesn't end there. “Sunstroke” gradually leads the characters to inexpressible selfless tenderness, and then to true love. The author refers to images of lonely people and ordinary life. And that is why memories of the past, covered with romantic impressions, seem so wonderful for his heroes. However, even here, after people become closer both spiritually and physically, it is as if nature itself leads them to inevitable separation, and sometimes to death.

"Mr. from San Francisco" - a bold interpretation of love relationships

The skill of describing the details of everyday life, as well as the touching description of love inherent in all the stories of the cycle, reaches its apogee in 1944, when Bunin finishes work on the story “Clean Monday,” which tells about the fate of a woman who left life and love for a monastery.

And the theme of love in Bunin’s understanding was revealed especially clearly with the help of the story “The Gentleman from San Francisco.” This is a story about the lowest and ugliest manifestations of a distorted great feeling. Falseness, deceit, automatism and lifelessness, which became the cause of the inability to love, are especially strongly emphasized in the images of “Mr. from San Francisco”.

Bunin himself considered love to be the feeling that frees a person from the captivity of everything superficial, makes him unusually natural and brings him closer to nature.

The theme of love occupies a special place in the works of Bunin and Kuprin. Of course, writers described this feeling in different ways and discovered new aspects of its manifestation. There are also similar features: they talk about both an all-consuming passion and a tragic feeling that does not stand the test of life situations. The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin shows it in all its diversity, allowing us to see new facets of this feeling.

A game of contrasts

The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin is often shown in the contrast of the characters of the main characters. If we analyze their works, we can note that in most of them one of the lovers has a stronger character and is ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of their feelings. The other side turns out to be weaker, for which public opinion or personal ambitions are more important than feelings.

This can be seen in the example of the heroes of Bunin's story "Dark Alleys". Both heroes met by chance and remembered the time when they were in love. The heroine, Nadezhda, carried love throughout her life - she never met someone who could outshine the image of Nikolai Alekseevich. He got married, however, without having strong feelings for his wife, but he didn’t regret it much. To think that the innkeeper could become his wife, the mistress of the house - for him it was unthinkable. And if Nadezhda was ready to do anything to be with her beloved and continued to love him, then Nikolai Alekseevich is shown as a person for whom social status and public opinion are more important.

The same contrast can be seen in Kuprin’s work “Olesya”. The Polesie witch is shown as a girl with a warm heart, capable of great feeling, ready to sacrifice not only her well-being, but also the peace of her loved ones for the sake of her lover. Ivan Timofeevich is a man of a gentle character, his heart is lazy, incapable of experiencing love of the strength that Olesya had. He did not follow the call of his heart, its movement, so he only had the girl’s beads as a souvenir of this love.

Love in the works of Kuprin

Despite the fact that both writers considered a bright feeling to be a manifestation of goodness, nevertheless, they describe it slightly differently. The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin has various manifestations; if you read their works, you can understand that most often the relationships they describe have differences.

Thus, A.I. Kuprin most often talks about tragic love, sacrificial love; for a writer, true love certainly had to be accompanied by life’s trials. Because a strong and all-consuming feeling could not bring happiness to the beloved. Such love could not be simple. This can be seen in his works, such as “Olesya”, “Garnet Bracelet”, “Shulamith”, etc. But for the heroes, even such love is happiness, and they are grateful that they had such a strong feeling.

Love in Bunin's stories

For writers, a bright feeling is the most beautiful thing that could happen to a person. Therefore, the theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin occupied a special place, which is why their works worried readers so much. But they each understood it in their own way. In the works of I. A. Bunin, love is a flash of emotions, a happy moment that suddenly appears in life, and then ends just as abruptly. Therefore, in his stories, the characters evoke conflicting feelings among readers.

Thus, the story “Sunstroke” shows a flash of love, a moment of love that illuminated the lives of two people for a brief moment. And after they broke up, the main character felt many years older. Because this fleeting love took away all the best that was in him. Or in the story “Dark Alleys,” the main character continued to love, but was never able to forgive her lover’s weaknesses. And he, although he understood that she had given him her best years, continued to believe that he had done the right thing. And if in Kuprin’s work, love was certainly tragic, then in Bunin it is shown as a more complex feeling.

The unusual side of a bright feeling

Although love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin is a sincere, real relationship between two people, sometimes love can be completely different. This is precisely the side shown in the story “The Mister from San Francisco.” Although this work is not about love, in one episode it is said that one happy couple walked around the ship and everyone, looking at her, saw two lovers. And only the captain knew that they were hired specifically to play a strong feeling.

It would seem, what could this have to do with the theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin? This also happens - this also applies to actors who play lovers on stage, and to such couples who were hired on purpose. But it also happens that a real feeling can arise between such artists. On the other hand, someone, looking at them, gains hope that he will also have love in his life.

The role of details in the description

The description of the feeling of love in both A.I. Kuprin and I.A. Bunin occurs against the background of a detailed description of the everyday life of the heroes. This allows us to show how strong feelings flow in simple life. How can the characters’ attitude towards familiar things and phenomena change? And some details of the characters’ everyday life allow us to better understand the characters’ personalities. The writers managed to organically combine everyday life and bright feeling.

Can everyone feel

In the essay “The Theme of Love in the Works of Bunin and Kuprin” it is also worth noting that only strong people can experience a real feeling, sacrifice everything for their beloved and love him all their lives. After all, why can’t the heroes of their works be together? Because a strong personality falls in love with someone who cannot experience a feeling of equal strength. But thanks to this contrast, the love of such heroes looks even stronger and sincere. A. I. Kuprin and I. A. Bunin wrote about a bright feeling in its various manifestations, so that readers would understand that whatever love there is, it is happiness that it happened in life, and a person should be grateful for what he has He has the ability to love.

Literature

Features of the theme of love in the works of I.A. Bunin

Performed:

9th grade student

Teacher:

Markovich L.V.

1 Introduction 3

2 Main part

1) Views of Bunin 6

2) “Dark Alleys” 10

3) "Natalie" 12

4) “Clean Monday” 14

3 Conclusion 17

4 Bibliography 20

introduction

“Love is an intimate and deep feeling directed at another person, human community or idea. Love includes impulse and the will to constancy, taking shape in the ethical demand for fidelity. Love arises as the most free and “unpredictable” expression of the depths of personality; it cannot be forced or overcome,” - this is exactly the definition of love that I.T. Frolov’s philosophical dictionary gives us, but how can a person who has never experienced love, after reading this definition, understand what kind of feeling it is. Certainly not. Love is a feeling that cannot be defined. Each person will have his own, because love is individual and in some sense unique, reflecting the unique features of each person’s life path. In addition, we can say that love is the pursuit of an ideal. When a person falls in love, his love becomes the living embodiment of an ideal that already exists for him not somewhere in the distant future, but today, now, this minute. Having fallen in love, a person begins to see and appreciate in his beloved what sometimes others do not see or appreciate. Love inspires people to write poetry, music, paintings. A person always thinks about love, needs it, waits for it, strives for it. And people have no stronger feeling than love. Neither fear, nor envy, nor malicious hatred - nothing can overcome love.

In literature, the theme of love is one of the eternal themes. An endless number of works have been and will be written about love.

The topic of my essay is “Features of the theme of love in the collection of stories by I.A. Bunin “Dark Alleys”.”

Bunin's stories made a strong impression on me. When you read works on the same topic by different authors, you seem to involuntarily compare them, noticing similarities and differences. Most often it happens that the plots are different, the authors present the problem differently, but they see it the same way. However, the first time I read Bunin’s stories, I was amazed at how he not only presents, but also sees love. I discovered a completely different, unlike anything else, “Bunin’s love.” I wanted to understand and understand Bunin’s views on love, which is why I chose this topic for the essay.

I believe that the theme of love is relevant, and I would like to express its relevance in the words of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky: “Life without love is not life, but existence. It is impossible to live without love; that is why the soul was given to man, to love.” Indeed, as long as Peace exists on Earth, people will experience this great feeling - love. After reading the collection of stories “Dark Alleys,” I found out that love for Bunin is the greatest happiness bestowed on man. But eternal doom hangs over her. Love is always associated with tragedy; true love does not have a happy ending, because a person has to pay for moments of happiness. To prove this, I set myself the following tasks:

Study the biography of Bunin and his views on love.

Research critical literature related to the topic of the essay.

Analyze some of the stories included in the collection “Dark Alleys”.

Draw conclusions and present material on this topic

Bunin's views

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is one of the most prominent Russian writers of the twentieth century. In 1933 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He was excellent at both poetry and prose, both short stories and novels. Speaking about Bunin, one cannot remain silent about the main circumstance of his literary and everyday fate. In 1917, the social drama of a writer who always lived in the interests of Russia began. Not understanding the October Revolution, the writer left his homeland forever in 1920. Emigration became a truly tragic milestone in Bunin’s biography. Poverty and indifference were painful to bear for Ivan Alekseevich. However, the terrible events with the Nazis coming to power were perceived immeasurably more acutely. Bunin constantly monitored the front and hid people persecuted by the Nazis. He saw the victory of the Russian people over the Germans. In 1945, he was happy for his Fatherland. A. Bobrenko cites the bitter words of Ivan Alekseevich, spoken on March 30, 1943: “... the days pass in great monotony, in weakness and idleness. About a year and a half ago, I wrote a whole book of new stories in a very short time, now I only occasionally pick up the pen - my hands fall off: why and for whom should I write?” We are talking here about stories published under the general title “Dark Alleys.” The first version of the collection appeared in the USA in 1943. Then Bunin, also in a “short time,” replenished it and published it in 1946 in Paris. Working on the collection was a source of spiritual inspiration for Bunin during the war years. The author himself considered the works of the collection “Dark Alleys”, begun and completed

from 1937 to 1944, its highest achievement. I.V. Odintsova recalled “Bunin’s heated objections to a remark about his glory: “What did this Nobel Prize - and how much I dreamed about it - bring me? Some damn shards. And did foreigners appreciate me? So I wrote my best book, “Dark Alleys,” but not a single French publisher wants to take it.” The stories in this cycle are fictional, which Bunin himself emphasized more than once. However, everything, including their retrospective form, is caused, as always in art, by the state of the author’s soul. A.V. Bakhrakh once asked: “Ivan Alekseevich, have you ever tried to compile your Don Juan list?” To which Bunin replied: “Then it would be better to make a list of unused opportunities, but your tactless question awakened a swarm of memories in me. What an amazing time - youth! There were so many meetings, unforgettable moments! Life passes quickly, and we begin to appreciate it only when everything else is behind us.” Such moments of return to the most vivid, powerful experience are reproduced in the cycle. The mood for him is given by N.P. Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Tale,” to which Bunin does not very accurately refer when explaining the origin of his story “Dark Alleys.” The collection “Dark Alleys” became the embodiment of all the writer’s many years of thoughts about love, which he saw everywhere, since for him this concept was very broad. He sees love in a special light. At the same time, it reflects the feelings that each person experienced. From this point of view, love is not some special, abstract concept, but, on the contrary, common to everyone. The main theme of the cycle is the theme of love, but this is no longer just love, but love that reveals the most secret corners of the human soul, love as the basis of life and as that illusory happiness that we all strive for, but, alas, so often miss. “Dark Alleys” is a multifaceted, diverse work. Bunin shows human relationships in all manifestations: sublime passion, quite ordinary desires, novels “out of nothing to do,” animal manifestations of passion.

Bunin is in love with love. For him, this is the most beautiful feeling on earth, incomparable to anything else. And yet love destroys destinies. The writer never tired of repeating that every strong love avoids marriage. An earthly feeling is only a short flash in a person’s life, and Bunin tries to preserve these wonderful moments in his stories. In the collection “Dark Alleys” we will not find a single story where love would end in marriage. Lovers are separated either by relatives, or by circumstances, or by death. It seems that death for Bunin is preferable to a long family life side by side. It shows love at its peak, but never at its decline.

Critics have repeatedly spoken about the tragic nature of Bunin’s views, which united love and death. But this is how he himself explained to I.V. Odoevtseva this motive: “Don’t you really know that love and death are inseparable? Every time I experienced a love catastrophe - and there were many of these love catastrophes in my life, or rather, almost every love of mine was a catastrophe - I was close to suicide. This means that the writer did not at all initially, not naturally, connect the light of life and the darkness of non-existence. But only in a catastrophic situation.

The words of one unknown philosopher are very close to the views of the writer: “They sought and idolized love. She was lost and not taken care of. “Love doesn’t exist,” people said, but they themselves died of love.”

According to Bunin, love is a certain highest main moment of existence that illuminates a person’s life, and Bunin in the face of love sees the opposition to death: if a person’s life is filled with love, then it lasts longer. But for Bunin, “happy, lasting” love, with which he simply has nothing to do, is not so important as short-lived love, which, like a flash, illuminates a person’s life, filling it with joyful emotions. Such love for Bunin quickly ends, but does not die, and with this idea of ​​love, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin writes a series of short stories under the general title “Dark Alleys.” First of all, all the stories are united by the motif of memories of youth and homeland. All or almost all of the stories in “Dark Alleys” are told in the past tense. Sometimes it is explicitly stated that past events are being reproduced. “In that distant time, he spent himself especially recklessly...” - “Tanya.” “He didn’t sleep, lay there, smoked and mentally looked at that summer” - “Rusya” “That summer I put on a student cap for the first time” - “Natalie.” In another case, the effect of the past is conveyed more subtly. For example, in "Clean

Monday” “Every evening the coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretching trotter...”, and in the end

definitely: “In the fourteenth year, on New Year’s Eve, there was the same quiet, sunny evening as that unforgettable one...”. Everywhere we talk about what human memory has retained.

At first glance, it may seem that all the stories are similar to each other and satisfy only such thematic divisions of the book as: love, life, death. But these themes coexist and intertwine in every story. Bunin himself designated parts of “Dark Alleys” with Roman numerals: I, II, III, placing the stories under them, probably in a strict sequence known only to him. Vyacheslav Shugaev, in his book “The Experiences of a Reading Man,” tried to decipher Roman numerals in more detail so that the connections and differences between the parts would become clearer. Perhaps we can assume that the main motive, indicated by the number I, is whimsicality, the whimsicality of the emergence of passion, its inappropriateness in the world around us and the necessity of retribution for this inappropriateness: broken, ruined destinies. Number II - the impossibility of separation for those who love - they can

either die, or fill your future life with the torment of memories and longing for departed love. Number III - the inscrutability of the female soul, its dark, sublime frantic service to passion. But perhaps all this is not true. In Bunin, kindred spirits unite in love, there is so much sacrificial devotion in this union, so much frenzied tenderness in the “struggle not equal to two hearts,” that love seems to overflow beyond the limits prepared for it by nature and tragically extinguishes. It was these inexpressible heartaches, caused not by a lack of love, but by its excess, that worried Bunin most of all, as a manifestation, it is appropriate to assume, of a purely Russian understanding of feeling. For love, or rather, tormented by love, Russian people went to the chopping block, to hard labor, shot themselves, went on a spree, and became a monk. We need fervor, akin to religious, in the service of love - this is what Bunin stood for and preached in “Dark Alleys”.

For analysis, I chose, in my opinion, the most striking works from each part.

"Dark alleys"

This story depicts a chance meeting of people who loved each other thirty years ago. The situation is quite ordinary: a young nobleman easily parted with the serf girl Nadezhda who was in love with him and married a woman from his circle. And Nadezhda, having received her freedom from the masters, became the owner of an inn and never got married, had no family, no children, and did not know ordinary everyday happiness. Throughout her life she carried her love for the master who had once seduced her. He is not able to rise to her high feelings, to understand why Nadezhda did not marry “with such beauty that she had.” How can you love one person all your life? Meanwhile, for Nadezhda Nikolenka remained an ideal, the one and only, for the rest of her life. “No matter how much time passed, she lived alone,” she confesses to Nikolai Alekseevich. Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten... I could never forgive you. Just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, I didn’t have anything later.” She could not change herself, her feelings. And Nikolai Alekseevich realized that in Nadezhda he had lost “the most precious thing he had in life.” But this is a momentary epiphany. Leaving the inn, he “remembered with shame his words and the fact that he kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame.” And yet it was difficult for him to imagine Nadezhda as his wife, the mistress of the St. Petersburg house, the mother of his children. This gentleman attaches too much importance to class prejudices to prefer genuine feelings to them. But he paid for his cowardice with a lack of personal happiness.

How differently the characters in the story interpret what happened to them! For Nikolai Alekseevich, this is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” but for Nadezhda, not dying memories, many years of devotion to love.

Yes, perhaps Nadezhda is not happy now, many years later, but how strong that feeling was, how much joy it brought, that it is impossible to forget about it. That is, love for the heroine is happiness, but happiness with the constant, aching pain of memories.

"Natalie"

The love story of first-year student Meshchersky for the young beauty Natalie Senkevich is conveyed in his memoirs about a long period - from his first acquaintance with the girl to her untimely death. Memory brings out the unusual, incomprehensible in the past and helps to understand it. Meshchersky's friends called him a “monk.” He himself did not want to “violate his purity, to seek love without romance.” Natalie is not only not vicious, but has a proud, refined soul. They immediately fell in love with each other. And the story is about their breakup and long loneliness. There is only one external reason - an unexpectedly awakened feeling on the eve of a meeting with Natalie, the young man’s attraction to the bodily charms of his cousin Sonya. The internal process is very complex. As always with Bunin, all the eventual turns are barely indicated. The phenomenon that occupies the author is deeply comprehended in its internal development. Already at the end of the second chapter, a contradiction is felt in the hero’s thoughts:

“... how can I now live in this duality - in secret meetings with Sonya and next to Natalie, the very thought of whom already covers me with such pure love delight.” Why is there a rapprochement with Sonya? The writer reveals its external causes - the common desire among young people for early sensuality, the girl’s premature female maturity, her bold and free disposition.

But the main thing is not in them. Meshchersky himself cannot tear himself away from the hot embrace. His memory preserves the intoxication of these meetings. Fully aware of the criminality of his dual behavior, he cannot choose one thing for himself.

The question seems painfully insoluble to the young man: “Why did God punish me so much, for what did he give me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such painful beauty of Natalie’s adoration and such bodily rapture for Sonya?” He first calls both experiences love. Only time will tell the poverty and deceitfulness of purely physical intimacy. It was enough for Meshchersky not to see Sonya for five days, and he forgot his sensual obsession, but it happened too late; Natalie found out about the betrayal. And Natalie’s long-term separation (her marriage with an unloved person, Meshchersky’s own relationship with a peasant woman) only fueled an unquenchable high feeling, giving both a genuine, albeit secret and short, marriage. The author ends the happiness of the lovers with the last, as if casually mentioned, phrase of the story: “In December, she died on Lake Geneva in premature birth.”

The main character, and this is where he differs from many, carries in his soul the rare gift of adoration for his beloved, and has the ability to understand his mistakes (even if not immediately, with great losses). And yet Meshchersky is unhappy for a long time, lonely, shocked by his own, so unexpected guilt.

The story “Natalie” revealed a new facet of the writer’s artistic generalizations. For the first time in Bunin, a person overcomes the imperfection of his consciousness, feels dissatisfaction from purely carnal pleasures, and the memory of them brings sobering. But such an experience is rare. For the most part, other feelings win out. Apparently, this is why the author ends the union of Meshchersky and Natalie with her death.

"Clean Monday"

Recognition of a hero, but how impulsive they are, internally abrupt, uncertain. And the reader immediately understands why to the Narrator (he is nameless, like her) everything seems like an obsession and a surprise. “I don’t know how all this should end”; “For some reason she studied at the courses...”; “What was left for me but hope”; “...for some reason we went to Ordynka.” Moreover, from the very beginning he admits that he “tried not to think, not to overthink it.” Only he is more open, kind, but frankly frivolous, subject to the power of chance and the elements. It was not for him to understand his friend, the complete opposite of himself. The refined skill of the writer was reflected here in the fact that in the language of such a person he was able to convey all the complex, serious nature of the heroine. Wouldn't it have been easier to tell the story from her perspective? But then we would not feel the exclusivity of this female character. “And as much as I was prone to talkativeness, she was so silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be mentally delving into something” - this is the first impression of the mysterious woman. The inconsistency of her behavior is immediately apparent: mockery of abundant food, luxury and participation in lunches and dinners “with a Moscow understanding of the matter”; irony over theatrical and other tinsel and constant social entertainment; accepting a man’s impudent caresses and refusing to have a serious conversation about their relationship. “I didn’t resist anything, but I was silent all the time.” The heroine’s hidden desires also suddenly shocked the fan. They spent every evening in the best restaurants in Moscow, taking advantage of their wealth, youth, striking everyone with their rare beauty. And then, at her suggestion, they ended up in the Novodevichy Convent. It turned out that she goes to the Rogozhskoye cemetery, where the flavor of pre-Petrine Russia is so strong, to the Kremlin cathedrals, to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and is fascinated by ancient Russian texts.

The author expands his impressions of this internally contradictory nature of the heroine with reference to the no less different origins of the capital. Moscow of those years, indeed, was a combination of the hoary antiquity of monasteries and cathedrals with the latest cultural achievements: the Art Theater, the work of the Symbolists, the works of L. Andreev, the translated works of Spitzler. The realities of such a varied environment are unobtrusively included in the narrative. Unobtrusively, because the heroine’s inner gaze is directed towards these contradictions. The writer speaks not so much about the intellectual development of this strange woman, but about the struggle in her soul of different aspirations. It is not for nothing that V. Bryusov is mentioned with his not devoid of vulgarity novel “Fire Angel”. Przybyshevsky, who spoke out against the “old” morality, “drunken” skits: And on the other hand, the Orthodox monasteries, finally, the heroine uttered the words of the 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...” This is the peak of the clash of opposites: “permissiveness,” the vulgarity of pleasures and suppression of the flesh, asceticism, purification of the spirit. It is these incompatible impulses that a woman unites in her being. Again, the subtext expresses the dream of merging the healthy demands of human happiness with the highest spiritual beauty. A dream that goes back to the ideal of love.

The heroine, however, believes in the wisdom of Tolstoy’s 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.” Nevertheless, she tries to “drink” her share of joy.

In a kaleidoscope of changing scenes: a restaurant, an evening living room, the Novodevichy cemetery, Egorov’s tavern, the skit party of the Art Theater - the decision of the heroine of the story grows in separate “seeds”: from a grin at the talkativeness of her admirer, to submission to his caresses, to the exclamation: “It’s true, how you like me love!”, to admiring him, “very beautiful,” to the last step - sharing his passion. But, apparently, she got little from that night; in the morning she left for a monastery forever. And there she did not find peace - she continued to grieve.

What does the heroine of the story “Clean Monday” cleanse herself of? It seems clear - from an idle worldly life. Then why, after “Forgiveness Sunday,” does she find herself in the arms of a man? No, there were other sins behind her: pride, contempt for people. She wanted to trust them and her feminine strength, to love the best person she met on her life’s path. And I couldn’t. The story is written with unusual conciseness and virtuosic depiction. Every stroke, color, and detail plays an important role in the external movement of the plot and becomes a sign of some internal trends (what is the heroine’s last black-velvet secular outfit in combination with the hairstyle of the Shamakhan queen). In vague forebodings and mature thoughts, the bright, changeable appearance of this woman, the author embodied his ideas about a contradictory atmosphere, about the complex layers of the human soul, about the emergence of some new moral ideal. It is not surprising that Bunin considered “Clean Monday” the best story in the collection.

Conclusion

In the theme of love, Bunin reveals himself as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul that is wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many word artists have dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them has found something unique and individual in this theme. From my work it follows that the peculiarity of Bunin, the artist, is that he considers love to be a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of infinitely elevating and destroying a person. Bunin also especially sees the images of the heroes of his stories.

The image of a woman is the attractive force that constantly attracts Bunin. He creates a gallery of such images, each story has its own. The writer addresses the destinies of completely different women. Social status ceases to matter when feelings come into play. A woman is inseparable from nature. It is almost always connected to a forest, a field, the sea, or clouds. She is part of it and therefore, apparently, is endowed with such spontaneous, uncontrollable power as wind, lightning, flood. Perhaps, under the influence of this force, so much mental torment was brought into “Dark Alleys”? all the images delight, it seems that the author is in love with each of them. All the feelings that these women experience have a right to exist. Let this be the first bright love, passion for an unworthy person, a feeling of revenge, lust and worship. And it makes absolutely no difference whether you are a peasant or a lady. The main thing is that you are a woman.

The male images in Bunin's stories are somewhat darkened, blurred, and the characters are not too defined. In almost all the stories, the man is the same: ardent, spiritually vigilant, full of compassion for a woman and somewhat contemplative - this is how a man should be who is worthy of love and finds it. Bunin deliberately does not endow him with characteristic uniqueness, so that it does not prevent the hero in all his love searches and adventures from being heartily attentive, sensually observant and tirelessly admiring a woman, worshiping her spiritual secrets. It is important for the writer to understand what feelings these men experience, what pushes them towards women, why they love them. The reader does not need to know what this or that man is like, what he looks like, what his advantages and disadvantages are. He participates in the story insofar as love is a feeling of two.

Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his fate a unique flavor against the backdrop of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with special meaning. Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal mystery, and every reader of Bunin’s works seeks his own answers, reflecting on the mysteries of love. The perception of this feeling is personal, and therefore someone will treat what is depicted in the book as a “vulgar story,” while others will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a writer, is not given to everyone. Every young person will find in Bunin’s works something consonant with his own thoughts and experiences, and will touch the great mystery of love. This is what makes the author of “Dark Alleys” always a modern writer, arousing deep reader interest. Readers may sometimes have a question: does the writer create artificial barriers on the heroes’ path to happiness? No, the fact is that people themselves do not strive to fight. They can experience happiness, but only for a moment, and then it disappears like water into sand. And that’s why many of Bunin’s stories are so tragic. Sometimes in one short line the writer reveals the collapse of hopes, the harsh mockery of fate. The stories of the “Dark Alleys” series are an example of amazing Russian psychological prose, in which love has always been one of the eternal secrets that word artists sought to reveal. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, in my opinion, was one of those brilliant writers who came closest to solving this mystery.

Bibliography

1. Arkhangelsky A.A.; Russian writers - Nobel laureates bonuses;

Moscow, 1991

2. Adamovich G.V.; Loneliness and freedom./ Comp., author. preface and approx. V. Kreid / M.: Republic, 1996.

3. Bunin I.A.; Collected works in 9 volumes; Moscow, “Fiction”, 1967.

4. Bunin I.A.; Poems, stories, novellas; Moscow, “Fiction”, 1973.

5.Russian writers; Bio-bibliographic dictionary./Ed. P.A. Nikolaeva / Moscow, “Enlightenment”, 1990.

6. Smirnova L.A.; I.A.Bunin: Life and creativity; Book for teachers; Moscow, “Enlightenment”, 1991.

7. Philosophical Dictionary./ Ed. I.T. Frolova. – 6th ed. reworked and additional/. Moscow, Politizdat, 1991.

8. Shugaev V.M.; Experiences of a reading person; Moscow, Sovremennik, 1988.

An essay on the works of I. A. Bunin using the examples of the stories “Cold Autumn” and “Sunstroke”.

The theme of love in the stories of I. A. Bunin

Love has always occupied a key position in the work of many writers. This is how it was with I. A. Bunin. In his works, she is assigned a special role: love is always tragic, it reveals the innermost, even what a person would like to hide from everyone. About this amazing feeling, capable of bringing both great happiness and extreme suffering, I. A. Bunin wrote a series of stories “Dark Alleys”, each of which understands Bunin’s love from different sides.

In the story “Cold Autumn,” the main character fell in love with a man who soon died in the war. He knew that this could happen, and advised his beloved to live without him, to enjoy the world while he waited for her on the other side. The heroine lives, gets married, takes care of her husband’s nephew, but in her own twilight she understands that the time that has passed since the death of her true love cannot be called life, it is only existence. The heroine asks herself: “Yes, and what happened in my life? Only that cold autumn evening.” She is ready to die because death is better than life without love. The story ends with a very strong phrase: “I lived, I was happy, now I’ll come back soon.” She is not afraid of death, she waits for it as salvation, the opportunity to finally be with her loved one, even if not in this life.

Also clearly the tragedy of love in the perception of I. A. Bunin is shown in his separate story “Sunstroke”. This is the story of two already mature people who met each other precisely at that moment in life when they needed this meeting. There are no accidents in Bunin's work, it was fate. But the heroes are not teenagers, the woman is bound by obligations, and although the reader sees that this is true love, this meeting leads to absolutely nothing. The heroes get off the ferry in order to be together for at least a few hours, however, parting with the one whom he has already fallen in love with, the lieutenant no longer knows what to do in this city. “It was all so stupid, so ridiculous that he fled from the market.” Nothing makes sense anymore. “The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.” The love of the heroes is mutual, their feelings are sincere, but their meeting leads nowhere, leaving in the heart the sweet bitterness of the feelings they experienced.

“All love is great happiness, even if it is not shared,” says I. A. Bunin. In his understanding, love is a spontaneous feeling, a person cannot control it, but without it life is empty and meaningless. It’s better to burn with love, break your heart, but fall in love, than not experience this feeling at all!