Bunin wrote a lot about love, its tragedies and rare moments of true happiness. These works are marked by an extraordinary poeticization of human feeling; they revealed the writer’s wonderful talent, his ability to penetrate into the intimate depths of the heart, with their unknown and unknown laws. For Bunin, true love has something in common with the eternal beauty of nature, therefore only such a feeling of love is beautiful, which is natural, not False, not invented; for him, love and existence without it are two hostile lives, and if love perishes, then the other , life is no longer needed.

Exalting love, Bunin does not hide the fact that it brings not only joy and happiness, but also very often conceals torment, grief, disappointment, and death. In one of his letters, he himself explained precisely this motive in his work and not only explained, but convincingly proved: “Don’t you still know that love and death are inextricably linked? 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.”

In stories about love, I. A. Bunin affirmed true spiritual values, the beauty and greatness of a person capable of great, selfless feeling, he portrayed love as a high, ideal, beautiful feeling, despite the fact that it brings not only joy and happiness, but more often - grief, suffering, death.

Reading Ivan Bunin’s story “The Village”, we go on a journey through Russia, through its villages and settlements. Looking out over endless fields, lazily flowing rivers, water meadows, we meet Russian peasants everywhere. Each of them has their own joys and sorrows, their own troubles, their own path in life. And the deeper you penetrate into the narrative, the more acutely you understand that it is these peasants who make up that very “mysterious” Russian people. We can further conclude: if the people of Russia are peasants, then Russia itself is nothing more than a large village. The same idea is suggested to us by one of the heroes of the story.

In the story “The Village” the story is about two brothers: Tikhon and Kuzma Krasov. They, the sons of a poor merchant, took different paths in life. Tikhon, following in his father’s footsteps, took up trading. Through work and perseverance he made a small fortune and bought the small estate of Durnovo. He led a sedentary life. Kuzma, who started trading with his brother, managed to abandon this business that was uninteresting to him. Since childhood, he “dreamed of studying and writing.” As a child, having learned to read and write on his own, he read his first books, perhaps from them he learned about a different life, different from the one his father and brother led. As he grew up, he began to write poetry, unskillful but sincere. Kuzma wrote about what he thought and felt. Having read his poems at the bazaar to the audience most accessible to him, he encountered misunderstanding and ridicule. And Kuzma, imitating the taste of the bazaar, began to write about what the bazaar was talking about then, about idle, uninteresting things. But these were no longer his poems. Realizing this, Kuzma quits writing. Having sold the shop left by his mother, he sets out in search of a better life. He moves from city to city, leading a half-starved existence. And everywhere he is accompanied by images of Russia. Poor and poor villages, rickety huts, downtrodden peasants, oppressed by need. One can feel the pain with which he looks at his great and at the same time so insignificant people. This people was given the richest land, but they are poor. Doesn't it hurt? “And what wealth!.. What black soil! The dirt on the roads is blue, greasy, the green of the trees, herbs, and vegetable gardens is dark, thick... But the huts are clay, small, with dung roofs. Near the huts there are dried out water tanks. The water in them, of course, is with tadpoles...” Kuzma saw many similar pictures, because most of his life was wandering, searching, which Kuzma himself may have explained as a search for work. But it seems to me that he was not looking for a job, but for answers to the many questions that tormented his soul.

Life didn’t work out for Tikhon either. Working all his life, accumulating goods, he understands that he does not and will not have children. There will be no heir, no one to whom he would pass on everything that he had acquired by devoting his entire life to a boring, monotonous task. Tikhon's desire to continue working is gone. “Hard labor” - this is how he talks about his past and possible future life, which becomes a burden to him. In addition, the evil atmosphere that has developed in the village is pressing. The first Russian revolution made the life of men a little freer, and illiterate, frightened men used it illiterately, ignorantly, turning freedom into disrespect for the law, for each other, for what we call universal human values. A wave of riots sweeps across the district. Tikhon also has something to fear. He withdraws more and more from business, looks for Kuzma and invites him to Durnovo so that his brother can manage his affairs, and he lives at a shop, which still brings him a small income. So, after many years, two brothers meet again.

Kuzma and Tikhon, of course, are given a large place in the story, but still they cannot be called the main characters of this work. In the story about them, the author skillfully weaves stories about the destinies of individual people, small but bright and emotional pictures of Russian life. These pictures, mostly gloomy, are aggravated by the description of nature: cloudy skies, cold, bad weather. Conveying all this with extraordinary skill, Bunin, however, refrains from judgment and leaves it to his heroes. Kuzma's assessments are especially interesting. It is clear with what pain he perceives the world around him. He passes every event, every meeting through his heart, be it the forgotten crests bitten by the wolf, the peasant Akim embittered by the harsh life, or Molodaya resigned to injustice. Kuzma is very worried about his insignificant and at the same time great people. The same cannot be said about Tikhon. In his assessments there is more anger, sometimes even hatred towards these “secretive” men. He is afraid of them: “And that means it’s clear who he oppresses for—the people... Don’t let him go! Otherwise, hold on: if he senses luck, if he senses a harness under his tail, he will smash him to pieces!”

The time in which this work was created was a time of great changes in the life of Russia. The First Russian Revolution took place, which brought a lot of new things. The disenfranchised Russian people began to learn about their rights. The State Duma was working. New laws appeared. How will a simple Russian man behave in a new situation? Will he be able to find himself in a new life, and how will this new life affect his soul first of all? These questions, in my opinion, were answered by Bunin in the story “The Village”. But one question remained open for him, and it remains open to this day. What are the Russian people like? All these Akims and Grays. Who are they, Russian people? Wild and ignorant by nature or rich in soul, but crushed by harsh life, faithful sons of their homeland.

It seems to me that Bunin wanted to tell us that no matter what Russia is, even dirty and wretched, we still need to love it - after all, it is our homeland.

Like any Russian poet, I. A. Bunin absorbed the classical tradition of singing Russia. For him, who grew up on his father’s estate, among the dim and inaudible beauty of Russian nature, his homeland began here. We find echoes of this fascination already in the poet’s early poems, which are called: “To the Motherland” (1891), “Motherland” (1896). In the poem “Motherland” (1891), still largely imitative and decorative, Russia appears in the image of a poor peasant woman:

They mock you

They, O Motherland, reproach

You with your simplicity,

Poor looking black huts.

In the poem “Motherland,” the familiar Russian distance evokes a vague melancholy:

Under the sky of deathly lead

The winter day is gloomily fading,

And there is no end to the pine forests,

And far from the villages.

Many of Bunin’s early poems contain epic and fairy-tale motifs that take us back to Ancient Rus' and pre-Christian times - “At the Crossroads” (1900), “Vir” (1900), “After the Battle” (1903), “Eve of Kupala” ( 1903), “Steppe” (1912). In the poem “Steppe” you can even feel the epic chant:

The blue raven drinks his eyes dry,

Collects tribute piece by piece.

You are my side, my side,

My age-old wilderness!

This return to the roots was also characteristic of Russian culture at the beginning of the last century (suffice it to recall the paintings of V. Vasnetsov and the early N. Roerich, Russian fairy tales of A. N. Tolstoy). The epic ancient Rus' was gradually superimposed in the poet’s mind on modern Russia with its backwardness and poverty. The outbreak of World War aggravated the impending crisis. The premonition of disaster is evident in the poem “Eve”:

Here comes the demon-possessed army

And, like Mamai, he will pass through all of Rus'...

But the world is empty - who will save?

But there is no God - who should be punished?

But Russia revealed itself to Bunin not only in poverty and the abandonment of wretched villages. He saw it in the multicolored spring steppes, the scarlet evening sky, and the golden autumn groves:

A long whip shoots in a dry forest,

Cows are chattering in the bushes,

And blue snowdrops are blooming,

And an oak leaf rustles underfoot.

(“Youth”, 1916)

A sad long evening in October!

I loved late autumn in Russia.

I loved the crimson forest on the mountain,

The expanse of fields and dull twilight...

(“Desolation”, 1903)

The open spaces and landscapes are inspired by people, peaceful peasant farmers. Bunin describes them with tenderness:

Along the furrow, hurrying after the coulters

I leave soft traces...

So good with bare feet

Step onto the velvet of the warm furrow!

(“Plowman”, 1903-1906)

Bunin writes about his old nanny:

Why in the eyes

So much sorrow, meekness?...

Bast shoes on the feet,

Head wrapped up

Printed shawl,

Old short fur coat...

“Hello, dear friend!..”

(“Nanny”, 1906-1907)

Bunin, like his other contemporaries, was concerned about the fate of Russia. Already in one of his early stories, written in the 1900s, Bunin asked himself, looking sadly into the “terrible distances” of Russia: “What do we have in common with this wilderness? She is infinitely great, and should I understand her sorrows, should I help them? (“New Road”). Nevertheless, already in those years he intensively studied Russian reality, looking for something bright and worthy in it. This is how the stories “Antonov Apples”, “Pines”, “Meliton”, “Birds of Heaven” appeared. Unlike many contemporary writers, Bunin did not have a sense of the age-old guilt of an intellectual before the downtrodden and impoverished Russian peasantry. Therefore, in his stories about village life, in particular in “Antonov Apples,” they sometimes see a poeticization of serfdom. In fact, the fresh smell of Antonov apples symbolized for the writer, first of all, the health, simplicity and homeliness of the peasants, a reasonable working life, and the healthy foundations of village life. These foundations are based on inextricable ties with the earth. It was they who created a unique layer of national folk culture, which is gradually disappearing and being corroded by urban civilization. Therefore, the story “Antonov Apples” has the subtitle “Epitaph”. The village is humbled and orphaned. And Bunin’s stories seem to be a poem of the desolation of landowners’ nests and remote villages. [Mikhailov 1991:3]

But Bunin’s heroes suffer not only and not so much from social injustice, from ruin and oppression. For the most part, his heroes (men, bankrupt landowners, priests, young ladies) think about the eternal questions of existence. The writer is keenly interested in the worldview of representatives of different social strata (peasants, commoners, landowners), the correlation of their spiritual experience, its origins and prospects. These interests did not take Bunin away from reality, for it was precisely this that determined the views and feelings of his characters. And the gap between external motivations and the actual state of affairs is especially painful for Bunin. At the same time, Bunin is far from idealizing the peasantry. He showed how centuries of slavery equally crippled the souls of both peasants and landowners, and how slave labor had a destructive effect on the human personality. The stories “Village” (1910), “Sukhodol” (1911), “Merry Yard” (1911), “Zakhar Vorobyov” (1912) and others, which the author himself later called “merciless,” showed readers a different, unusual Russia, revealed the self-consciousness of the masses at a turning point, revealed the contradictions of the Russian soul. Such, for example, is the main character of the story “Village” Kuzma Krasov, striving for light and goodness, but crushed by the stupid and difficult life and anger of the rest of the inhabitants of Durnovka. And “Sukhodol” mercilessly talks about the spiritual impoverishment of the barchuks, the decline of the “nests of the nobility” at the beginning of the last century.

Fate doomed Bunin to part with his homeland. However, his stories and poems, written far from Russia, are still inextricably linked with it, its breadth and absurdity. The heroes and heroines of his stories simply lived a natural life, trying to comprehend their own purpose on earth. At the same time, the writer’s own thoughts on the existing connections between the past and the future, the national and the universal, the momentary and the eternal, which determine the fate of Russia, are organically woven into the fabric of Bunin’s stories. He tried to understand what the character of a Russian person, the Russian soul, is. Bunin saw that life was changing, that there was no and could not be a return to the past. Therefore, in his stories, time inexorably counts down the time allotted to the old world. But he could not foresee what the new world would be like, what awaited Russia, describing with horror the bloody turmoil of the revolution in “Cursed Days.” Therefore, Bunin’s Russia remained a protected country of inspired landscapes and broken people, seeking and not finding their place in the new world order. [Basinsky 2000:410]

The literary fate of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is an amazing fate. During his lifetime, he was not as famous as Gorky, they did not argue about him like L. Andreev, he did not evoke such contradictory, sometimes noisily enthusiastic, and sometimes unconditionally condemning assessments, like the Symbolists. In literary and reading circles, with unusual unanimity, he was recognized as a Master. The Second World War found Bunin in Paris. Poverty and the indifference of publishing houses were painful for Ivan Alekseevich. This is how he himself talks about it: “Of course, my life is very, very bad: loneliness, hunger, cold and terrible poverty...” The only thing that saves me is work. Yes, the creation of the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” was a source of spiritual inspiration for Bunin during the war years. The author himself considered the works in the collection, written in 1937-1944, to be his highest achievement.

Critics defined the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” as an “encyclopedia of love” or, more precisely, an encyclopedia of love dramas. Love here is depicted as the most beautiful, highest feeling. In each of the stories (“Dark Alleys”, “Russia”, “Antigone”, “Tanya”, “In Paris”, “Galya Ganskaya”, “Natalie”, “Clean Monday”; this also includes the one written before “Dark Alleys” "The story "Sunstroke") shows the moment of the highest triumph of love. All the stories in the collection are united by the motif of memories of youth and homeland. All of them are fictional, which the author himself has repeatedly emphasized. However, all of them, including their retrospective form, are caused by the state of the author’s soul. “What an amazing time to be young! Life passes quickly, and we begin to appreciate it only when everything is left behind,” says I. A. Bunin. Such moments of return to the most vivid, powerful experience are reproduced in the cycle. Bunin writes about the unforgettable, which left a deep mark on the human soul.

Often the very moment of remembrance is captured, a sad touch to a long-gone joy. It is given by love, and preserved for the rest of one’s life by a special, sensory memory, which makes one perceive differently over the years much of what is “left behind.” However, Bunin's conviction in the purity, uncloudedness, and healthy naturalness of love remained unchanged.

True, sometimes in Bunin’s depiction of love the “earthly”, sensual character prevailed, but this never happened at the expense of reducing the main, spiritual significance of love. Only in this quality does it constitute the best moments of life. “Love is the highest judge in human relations,” says Bunin. The author wrote about the book “Dark Alleys” in April 1947: “It talks about the tragic and about many tender and beautiful things, I think that this is the best and most beautiful thing that I have written in my life.” We must learn from Bunin how to express soulfully, on the highest emotional wave, the most extraordinary and beautiful feeling of a person. Bunin does not intrigue with a complex plot; he awakens feelings with a lyrical monologue and confession. What he yearns for has long ago become history, and the way he knows how to express feelings is our imperishable spiritual wealth. This facet of the spiritual is the inviolability and eternity of Russia.

I. A. Bunin is called the last Russian classic, a representative of the outgoing noble culture. His works are truly imbued with a tragic sense of the doom of the old world of Russia, close and related to the writer, with whom he was connected by origin and upbringing. The artist was especially dear to those features of the past that bore the stamp of a refined noble perception of the beauty and harmony of the world. “The spirit of this environment, romanticized by my imagination, seemed all the more beautiful to me because it disappeared forever before my eyes,” he would later write. But, despite the fact that for Bunin the past of Russia became a kind of ideal example of spirituality, he belonged to his contradictory, disharmonious time. The most striking works on the theme of Russia are the stories “Village” and “Sukhodol”. [Lavrov 1989: 217]

The real features of his controversial time were embodied with remarkable force in “The Village”. In this “cruel” story, using the example of the fate of the Krasov brothers, the author shows the decomposition and death of the peasant world, and the decomposition is both external, everyday, and internal, moral. Peasant life is full of ugliness and savagery. The ruin and poverty of the majority of men is highlighted even more clearly by the rapid enrichment of those like Tikhon Krasov, who subordinated his entire life to the pursuit of money. But life takes revenge on the hero: material well-being does not make him happy and, moreover, turns into a dangerous deformation of his personality.

Bunin's story is full of events from the time of the first Russian revolution. A multivocal gathering of peasants is seething, incredible rumors are spreading, landowners' estates are on fire, and the poor are walking around desperately. All these events in the “Village” bring discord and confusion into the souls of people, disrupt natural human connections, and distort age-old moral concepts. The soldier, who knows about Tikhon Krasov’s relationship with his wife, humiliatingly asks the owner not to kick him out of service, brutally beating Young. All his life, the self-taught poet Kuzma Krasov has been searching for the truth, painfully experiencing the senseless and cruel behavior of men. All this speaks of the disunity of the peasants, their inability to rationally arrange their fate. In an effort to understand the reasons for the current state of the people, Bunin turns to the serfdom past of Russia in the story “Sukhodol”. But the writer is far from idealizing that era.

In the center of the image is the fate of the impoverished noble family of the Khrushchevs and their servants. In the life of the heroes of this story, as in the story “The Village,” there is a lot of strange, wild, and abnormal things. The fate of Natalya, the former serf nanny of the young Khrushchevs, is indicative. This extraordinary, gifted nature is deprived of the opportunity to realize itself. The life of a serf girl is mercilessly broken by her masters, who condemn her to shame and humiliation for such a “terrible” offense as love for the young master Pyotr Petrovich. After all, it was this feeling that was the reason for the theft of the folding mirror, which amazed the yard girl with its beauty. [Sokolov 1999:338]

There is a great contrast between the feeling of unprecedented happiness that overwhelms Natasha, who furrowed her eyebrows in front of the mirror in order to please her idol, and the shame and disgrace experienced by a village girl with a face swollen from tears, who, in front of the entire servants’ eyes, was put on a dung cart and sent to a distant place. farm After returning, Natalya is subjected to cruel bullying from the young lady, which she endures with stoic submission to fate. Love, family happiness, warmth and harmony of human relationships are inaccessible to a serf woman. Therefore, all the strength and depth of Natalya’s feelings are realized in her touching affection for the masters and devotion to Sukhodol. This means that the poetry of the “noble nests” hides the tragedy of souls disfigured by the cruelty and inhumanity of serfdom, which the writer reproduced with stern truthfulness in “Sukhodol”.

But the inhumane social system also cripples representatives of the nobility. The fate of the Khrushchevs is absurd and tragic. Young lady Tonya goes crazy, Pyotr Petrovich dies under the hooves of a horse, and the feeble-minded grandfather Pyotr Kirillovich dies at the hands of a serf. The perversity and ugliness of the relationship between masters and servants was very accurately expressed by Natalya: “Gervaska bullied the barchuk and grandfather, and the young lady bullied me. Barchuk, and, to tell the truth, grandfather themselves, doted on Gervaska, and I doted on her.” Violation of normal, natural concepts even leads to deformation of the feeling of love. What fills the life of a person in love with joy, tenderness, and a sense of harmony, in “Sukhodol” leads to dementia, madness, shame, and devastation. What is the reason for the distortion of moral concepts? Of course, feudal reality is largely to blame for this.

But Bunin’s story, without sharpening social contradictions, reveals this problem more widely and deeply, transferring it to the plane of human relations characteristic of any time. The point is not only in the socio-political system, but also in the imperfection of man, who often lacks the strength to fight circumstances. Thus, Bunin did not idealize Russia, but also did not deny it poetry. The homeland gave birth to many contradictory feelings in his soul, which he tried to understand in a way accessible to him - by attracting the attention of the readership to the problems of existence through his creativity.

Coursework on Russian literature:

“Themes of love and homeland in I. A. Bunin’s cycle “Dark Alleys.” Originality of genre and composition"

Introduction

Life and work of I. A. Bunin

Poetry and tragedy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin

Philosophy of love in the cycle “Dark Alleys”

1Story “Dark Alleys”

2"Raven"

3"The Romance of the Hunchback"

The theme of Russia in the works of I. A. Bunin

Conclusion

Introduction

Bunin love creativity tragedy

In recent years, I. A. Bunin’s books have been repeatedly published and reprinted in huge numbers. The growing interest in his poetry and prose is due not only to the restoration of justice (Bunin was practically not published in Russia for 35 years, from 1921 to 1956) and not only to the fact that he was the first Nobel laureate, but also to the fact that his books have a spiritual content , consonant with our modern times. Literary scholars have far from exhausted the Bunin theme, as evidenced by numerous publications published in recent decades, which reveal various aspects of the artist’s life and work.

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 in this theme.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the theme of love and homeland in the works of I. A. Bunin using the example of the “Dark Alleys” cycle.

The task is to trace the evolution of the theme of love and homeland in Bunin’s work.

In our Russian literature, before Bunin, there was, perhaps, no writer in whose work the motives of love, passion, and feelings would play such a significant role. Busy with solving social, moral, religious and philosophical problems, Russian literature seemed to be ashamed for a long time to pay exclusive attention to love, or even (as was the case with the late L. Tolstoy) to reject it altogether as an unworthy “temptation.”

1.Life and work of I. A. Bunin

Bunin Ivan Alekseevich (October 10 (22), 1870, Voronezh - November 8, 1953, Paris) - Russian writer; prose writer, poet, translator.

The childhood of the future writer took place in the conditions of the impoverished life of the nobility (the Butyrki farm of the Yelets district of the Oryol province). He learned to read early, had imagination since childhood and was very impressionable. Having entered the gymnasium in Yelets in 1881, he studied there for only five years, since the family had no funds. A nobleman by birth, Ivan Bunin did not even receive a high school education, and this could not but affect his future fate.

In 1889, an independent life began - with a change of professions, with work in both provincial and metropolitan periodicals. While collaborating with the editors of the newspaper "Orlovsky Vestnik", the young writer met the newspaper's proofreader, Varvara Vladimirovna Pashchenko, who married him in 1891. The young couple, who lived unmarried (Pashchenko's parents were against the marriage), subsequently moved to Poltava (1892) and began to serve as statisticians in the provincial government. In 1891, Bunin's first collection of poems, still very imitative, was published.

The year is a turning point in the fate of the writer. After Pashchenko got along with Bunin’s friend A.I. Bibikov, the writer left his service and moved to Moscow, where his literary acquaintances took place (with L.N. Tolstoy, whose personality and philosophy had a strong influence on Bunin, with A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, N.D. Teleshov, whose “environments” the young writer became a member of). Bunin was friends with many famous artists.

In 1900, Bunin's story "Antonov Apples" appeared, which was later included in all anthologies of Russian prose. During this period, wide literary fame came: for the collection of poems "Falling Leaves" (1901), as well as for the translation of the poem by the American romantic poet G. Longfellow "The Song of Hiawatha" (1896), Bunin was awarded the Pushkin Prize by the Russian Academy of Sciences (later, in 1909 he was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences). [Sokolov 1999: 279]

Bunin's family life with Anna Nikolaevna Tsakni (1896-1900) also turned out unsuccessfully; their son Kolya died in 1905. In 1906, Bunin met Vera Nikolaevna Muromtseva (1881-1961), who became the writer’s companion throughout his subsequent life. Muromtseva, possessing extraordinary literary abilities, left wonderful literary memories of her husband (“The Life of Bunin”, “Conversations with Memory”). In 1907, the Bunins went on a trip to the countries of the East - Syria, Egypt, Palestine.

If in his earlier works - the stories in the collection "To the End of the World" (1897), as well as in the stories "Antonov Apples" (1900), "Epitaph" (1900), Bunin turns to the theme of small-scale impoverishment, nostalgically tells about the life of impoverished noble estates , then in the works written after the first Russian Revolution of 1905, the main theme becomes the drama of Russian historical fate (the stories “Village”, 1910, “Sukhodol”, 1912). Both stories were a huge success among readers. In 1910, the Bunins traveled first to Europe, and then to Egypt and Ceylon. The echoes of this journey, the impression that Buddhist culture made on the writer, are palpable, in particular, in the story “Brothers” (1914). In the fall of 1912 - spring of 1913 again abroad (Trebizond, Constantinople, Bucharest), then (1913-1914) - to Capri. In 1915-1916, collections of stories “The Cup of Life” and “The Mister from San Francisco” were published.

The Bunins leave Moscow for Odessa (1918), and then abroad, to France (1920). The break with the Motherland, as it turned out later, forever, was painful for the writer. The works of this period are permeated with thoughts about Russia, about the tragedy of Russian history of the 20th century, about the loneliness of modern man, which is only for a short moment broken by the invasion of love passion (collections of stories "Mitya's Love", 1925, "Sunstroke", 1927, "Dark Alleys" , 1943, autobiographical novel "The Life of Arsenyev", 1927-1929, 1933). In 1933 he became the first Russian writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize. In 1939, the Bunins settled in the south of France, in Grasse, at the Villa Jeannette, where they spent the entire war. In 1927-1942, Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova lived side by side with the Bunin family, who became the writer’s deep, late affection. In 1945 the Bunins returned to Paris. The greatest writers of France and other European countries highly appreciated Bunin's work even during his lifetime (F. Mauriac, A. Gide, R. Rolland, T. Mann, R.-M. Rilke, J. Ivashkevich, etc.). The writer's works have been translated into all European languages ​​and some oriental ones. [Smirnova 1991:54]

He was buried in the Russian cemetery of Saint-Genevieve-des-Bois, near Paris.

2.Poetry and tragedy of love in the works of I. A. Bunin

How, Lord, can I thank you?

You for everything that is in this world

You gave me to see and love

On a sea night, under the starry sky.

Bunin wrote a lot about love, its tragedies and rare moments of true happiness. These works are marked by an extraordinary poeticization of human feeling; they revealed the writer’s wonderful talent, his ability to penetrate intimate depths, hearts with their unknown and unknown laws. For Bunin, true love has something in common with the eternal beauty of nature, therefore only such a feeling of love is beautiful that is natural, not false, not fictitious. For him, love and existence without it are two hostile lives, and if love dies, then another life is no longer needed.

Exalting love, Bunin does not hide the fact that it brings not only the joy of happiness, but also very often conceals torment, grief, disappointment, and death. That is why the writer combined in his work the most beautiful and the most terrible - love and death. In one of his letters, he himself explained exactly this motive in his work, and not only explained, but convincingly argued: Don’t you really know yet that love and death are inextricably linked? Every time I experienced a love catastrophe, and there were quite a few of these love catastrophes in my life, or rather, almost every love of mine was a catastrophe - I was close to suicide . [Mikhailov 1991:7] In stories about love, I. A. Bunin affirmed the true, spiritual values, beauty and greatness of a person capable of great selfless feelings, portrayed love as a high, ideal, beautiful feeling, despite the fact that it does not carry only joy and happiness, but more often - grief, suffering, death.

.Philosophy of love in the cycle “Dark Alleys”

I. A. Bunin devoted a significant part of his works to the theme of love, from the earliest to the last. Collection Dark alleys became the embodiment of all the writer’s many years of thoughts about love. He saw it everywhere, because for him this concept was very broad.

Bunin's stories are precisely philosophy. 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.

Dark alleys - a work of many faces, diverse. Bunin shows human relationships in all manifestations: sublime passion, quite ordinary desires, novels having nothing to do , animal manifestations of passion. In his characteristic manner, Bunin always finds the necessary, suitable words to describe even the basest human instincts. He never stoops to vulgarity, because he considers it unacceptable. But, as a true master of the Word, he always accurately conveys all shades of feelings and experiences. He does not shy away from any aspects of human existence; you will not encounter any sanctimonious silence about any topics. Love for a writer is a completely earthly, real, tangible feeling. Spirituality is inseparable from the physical nature of human attraction to each other. And this is no less beautiful and attractive for Bunin. [Mikhailov 1991:4]

The naked female body often appears in Bunin's stories. But even here he knows how to find the only correct expressions, so as not to descend to ordinary naturalism. And the woman appears beautiful, like a goddess, although the author is far from turning a blind eye to shortcomings and overly romanticizing nudity.

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. A simple girl from a village in a story Tanya as beautiful as the bright Spanish woman from Camargue . The writer also addresses the fates of fallen women; they are no less interesting to him than ladies who keep up appearances. Love makes everyone equal. Prostitutes do not cause disgust, and vice versa, the behavior of some women from decent families are perplexed. Social status ceases to matter when feelings come into play.

It is surprising that the action of the story can last for a very short time. In several stories, Bunin simply describes women he accidentally saw in a train carriage. And this is no less interesting than if some action were taking place. The images are vivid and immediately imprinted in the memory. This is typical for Bunin. He always knows how to choose the right words, and not a single one will be superfluous.

All the images delight, it seems that the author is in love with each of them. It is possible that he embodied real-life personalities on paper. All the feelings that these women experience have a right to exist. Let it be the first timid love, passion for an unworthy person, a feeling of revenge, lust, worship. And it makes absolutely no difference whether you are a peasant, a prostitute 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. It doesn't matter. It is much more necessary 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 between two. [Basinsky 2000:415]

Bunin is in love with love. For him, this is the most wonderful 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. Even before the appearance Dark alleys he's writing: The blissful hours pass, and it is necessary, necessary... to preserve at least something, that is, to oppose death, the fading of the rosehip . The last image is taken from a poem by N. Ogarev An ordinary story . That's where the name came from Dark alleys.

Bunin strives in his stories to stop the moment, to prolong the flowering of the rosehip, because the fall of flowers is inevitable. [Lavrov 1989:199]

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. He shows us love at its peak, but never at its fading, since fading does not happen in his stories. Only the instantaneous disappearance of a bright flame by the will of circumstances.

Dark alleys I would like to name it exactly philosophy of love . There is no better definition. Bunin subordinated all his work to this philosophy.

Book Dark alleys has become an integral part of not only Russian, but also world literature, dedicated to the eternal, ageless theme of love.

1 Story “Dark Alleys”

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, I still 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, 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 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 it is not dying memories, many years of devotion to love. Nevertheless, the “thorn” in Nikolai’s heart will still not disappear.

Already in this first story of the cycle, one of the main themes of the cycle appears: life moves inexorably forward, dreams of lost happiness are illusory, because a person cannot influence the development of events. The man in the works of I. A. Bunin is in a vicious circle of everyday life, vulgarity and melancholy. Only occasionally does happiness smile at him, and then it leaves forever. The heroes of the writer’s works have a keen sense of beauty, but never enter into a fight for it. The philosophy of Bunin's heroes is based on the feeling of the impossibility of changing anything in life, and therefore they only greedily catch moments of happiness, suffer if it passes by, but never fight for it.

As the doctor from the story “The River Inn” will say: “... after all, cruel traces remain in the soul, that is, memories that are especially cruel and painful if something happy is remembered...”

3.2 "Raven"

How strange: you start leafing through a volume of “Dark Alleys” by I.A. Bunin and you can’t tear yourself away. It seems that you know in detail “Caucasus”, and “Muse”, and “Late Hour”, and not just “Natalie” or “Clean Monday”, but reading these stories awakens some strange feeling: as if not only these stories you know, but I once knew and loved these young people, as if you had lived a long time ago in the world and it seems that you haven’t really loved yet, but tomorrow or even tonight this could happen. Such is the story “The Raven,” also included in the book “Dark Alleys.”

It seems that the author is unsophisticated in his narration, explaining the meaning of the title from the very beginning: “My father looked like a raven.” Well, then what does “alley of love” have to do with it? Apparently, this question is the main intrigue of the story. In the house where yesterday’s lyceum student returns for the holidays, his eight-year-old sister, a peer, yesterday’s high school student, has appeared as a new “nanny.” This is how a strange “love triangle” arises: yesterday’s high school student and lyceum student are in love with each other, and the “raven” father turns out to be a predatory homewrecker. The story is banal, if not vulgar, if not for the writer’s style, which makes the ordinary and trivial poetic, and turns the cliches of a love triangle into the sublime and tragic.

Here is the tensely prim atmosphere at dinner, the theatrically cutesy atmosphere at evening tea: there is not a single look, word, sigh; there is a “filled to the brim” cup, “how he loved”, there are strange moral teachings of the owner of the house, which seem to sound out of place: “If only a black satin dress with a jagged, standing collar a la Maria Stuart, studded with small diamonds, would suit your face very well ... or a medieval dress of punched velvet with a small neckline and a ruby ​​cross...” Or other speeches already addressed to the son, completely unflattering... Everything is so believable, as if it is only now unfolding before our eyes. However, in Bunin’s early works there seem to be variants of the prototypes of the heroine of “The Crow”. This is Olya Meshcherskaya from “Easy Breathing”, and Vera from “The Last Date”, Aglaya... All of them at the beginning of the story are caught by the author in moments of waiting for love, but fate will reward each of them differently.

The plot twist in “The Crow” is also unusual; it will make the reader remember Chekhov’s “The Jumper,” for example. The scene of her love confession will be the reason for her son to leave his home forever, renounce his inheritance, and then learn that his father left the service and moved to St. Petersburg “with a lovely young wife.” One day at the Mariinsky Theater he will see them: his father, sitting like a raven, and her... How much says a detail once noticed by a young lover: “On her neck a ruby ​​cross sparkled with dark fire...”

Here they are: dark, inscrutable alleys of love... She, once madly in love with a young man, today seems to be in love... with herself. The Raven Predator is the owner of a beautiful doll, but not a beautiful living loving soul. “The ruby ​​cross” is like a dream at the beginning of the story for her and a “trap” for the predator - and at the end as a payment for power over youth and beauty, in essence, makes this story a kind of elegy. “Youth is retribution,” Ibsen once said very accurately. For the raven father, the retribution is doubly: he has lost his son forever, his power over the sweet creature, who looks around with curiosity in the theater whose name is life, is also illusory.

And yet, how sweet even a moment of recollection of the unsaid! How quiet is the sadness of the unrealizable!

3 "The Hunchback's Romance"

The book of short stories “Dark Alleys” was published in 1943 in New York. Then it included eleven stories, and three years later for the Paris edition of I.A. Bunin gave 38 stories; essentially, it was already a different book in some ways. Although it is called “Dark Alleys,” there is a lot of light in it, and also that many stories written earlier or later also, for some reason, “ask” to be included in this book. Perhaps this is because the central theme of Bunin’s work in general is Love. He always talks about love, even when there are no love collisions in the plot. Bunin himself, a connoisseur of the human heart, creates a whole gallery of “portraits of love”, one of the halls of which he will later call “Dark Alleys”. But on the other hand, there is so much music and poetry in this book that the “dark alleys” can involuntarily be read as some kind of revelation, like the secret writing of your own soul.

Open at random “The Hunchback’s Romance,” which ends with the exclamation: “Someone is merciless to man!” Just one page... and that's the whole novel. For the first time in his life, the hunchback receives a love note, an invitation to a date, in which the girl in love with him names her characteristics: “... a gray English suit, a purple silk umbrella in his left hand, a bouquet of violets in his right...” So much tact and sophistication and even magic in the combination of colors: gray, lilac!.. How much poetry is only in a bouquet of violets, what a fragrant and joyful spring opens up to an almost happy eternity ahead... And he strives to get in tune with this love melody, this wondrous picture: “I bought lilac gloves, a new gray tie with a red sparkle to match the color of the suit...” Everything that the human imagination draws speaks of the future happy excitement of lovers. By all external signs, it seems that they are made for each other. In order to harmonize even in clothes, I think, you need to be mentally and emotionally similar, tuned in to the same wavelength... It is impossible not to anticipate that happiness has finally smiled on the hunchback. But the reader, it turns out, is mistaken: the hunchback’s first glance at the woman in love with him... - and happiness is gone. He sees a hunchback walking towards him. The writer deliberately uses the technique of disappointed expectations: this story, written in the early thirties, is not included in the “Dark Alleys” cycle, not only because it was written earlier, but also because its plot itself contains an allegory. It is not only and not so much about the hunchback and the hunchback, but about the vicissitudes of fate, the vicissitudes of love, about self-deception, about the fact that the gap between dreams and reality can be overcome only in fantasies and can never be overcome in real life. In essence, this most intimate thought of the writer and lyricist I.A. Bunin is realized in his own way in “Cold Autumn”, and in “Dark Alleys”, and in “Clean Monday”, but it seems that the writer has never completed his work so sadly. Reflecting on the mercilessness of fate towards a person, the author more often makes a person remember happy moments, which, like tiny stars, are scattered in the huge, endless black sky, but without which our life would, without a doubt, be completely different. Perhaps this thought was best expressed by the artist himself in the poem “And Flowers and Bumblebees...”:

And I will forget everything. I only remember these

Field paths between ears of grain and grass...

And from sweet tears I won’t have time to answer,

Falling to the merciful knees.

And in this story, the hero is caught at a time when he still does not know how to appreciate the happiness given by God for only a moment. Perhaps the most mysteriously dark state of the soul reveals itself to itself in anticipation of the Happiness of love, the Light of Love. Time will pass, and they will remember the same story with a completely different feeling.

“The Romance of the Hunchback” is a kind of parable about the happiness of a love dream and the sorrows of ordinary life, about that tragic discrepancy in love, about which much has been written in world literature, but, as the work of I.A. Bunina, cannot be exhausted...

.The theme of Russia in the works of I. A. Bunin

Like any Russian poet, I. A. Bunin absorbed the classical tradition of singing Russia. For him, who grew up on his father’s estate, among the dim and inaudible beauty of Russian nature, his homeland began here. We find echoes of this fascination already in the poet’s early poems, which are called: “To the Motherland” (1891), “Motherland” (1896). In the poem “Motherland” (1891), still largely imitative and decorative, Russia appears in the image of a poor peasant woman:

They mock you

They, O Motherland, reproach

You with your simplicity,

Poor looking black huts.

In the poem “Motherland,” the familiar Russian distance evokes a vague melancholy:

Under the sky of deathly lead

The winter day is gloomily fading,

And there is no end to the pine forests,

And far from the villages.

Many of Bunin’s early poems contain epic and fairy-tale motifs that take us back to Ancient Rus' and pre-Christian times - “At the Crossroads” (1900), “Vir” (1900), “After the Battle” (1903), “Eve of Kupala” (1903) ), "Steppe" (1912). In the poem “Steppe” you can even feel the epic chant:

The blue raven drinks his eyes dry,

Collects tribute piece by piece.

You are my side, my side,

My age-old wilderness!

This return to the roots was also characteristic of Russian culture at the beginning of the last century (suffice it to recall the paintings of V. Vasnetsov and the early N. Roerich, Russian fairy tales of A. N. Tolstoy). The epic ancient Rus' was gradually superimposed in the poet’s mind on modern Russia with its backwardness and poverty. The outbreak of World War aggravated the impending crisis. The premonition of disaster is evident in the poem “Eve”:

Here comes the demon-possessed army

And, like Mamai, he will pass through all of Rus'...

But the world is empty - who will save?

But there is no God - who should be punished?

But Russia revealed itself to Bunin not only in poverty and the abandonment of wretched villages. He saw it in the multicolored spring steppes, the scarlet evening sky, and the golden autumn groves:

A long whip shoots in a dry forest,

Cows are chattering in the bushes,

And blue snowdrops are blooming,

And an oak leaf rustles underfoot.

(“Youth”, 1916)

A sad long evening in October!

I loved late autumn in Russia.

I loved the crimson forest on the mountain,

The expanse of fields and dull twilight...

(“Desolation”, 1903)

The open spaces and landscapes are inspired by people, peaceful peasant farmers. Bunin describes them with tenderness:

Along the furrow, hurrying after the coulters

I leave soft traces -

So good with bare feet

Step onto the velvet of the warm furrow!

(“Plowman”, 1903-1906)

Bunin writes about his old nanny:

Why in the eyes

So much sorrow, meekness?...

Bast shoes on the feet,

Head wrapped up

Printed shawl,

Old short fur coat...

“Hello, dear friend!..”

(“Nanny”, 1906-1907)

Bunin, like his other contemporaries, was concerned about the fate of Russia. Already in one of his early stories, written in the 1900s, Bunin asked himself, looking sadly into the “terrible distances” of Russia: “What do we have in common with this wilderness? She is infinitely great, and should I understand her sorrows, should I help them? (“New Road”). Nevertheless, already in those years he intensively studied Russian reality, looking for something bright and worthy in it. This is how the stories “Antonov Apples”, “Pines”, “Meliton”, “Birds of Heaven” appeared. Unlike many contemporary writers, Bunin did not have a sense of the age-old guilt of an intellectual before the downtrodden and impoverished Russian peasantry. Therefore, in his stories about village life, in particular in “Antonov Apples,” they sometimes see a poeticization of serfdom. In fact, the fresh smell of Antonov apples symbolized for the writer, first of all, the health, simplicity and homeliness of the peasants, a reasonable working life, and the healthy foundations of village life. These foundations are based on inextricable ties with the earth. It was they who created a unique layer of national folk culture, which is gradually disappearing and being corroded by urban civilization. Therefore, the story “Antonov Apples” has the subtitle “Epitaph”. The village is humbled and orphaned. And Bunin’s stories seem to be a poem of the desolation of landowners’ nests and remote villages. [Mikhailov 1991:3]

But Bunin’s heroes suffer not only and not so much from social injustice, from ruin and oppression. For the most part, his heroes (men, bankrupt landowners, priests, young ladies) think about the eternal questions of existence. The writer is keenly interested in the worldview of representatives of different social strata (peasants, commoners, landowners), the correlation of their spiritual experience, its origins and prospects. These interests did not take Bunin away from reality, for it was precisely this that determined the views and feelings of his characters. And the gap between external motivations and the actual state of affairs is especially painful for Bunin. At the same time, Bunin is far from idealizing the peasantry. He showed how centuries of slavery equally crippled the souls of both peasants and landowners, and how slave labor had a destructive effect on the human personality. The stories “Village” (1910), “Sukhodol” (1911), “Merry Yard” (1911), “Zakhar Vorobyov” (1912) and others, which the author himself later called “merciless,” showed readers a different, unusual Russia, revealed the self-consciousness of the masses at a turning point, revealed the contradictions of the Russian soul. Such, for example, is the main character of the story “Village” Kuzma Krasov, striving for light and goodness, but crushed by the stupid and difficult life and anger of the rest of the inhabitants of Durnovka. And “Sukhodol” mercilessly talks about the spiritual impoverishment of the barchuks, the decline of the “nests of the nobility” at the beginning of the last century.

Fate doomed Bunin to part with his homeland. However, his stories and poems, written far from Russia, are still inextricably linked with it, its breadth and absurdity. The heroes and heroines of his stories simply lived a natural life, trying to comprehend their own purpose on earth. At the same time, the writer’s own thoughts on the existing connections between the past and the future, the national and the universal, the momentary and the eternal, which determine the fate of Russia, are organically woven into the fabric of Bunin’s stories. He tried to understand what the character of a Russian person, the Russian soul, is. Bunin saw that life was changing, that there was no and could not be a return to the past. Therefore, in his stories, time inexorably counts down the time allotted to the old world. But he could not foresee what the new world would be like, what awaited Russia, describing with horror the bloody turmoil of the revolution in “Cursed Days.” Therefore, Bunin’s Russia remained a protected country of inspired landscapes and broken people, seeking and not finding their place in the new world order. [Basinsky 2000:410]

The literary fate of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is an amazing fate. During his lifetime, he was not as famous as Gorky, they did not argue about him like L. Andreev, he did not evoke such contradictory, sometimes noisily enthusiastic, and sometimes unconditionally condemning assessments, like the Symbolists. In literary and reading circles, with unusual unanimity, he was recognized as a Master. The Second World War found Bunin in Paris. Poverty and the indifference of publishing houses were painful for Ivan Alekseevich. This is how he himself talks about it: “Of course, my life is very, very bad: loneliness, hunger, cold and terrible poverty...” The only thing that saves me is work. Yes, the creation of the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” was a source of spiritual inspiration for Bunin during the war years. The author himself considered the works in the collection, written in 1937-1944, to be his highest achievement.

Critics defined the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” as an “encyclopedia of love” or, more precisely, an encyclopedia of love dramas. Love here is depicted as the most beautiful, highest feeling. In each of the stories (“Dark Alleys”, “Russia”, “Antigone”, “Tanya”, “In Paris”, “Galya Ganskaya”, “Natalie”, “Clean Monday”; this also includes the one written before “Dark Alleys” "The story "Sunstroke") shows the moment of the highest triumph of love. All the stories in the collection are united by the motif of memories of youth and homeland. All of them are fictional, which the author himself has repeatedly emphasized. However, all of them, including their retrospective form, are caused by the state of the author’s soul. “What an amazing time to be young! Life passes quickly, and we begin to appreciate it only when everything is left behind,” says I. A. Bunin. Such moments of return to the most vivid, powerful experience are reproduced in the cycle. Bunin writes about the unforgettable, which left a deep mark on the human soul.

Often the very moment of remembrance is captured, a sad touch to a long-gone joy. It is given by love, and preserved for the rest of one’s life by a special, sensory memory, which makes one perceive differently over the years much of what is “left behind.” However, Bunin's conviction in the purity, uncloudedness, and healthy naturalness of love remained unchanged.

True, sometimes in Bunin’s depiction of love the “earthly”, sensual character prevailed, but this never happened at the expense of reducing the main, spiritual significance of love. Only in this quality does it constitute the best moments of life. “Love is the highest judge in human relations,” says Bunin. The author wrote about the book “Dark Alleys” in April 1947: “It talks about the tragic and about many tender and beautiful things, I think that this is the best and most beautiful thing that I have written in my life.” We must learn from Bunin how to express soulfully, on the highest emotional wave, the most extraordinary and beautiful feeling of a person. Bunin does not intrigue with a complex plot; he awakens feelings with a lyrical monologue and confession. What he yearns for has long ago become history, and the way he knows how to express feelings is our imperishable spiritual wealth. This facet of the spiritual is the inviolability and eternity of Russia.

I. A. Bunin is called the last Russian classic, a representative of the outgoing noble culture. His works are truly imbued with a tragic sense of the doom of the old world of Russia, close and related to the writer, with whom he was connected by origin and upbringing. The artist was especially dear to those features of the past that bore the stamp of a refined noble perception of the beauty and harmony of the world. “The spirit of this environment, romanticized by my imagination, seemed all the more beautiful to me because it disappeared forever before my eyes,” he would later write. But, despite the fact that for Bunin the past of Russia became a kind of ideal example of spirituality, he belonged to his contradictory, disharmonious time. The most striking works on the theme of Russia are the stories “Village” and “Sukhodol”. [Lavrov 1989: 217]

The real features of his controversial time were embodied with remarkable force in “The Village”. In this “cruel” story, using the example of the fate of the Krasov brothers, the author shows the decomposition and death of the peasant world, and the decomposition is both external, everyday, and internal, moral. Peasant life is full of ugliness and savagery. The ruin and poverty of the majority of men is highlighted even more clearly by the rapid enrichment of those like Tikhon Krasov, who subordinated his entire life to the pursuit of money. But life takes revenge on the hero: material well-being does not make him happy and, moreover, turns into a dangerous deformation of his personality.

Bunin's story is full of events from the time of the first Russian revolution. A multivocal gathering of peasants is seething, incredible rumors are spreading, landowners' estates are on fire, and the poor are walking around desperately. All these events in the “Village” bring discord and confusion into the souls of people, disrupt natural human connections, and distort age-old moral concepts. The soldier, who knows about Tikhon Krasov’s relationship with his wife, humiliatingly asks the owner not to kick him out of service, brutally beating Young. All his life, the self-taught poet Kuzma Krasov has been searching for the truth, painfully experiencing the senseless and cruel behavior of men. All this speaks of the disunity of the peasants, their inability to rationally arrange their fate. In an effort to understand the reasons for the current state of the people, Bunin turns to the serfdom past of Russia in the story “Sukhodol”. But the writer is far from idealizing that era.

In the center of the image is the fate of the impoverished noble family of the Khrushchevs and their servants. In the life of the heroes of this story, as in the story “The Village,” there is a lot of strange, wild, and abnormal things. The fate of Natalya, the former serf nanny of the young Khrushchevs, is indicative. This extraordinary, gifted nature is deprived of the opportunity to realize itself. The life of a serf girl is mercilessly broken by her masters, who condemn her to shame and humiliation for such a “terrible” offense as love for the young master Pyotr Petrovich. After all, it was this feeling that was the reason for the theft of the folding mirror, which amazed the yard girl with its beauty. [Sokolov 1999:338]

There is a great contrast between the feeling of unprecedented happiness that overwhelms Natasha, who furrowed her eyebrows in front of the mirror in order to please her idol, and the shame and disgrace experienced by a village girl with a face swollen from tears, who, in front of the entire servants’ eyes, was put on a dung cart and sent to a distant place. farm After returning, Natalya is subjected to cruel bullying from the young lady, which she endures with stoic submission to fate. Love, family happiness, warmth and harmony of human relationships are inaccessible to a serf woman. Therefore, all the strength and depth of Natalya’s feelings are realized in her touching affection for the masters and devotion to Sukhodol. This means that the poetry of the “noble nests” hides the tragedy of souls disfigured by the cruelty and inhumanity of serfdom, which the writer reproduced with stern truthfulness in “Sukhodol”.

But the inhumane social system also cripples representatives of the nobility. The fate of the Khrushchevs is absurd and tragic. Young lady Tonya goes crazy, Pyotr Petrovich dies under the hooves of a horse, and the feeble-minded grandfather Pyotr Kirillovich dies at the hands of a serf. The perversity and ugliness of the relationship between masters and servants was very accurately expressed by Natalya: “Gervaska bullied the barchuk and grandfather, and the young lady bullied me. Barchuk, and, to tell the truth, grandfather themselves, doted on Gervaska, and I doted on her.” Violation of normal, natural concepts even leads to deformation of the feeling of love. What fills the life of a person in love with joy, tenderness, and a sense of harmony, in “Sukhodol” leads to dementia, madness, shame, and devastation. What is the reason for the distortion of moral concepts? Of course, feudal reality is largely to blame for this.

But Bunin’s story, without sharpening social contradictions, reveals this problem more widely and deeply, transferring it to the plane of human relations characteristic of any time. The point is not only in the socio-political system, but also in the imperfection of man, who often lacks the strength to fight circumstances. Thus, Bunin did not idealize Russia, but also did not deny it poetry. The homeland gave birth to many contradictory feelings in his soul, which he tried to understand in a way accessible to him - by attracting the attention of the readership to the problems of existence through his creativity.

Conclusion

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 of the 21st century indifferent. Each person will find in Bunin’s works something consonant with their 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 who arouses deep reader interest. In the extremely difficult conditions of emigration, Bunin’s talent did not ossify in despair and melancholy, but, constrained and cut off from his homeland, he continued to search for something new. One can even say that it was in foreign countries that the personal, coming directly from Bunin, began to break through in his works stronger and more clearly than before. During the years of loneliness, the memories of a slow, but, as it might have seemed then, oblivion that surrounded him for a long time, Bunin’s work concentrated attention on several fundamental problems - love, death, the memory of Russia.

The book “Dark Alleys” is the most important proof of this.

Handing it over to journalist Andrei Sedykh for publication in the United States, Bunin said: “This book is about love with some bold passages. In general, she talks about the tragic and in many ways tender and beautiful. I think that this is the best and most original thing that I have written in my life...” [Smirnova 1991:82]

Bibliography

1. Basinsky P. Russian literature of the late XIX - early XX centuries and the first emigration / P. Basinsky, S. Fedyakin. - M.: Academy, 2000. - 525 p.

Lavrov V.V. Cold autumn. Ivan Bunin in exile 1920-1953: Roman-chronicle.-M.: Mol. Guard, 1989.-384p.

Mikhailov O. Bunin’s Song of Songs: introductory article//Bunin I.A. Dark alleys.-M.: Khud. Literary, 1991.-P.3-8

Smirnova L.A. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin: Life and creativity: A book for teachers.-M.: Education, 1991.-192p.

Sokolov A.G. History of Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: Textbook.-4th ed., additional. And revised - M.: Higher school; Ed. Center Academy, 1999.-432p.

The creative path of the outstanding Russian writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is conventionally divided into two parts, as is his personal fate. The writer’s work and life were connected with Russia until 1920, and until 1953 he was in exile.

Bunin's early work was characterized by intellectual and artistic quests, which were particularly intense. Bunin made new aesthetic discoveries in Russian literature; he was characterized by genre experiments and constant renewal of imaginative thinking.

Love for the Motherland and spiritual connection with Russia

The writer was also interested in populist ideas, and in the 1910s. A special stage of his creative activity began - this concerned pre-revolutionary motives. Then Bunin's attention to lyrics decreased, and he turned to epic canvases that concerned his homeland.

This reveals the powerful spiritual connection between the writer himself and his homeland. The historical events taking place in the country attracted many writers and poets to folk themes and to the theme of the Russian revolution. When the writer was forced to emigrate, a different facet of his love for Russia began to appear in his lyrics - he was able to look at the fate of his country and compatriots from the other side.

Bunin became characterized by special sophistication and slightly different forms of artistic expression; the themes he touched on in his work became more deeply important.

Bunin’s work has always been distinguished by his love for his native nature. This is how he revealed his true love for Russia, his reverent attitude towards its natural wealth and beauty, showed how strong his spiritual connection with his Motherland was.

"Dense green spruce forest near the road..."

At first glance, this poem is dedicated to the beauty of nature - the poet praises its splendor and diversity. But with a more detailed analysis, it becomes clear that “Dense green spruce forest by the road...” also has a hidden meaning. Here Bunin’s tender and sincere love for his native country is revealed. He shows how dear to him is what is in it. The poet tries to convey his feelings through lyrics.

"Word"

The poet’s main intention was to convey the true value of a word that has existed for many centuries and amazes with its immortality. “The Word” is considered one of Bunin’s most powerful and memorable poems, in which he reveals the human word as the main asset of life.

"Motherland"

And this poem clearly shows how strong and invincible Bunin’s love for Russia was. It is in these lines that the multifaceted feelings that the poet experienced in relation to his native land are revealed. The circumstances of his life did not allow him to live his whole life in Russia, and this only emphasized for him the value of the Motherland and revealed his closeness with Russia and its people. Bunin is close to all its traditions and customs; the spirit of Russia for him has always been the main theme in his work, and he tried to reveal this theme from different sides.

“And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn”

This philosophical and lyrical work by Bunin reveals his poetic talent. The poem is filled with symbolism; Bunin often used nature and its elements to show what was going on in his soul. But the nature of Russia, which surrounded and inspired him, itself aroused the desire to embody its wonderful images in poetry.