How many short stories are included in the collection Dark Alleys. Dark Alleys (2011)

Annotation

Storybook " Dark alleys» Ivan Bunin, winner of the most prestigious Nobel Prize in the world, is rightfully considered the standard of love prose. Bunin was the only writer of his time who dared to speak so openly and beautifully about the relationship between a man and a woman - about love that can last just a moment, or maybe a lifetime... “Dark Alleys” shocks with its frankness and exquisite sensuality. This is probably one of the best books Russian literature of the twentieth century.

Ivan Bunin

Dark alleys

Late hour

Gorgeous

Antigone

Business Cards

Zoyka and Valeria

Galya Ganskaya

River Inn

"Madrid"

Second coffee pot

Cold autumn

Steamship "Saratov"

One hundred rupees

Clean Monday

Spring, in Judea

Ivan Bunin

Dark alleys

Dark alleys

In cold autumn weather, on one of the big Tula roads, flooded with rain and cut by many black ruts, to a long hut, in one connection there was a state postal station, and in the other a private room, where you could rest or spend the night, dine or ask for a samovar , a carriage covered in mud with the top half-raised, three rather simple horses with their tails tied up from the slush, rolled up. On the box of the tarantass sat a strong man in a tightly belted overcoat, serious and dark-faced, with a sparse pitch beard, looking like an old robber, and in the tarantass a slender old military man in a large cap and in a Nikolaev gray overcoat with a beaver stand-up collar, still black-browed, but with a white mustache that connected with the same sideburns; his chin was shaved, and his whole appearance bore that resemblance to Alexander II, which was so common among the military during his reign; the look was also questioning, stern and at the same time tired.

When the horses stopped, he threw his leg in a military boot with a straight top out of the tarantass and, holding the hem of his overcoat with his hands in suede gloves, ran up to the porch of the hut.

- To the left, Your Excellency! - the coachman shouted rudely from the box, and he, bending slightly on the threshold from his tall, entered the hallway, then into the upper room to the left.

The upper room was warm, dry and tidy: a new golden image in the left corner, under it a table covered with a clean, harsh tablecloth, behind the table there were cleanly washed benches; the kitchen stove, which occupied the far right corner, was new white with chalk; closer to it stood something like an ottoman, covered with piebald blankets, resting with its blade against the side of the stove; from behind the stove damper there was a sweet smell of cabbage soup - boiled cabbage, beef and bay leaves.

The newcomer threw off his overcoat on the bench and found himself even slimmer in his uniform and boots, then he took off his gloves and cap and, with a tired look, ran his pale, thin hand over his head - White hair His hair was slightly curly at the temples and at the corners of his eyes; his handsome, elongated face with dark eyes bore here and there small traces of smallpox. There was no one in the upper room, and he shouted with hostility, opening the door to the hallway:

- Hey, who's there?

Immediately after that, a dark-haired, also black-browed and also still beautiful woman for her age, who looked like an elderly gypsy, with dark down on her face, entered the room. upper lip and along the cheeks, light on the move, but full, with big breasts under a red blouse, with a triangular belly, like a goose’s, under a black woolen skirt.

“Welcome, Your Excellency,” she said. - Would you like to eat or would you like a samovar?

The visitor glanced briefly at her rounded shoulders and light legs in worn red Tatar shoes and answered abruptly, inattentively:

- Samovar. Is the mistress here or are you serving?

- Mistress, Your Excellency.

– So you’re holding it yourself?

- Yes sir. Herself.

- What’s so? Are you a widow, are you running the business yourself?

- Not a widow, Your Excellency, but you have to live somehow. And I love to manage.

- So. So. This is good. And how clean and pleasant your place is.

The woman looked at him inquisitively all the time, squinting slightly.

“And I love cleanliness,” she answered. “After all, I grew up under the masters, but I don’t know how to behave decently, Nikolai Alekseevich.”

He quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed:

- Hope! You? - he said hastily.

“I, Nikolai Alekseevich,” she answered.

- My God, my God! - he said, sitting down on the bench and looking at her point-blank. - Who would have thought! How many years have we not seen each other? Thirty-five years old?

- Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich. I’m forty-eight now, and you’re nearly sixty, I think?

– Like this... My God, how strange!

-What's strange, sir?

- But everything, everything... How don’t you understand!

His fatigue and absent-mindedness disappeared, he stood up and walked decisively around the room, looking at the floor. Then he stopped and, blushing through his gray hair, began to say:

“I haven’t known anything about you since then.” How did you get here? Why didn’t she stay with the masters?

“The gentlemen gave me my freedom soon after you.”

-Where did you live later?

- It's a long story, sir.

– You say you weren’t married?

- No, I wasn’t.

- Why? With such beauty as you had?

– I couldn’t do it.

- Why couldn’t she? What do you want to say?

- What is there to explain? You probably remember how much I loved you.

He blushed to tears and, frowning, walked again.

“Everything passes, my friend,” he muttered. – Love, youth – everything, everything. The story is vulgar, ordinary. Over the years everything goes away. How does it say this in the book of Job? “You will remember how water flowed through.”

– What does God give to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Everyone's youth passes, but love is another matter.

He raised his head and, stopping, smiled painfully:

– After all, you couldn’t love me all your life!

- So, she could. No matter how much time passed, she lived alone. I knew that you had not been the same for a long time, that it was as if nothing had happened for you, but... It’s too late to reproach me now, but, really, you abandoned me very heartlessly - how many times did I want to lay hands on myself out of resentment from one, really not to mention everything else. After all, there was a time, Nikolai Alekseevich, when I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me? And they deigned to read all the poems to me about all sorts of “dark alleys,” she added with an unkind smile.

- Oh, how good you were! - he said, shaking his head. - How hot, how beautiful! What a figure, what eyes! Do you remember how everyone looked at you?

- I remember, sir. You were also excellent. And it was I who gave you my beauty, my passion. How can you forget this?

- A! Everything passes. Everything is forgotten.

– Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.

“Go away,” he said, turning away and going to the window. - Please go away.

And, taking out the handkerchief and pressing it to his eyes, he quickly added:

- If only God would forgive me. And you, apparently, have forgiven.

She walked to the door and paused:

- No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive you. Since our conversation touched on our feelings, I’ll say frankly: I could never forgive you. Just as there was nothing more expensive than you in the world at that time, so there was nothing later. That's why I can't forgive you. Well, why remember, they don’t carry the dead from the graveyard.

“Yes, yes, there’s no need, order the horses to be brought,” he answered, moving away from the window already with stern face. – I’ll tell you one thing: I’ve never been happy in my life, please don’t think about it. Sorry that I may be hurting your pride, but I’ll tell you frankly - I loved my wife madly. And she cheated on me, abandoned me even more insultingly than I did you. He adored his son - while he was growing up, he didn’t have any hopes for him! And what came out was a scoundrel, a spendthrift, an insolent person, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience... However, all this is also the most ordinary, vulgar story. Be healthy, dear friend. I think that I, too, have lost in you the most precious thing I had in life.

I. A. Bunin is the first of the Russian writers to receive Nobel Prize, who achieved popularity and fame at the world level, having fans and associates, but... deeply unhappy, because since 1920 he was cut off from his homeland and yearned for it. All stories from the emigration period are imbued with a feeling of melancholy and nostalgia.

Inspired by the lines of the poem “An Ordinary Tale” by N. Ogarev: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around / There was an alley of dark linden trees,” Ivan Bunin conceived the idea of ​​writing a cycle of love stories about subtle human feelings. Love is different, but always this strong feeling, changing the lives of the heroes.

The story “Dark Alleys”: summary

The story “Dark Alleys,” which bears the same name in the cycle and is the main one, was published on October 20, 1938 in the New York edition of “New Earth.” Main character, Nikolai Alekseevich, accidentally meets Nadezhda, whom he seduced and abandoned many years ago. For the hero then it was just an affair with a serf girl, but the heroine seriously fell in love and carried this feeling throughout her life. After the affair, the girl received her freedom, began to earn her own living, now owns an inn and “gives money on interest.” Nikolai Alekseevich ruined Nadezhda’s life, but was punished: his beloved wife abandoned him as vilely as he himself had once done, and his son grew up to be a scoundrel. The heroes part, now forever, Nikolai Alekseevich understands what kind of love he missed. However, the hero cannot even in his thoughts overcome social conventions and imagine what would have happened if he had not abandoned Nadezhda.

Bunin, “Dark Alleys” - audiobook

Listening to the story “Dark Alleys” is extremely pleasant, because the poetic language of the author is also manifested in prose.

Image and characteristics of the main character (Nikolai)

The image of Nikolai Alekseevich evokes antipathy: this man does not know how to love, he sees only himself and public opinion. He is afraid of himself, of Nadezhda, no matter what happens. But if everything is outwardly decent, you can do as you please, for example, break the heart of a girl for whom no one will stand up. Life punished the hero, but did not change him, did not add strength of spirit. His image personifies habit, the routine of life.

Image and characteristics of the main character (Nadezhda)

Much stronger is Nadezhda, who was able to survive the shame of an affair with the “master” (although she wanted to kill herself, she came out of this state), and also managed to learn to earn money on her own, and in an honest way. Coachman Klim notes the woman’s intelligence and fairness; she “gives money on interest” and “gets rich,” but does not profit from the poor, but is guided by justice. Nadezhda, despite the tragedy of her love, kept it in her heart for many years, forgave her offender, but did not forget. Its image is the soul, the sublimity, which is not in origin, but in personality.

The main idea and main theme of the story “Dark Alleys”

The theme of love connects Russian and emigrant period. Just as the heroes remember their departed love, so the author yearns for his abandoned homeland, loves it, but cannot accept the changes that have taken place in it.

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin's story "Dark Alleys" was written in 1938 and was included in the collection of short stories "Dark Alleys" dedicated to the theme of love. The work was first published in 1943 in the New York publication “New Land”. The story “Dark Alleys” is written in the traditions literary direction neorealism.

Main characters

Nikolai Alekseevich- a tall, thin man of sixty years old, a military man. In his youth he loved Nadezhda, but abandoned her. He was married and has a son.

Hope- a woman of forty-eight years old, the owner of an inn. She loved Nikolai Alekseevich all her life, which is why she never got married.

Klim- coachman of Nikolai Alekseevich.

“In cold autumn weather,” a “tarantass with a half-raised top” pulled up to a long hut located on one of the roads in Tula. The hut was divided into two halves - a postal station and a private upper room (inn), where travelers could stop, rest, and spend the night.

The carriage was driven by a “strong man,” a “serious and dark-faced” coachman, “resembling an old robber,” while in the carriage itself sat a tall and “slender old military man,” outwardly similar to Alexander II with an inquiring, stern and tired look.

When the coachman stopped the carriage, the military man entered the room. Inside it was “warm, dry and tidy”, in the left corner there was a “new golden image”, in the right there was a chalk-whitened stove, from behind the damper of which came the sweet smell of cabbage soup. The visitor took off his outer clothing and shouted to the owners.

Immediately a “dark-haired”, “black-browed”, “beautiful woman beyond her age, looking like an elderly gypsy” entered the room. The hostess offered the visitor something to eat. The man agreed to drink tea, asking for the samovar. Questioning the woman, the visitor learns that she is unmarried and runs the household herself. Unexpectedly, the hostess calls the man by name - Nikolai Alekseevich. “He quickly straightened up, opened his eyes and blushed,” recognizing in his interlocutor his old love - Nadezhda.

Excited, Nikolai Alekseevich begins to remember how long they have not seen each other - “thirty-five years?” . Nadezhda corrects him - “Thirty, Nikolai Alekseevich.” The man knew nothing about her fate since then. Nadezhda said that soon after they separated, the gentlemen gave her her freedom, and she was never married because she loved him too much. Blushing, the man muttered: “Everything passes, my friend.<…>Love, youth - everything, everything." But the woman did not agree with him: “Everyone’s youth passes, but love is another matter.” Nadezhda says that she could not forget him, “she lived alone,” she recalls that he left her “very heartlessly” - she even wanted to commit suicide more than once, that she called him Nikolenka, and he read her poems about “all sorts of” dark alleys"" .

Delving into his memories, Nikolai Alekseevich concludes: “Everything passes. Everything is forgotten,” to which Nadezhda replied: “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” Tearing up, the man asks for the horses, saying: “If only God would forgive me. And you obviously forgave." However, the woman did not forgive and could not forgive: “just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, so I didn’t have anything later.”

Nikolai Alekseevich asks the woman for forgiveness and says that he was also unhappy. He loved his wife madly, but she cheated and abandoned him even more insultingly than he did Nadezhda. He adored his son, “but he turned out to be a scoundrel, a spendthrift, an insolent person, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience.” “I think that I, too, have lost in you the most precious thing I had in life.” In parting, Nadezhda kisses his hand, and he kisses hers. Afterward, the coachman Klim recalled that the hostess was looking after them from the window.

Already on the road, Nikolai Alekseevich becomes ashamed that he kissed Nadezhda’s hand, and then feels ashamed of this shame. The man remembers the past - “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...”. He thinks about what would have happened if he had not abandoned her, and “this same Nadezhda was not the innkeeper, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?” “And, closing his eyes, he shook his head.”

Conclusion

I. A. Bunin called the story “Dark Alleys” the most successful work of the entire collection, his best creation. In it, the author reflects on the questions of love, on whether a true feeling is subject to the flow of time - is it capable of real love live for decades or it remains only in our memories, and everything else is “a vulgar, ordinary story.”

A brief retelling of “Dark Alleys” will be useful for preparing for a lesson or when familiarizing yourself with the plot of the work.

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Bunin’s collection “Dark Alleys” includes stories created between 1937 and 1944. Most of of them was created during the Second World War, during the occupation of the south of France, where the writer lived, by Italian and then German troops.

However, despite the difficult world situation, hunger and devastation, Bunin chooses for all his stories a theme that is detached from all these cataclysms - the theme of love. It is this theme, present in each story and being conceptual, that united all forty of them into a single cycle.

The writer himself considered “Dark Alleys” his best creative creation. Which is not without reason: the four dozen stories in the collection seem to tell about one thing - about love, but absolutely each of them presents its own unique shade of this feeling. The collection contains sublime “heavenly” love, love-infatuation, love-passion, love-madness, and love-lust. And this is no coincidence, because in the author’s understanding, love is endless complicated feeling, “dark alleys” of human life.

And yet, with all the variety of shades of love captured in the stories of the cycle, there is one predominant feature in it. This is a comparison of the power of love with the irresistible force of the elements, which not everyone can accommodate. The love created by Bunin on the pages of “Dark Alleys” would most accurately be compared to a thunderstorm - a powerful but short-lived element that, flaring up in the soul, shakes it to its core, but soon disappears.

That is why in all the stories in the collection, love ends on a dramatic or deep melancholy note - parting, death, disaster, resignation. So, Natalie dies during childbirth, as soon as her love reaches its dawn (“Natalie”), the officer puts a bullet in his forehead, having learned about his wife’s betrayal (“Caucasus”), from a Russian Parisian, who met warmth and affection in his declining years, in a carriage subway there is a heart break (“In Paris”), the novelist’s girlfriend, Heinrich, dies at the hands of her former lover on the threshold of a new life (“Henry”), etc.

At first glance, all these endings are unexpected; for many readers they give the impression of a stab with a knife, as if the writer, not knowing what to do with his characters, forcibly condemns them to a sad ending. love stories. But internally, such endings are completely justified, since in the writer’s understanding, mere mortals are not given the opportunity to live long in the atmosphere of this extraterrestrial feeling. True feeling, according to Bunin, is always tragic.

The stories in the cycle are also united by the fact that in most of them Bunin uses the motif of memory: memories of a passion that once flared up, of an irrevocable past. Bunin describes what seems to him the most important and almost weightless in memories of the past: the excitement of love, that trembling tension of a human being, from which everything visible world suddenly it becomes dazzlingly sonorous and unique. The heroes of the cycle remember only what was cut off on the fly, what did not have time to decline and retained the wonderful brightness of the rise.

Thus, the stories included in the “Dark Alleys” cycle are united by the fact that in each of them Bunin speaks with great graphic power about the diversity of faces of love and the enormous power of this feeling.

Bunin’s series of stories “Dark Alleys” is the best thing written by the author in his entire creative career. Despite the simplicity and accessibility of Bunin's style, analysis of the work requires special knowledge. The work is studied in 9th grade in literature lessons, it detailed analysis will be useful in preparing for the Unified State Exam, writing creative works, test tasks, drawing up a story plan. We invite you to familiarize yourself with our version of the analysis of “Dark Alleys” according to plan.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– 1938.

History of creation- the story was written in exile. Homesickness, bright memories, escape from reality, war and hunger - served as the impetus for writing the story.

Subject– love lost, forgotten in the past; broken destinies, the theme of choice and its consequences.

Composition- traditional for a short story or short story. Consists of three parts: the arrival of the general, the meeting with ex-lover and a hasty departure.

Genre- story (short story).

Direction– realism.

History of creation

In “Dark Alleys,” the analysis will be incomplete without the history of the creation of the work and knowledge of some details of the writer’s biography. In N. Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Tale,” Ivan Bunin borrowed the image of dark alleys. This metaphor impressed the writer so much that he endowed it with his own special meaning and made it the title of a series of stories. All of them are united by one theme - bright, fateful, life-long love.

The work, included in the cycle of stories of the same name (1937-1945), was written in 1938, when the author was in exile. During the Second World War, hunger and poverty plagued all residents of Europe, and the French city of Grasse was no exception. That's where everything is written best works Ivan Bunin. A return to memories of the wonderful times of youth, inspiration and creative work gave the author strength to survive separation from his homeland and the horrors of war. These eight years away from home were the most productive and important in creative career Bunina. Mature age, wonderfully beautiful landscapes, rethinking historical events And life values- became the impetus for the creation of the main work masters of words.

In the most terrible times, the best, subtle, piercing stories about love were written - the “Dark Alleys” cycle. In the soul of every person there are places where he looks infrequently, but with with special awe: the brightest memories, the most “dear” experiences are stored there. It was precisely these “dark alleys” that the author had in mind when giving the title to his book and story of the same name. The story was first published in New York in 1943 in the publication “New Land”.

Subject

Leading topic- the theme of love. Not only the story “Dark Alleys,” but all the works in the cycle are based on this wonderful feeling. Bunin, summing up his life, was firmly convinced that love is the best thing that can be given to a person in life. She is the essence, the beginning and the meaning of everything: tragic or happy story– there is no difference. If this feeling flashed through a person’s life, it means he didn’t live it in vain.

Human destinies, the irrevocability of events, choices that one had to regret are the leading motives in Bunin’s story. The one who loves always wins, he lives and breathes his love, it gives him the strength to move on.

Nikolai Alekseevich, who made his choice in favor of common sense, only at the age of sixty he understands that his love for Nadezhda was the most best event in life. The theme of choice and its consequences is clearly revealed in the plot of the story: a man lives his life with the wrong people, remains unhappy, fate returns the betrayal and deception that he committed in his youth towards a young girl.

The conclusion is obvious: happiness lies in living in harmony with your feelings, and not contrary to them. The problem of choice and responsibility for one's own and others' fate is also touched upon in the work. The issues are quite broad, despite the small volume of the story. It is interesting to note the fact that in Bunin’s stories, love and marriage are practically incompatible: emotions are swift and bright, they arise and disappear as quickly as everything in nature. Social status makes no sense where love reigns. It equalizes people, makes ranks and classes meaningless - love has its own priorities and laws.

Composition

Compositionally, the story can be divided into three parts.

First part: the hero’s arrival at the inn (descriptions of nature and the surrounding area predominate here). The meeting with the former lover - the second semantic part - mainly consists of dialogue. In the last part, the general leaves the inn - he runs from his own memories and his past.

Main events– the dialogue between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich is built on two completely opposite views on life. She lives by love, finding consolation and joy in it, and preserves the memories of her youth. In the mouth of this wise woman, the author puts the idea of ​​the story - what the work teaches us: “everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” In this sense, the heroes are opposite in their views; the old general mentions several times that “everything passes.” This is exactly how his life passed, meaningless, joyless, in vain. Critics received the cycle of stories enthusiastically, despite its courage and frankness.

Main characters

Genre

Dark Alleys belongs to the short story genre; some researchers of Bunin's work tend to consider them short stories.

The theme of love, unexpected abrupt endings, tragedy and dramatic plots - all this is typical for Bunin’s works. It should be noted that the lion's share of lyricism in the story is emotions, the past, experiences and spiritual quests. General lyrical orientation - distinctive feature Bunin's stories. The author has a unique ability - in small epic genre fit a huge period of time, reveal the soul of the character and make the reader think about the most important things.

The artistic means that the author uses are always varied: precise epithets, vivid metaphors, comparisons and personifications. The technique of parallelism is also close to the author; quite often nature emphasizes state of mind characters.