I remember a fruitful year. Short stories about autumn. Autumn day in a birch grove

...I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing - with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shade in the Indian summer - autumn is vigorous”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden. These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on the night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark a long convoy along the high road. The man pouring the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but that’s the way the establishment is - the tradesman will never cut it off, but will also say:

- Get out, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red headdresses constantly flash behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless vest is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the paneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...

- Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. – These are now being translated...

And the boys in fancy white shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, all come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. Of course, only one buys, because the purchases are only for a penny or an egg, but there are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful. Together with his brother, a burry, nimble half-idiot who lives with him “out of mercy,” he trades in jokes, jokes and even sometimes “touches” the Tula harmonica. And until the evening there is a crowd of people in the garden, you can hear laughter and talking around the hut, and sometimes the clatter of dancing...

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fabulous picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near a hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across apple trees Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...

Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond seven-star Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again. Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

- Is it you, barchuk? – someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can’t sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

We listen for a long time and notice trembling in the ground. The trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is rapidly beating out: thundering and knocking, the train rushes... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins to subside, stall, as if going into the ground ...

– Where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But next to the box, sir.

You throw up a single-barreled shotgun, heavy as a crowbar, and shoot straight away. The crimson flame will flash towards the sky with a deafening crack, blind for a moment and extinguish the stars, and a cheerful echo will ring out like a ring and roll across the horizon, fading far, far away in the clean and sensitive air.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

And the black sky is lined with fiery stripes of falling stars. You look for a long time into its dark blue depths, overflowing with constellations, until the earth begins to float under your feet. Then you will wake up and, hiding your hands in your sleeves, quickly run along the alley to the house... How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!

II

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is bad: that means the grain is bad too... I remember a good year.

At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing and the huts were smoking black, you would open the window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you couldn’t resist - you ordered to quickly saddle the horse, and you yourself ran wash at the pond. Almost all the small leaves have flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy, and seemingly heavy. It instantly drives away the night's laziness, and, having washed and had breakfast in the common room with the workers, hot potatoes and black bread with coarse raw salt, you enjoy feeling the slippery leather of the saddle under you as you ride through Vyselki to hunt. Autumn is the time for patronal feasts, and at this time the people are tidy and happy, the appearance of the village is not at all the same as at other times. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese cackle loudly and loudly on the river in the morning, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki have been famous for their “wealth” since time immemorial, since the time of our grandfather. The old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier. All you ever heard was: “Yes,” Agafya waved off her eighty-three year old!” - or conversations like this:

Antonov apples
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

Easy breath

Ivan Bunin

Antonov apples

- Get out, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

- Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. – These are now being translated...

- Is it you, barchuk? – someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can’t sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

– Where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But next to the box, sir.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is bad: that means the grain is bad too... I remember a good year.

- And when will you die, Pankrat? I suppose you will be a hundred years old?

- How would you like to speak, father?

- How old are you, I ask!

- I don’t know, sir, father.

- Do you remember Platon Apollonich?

“Why, sir, father,” I clearly remember.

- You see now. That means you are no less than a hundred.

The old man, who stands stretched out in front of the master, smiles meekly and guiltily. Well, they say, what to do - it’s my fault, it’s healed. And he probably would have prospered even more if he had not eaten too much onions in Petrovka.

I remember his old woman too. Everyone used to sit on a bench, on the porch, bent over, shaking his head, gasping for breath and holding onto the bench with his hands, all thinking about something. “About her goods,” the women said, because, indeed, she had a lot of “goods” in her chests. But she doesn’t seem to hear; he looks half-blindly into the distance from under sadly raised eyebrows, shakes his head and seems to be trying to remember something. She was a big old woman, kind of dark all over. Paneva is almost from the last century, the chestnuts are like those of a deceased person, the neck is yellow and withered, the shirt with rosin joints is always white-white, “you could even put it in a coffin.” And near the porch there was a large stone: I bought it for my grave, as well as a shroud, an excellent shroud, with angels, with crosses and with a prayer printed on the edges.

The courtyards in Vyselki also matched the old people: brick, built by their grandfathers. And the rich men - Savely, Ignat, Dron - had huts in two or three connections, because sharing in Vyselki was not yet fashionable. In such families they kept bees, were proud of their gray-iron-colored bull stallion, and kept their estates in order. On the threshing floors there were dark, thick hemp trees; there were barns and barns covered with hair; in the bunks and barns there were iron doors, behind which canvases, spinning wheels, new sheepskin coats, type-setting harnesses, and measures bound with copper hoops were stored. Crosses were burned on the gates and on the sleds. And I remember that sometimes it seemed extremely tempting to me to be a man. When you used to drive through the village on a sunny morning, you kept thinking about how good it would be to mow, thresh, sleep on the threshing floor in brooms, and on a holiday to rise with the sun, under the thick and musical blast from the village, wash yourself near a barrel and put on a clean pair of clothes. a shirt, the same trousers and indestructible boots with horseshoes. If, I thought, we add to this a healthy and beautiful wife in festive attire and a trip to mass, and then dinner with a bearded father-in-law, a dinner with hot lamb on wooden plates and with rushes, with honeycomb honey and mash - it’s impossible to wish for more. !

Even in my memory, very recently, the lifestyle of the average nobleman had much in common with the lifestyle of a wealthy peasant in its homeliness and rural, old-world prosperity. Such, for example, was the estate of Aunt Anna Gerasimovna, who lived about twelve versts from Vyselki. By the time you get to this estate, you’re completely exhausted. With dogs and packs you have to walk at a pace, and you don’t want to rush - it’s so fun in an open field on a sunny and cool day! The terrain is flat, you can see far away. The sky is light and so spacious and deep. The sun sparkles from the side, and the road, rolled by carts after the rains, is oily and shines like rails. Fresh, lush green winter crops are scattered around in wide schools. A hawk will fly up from somewhere in the transparent air and freeze in one place, fluttering its sharp wings. And clearly visible telegraph poles run into the clear distance, and their wires, like silver strings, slide along the slope of the clear sky. Falcons sit on them - completely black icons on music paper.

I didn’t know or see serfdom, but I remember feeling it at my aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You drive into the yard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small, but all old, solid, surrounded by hundred-year-old birch and willow trees. There are a lot of outbuildings - low, but homely - and all of them seem to be made of dark, oak logs under thatched roofs. The only thing that stands out in size, or better yet, in length, is the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peep out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, looking like Don Quixote. When you drive into the yard, they all pull themselves up and bow low and low. A gray-haired coachman, heading from the carriage barn to pick up a horse, takes off his hat while still at the barn and walks around the yard with his head naked. He worked as a postilion for his aunt, and now he takes her to mass - in the winter in a cart, and in the summer in a strong, iron-bound cart, like those that priests ride on. My aunt’s garden was famous for its neglect, nightingales, turtle doves and apples, and the house for its roof. He stood at the head of the courtyard, right next to the garden - the branches of the linden trees hugged him - he was small and squat, but it seemed that he would not last a century - so thoroughly did he look from under his unusually high and thick thatched roof, blackened and hardened by time. Its front facade always seemed to me to be alive: as if an old face was looking out from under a huge hat with sockets of eyes - windows with mother-of-pearl glass from the rain and sun. And on the sides of these eyes there were porches - two old large porches with columns. Well-fed pigeons always sat on their pediment, while thousands of sparrows rained from roof to roof... And the guest felt comfortable in this nest under the turquoise autumn sky!

You will enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples, and then others: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossoms, which have been lying on the windows since June... In all the rooms - in the servant's room, in the hall, in the living room - it is cool and gloomy: this is why that the house is surrounded by a garden, and the upper glass windows are colored: blue and purple. Everywhere there is silence and cleanliness, although it seems that the chairs, tables with inlays and mirrors in narrow and twisted gold frames have never been moved. And then a cough is heard: the aunt comes out. It is small, but, like everything around, it is durable. She has a large Persian shawl draped over her shoulders. She will come out importantly, but affably, and now, amid endless conversations about antiquity, about inheritances, treats begin to appear: first, “duli”, apples, Antonovsky, “Bel-Barynya”, borovinka, “plodovitka” - and then an amazing lunch : all through and through pink boiled ham with peas, stuffed chicken, turkey, marinades and red kvass - strong and sweet-sweet... The windows to the garden are raised, and the cheerful autumn coolness blows from there...

In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting.

Previously, such estates as the estate of Anna Gerasimovna were not uncommon. There were also decaying, but still living in grand style, estates with a huge estate, with a garden of twenty dessiatines. True, some of these estates have survived to this day, but there is no longer life in them... There are no troikas, no riding “Kirghiz”, no hounds and greyhounds, no servants and no owner of all this - a landowner-hunter like mine late brother-in-law Arseny Semenych.

Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floors have been empty, and the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, and the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the flickering golden light of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became clean and clear, and the sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds, and from behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly floated out. You stand at the window and think: “Maybe, God willing, the weather will clear up.” But the wind did not subside. It disturbed the garden, tore up the continuously flowing stream of human smoke from the chimney, and again drove up the ominous strands of ash clouds. They ran low and fast - and soon, like smoke, they clouded the sun. Its shine faded, the window into the blue sky closed, and the garden became deserted and boring, and the rain began to fall again... at first quietly, carefully, then more and more thickly and, finally, it turned into a downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night was coming...

From such a scolding, the garden emerged almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow quiet and resigned. But how beautiful it was when clear weather came again, clear and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will now hang on the trees until the first winter. The black garden will shine through the cold turquoise sky and dutifully wait for winter, warming itself in the sunshine. And the fields are already turning sharply black with arable land and brightly green with overgrown winter crops
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Homework

1. Write down folk proverbs from the text in a notebook. For what purpose does the writer introduce them into the story?

2. Find tropes in the work (epithets, metaphors, comparisons). Which ones do you remember?

The most famous of Bunin’s early stories was the languidly sad sketch “Antonov Apples,” written at the turn of the century, in 1900, and published in the magazine “Life.” This small work caused a lot of controversy among Bunin's contemporary critics. “Describes everything that comes to hand,” they slandered. “Where are you, the wonderful time of pies with milk mushrooms, greyhounds and male dogs... serf souls, Antonov apples?..” - Alexander Kuprin sarcastically in the parody “I.A. Bunin. Pies with milk mushrooms."

The story really caused a lot of reproaches. “Antonov apples” do not smell democratic at all,” wrote Gorky, nevertheless, admiring the author’s skill.

However, Bunin does not yearn for serfdom.

Question

What is this story about?

Answer

About autumn, about Antonov apples, about memories...

The scion of an impoverished noble family remembers the family estate, famous for its Antonov apples. Their sour, autumn smell, dry leaves, slight sadness of a clear, fine, but already short day - this is the atmosphere of the story. The sadness is bright, tender, the past looks like an idyll: “In the early dawn, when the roosters are still crowing and the huts are smoking black, you would open a window into a cool garden, filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and not If you can’t bear it, you’ll order the horse to saddle up as quickly as possible, and you’ll run to the pond to wash yourself.”...

The story does not have a conventional plot line. It is rather an impression story, a memory story. “Antonovsky apples is an impressionistic story, a work that stops and captures moments.

One of its main themes is frailty, fragility, the brevity of life, sadness over everything that is irrevocable. Whether Bunin writes about his native estate or about youthful love, everywhere he strives, at least in words, to hold on to life, which is melting irreparably every second. And his nostalgia is akin to the sadness of early autumn - the writer’s favorite time of year.

Bunin follows the traditions of Russian classical literature, one of the properties of which is to see the complex, important, and expensive behind the seemingly simple, insignificant. This is where the transfer of subtle moods and psychological nuances in this story with the features of a memoir, biographical sketch comes from.

Question

How is the story organized? (On whose behalf is it conducted).

Answer

The story unfolds as a series of memories, a retrospective. The narration is told in the first person: “I remember an early fine autumn”; “I remember a fruitful year”; “I remember”; “as I see it now”; “Now I see myself again in the village...”

Question

Notice how the verbs are used?

Answer

Verbs are used most often in the present tense, which brings the reader closer to what is happening in the memories (“The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all, voices and the creaking of carts are heard throughout the garden”; “Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples...”; “You can hear how carefully he walks the gardener walks through the rooms, lighting the stoves, and how the firewood crackles and shoots”).

Sometimes the verbs are in the second person singular - thus, the reader is involved in the action: “...you used to open the window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there, and you couldn’t resist - you ordered to saddle up the horse as soon as possible.” , and you’ll run to the pond to wash yourself”; “You enter the house and first of all you will hear the smell of apples...”).

Question

What is the subject of memories? Give examples.

Answer

It is not some events that are remembered, but pictures, impressions, and sensations. For example, a holiday (Chapter I). Here is “a young elder, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”…. Here the comparison with a cow is not at all offensive. This is a “household butterfly”, solid, strong, well-drawn, it is drawn so brightly, elegantly, in detail, vividly, as if it came out of a painting.

Description of the hunt (Chapter III).

Everything that belongs to the past, be it a manor’s house, or a peasant’s yard, or a tree, or the hundred-year-old old man Pankrat, has some powerful margin of safety, it seems reliable, eternal.

Question

What does the writer poetize?

Answer

Bunin dwells on the attractive aspects of the former landowner's life, its freedom, contentment, abundance, the fusion of human life with nature, its naturalness, the cohesion of the life of nobles and peasants.

The writer poetizes not only the past life of people of his class, but also rural, natural, simplified life in general. It is beautiful for its purposeful rhythm, its simplicity, its correspondence with the once-rooted foundations of existence, its fusion with the life of its native nature. Here Bunin seems to take over the baton from Rousseau and L.N. Tolstoy.

Question

Ivan Alekseevich describes his memories so vividly that it seems that we, the readers, were witnesses or participants in those events. How is the effect of the reader’s presence in the described paintings achieved?

Answer

We have already noted grammatical devices (the use of present tense verbs, verbs of the 2nd person singular). In addition, Bunin masterfully conveys the sounds, smells, and colors of the surrounding world. The memory of smells is very strong: “The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the landowners’ estates” - and with it the old way of life fades away. “The ravines smell strongly of mushroom dampness, rotted leaves and wet tree bark” - the effect is enhanced by the bright sound recording. Alliterations create the impression that we really hear how, for example, the leaves rustle under our feet: “Rustling through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will get to the hut.”

But the smell of “my grandfather’s books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, similar to church breviaries, smell wonderful with their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sourish mold, old perfume...” To the olfactory sensations are added tactile ones (“thick, rough paper”). We see the smallest details - even the golden stars on the spines of books - and it’s as if we are plunging into the past.

Question

What does the tone of the story remind you of? Perhaps it resembles some poetic form you are familiar with? What is the tone of the story? How does she change throughout the story?

Answer

The general intonation of “Antonov Apples” is elegiac. This is an image of the fading, dying of “noble nests” (remember Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”). The beginning of the story is full of joyful cheerfulness: “How cold, dewy and how good it is to live in the world!” Gradually, the intonation becomes nostalgic: “In recent years, one thing has supported the fading spirit of the landowners - hunting”; “... little by little a sweet and strange melancholy begins to creep into my heart...” And finally, in the description of late autumn and pre-winter there is sadness. The song “on some remote farm” sounds “with sad, hopeless daring.”

Acute perception, sensitivity, vigilance are the source of amazing details, observations, comparisons that fill Bunin’s works. These details are not just the background of the story, they are the main thing. Everything earthly, everything living in its multitude of manifestations, fragmented into individual smells, sounds, colors - is an independent subject of depiction in Bunin, suggesting the inextricable unity of man and nature.

Literature

Dmitry Bykov. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin. // Encyclopedia for children “Avanta+”. Volume 9. Russian literature. Part two. XX century M., 1999

Vera Muromtseva-Bunina. Bunin's life. Conversations with memory. M.: Vagrius, 2007

Galina Kuznetsova. Grasse diary. M.: Moscow worker, 1995

N.V. Egorova. Lesson developments in Russian literature. Grade 11. I half of the year. M.: VAKO, 2005

D.N. Murin, E.D. Kononova, E.V. Minenko. Russian literature of the 20th century. 11th grade program. Thematic lesson planning. St. Petersburg: SMIO Press, 2001

E.S. Rogover. Russian literature of the 20th century. SP.: Parity, 2002

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich

Antonov apples

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin

Antonov apples

...I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing, with rains right at the right time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lawrence. And “autumn and winter live well if the water is calm and there is rain on Laurentia.” Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields. This is also a good sign: “There is a lot of shading in the Indian summer - autumn is vigorous”... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden.

These Tarkhans, bourgeois gardeners, hired men and poured apples in order to send them to the city at night - certainly on a night when it is so nice to lie on a cart, look into the starry sky, smell tar in the fresh air and listen to how carefully it creaks in the dark a long convoy along the high road. The man pouring the apples eats them with a juicy crackle one after another, but such is the establishment - the tradesman will never cut it off, but will also say:

- Go ahead, eat your fill, there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to the large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, all sorts of tattered belongings, and an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees. On holidays, there is a whole fair around the hut, and red headdresses are constantly flashing behind the trees. There is a crowd of lively single-yard girls in sundresses that smell strongly of paint, the “lords” come in their beautiful and rough, savage costumes, a young elder woman, pregnant, with a wide, sleepy face and as important as a Kholmogory cow. She has “horns” on her head - the braids are placed on the sides of the crown and covered with several scarves, so that the head seems huge; the legs, in ankle boots with horseshoes, stand stupidly and firmly; the sleeveless jacket is corduroy, the curtain is long, and the poneva is black and purple with brick-colored stripes and lined at the hem with a wide gold “prose”...

- Household butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. - These are now being translated...

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. Having inhaled the rye aroma of new straw and chaff on the threshing floor, you cheerfully walk home for dinner past the garden rampart. Voices in the village or the creaking of gates can be heard unusually clearly in the chilly dawn. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches. In the darkness, in the depths of the garden, there is a fairy-tale picture: as if in a corner of hell, a crimson flame is burning near the hut, surrounded by darkness, and someone’s black silhouettes, as if carved from ebony wood, are moving around the fire, while giant shadows from them walk across the apple trees . Either a black hand several arshins in size will fall across the entire tree, then two legs will clearly appear - two black pillars. And suddenly all this will slide from the apple tree - and the shadow will fall along the entire alley, from the hut to the gate itself...

Late at night, when the lights in the village go out, when the diamond constellation Stozhar is already shining high in the sky, you will run into the garden again.

Rustle through the dry leaves, like a blind man, you will reach the hut. There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

- Is it you, barchuk? - someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can't sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

We listen for a long time and discern a trembling in the ground, the trembling turns into noise, grows, and now, as if already just outside the garden, the noisy beat of the wheels is being rapidly knocked out: rumbling and knocking, the train rushes by... closer, closer, louder and angrier... And suddenly it begins subside, die out, as if going into the ground...

- Where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But next to the box, sir.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

An extraordinary picture

A wide dark hole appeared in the sky and abundant, summer-warm water poured out; our quiet, peaceful river immediately began to swell and swell. Having overflowed its banks, it flooded the meadows, a field of green oats, golden rye, white flowering buckwheat, and approached the vegetable gardens.

Admiring the extraordinary spectacle, I walked along the shore. A monotonous weak squeak began to reach my ears; I listened and then I saw a tiny hole left by a cow’s hoof. In the hole, huddled in a ball, tiny creatures the size of moles floundered, helpless, like all cubs.

I wanted to know whose cubs these were, and I began to look around. From behind the top of the alder tree, a muskrat looked at me with its black beads. Having met my eyes, she quickly and fearfully swam to the side, but an invisible connection with the cow’s hoof held her as if on a thread.

It could be assumed that the mother, when water poured into the hole, managed to drag the cubs to a dry place. Most likely, the hoof was not the first refuge. But all the previous ones were also flooded with water, as in a quarter of an hour this cold hoof, with a puddle at the bottom, will be flooded.

The muskrat stayed on the water about two meters from me, which is incredible for this extremely cautious, timid animal. It was heroism, it was self-sacrifice on the part of the mother. I finally left so as not to interfere with the mother’s rescue of her children.

Task 5. Cross out from this text everything that is a deviation from the topic of the essay.

School duty

I got up early that day, because today we are on duty at school. The morning was sunny and clear. Only here and there were light white clouds visible in the sky.

After breakfast, I quickly collected my books and notebooks, put all my supplies in my briefcase and, singing cheerfully, went to school. On the way to school I met two of my classmates. We talked a little and then we all went to school together.

At eight o'clock all the guys gathered for the line. At the line, the director and our class teacher talked about how we were on duty yesterday and what we should do today. After the lineup, everyone went to their assigned posts. But then the bell began to burst into cheerful song. There was silence in the school.

Our first lesson is history. During the lesson we learned a lot of interesting things about the life of the ancient Greeks. What a pity that the lesson lasts only forty minutes! So it ended. And back on duty.

On the third floor, the children from the 5th grade started a game of tag. We had to calm them down, but without the teacher on duty we couldn’t do anything. We weren't angry with the guys. After all, we indulge ourselves when we are not on duty at school.

Our second lesson is English.

In the third lesson we wrote a dictation. The dictation was difficult and we made a lot of mistakes.

After the third lesson there is a big change. I want to run to the buffet, but I can’t leave my assigned post.

Then we had mathematics, and the fifth lesson was geography. We learned with interest more and more about nature, about rivers, waterfalls, rapids. This is such a fun subject and the lesson goes by so quickly.

After classes, I walked around the school and checked that the classrooms were cleaned.

Task 6. Read the text. Make a plan for it. Retell in detail in writing one of the points of the plan (optional).

Lake Yaskhan

Among the sands of Turkmenistan lies the amazing Lake Yaskhan. No matter what scientists say about it, this lake still remains a mystery of nature. The lake is as unusual in appearance as it is in the water it contains. Yaskhan is like a horseshoe, one half of which contains fresh water, the other half contains salt water. Fresh water is very cold. It seems that someone specially cooled it to quench the thirst of a tired traveler.

In the hot summer, all the lakes of Turkmenistan dry up, but Yaskhan abounds in beautiful water, and there is just as much of it in the lake as at other times of the year. It is believed that the underground sea of fresh water serves as a good wizard. During the time that the lake has existed, many legends have been created about it.

One of them tells about a kind wanderer who took pity on people, drove the spirits out of the lake and desalinated the water. (From the Popular Encyclopedia of Rivers and Lakes).

Task 7. Find in the text a description of an early autumn morning (a stormy autumn day). Write it down.

Autumn in the village

...I remember an early fine autumn. August was full of warm rains, as if falling on purpose for sowing - with rains at the very time, in the middle of the month, around the feast of St. Lavrentia...

I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, it’s as if there is no air at all; voices and the creaking of carts can be heard throughout the garden.

In the thinned garden one can see far away the road to a large hut, strewn with straw, and the hut itself, near which the townspeople acquired an entire household over the summer. Everywhere there is a strong smell of apples, especially here. There are beds in the hut, there is a single-barreled gun, a green samovar, and dishes in the corner. Near the hut there are mats, boxes, and all sorts of tattered belongings lying around: an earthen stove has been dug. At noon, a magnificent kulesh with lard is cooked on it, in the evening the samovar is heated, and a long strip of bluish smoke spreads across the garden, between the trees.

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is bad: that means the grain is bad too... I remember a good year.

Autumn is the time for patronal feasts, and at this time the people are tidy and happy, the appearance of the village is not at all the same as at other times. If the year is fruitful and a whole golden city rises on the threshing floors, and geese cackle loudly and sharply on the river in the morning, then it’s not bad at all in the village. In addition, our Vyselki have been famous for their “wealth” since time immemorial, since the time of our grandfather. The old men and women lived in Vyselki for a very long time - the first sign of a rich village - and they were all tall, big and white, like a harrier.

Since the end of September, all the gardens and threshing floors were empty, and the weather, as usual, changed dramatically. The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, and the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy and low clouds, the trembling golden color of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became clean and clear, and the sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds, and from behind these clouds ridges of snowy mountain-clouds slowly floated out. You stand at the window and think: “Maybe, God willing, the weather will clear up.” But the wind did not subside. It disturbed the garden, tore up the continuously flowing stream of human smoke from the chimney, and again drove up the ominous strands of ash clouds. They ran low and fast and soon, like smoke, they clouded the sun. Its shine faded, the window into the blue sky closed, and the garden became deserted and boring, and the rain began to fall again... at first quietly, carefully, then more and more thickly and, finally, it turned into a downpour with storm and darkness. A long, anxious night was coming... (I. Bunin).

1.3 Tasks with insufficient information

Task 1. Insert the missing synonyms.

Sly bear

A bear came into the village. It’ll get a little dark - ... right there. The hunters decided to catch...: they brought a trap, coated it with honey, and sprinkled grains. And... he ate everything and was gone!

Key to the exercise

A bear came into the village. As soon as it gets dark, the clubfoot is right there. The hunters decided to catch the beast: they brought a trap, coated it with honey, and sprinkled grains. And the bear ate everything and was gone!

Task 2. Restore the text.

Potash fertilizers

Firstly, when they enter the cells of plant organisms, they contribute to ________. This allows plants to maintain normal life activity during a temporary lack of moisture in the soil.

Secondly, the presence of potassium promotes ________. Potassium is also necessary for the formation of ________. Plants get sick mainly due to a lack of potassium. ________ appear on the leaves, and ________ also stops.

Key to the exercise

Potassium salts play a very important role in plant life.

Firstly, when they enter the cells of plant organisms, they contribute to the retention of water in the protoplasm. This allows plants to maintain normal life activity during a temporary lack of moisture in the soil.

Secondly, the presence of potassium promotes the formation of starch, sugar, proteins, fats and other substances in cells. Potassium is also necessary for the formation of tubers in root vegetables. Plants get sick mainly due to a lack of potassium. Red dots appear on the leaves, and plant branching also stops.

Therefore, potassium is essential for the life of our green friends.

Task 3. Restore the text. Choose words that stylistically correspond to the content of the passage.

When dad... is still little,... a lot.... He learned... at four years old and... didn’t want anything.... While others...jumped, ran,...to various interesting places..., little dad...and read. Finally... worried grandfather and.... They decided that... it was time to read... They... him books and... read only... hours a day. But... it didn’t help, and the little one... still... from morning until... His rightful... hours he..., sitting in plain sight. ... He was hiding. ... hid under ... and read under the bed, ... in the attic and read .... He went to ... and read in the hayloft. … it was special … and it smelled fresh ….

Key to the exercise

When dad was still little, he read a lot. He learned to read at age four and didn't want to do anything else. While other children were jumping, running, and playing various interesting games, little dad was reading and reading. Finally it bothered the grandparents. They decided that reading all the time was harmful. They stopped giving him books and only allowed him to read three hours a day. But this did not help, and little dad still read from morning to evening. He spent his legal three hours reading, sitting in plain sight. Then he went into hiding. He hid under the bed and read under the bed, hid in the attic and read there. He went to the hayloft and read in the hayloft. It was especially pleasant here and smelled of fresh hay. (Ruskin).

Task 4. Complete the text with participial phrases or single participles.

I... looked at the sea, an unexpected, indescribable feeling overwhelmed me. I saw the warm blue of the sea, ______ the face of a girl who, looking back, entered the water, a guy on a rescue boat with strong tanned arms, ______, the shore, _____, and all this was so softly and clearly lit and there was so much kindness and peace around, that I froze with happiness.

Key to the exercise

I... looked at the sea, an unexpected, indescribable feeling overwhelmed me. I saw the warm blue of the sea, illuminated by the setting sun, the laughing face of a girl who, looking back, entered the water, a guy on a lifeboat with strong tanned arms resting on the oars, a shore dotted with people, and all this was so softly and clearly illuminated and There was so much kindness and peace around that I froze with happiness. (Iskander).

Task 5. Based on the initial sentences of the paragraphs, try to reconstruct the text from which they were taken. Title the text you restored. The full text is contained in the textbook (reader) on literature.

Page 1 of 4

I

- Get out, eat your fill - there’s nothing to do! Everyone drinks honey while pouring.

- Economic butterfly! - the tradesman says about her, shaking his head. – These are now being translated...

There in the clearing it is a little lighter, and the Milky Way is white above your head.

- Is it you, barchuk? – someone quietly calls out from the darkness.

- I am. Are you still awake, Nikolai?

- We can’t sleep. And it must be too late? Look, there seems to be a passenger train coming...

– Where is your gun, Nikolai?

- But next to the box, sir.

- Wow, great! - the tradesman will say. - Spend it, spend it, little gentleman, otherwise it’s just a disaster! Again they shook off all the gunk on the shaft...

II

“Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is bad: that means the grain is bad too... I remember a good year.

Antonov apples. I.A.Bunin

“...I remember an early fine autumn. August was with warm rains... Then, in the Indian summer, a lot of cobwebs settled in the fields... I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and - the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness. The air is so clean, as if there is none at all... And the cool silence of the morning is disturbed only by the well-fed cackling of blackbirds on the coral rowan trees in the thicket of the garden, voices and the booming sound of apples being poured into measures and tubs. In the thinned garden one can see the road to a large hut, strewn with straw.” Bourgeois gardeners live here and have rented the garden. “On holidays, there is a whole fair near the hut, and red headdresses constantly flash behind the trees.” Everyone comes for apples. Boys in white fluffy shirts and short porticoes, with white open heads, come up. They walk in twos and threes, shuffling their bare feet, and glance sideways at the shaggy shepherd dog tied to an apple tree. There are many buyers, trade is brisk, and the consumptive tradesman in a long frock coat and red boots is cheerful.

By nightfall the weather becomes very cold and dewy. It's getting dark. And here’s another smell: there’s a fire in the garden, and there’s a strong wafting of fragrant smoke from cherry branches.

““Vigorous Antonovka - for a fun year.” Village affairs are good if the Antonovka crop is cropped: that means the grain crop is cropped... I remember a fruitful year.

At early dawn, when the roosters were still crowing and the huts were smoking black, you would open a window into a cool garden filled with a lilac fog, through which the morning sun shines brightly here and there... and you would run to the pond to wash your face. Almost all the small leaves have flown off the coastal vines, and the branches are visible in the turquoise sky. The water under the vines became clear, icy and seemed heavy.”

“I didn’t know or see serfdom, but I remember feeling it at Aunt Anna Gerasimovna’s. You drive into the yard and immediately feel that it is still quite alive here. The estate is small... What stands out in size, or better yet, in length, is only the blackened human one, from which the last Mohicans of the courtyard class peek out - some decrepit old men and women, a decrepit retired cook, looking like Don Quixote. When you drive into the yard, all of them pull themselves up and bow low and low...

“Since the end of September, our gardens and threshing floor have been empty, the weather, as usual, has changed dramatically. The wind tore and tore the trees for days on end, and the rains watered them from morning to night. Sometimes in the evening, between the gloomy low clouds, the flickering golden light of the low sun made its way in the west; the air became clean and clear, and the sunlight sparkled dazzlingly between the foliage, between the branches, which moved like a living net and were agitated by the wind. The liquid blue sky shone coldly and brightly in the north above the heavy lead clouds, and from behind these clouds the ridges of snowy mountains-clouds slowly floated out... A long, anxious night was coming... From such a scolding, the garden emerged almost completely naked, covered with wet leaves and somehow quiet, resigned. But how beautiful it was when clear weather came again, clear and cold days of early October, the farewell holiday of autumn! The preserved foliage will hang on the trees until the first winter. The black garden will shine through the cold turquoise sky and dutifully wait for winter, warming itself in the sunshine.”

“When I overslept the hunt, the rest was especially pleasant. You wake up and lie in bed for a long time... Slowly get dressed, wander around the garden, find in the wet leaves an accidentally forgotten cold and wet apple, and for some reason it seems unusually tasty, not at all like the others. Then you’ll get down to reading books—grandfather’s books in thick leather bindings, with gold stars on morocco spines. These books, similar to church breviaries, smell wonderful with their yellowed, thick, rough paper! Some kind of pleasant sourish mold, old perfume... The notes in their margins are also good, large and with round soft strokes made with a quill pen... And you will involuntarily be carried away by the book itself. This is “The Noble Philosopher”... a story about how “a noble philosopher, having time and the ability to reason about what the human mind can ascend to, once received the desire to compose a plan of light in a spacious place of his village...”

“The smell of Antonov apples disappears from the landowners’ estates. These days were so recent, and yet it seems to me that almost a whole century has passed since then. The old people in Vyselki died, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseniy Semenych shot himself... The kingdom of the small estates, impoverished to the point of beggary, is coming. But this miserable small-scale life is also good! So I see myself again in the village, deep in the ass. The days are bluish and cloudy. In the morning I get into the saddle and with one dog, a gun and a horn, I ride off into the field. The wind rings and hums in the barrel of a gun, the wind blows strongly towards, sometimes with dry snow. All day long I wander through the empty plains... Hungry and frozen, I return to the estate at dusk, and my soul becomes so warm and joyful when the lights of the Settlement flash and the smell of smoke and housing draws me out of the estate... Sometimes someone will come by a small-scale neighbor and will take me away for a long time... The life of a small-scale estate is good too!”

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.litra.ru/