Genre focus The work is a short novella in the style of realism, the main theme of which is reflections on love, lost, forgotten in the past, as well as on broken destinies, choices and their consequences.

Compositional structure The story is traditional for a short story, consisting of three parts, the first of which tells about the arrival of the protagonist in combination with descriptions of nature and the surrounding area, the second describes his meeting with the former beloved woman, and the third part depicts a hasty departure.

The main character The story is Nikolai Alexandrovich, presented in the image of a sixty-year-old man who relies in life on common sense in the form of his own ego and public opinion.

Minor character The work introduces Nadezhda, Nikolai’s former lover, abandoned by him once in the past, who met the hero at the end of his life’s journey. Nadezhda personifies a girl who was able to overcome the shame of having an affair with a rich man and learned to live an independent, honest life.

Distinctive feature The story is a depiction of the theme of love, which is presented by the author as a tragic and fatal event, gone irrevocably along with a dear, bright and wonderful feeling. Love in the story is presented in the form of a litmus test that helps test the human personality in terms of fortitude and moral purity.

By means of artistic expression in the story are the author's use of precise epithets, vivid metaphors, comparisons and personifications, as well as the use of parallelism, emphasizing the mental state of the characters.

Originality of the work consists in the inclusion by the writer of unexpected abrupt endings, the tragedy and drama of the plot in combination with lyricism in the form of emotions, experiences and mental anguish.

Option 2

Bunin worked in the 19th and 20th centuries. His attitude to love was special: in the beginning people loved each other very much, but in the end either one of the heroes dies or breaks up. For Bunin, love is a passionate feeling, but similar to a flash.

To analyze Bunin's work "Dark Alleys", you need to touch on the plot.

General Nikolai Alekseevich is the main character, he comes to hometown and meets the woman he loved many years ago. Nadezhda is the mistress of the yard; he does not recognize her right away. But Nadezhda did not forget him and loved Nikolai, even tried to commit suicide. The main characters seem to feel guilty for leaving her. Therefore, he tries to apologize, saying that any feelings pass.

It turns out that Nikolai’s life was not so easy, he loved his wife, but she cheated on him, and his son grew up to be a scoundrel and an insolent man. He is forced to blame himself for what he did in the past, because Nadezhda could not forgive him.

Bunin's work shows that after 35 years the love between the heroes has not faded. When the general leaves the city, he realizes that Nadezhda is the best thing that happened in his life. He reflects on the life that could have been if the connection between them had not been broken.

Bunin put tragedy into his work, because the lovers never got back together.

Nadezhda was able to maintain love, but this did not help create a union - she was left alone. I didn’t forgive Nikolai either, because the pain was very strong. But Nikolai himself turned out to be weak, did not leave his wife, was afraid of contempt and could not resist society. They could only be submissive to fate.

Bunin shows the sad story of the destinies of two people. Love in the world could not resist the foundations of the old society, so it became fragile and hopeless. But there is also a positive feature - love brought a lot of good things into the lives of the heroes, it left its mark, which they will always remember.

Almost all of Bunin’s work touches on the problem of love, and “Dark Alleys” shows how important love is in a person’s life. For Blok, love comes first, because it is what helps a person improve, change his life for the better, gain experience, and also teaches him to be kind and sensitive.

Sample 3

Dark Alleys is both a cycle of stories by Ivan Bunin, written in exile, and separate story, included in this cycle, and a metaphor borrowed from the poet Nikolai Ogarev and reinterpreted by the author. By dark alleys, Bunin meant the mysterious soul of a person, carefully preserving all the feelings, memories, emotions, and meetings once experienced. The author argued that everyone has memories that he turns to again and again, and there are the most precious ones, which are rarely disturbed, they are reliably stored in the remote corners of the soul - dark alleys.

It is about such memories that Ivan Bunin’s story, which was written in 1938 in exile, is about. Into the scary war time in the city of Grasse in France, the Russian classic wrote about love. Trying to drown out his longing for his homeland and get away from the horrors of war, Ivan Alekseevich returns to bright memories of his youth, first feelings and creative endeavors. During this period, the author wrote his best works, including the story “ Dark alleys».

Bunin's hero Ivan Alekseevich, a sixty-year-old man, a high-ranking military man, finds himself in the places of his youth. He recognizes the owner of the inn as a former serf girl, Nadezhda, whom he, a young landowner, once seduced and later abandoned. Their chance meeting makes you turn to the memories that were kept all this time in those very “dark alleys”. From the conversation of the main characters, it becomes known that Nadezhda never forgave her treacherous master, but she could not stop loving her. And Ivan Alekseevich only thanks to this meeting realized that then, many years ago, he left not just a serf girl, but the best thing that fate gave him. But he didn’t gain anything else: his son was a spendthrift and a spendthrift, his wife cheated and left.

One might get the impression that the story “Dark Alleys” is about retribution, but in fact it is about love. Ivan Bunin valued this feeling above all else. Nadezhda, an aged, lonely woman, is happy because she has had love all these years. And Ivan Alekseevich’s life did not work out precisely because he once underestimated this feeling and followed the path of reason.

In the short story, in addition to betrayal, the themes of social inequality, choice, responsibility for someone else’s fate, and the theme of duty are raised. But there is only one conclusion: if you live with your heart and put love as a gift above all else, then all these problems can be solved.

Analysis of the work Dark Alleys

In one of Ogarev’s poems, Bunin was “hooked” by the phrase “...there was an alley of dark linden trees...” Then his imagination painted autumn, rain, a road, and an old soldier in a tarantass. This formed the basis of the story.

This was the idea. The hero of the story in his youth seduced a peasant girl. He had already forgotten about her. But life has a way of bringing surprises. By chance, after many years of driving through familiar places, he stopped in a passing hut. And in the beautiful woman, the owner of the hut, I recognized that same girl.

The old soldier felt ashamed, he blushed, turned pale, and muttered something like a guilty schoolboy. Life punished him for his deed. He married for love, but never knew the warmth of a family hearth. His wife didn’t love him and cheated on him. And, in the end, she left him. The son grew up to be a scoundrel and a slacker. Everything in life comes back like a boomerang.

What about Nadezhda? She still loves the former master. Her personal life did not work out. No family, no beloved husband. But at the same time she could not forgive the master. These are the kind of women who love and hate at the same time.

The military man plunges into memories. Mentally relives their relationship. They warm the soul like the sun a minute before sunset. But he doesn’t allow for a second the thought that everything could have turned out differently. The society of that time would have condemned their relationship. He wasn't ready for this. He didn't need them, these relationships. Then it was possible to put an end to a military career.

He lives as social rules and principles dictate. He is a coward by nature. You have to fight for love.

Bunin does not allow love to flow along the family channel and form into a happy marriage. Why does he deprive his heroes of human happiness? Perhaps he thinks that fleeting passion is better? Is this eternal unfinished love better? She did not bring happiness to Nadezhda, but she still loves. What does she hope for? Personally, I don’t understand this; I don’t share the author’s views.

The old servant finally sees the light and realizes what he has lost. He speaks about this with such bitterness to Nadezhda. He realized that she was the dearest, brightest person to him. But he still didn’t understand what trump cards he had up his sleeve. Life gave him a second chance at happiness, but he didn’t take advantage of it.

What meaning does Bunin put into the title of the story “Dark Alleys”? What does he mean? Dark corners of the human soul and human memory. Every person has his own secrets. And they sometimes emerge for him in the most unexpected ways. There is nothing random in life. Accident is a pattern well planned by God, fate or the cosmos.

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Analysis of the story by I.A. Bunin "Muse".

The story was written on October 17, 1938, included in the collection “Dark Alleys”. The Second was approaching World War, Bunin personally encountered the Nazis in 1936, while traveling in Germany: in Lindau he was arrested and subjected to an unceremonious and humiliating search. Although there are no direct references to these events in Bunin's works, they significantly influenced the general mood of his work. The feeling of catastrophic existence, loneliness, the impossibility of happiness, characteristic of Bunin’s prose before, has only intensified in these years.

Like all the works in the “Dark Alleys” series, the story “Muse” reveals the theme of love. The main stylistic principle of the story is antithesis. He manifests himself on all levels.

The narration is told from the 1st person in the form of a memoir, which means that a view of events is given through the prism of the narrator’s perception, therefore, this is a subjective view. Bunin chooses this form of narration to show the image of the narrator from the inside: which of the events of those distant years were most important to him, what feelings they evoked.

There are two central images in the work: the narrator and the conservator Muse Graf. There is also “someone Zavistovsky”, but his image is secondary and in many ways parallel to the image of the narrator.

The narrator is a weak, weak-willed person who has no purpose in life. He abandoned his estate in the Tambov province to study painting, then just as easily abandoned his hobby when the Muse appeared in his life. He studied with a mediocre but famous artist, and although he was aware of the vulgarity of his nature, he still continued his studies. Free time spent in the company of representatives of bohemians, all of whose bohemianism is immediately removed by the remark that they were equally committed to “billiards and crayfish with beer.” This means, at least during his youth, he was not much different from all these ordinary people.

The image of Zavistovsky echoes the image of the narrator; he is “lonely, timid, narrow-minded.” That is, just like the narrator, a person who does not particularly stand out from others. But there is something about both of them that attracted the Muse's attention to them. Zavistovsky is “not a bad musician,” Muse says about the narrator: “You are quite beautiful,” in addition, she probably heard about his painting activities.

These two images are contrasted with the image of the main character. The external image of the Muse does not correspond to the expectations that her name generates. This is “a tall girl in a gray winter hat, a gray straight coat, gray boots, ..., eyes the color of acorns,” she has “rusty hair.” There is neither lightness nor ephemerality in her appearance: “... her knees lay round and plump,” “convex calves,” “elongated feet”; “She sat comfortably on the sofa, apparently not planning to leave soon.” She is direct and categorical. In her addresses to the narrator, imperative intonations predominate: “accept”, “remove”, “give”, “order” (whereas in the narrator’s speech we see the passive voice, impersonal constructions “very flattered”, “nothing interesting about me, it seems.” No"). This is a strong, decisive, rather eccentric nature. She cannot be called tactful and sensitive to the feelings of others. The author does not say anything about her inner world; we can only guess about what caused her offensive tactics. But most likely this is how her desire for happiness is expressed, although the methods for achieving it are somewhat naive. The muse says to the narrator: “But in fact, you are my first love.”

Such antagonism between the male and female worlds is characteristic of Bunin’s work. The peculiarities of Bunin's perception of these worlds are reflected in the joking words of the heroine of the story "Smaragd": "... the worst girl is still better than any young man."

The significance of the appearance of this unusual girl in the narrator’s life is indicated by both the composition of the story and the organization of artistic time and space.

One of the characteristic features of Bunin's work is the laconicism of the narrative. The events described on several pages of the story take a year. The narrator begins the story with winter, when he “was no longer in his early youth and decided to study painting.” He evaluates this period with the words: “I lived an unpleasant and boring life!” The space is closed in type: an artist’s house, cheap restaurants, “Capital” rooms.

Next comes the “suddenly” characteristic of Bunin’s work, when the hero’s life changes due to some unexpected event: the Count Muse knocks on the narrator’s door. This happens in early spring. Two phrases serve as a kind of marker for changes in the mood of the narrative:

Winter period of life: “It remains in my memory: the light constantly pours outside the windows, the trams rattle dully and ring along the Arbat, in the evening there is a sour stink of beer and gas in the dimly lit restaurant...”

The beginning of spring: “... through the open windows of the double frames there was no longer a whiff of sleet and rain in the dampness of winter, horseshoes were clicking on the pavement in an unwinter manner, and as if the horse-cars were ringing more musically, someone knocked on the door of my hallway.”

Here there is a kind of enlargement of the frame, focusing on one of the key moments of the hero’s life, the narrative develops in jerks, it seems that the hero’s heart is beating: “I shouted: who is there?”, “I waited...”, “I stood up.” , opened..." This is expressed grammatically by the transition from past tense to present: "... a tall girl is standing at the threshold." About this moment the narrator says: “Where does such happiness suddenly come from!” And again the phrase as a marker of mood and feeling: “As if in a dream, I heard the monotonous ringing of horse-drawn horses, the clatter of hooves...” This constant mention of street sounds may indicate the connection of the hero’s life with the space of the city.

Further May, summer is approaching. The hero, at the request of the Muse, moves to a dacha near Moscow. Now he is surrounded by the world of nature, silence and tranquility. This is an open space. Even inside the house in which the hero lives is spacious: there is almost no furniture in it. Bunin uses the technique of natural parallelism: when the Muse arrives at the hero’s dacha, it is usually clear and sunny, everything around breathes freshness. After he sees off the Muse, the sky darkens, it rains, and a thunderstorm rages.

June. The muse moves to the narrator.

Autumn. Here, as a harbinger of trouble, Zavistovsky appears.

And now attention is again focused on an important, decisive moment in the hero’s life. Winter again: “Before Christmas, I once went to the city. I returned by moonlight.” Again the narrative develops in jerks, like a restless heartbeat: “suddenly fell asleep,” “suddenly woke up,” “but she left me!”, “maybe she came back?”, “no, she didn’t come back,” etc. Bunin greatly emphasizes the hero’s despair at the level of the character of filling the space: “alley of bare trees”, “poor house”, “door in shreds of upholstery”, “burnt-out stove”. The muse, with her characteristic categoricalness, says: “The matter is over and clear, the scenes are useless.” Here the absolute end of their relationship is highlighted grammatically, which the hero himself noticed: “You are already speaking to me on “you”, you could at least not speak to him on “you” in front of me.”

Figurative system:

Man Woman

Composition:

There are 2 in the construction of the text key points: meeting with the Muse and parting with her; and 2 connecting links between these moments: life before meeting the Muse, and life before parting with her. The elements of these pairs are opposed. Also, these pairs themselves are opposed to each other in terms of the nature of the description and emotional intensity.

meeting - parting

life before meeting - life before parting

Time:

The story can be divided into 4 parts. The story takes a year. The description of two days, when key events in the hero’s life take place, is equal in volume to the description of the rest of the time. Since the narrative is given in the form of a memory, we conclude that this is psychological, subjective time. This means that these two days were the most emotionally filled, the most important for the hero. These days are, as it were, relived by the hero: this is evidenced by both the emotional intensity of the narrative and the transition to the present tense at the grammatical level.

The development of the relationship between the Muse and the narrator correlates with the seasons. Winter (the hero's life before meeting the Muse), spring-summer (life with the Muse), autumn (Zavistovsky appears), winter (Muse goes to Zavistovsky).

The same pattern can be noted in relation to times of day. The meeting of the hero and the Muse takes place during the day, and their separation occurs at night.

Space:

The periods in the hero's life when the Muse is near him are contrasted with those when she is not near him. This girl seems to free him from the closed space of the city with its constant noise, second-rate restaurants, and frees him from vulgar, empty people. At her request, he moves to a dacha near Moscow. Now he is surrounded by an open space, free from everything unnecessary, and it is easier to breathe in it.

So, we have already determined the theme of the story - love. Now let's see how Bunin reveals this topic. According to Bunin, love is tragic, it is fleeting, but leaves a deep mark on the heart. This story reveals such a facet of love as its similarity to inspiration. It visits the artist against his will, and can leave as suddenly as it came. Here this idea is personified in the Muse Count. We can only guess about the logic of her actions; she comes to bad artists, mediocre musicians, and colors their lives, making them more beautiful and spiritual. But a person in the union of the Muse acts as a passive principle, as an object, and not as a subject. And so, when she leaves him, and she inevitably leaves him, he experiences excruciating grief, but realizes his powerlessness to change anything.

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Bunin I. A. Antonov apples 1900

The author-narrator recalls the recent past. He remembers the early fine autumn, the whole golden, dried up and thinning garden, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples: gardeners are pouring apples onto carts to send them to the city. Late at night, having run out into the garden and talked with the guards guarding the garden, he looks into the dark blue depths of the sky, crowded with constellations, looks for a long, long time until the earth floats under his feet, feeling how good it is to live in the world!

The narrator recalls his Vyselki, which since the time of his grandfather had been known in the area as a rich village. Old men and women lived there for a long time - the first sign of prosperity. The houses in Vyselki were brick and strong. The average noble life had much in common with the rich peasant life. He remembers his aunt Anna Gerasimovna, her estate - small, but strong, old, surrounded by hundred-year-old trees. My aunt’s garden was famous for its apple trees, nightingales and turtle doves, and the house for its roof: its thatched roof was unusually thick and high, blackened and hardened by time. In the house, first of all, the smell of apples was felt, and then other smells: old mahogany furniture, dried linden blossom.

The narrator remembers his late brother-in-law Arseny Semenych, a landowner-hunter, big house where a lot of people gathered, everyone had a hearty dinner, and then went hunting. A horn blows in the yard, dogs howl in different voices, the owner’s favorite, a black greyhound, climbs onto the table and devours the remains of a hare with sauce from the dish. The author remembers himself riding an angry, strong and squat “Kyrgyz”: trees flash before his eyes, the screams of hunters and the barking of dogs are heard in the distance. From the ravines there is a smell of mushroom dampness and wet tree bark. It gets dark, the whole gang of hunters pours into the estate of some almost unknown bachelor hunter and, it happens, lives with him for several days. After a whole day spent hunting, the warmth of a crowded house is especially pleasant. When I happened to oversleep the hunt the next morning, I could spend the whole day in the master's library, leafing through old magazines and books, looking at the notes in their margins. Family portraits look from the walls, an old dreamy life appears before your eyes, your grandmother is sadly remembered...

But the old people in Vyselki died, Anna Gerasimovna died, Arseny Semenych shot himself. The kingdom of small landed nobles, impoverished to the point of beggary, is coming. But this small-scale life is also good! The narrator happened to visit a neighbor. He gets up early, orders the samovar to be put on, and, putting on his boots, goes out onto the porch, where he is surrounded by hounds. It will be a nice day for hunting! Only they don’t hunt along the black trail with hounds, oh, if only they were greyhounds! But he doesn’t have greyhounds... However, with the onset of winter, again, as in the old days, small estates come together, drink with their last money, and disappear for whole days in the snowy fields. And in the evening, on some remote farm, the outbuilding windows glow far away in the darkness: candles are burning there, clouds of smoke are floating, they are playing the guitar, singing...

Village 1909

Russia. Late XIX - early XX century. The Krasov brothers, Tikhon and Kuzma, were born in the small village of Durnovka. In their youth, they were engaged in small trade together, then they quarreled, and their paths diverged.

Kuzma went to work for hire. Tikhon rented an inn, opened a tavern and a shop, began buying wheat and rye from landowners, and acquiring land for next to nothing. Having become a fairly wealthy owner, Tikhon even bought a manorial estate from an impoverished descendant of the previous owners. But this did not bring him joy: his wife gave birth only to dead girls, and there was no one to leave everything he had acquired. Tikhon did not find any consolation in the dark, dirty village life, except the tavern. Started drinking. By the age of fifty, he realized that there was nothing to remember from the years that had passed, there was not a single close person nearby, and he himself was a stranger to everyone. Then Tikhon decides to make peace with his brother.

Kuzma is a completely different person by nature. Since childhood, he dreamed of studying. A neighbor taught him to read and write, a market “freethinker”, an old accordion player, supplied him with books and introduced him to disputes about literature. Kuzma wanted to describe his life in all its poverty and terrible routine. He tried to compose a story, then began to write poetry and even published a book of simple verses, but he himself understood all the imperfections of his creations. And this business did not bring in income, and a piece of bread was not given for nothing. Many years passed in search of work, often fruitless. Having seen enough of human cruelty and indifference in his travels, he started drinking and began to sink lower and lower. In the end, Kuzma decides to either go to a monastery or commit suicide.

Then Tikhon finds him and offers to take over the management of the estate. Having settled in Durnovka, Kuzma is cheerful - finally a quiet place has been found for him. At night he walks around with a mallet - he guards the estate, during the day he reads newspapers and makes notes in an old office book about what he saw and heard around him.

Gradually, sadness begins to overcome him: there is no one to talk to. Tikhon rarely appears, talking only about the farm, the meanness and anger of the men and the need to sell the estate. The cook Avdotya, the only living creature in the house, is always silent, and when Kuzma becomes seriously ill, she leaves him to his own devices and, without any sympathy, goes to spend the night in the common room.

Now Tikhon, who rarely goes to church, decides to justify himself before God. He asks his brother to take charge of this matter. Kuzma is against this idea: he feels sorry for the unfortunate Avdotya, whose suitor Tikhon identified as a real “life cutter” who beat his own father, had no inclination towards housekeeping and was only tempted by the promised dowry. Tikhon stands his ground, Avdotya meekly submits to his unenviable fate, and Kuzma reluctantly gives in to his brother.

The wedding takes place as usual. The bride weeps bitterly, Kuzma blesses her with tears, the guests drink vodka and sing songs. The irrepressible February blizzard accompanies the wedding train to the dull ringing of bells.

Zakhar Vorobyov Zakhar Vorobyov from Osinovy ​​Dvory died the other day.

He was reddish-blond, bearded, and so much taller and larger than ordinary people that he could be shown off. He himself felt like he belonged to some other breed than other people, and partly like an adult among children, with whom he had, however, to stand on an equal footing. All his life - he was forty years old - another feeling did not leave him - a vague feeling of loneliness: in the old days, they say, there were many like him, but this breed is translated. “There is another one like me,” he sometimes said, “but he is far away, near Zadonsk.”

However, he was invariably in an excellent mood. Extremely healthy. Built perfectly. He was even handsome, if not for his brown tan, his slightly turned-out lower eyelids, and the constant tears that stood like glass in them under his big blue eyes. His beard was soft, thick, slightly wavy, and I just wanted to touch it. He often, with the gentleness of a giant, smiled in surprise and threw back his head, slightly opening his red, hot mouth, showing wonderful young teeth. And a pleasant smell came from him: the rye smell of a steppe dweller with the smell of tar, tightly forged boots, with the sourish stench of a tanned sheepskin coat and the mint aroma of snuff: he did not smoke, but sniffed.

He was generally inclined towards antiquity. The collar of his rugged, rugged shirt, always clean, was not buttoned, and was tied with a small red ribbon. A copper comb and a copper digger hung on the belt. Until he was thirty-five, he wore bast shoes. But the sons grew up, the yard managed, and Zakhar began to wear boots. Winter and summer he did not take off his sheepskin coat and hat. And he left behind a good short fur coat, completely new, the green-blue stains and small stripes of multi-colored morocco on the beautifully stitched chest had not yet faded. The brown cat, the edge of the side and collar, was still spiny and cruel. Zakhar loved cleanliness and order, loved everything new and durable.

He died completely unexpectedly.

It was the beginning of August. He just threw a decent hook. From Osinovy ​​Dvory I went to Krasnaya Palna for a trial with my neighbor. From Palna I made fifteen versts to the city: I needed to visit the lady from whom I was renting land. From the city I came by rail to the village of Shipovo and went to Osinovye Dvory through Zhiloye: that’s another ten miles. That's not what brought him down.

What? - he would say in surprise and royally sternly in his velvety bass. - Forty miles?

What are you doing, little one! Yes, I can make a thousand of them.

There was the first Savior. “It would be nice to have a little drink now for the holiday,” he jokingly said to an acquaintance in Shipovo, a Petrishchevsky coachman, walking through the chalk-filled station, which, as always, was being renovated in the summer.<…>And Alyoshka immediately started an argument: can Zakhar drink at quarter past one?<…>Drinking a quarter is not God knows what kind of thing, it’s not new...<…>

It was a hot day. But around the village, in the expanse of yellow fields covered with haystacks, there was already something pre-autumn, light, clear. Thick dust lay on Shipovskaya Square. The square is separated from the village by wood warehouses, a bakery, a wine shop, a post office, the blue house of the merchant Yakovlev with its front gardens and his two shops in a special log house on the corner. Near the black shop, pine planks are piled up on steps. Sitting on it, Zakhar drank, ate, talked and looked at the square, at the rails glistening in the sun, at the barrier of the humpbacked crossing and at the yellow field beyond the rails.<…>

The coachman, the constable and Alyoshka did their best to pretend to be calm, although the soul of each of them fervently prayed to God for Zakhar to fall dead. And he just unbuttoned his sheepskin coat, slightly pushed his hat off his forehead, and blushed.<…>

Holding the emptying bottle under his arm, he strained the light moisture into the dark end, filled it to the brim and, smoothing his mustache, fell to her, smelling sharply and nourishingly, with his wet lips; He drank it slowly, with pleasure, like spring water on a hot day, and when he drank to the bottom, he quacked and, turning the end over, shook out the last drops. Then he carefully placed the bottle next to him. The coachman did not take his gloomy eyes off her; the policeman, who had already secretly moved the hand of the clock forward a full quarter, glanced anxiously at Alyoshka. And Zakhar, having put the bottle down, took two or three onion arrows, breaking them, hammering them into a large wooden salt shaker, into coarse gray salt, and devouring them with an appetizing, juicy crunch.<…>It seemed to him that he could talk endlessly and more and more amusingly, ever better, but after listening to him, making sure that the matter was lost, it came down only to the fact that Zakhar drank, ate them, and even talked nonsense incessantly, the coachman and the policeman touched horses and drove off, cutting him off mid-sentence. Alyoshka sat for a while, agreed, begged for four kopecks for tobacco and left for the station. And Zakhar, completely dissatisfied with either the amount of drink or the interlocutor, was left alone. He sighed, shook his head, pulling back the collar of his sheepskin coat, and, feeling an even greater surge of strength and vague desires than before, he got up, went into a wine shop, bought a bottle and walked along the alley out of the village. The sun was going down; it was replaced by a full moon rising from the east, pale as a cloud in the flat, dry blue of the sky. The rays that rained down on the prickly stubble from the left turned orange, and the dust raised by Zakhar’s boots turned red; from every haystack, from every Tatar woman, from every blade of grass, a shadow stretched. “No, you’re naughty, you won’t overtake!” - thought Zakhar, looking at the sun, wiping sweat from his forehead and remembering either the bull stallion, which he once lifted by the front legs at a fair, arguing about strength with the townspeople, or the cast iron drive that he dragged last summer from the barn to the barn's threshing floor Khomutov, then this poor old woman, whom he dragged in his arms, not paying attention to her fear and pleas to release her soul to repentance.<…>

His back was wet, his face was gray from the rush of blood and sweaty, his heart was beating like hammers in his head, when, proudly looking at the cloudy crimson ball that had not yet touched the horizon, he quickly entered the Residential.<…>

And suddenly I felt such a heavy, such a deadly melancholy, mixed with anger, that I even closed my eyes. His face became boiler-colored, separated from his light brown beard, his ears were swollen from the rush of blood. As soon as his eyes closed, thousands of malachite and crimson circles immediately jumped in the darkness in front of him, and his heart froze, broke off - and his whole body gently fell somewhere into the abyss. Oh, I wish I could go home now...! But after standing there... he stubbornly walked towards the wine shop.<…>

...Zakhar resisted the melancholy with all his might, talked incessantly, drank more and more greedily in order to break it and punish this curly-haired... tradesman, who meanly and happily fussed when Zakhar invited him to argue: could he, Zakhar, drink two more bottles or not?<…>

Zakhar, gathering his last strength, not allowing his heart to break first..., firmly finished:

Listen. I'm dying. Sabbat. I don't want to get you into trouble. I'll go away. I'll go away.

And he firmly walked into the middle of the high road. And, having reached the middle, he bent his knees - and fell heavily on his back, like a bull, with his arms outstretched.<…>...In the middle of the high road something huge and terrible was shining white and shining: someone had covered a dead body with calico. And the barefoot women, quickly and silently approaching, crossed themselves and timidly placed coppers at its head.

Text analysis. In this work, Bunin paints an unusual hero for himself: a village hero, a giant, overwhelmed by pity for people and some kind of unconscious, but insatiable thirst for achievement.

Zakhar “could not survive the mood of hopeless melancholy of dying, this is the only thing that broke Zakhar, what he could no longer resist, what turned out to be beyond his heroic strength and what generally makes the life of Zakhar Vorobyov in Bunin’s story with this “thirst for achievement” unnecessary devoid of meaning."

The text has completeness, semantic and compositional completeness, it is informative, has a beginning and an end. The entire content of the text corresponds to its title and reveals the author’s intention. All linguistic units that form the text, all its parts and meaningful, semantic aspects are ordered and organized in a certain way, therefore, the text has orderliness and structure.

The connection between sentences is parallel. The coherence of the text is provided by lexical repetitions (Zakhar Vorobyov died from Osinovy ​​Dvory, passed from Osinovy ​​Dvory, went to Osinovy ​​Dvory, asked Zakhar, loved Zakhar, holding a bottle, put the bottle, began to speak, said anything), pronouns (Zakhar Vorobyov died, he was, he was, he was smiling, he said), conjunctions (And a pleasant smell came from him, but around the village...,), introductory words (However), and also dialogues, direct speech (“No, you’re naughty, you won’t overtake ! - thought Zakhar). Zakhar's speech is emotionally charged. To do this, Bunin uses exclamatory sentences.

In the vocabulary of the language there are obsolete and original Russian words (Comb 1. An oblong plate with a row of teeth on both sides, used for combing hair, (singular - bast shoe) - low shoes, common in Rus' in the old days, and formerly in widely used in rural areas until the 1930s, woven from tree bast (linden, elm and others), birch bark or hemp, Kopoushka. A very common personal hygiene item in the Middle Ages for cleaning ears, original Russian words, Zamashnaya shirt. Made from hemp canvas , Morocco - goat skin tanned with sumac and dyed in one of the bright colors. Verstam - a Russian unit of measurement of distance, equal to five hundred fathoms or one thousand five hundred arshins (which corresponds to the current 1,066.8 meters, before the reform of the 18th century - 1,066.781 meters).Spas are folk Orthodox holidays(honey, nut, apple); SHOP. Obsesslav. Suf. derived from lava "bench"< "деревянный мостик", "доска", того же корня, что латышск. lвva "нары, лавка", др.-инд. lбva- "отрезок" < "отрезанный кусок дерева", небольшое торговое заведение, магазинчик, Копна. Уплотнённая конусообразная куча сена или соломы, обычно складываемая на месте уборки, Кучер. Работник, который правит запряжёнными в экипаж лошадьми; возница, Урядник. Нижний чин уездной полиции, Булочная. магазин, торгующий bakery products, Merchant. Histor., person engaged in trade, owner of a trading enterprise, Tes. Thin boards, Korets. 1) “bucket”, 2) “flour chest”, 3) “measure of grain, Salt shaker. a small vessel for salt served to the table. Stubble. A field on which bread or other grains are harvested, straw remaining on the root after the harvest; harvesting grain; harvest, Blalinka. Grass stalk; blade of grass (usually dried, yellowed) Head. upper part, Copper. Derived from the noun copper, further from the Orthodox form, from which, among other things, came: others - Russian, Old Slavic m?d (Old Greek chblkt), Russian copper. Thematic groups of words can be distinguished. These are words related to portrait-descriptive vocabulary (reddish-Russian, bearded, forty years old, healthy , young teeth), vocabulary of clothing (rubvakha, belt, bast shoes, boots, hat, short fur coat). Also in the text there is vocabulary of nature (yellow fields, the sun was shining, sky), vocabulary of geographical names (Osinovy ​​Dvor, Zhiloe, Shipovo, Krasnaya Palna The text can be divided into micro-themes (Portrait of Zakhar, Dispute, Road to Residential, Good Deed, Death).

The main semantic load is carried by concrete nouns (Zakhar, loneliness, sarina, cleanliness, order, Osiny Dvor, Residential, dispute, mile, day, shop, coachman, constable, tradesman, cunning, sun, death). Verbs in are used in the past tense, denoting the dynamics of action, movement (died, was, felt, spoke, dressed, walked, drank), conveying the meaning of the past.

The text contains mainly words with an unstressed vowel at the root of the word, dictionary words. Bunin uses colloquial words (thousand, now, isdat) in order to bring the reader as close as possible to the reality of that time, so that the reader can imagine a simple village peasant.

The sentences are mostly complex, complicated by homogeneous parts of the sentence, participle phrases, participial phrases (Sitting on it, Zakhar drank, ate, spoke and looked at the square..). The average sentence length is 10-11 words.

The text contains means of artistic expression (epithets - mortal melancholy, severe melancholy, metaphors - circles jumped, the heart froze, beat with hammers, comparison - the month, like a cloud, fell on its back like a bull, etc.), which gives the text expressiveness and reliably conveys the emotional state of the hero.

Thus, in terms of style and type of speech, this text is artistic storytelling, since the author narrates, and uses epithets, metaphors, comparisons, colloquial vocabulary, actions are conveyed in time sequence using verbs in the past tense, adjectives give a descriptive character.

This text is cultural. When creating a text, he uses words with a cultural component (a fancy shirt, bast shoes, a sheepskin coat, coachman, shop, merchant, salt shaker, korets, stubble, blade of grass, copper, verst, head, etc.), cultural keywords (melancholy, loneliness, extremely healthy, repentance, be baptized), reflects the background vocabulary (Savior, rye smell) of the Russian people. Let's give an example of the analysis of one of the words with a cultural component: Versta is a Russian unit of distance measurement, equal to five hundred fathoms or one thousand five hundred arshins (which corresponds to the current 1,066.8 meters, before the reform of the 18th century - 1,066.781 meters). Spas are folk Orthodox holidays (honey, nut, apple); Repentance (Mark I, 4, 5, II Cor. VII, 10) is a sacrament in which a believer, when verbally confessing his sins before a priest, receives through him an invisible resolution of sins from Jesus Christ himself. Repentance was partly in the Old Testament Church. Those who sacrificed for their sins according to the Law of Moses repented of them before God and received their cleansing. In the same way, those who came to John the Baptist for baptism first confessed their sins to him. But, as a sacrament of the New Testament Church, repentance was established by Jesus Christ himself. First, He promised the apostles to grant the power to resolve sins: whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven; and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven (Matt. XVIII, 18). After His resurrection, He actually gave them this power when He said: receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins you forgive, they will be forgiven; on whomever you leave it, it will remain on him (John XX: 22, 23). What is required of the repentant is: sincere contrition for sins and verbal confession of them, a firm intention to correct his life, faith in Christ and confidence in His mercy. In addition, as a preparatory means for repentance, fasting and prayer are necessary, which can dispose the repentant to contrition for sins and confidence in God’s mercy. Truly repentant people can receive remission of all their sins, because there is no sin that would exceed the mercy of God. If sins against the Holy Spirit (stubborn denial of obvious manifestations of Divine power, extreme hardness of heart and despair) are recognized as unforgivable, then not because of a lack of God’s mercy, but because people who fall into them, themselves, due to their bitterness and stubbornness, are not able to turn to God with repentance for them.

Compositionally, the story is based on a characteristic technique for the writer - the opposition of the past and the present. Bunin explores in “Zakhar Vorobyov” the same tragic, from his point of view, foundations of the “Russian soul” that determined the historical movement of Russia from the great - and seemingly recent - past to the disastrous present.

Bunin, who believed that the situation in the village “plunges into hopeless pessimism,” was only able to present with bitter irony “a parody of a heroic feat - senselessly wild and tragic.”

Zakhar Vorobyov longed for something unknown - tempting, which would give the opportunity to unleash his heroic power, his broad and kind soul of a man full of vitality, but who did not know how to spend their generosity.

Buninsky Zakhar resembles more a museum exhibit from a distant, almost legendary past than an ordinary man from the present village of Osinovye Dvory.

In the figure of Zakhar Vorobyov, about whom the author notes: “in the old days, they say, there were many like him, but this breed is translated,” undoubtedly embodied for Bunin the positive features of the Russian peasant, although he lives today, but with all his appearance he resembles a peasant past centuries.

Talking about Zakhara, Bunin constantly emphasizes his “penchant for antiquity” in his appearance, manners, and clothing, creating an almost epic - conventional or fairy-tale image of a Russian hero. The main thing is that he remained a man in everything: “the rye smell of a steppe man came from him,” he had a “regular yard” and, in addition to his own land, he also cultivated the land that he rented from the master. Zakhar was bored with ordinary people, and they decided to show off on him, get him drunk - as a bet, out of idleness and envy of his strength and well-being. These people are endowed by Bunin with an extremely sharpened negative characteristic, contrasting them with Zakhar Vorobyov. They all live in the village, but these are not men: the master’s coachman Petrishchev, “a short-sighted man and low by nature,” the constable Golitsin is a gloomy, pig-eyed friend of Petrishchev’s coachman, the drunkard Alyoshka is “a ragged man with a broken nose (who traded in pimping) ".

But Zakhar was “good at heart,” Bunin emphasizes, unfolding his psychological exposition of the image: at the end of a fruitful summer, the weather was dry, and the trial with his neighbor ended peacefully. Zakhar had already drunk - and quite a bit, and although the proposed bet seemed like nothing, a burning need “with all my being... to do something out of the ordinary” (vol. 3, p. 298) and natural complaisance forced him to agree : “he willingly agreed to an argument” (vol. 3, p. 299).

Understanding the uselessness and pointlessness of an argument with the “little people” who decided to get him drunk for fun, Zakhar still willingly goes to the argument, and then - feeling stunned from vodka and deciding to go home, Zakhar, writes Bunin, “instead of would have turned left, onto Osinovye Dvory, he stubbornly walked, crossing the dam, onto the high road, to the wine shop" (vol. 3, p. 307) - towards his death.

Bunin endows Zakhar Vorobyov not only with an inescapable desire to “do something amazing,” but also with a “thirst for achievement,” “it doesn’t matter whether he’s good or evil,” the writer stipulates, but here, captivated by the beauty of the humanity of the character he created, he adds how would be surprised by this: “...even, perhaps, rather good than evil” (vol. 3, p. 305).

The hero of Bunin's story with good-natured irony looks at people's lives, at their "quarrels, trials", at their vanity, looks at the way adults look at children's games. But he is naive in Bunin, like a person who has just arrived from some other, distant world. Vaguely feeling his loneliness, he reaches out to people, he cannot help but share with people his understanding of life, those pictures of it that capture his imagination. The writer especially highlights and constantly emphasizes this character trait of his hero - his artistic nature. But no one understands Zakhara, no one wants to listen to him, and if he felt in life “partly like an adult among children,” then people treated him like an obsessive child, calling him Little One.

Bunin loves a similar simple-minded hero, kind, naive, generous, doomed both due to his simplicity and the evil reality surrounding him. Bunin will illuminate him with all the charm of his poetic talent, for he sympathizes with Zakhar, a man created to love life, enjoy its charm and do good, to the point of heartache.

The road that passes in Zakhar Vorobyov’s story, like Anisya’s road in “The Cheerful Yard,” is his road.” In the story, as in the story, Bunin’s description of the road is distinguished by its metaphorical ambiguity, which the writer brings to the point of symbolism.

So, Zakhar, eager to come out of his loneliness to people in order to tell them his “pictures of life,” hurries to get to Zhily before dark. By its very name, this village, as the place where Zakhar hurries, having reached his last road, is the opposite of the villages with “non-residential” names where he spent his life: Osinovye Dvors, Krasnaya Palnya (from burn: burning places, scorched, burnt), Shipovo and etc. Zakhar’s involvement with nature is symbolic: his ability to “look at the sun without blinking, like an eagle,” his animation of the sun, which he does not allow to “overtake himself” and which threw his “big a shadow with a glow around the head.”

The symbolism of Bunin’s description of the road acquires an ideological and compositional meaning when Zakhar, “looking at the cloudy crimson ball that has not yet had time to touch the horizon” (vol. 3, p. 306), enters Zhiloye, where he wanted to see people to tell them about everything how his soul lived, intoxicated with the dream of heroism. But: “It was deathly quiet. Not a single soul anywhere. The even pale blue of the evening sky is over everything... a long, bare green pasture and a row of huts along it. Three huge mirror ponds, and between them two wide dung dams with bare, dry willows - thick trunks and thin twigs of branches. On the other side is another row of huts...” (vol. 3, p. 306), and squeezed the heart of Zakhar, who saw the “dead” landscape “on this deserted, endless road, in these pale plains beyond it, on this silent steppe evening ” (vol. 3, p. 307) mortal melancholy from the fact that there is no soul mate nearby, and he does not find an interlocutor who will listen to him, help him understand himself, his dream. He is filled with a thirst for achievement, certainly amazing, good, kind. But he is also greeted by people who treat his story with dull indifference, or by a silent, as if extinct, village, in which it seems as if one single person still lives in the dead silence of desertion: a freak, a lame-legged, monkey-like tradesman - a sitter in a wine shop on the high road.

Zakhar tries to tell him his story with the old woman, but, overwhelmed by “severe, mortal melancholy mixed with anger” (vol. 3, p. 307), he dies on the same “high road” along which he was in such a hurry to see people - in Residential. People came and ran, but not to Zakhar Vorobyov, but to something “huge and terrible” that was white and shining on the high road. “This moonlit August night was terrible,” writes Bunin, finishing the story about the life and death of Zakhar Vorobyov: “... barefoot women, quickly and silently approaching, crossed themselves and timidly placed coppers at its head” (vol. 3, p. 308).

The ending of the story is tragic. The writer considers the main noble trait in Zakhar’s character to be the constant struggle in his soul between the melancholy of loneliness, anger at small people hiding in their holes and inner delicacy, overcoming “obscene” disrespect for others. In this Bunin sees Zakhar’s spiritual strength. The hero’s aspirations are not abstract: a greedy craving for some new, spiritually close relationship, a painful awareness of the imperfections of people and at the same time selfless care for them, right up to the dream of a feat - this is what distinguishes Zakhara.

In the story, the writer created an image that is reliable in many respects, embodying certain historical features of the Russian national character. It is no coincidence that Bunin placed special hopes on this story and contrasted it with his other Capri works about the village. The story reveals admiration for man, the beauty, strength and greatness of his capabilities. This is how “Zakhar Vorobyov” differs from the gloomily tendentious depictions of the “Russian peasant” both in “The Village” and in most Capri stories.

However, for Bunin all this is the past of people’s lives. In the “eternal everyday life” of her present, the writer sees only the finitude of her future.

Zakhar Vorobyov’s thirst for heroism ended only in humiliating death from drinking. It was as if the artist wanted to testify with the power of his talent: there is no way for either the Russian village or the kind, simple-minded person who miraculously survived in it.

Bunin story plot hero

Brothers 1914

The road from Colombo goes along the ocean. Primitive pirogues sway on the surface of the water, black-haired teenagers lie on the silken sands in heavenly nakedness. It would seem, why do these forest people of Ceylon need cities, cents, rupees? Doesn’t the forest, the ocean, the sun give them everything? However, growing up, they trade, work on plantations, fish for pearls, and transport Europeans.

The British, the owners of the island, put a badge with a number on the left hand of rickshaw pullers. Lucky number seven goes to an old rickshaw puller living in one of the forest huts near Colombo.

“Why,” the Exalted One would ask, “would the old man do this?” “Then,” they would answer him, “that he wanted to multiply his earthly sorrows, that he was driven by earthly love and thirst for life.”

The old man has a wife, a son and many small children who need to be fed. The old man himself is gray-haired, very thin, wrinkled, nondescript, looking like a small monkey. The old man wants happiness for his son and works hard. He doesn’t know English and often runs at random until a large European dressed in white hits him on the back with a stick. But the old man also gets a lot of extra cents, wincing pitifully and throwing out his thin hands folded like a ladle.

Having run home one day at an inopportune time, in the heat of the afternoon, an old rickshaw driver, exhausted from overwork, dies in his hut.

The old man's wife mourns him all night, and their son stands nearby. In the evening he saw his bride, a chubby thirteen-year-old girl from a neighboring village, and the excitement of love overpowered the fear of death in his soul.

The old man's son, handsome and light-footed, puts his father's copper plaque on his hand and goes to the city. At first he only runs after experienced rickshaw pullers, memorizing English names streets; then he begins to earn money himself, preparing to support his family.

One day, running home, he hears terrible news: his bride has gone to the city and disappeared. The bride's father, a plump and well-fed old man, looked for her for three days and must have learned something, because he returned reassured. Sly, like all merchants, he sighs, expressing feigned submission to fate. You can't get the truth out of him, and women are weak, and the young rickshaw puller understands this.

After sitting at home for two days, not touching food, only chewing betel, he finally comes to his senses and runs to Colombo. As if forgetting about his bride, he runs around, greedily saving money, and it is unclear what he is more in love with: his running around or the coins he receives for it. He has been working like this safely and seemingly even happily for six months.

One morning, an Englishman sits in his carriage, dressed in a white suit, tall and strong, with gold glasses, a short black mustache and an olive complexion. It is the end of March, the hottest time, but the rickshaw is running fast, and there is not a single drop of sweat on his back. Despite the blows of the cane, the young man stops, buys a betel nut and runs on. The commandments “do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie and do not get drunk in anything” sound vaguely in the heart of the rickshaw puller. Putting betel in his mouth, the rickshaw driver runs into the city - Fort, as the British call it.

They stop near an old Dutch building. The Englishman goes off to drink tea and smoke a cigar, and the rickshaw driver sits down by a tree to wait for him. What is this young man thinking about, having already tasted the most powerful poison - love for a woman? Mara wounds, but Mara heals wounds; Mara snatches something from the man's hands, but Mara incites the man to grab what was taken again... The rickshaw escorts the Englishman to the shipping office, and then runs back to the hotel. So he works, drugged by betel, cheap cigarettes and whiskey. For the rest of the day, the rickshaw carries a drunken Englishman who does not know how to kill time until the evening. At night, the young man takes the Englishman to a large, brightly lit two-story house. Having dropped off the passenger, he rushes around the house to get into the courtyard, to other rickshaws, and suddenly sees his bride in the second floor window, elegant and hung with gold.

The young man looks at the woman standing in the window frame for a long time until she leaves. Then he grabs the shafts and starts running, this time knowing exactly where and why.

“Wake up! - thousands of silent voices of his ancestors shouted in him. - Shake off the seduction of Mara, this dream short life! ... All sorrows come from love - kill her!

The rickshaw runs into the hut of the old snake tamer and comes out with a large cigar box, in which something rustles and knocks on the lid with tight rings. He runs to the empty parade ground and sits down not on the ground, but on a bench, boldly, like a white man. Then he releases from the box the snake he bought for a pound - small, deadly, fabulously beautiful and incredibly vicious after being imprisoned in a wooden box. The snake bites the young man, and a burning pain pierces his body, forcing him to arch like a wheel. He loses consciousness, then briefly comes to his senses again, losing his life, memory, sight, pain, joy, hatred and love...

Ten days later, the Englishman - the rider of rickshaw number seven - gets on a large Russian steamer. After much begging, the captain puts him in a free cabin. Over dinner, the uninvited passenger talks with Russian officers, talks about his stay in India, Java and Ceylon and talks about the colonial tasks of Europe. The Englishman believes that Europeans “for all their efficiency and greed, are as cold as ice to both life and death.” Hiding behind colonial goals, they greedily rob their brothers, the “colored people,” turning them into dirty brutes. And when this division comes to an end, when some new Rome, English or German, reigns in the world, then the Apocalypse will repeat itself...

An Englishman tells the Buddhist legend of the crow and the elephant, in which the elephant rushes into the ocean waves. The raven, tormented by hunger, flies after him. The elephant drowns, and the raven begins to greedily peck at its carcass. Having had enough, the raven sees that it has been carried far out to sea, and screams in an eerie voice, the one for which Death is so sensitively waiting...

The Grammar of Love 1915

The beginning of June. Ivlev travels to the far edge of his district. At first it’s pleasant to drive: a warm, dim day, a well-trodden road. Then the sky becomes cloudy. and Ivlev decides to call on the count, whose village is just along the road. An old man working near the village reports that only the young countess is at home, but Ivlev drops by anyway.

The Countess in a pink hood, with an open powdered chest, smokes, often straightening her hair and exposing her tight and round arms to the shoulders. She reduces all conversations to love and, by the way, talks about her neighbor, the landowner Khvoshchinsky, who died this winter and all his life was obsessed with love for his maid Lushka, who died in her early youth.

Ivlev travels further, thinks what kind of person the landowner Khvoshchinsky was, and wants to look “at the empty sanctuary of the mysterious Lushka.” According to the stories of old landowners, Khvoshchinsky was once known in the district as a rare clever man, but he fell in love - and everything went to dust. He locked himself in the room where Lushka lived and died, and sat on her bed for more than twenty years...

It’s getting dark, and Khvoshchinskoe appears behind the forest. On the gloomy porch of the estate, Ivlev notices a handsome young man in a school blouse. Ivlev justifies his visit with the desire to see and possibly buy the library of the late master. The young man leads him into the house, and Ivlev realizes that he is the son of the famous Lushka.

The young man answers questions hastily, but in monosyllables. He is extremely happy about the opportunity to sell his books at a high price. He leads Ivlev through the dim vestibule and large hallway into a cold hall that occupies almost half of the house. On the dark ancient image There are wedding candles in a silver robe. The young man says that “priest bought them after her death... and even wedding ring always wore..."

From the hall they go into a gloomy room with a couch, and the young man with difficulty unlocks the low door. Ivlev sees a closet with two windows; there is a bare cot against one wall, and a library in two bookcases against the other.

Ivlev discovers that the library consists of very strange books. Mystical novels and dream books—that’s what the lonely soul of the recluse fed on. On the middle shelf, Ivlev finds a very small book that looks like a prayer book, and a darkened box with the late Lushka’s necklace - a string of cheap blue balls.

When looking at this necklace, lying on the neck of the once so beloved woman, Ivlev is overcome with excitement. He carefully puts the box back in place and takes the book. This turns out to be the charming “Grammar of Love, or the Art of Loving and Being Mutually Loved,” published almost a hundred years ago. The young man considers it the most expensive book in the library.

Ivlev slowly leafs through the Grammar. It is divided into small chapters: “About Beauty”, “About the Heart”, “About the Mind”, “About Love Signs”... Each chapter consists of short and elegant maxims, some of which are delicately marked with a pen. Then comes the “explanation of the language of flowers,” and again something is noted. And on a blank page at the very end, a quatrain is written in small beads with the same pen. The young man explains with a fake grin: “They made it up themselves...”.

Half an hour later, Ivlev says goodbye to him with relief. Of all the books, he buys only this little book for a lot of money. On the way back, the coachman says that young Khvoshchinsky lives with the deacon’s wife, but Ivlev does not listen. He thinks about Lushka, about her necklace, which left in him a complex feeling, similar to the one he experienced in one Italian town when looking at the relics of the saint. “She entered my life forever!” - Ivlev thinks and rereads the poems written with a pen on a blank page of “The Grammar of Love”: “The hearts of those who loved will say to you: “Live in sweet traditions!” And they will show their grandchildren and great-grandchildren this Grammar of Love.”

Mister from San Francisco 1915

A gentleman from San Francisco, who is never named by name in the story, since, the author notes, no one remembered his name either in Naples or Capri, goes with his wife and daughter to the Old World for two whole years so that to have fun and travel. He worked hard and is now rich enough to afford such a vacation.

At the end of November, the famous Atlantis, which looks like a huge hotel with all the amenities, sets sail. Life on the ship goes smoothly: they get up early, drink coffee, cocoa, chocolate, take baths, do gymnastics, walk along the decks to whet their appetite; then they go to the first breakfast; after breakfast they read newspapers and calmly wait for second breakfast; the next two hours are devoted to rest - all the decks are filled with long reed chairs, on which, covered with blankets, travelers lie, looking at the cloudy sky; then - tea with cookies, and in the evening - what constitutes the main goal of this entire existence - dinner.

A wonderful orchestra plays exquisitely and tirelessly in a huge hall, behind the walls of which the waves of the terrible ocean roar, but low-cut ladies and men in tailcoats and tuxedos do not think about it. After dinner, dancing begins in the ballroom, men in the bar smoke cigars, drink liqueurs, and are served by blacks in red camisoles. Finally, the ship arrives in Naples, the family of the gentleman from San Francisco stays in an expensive hotel, and here their life also flows according to a routine: early in the morning - breakfast, then - visiting museums and cathedrals, second breakfast, tea, then - cooking for lunch and in the evening - a hearty dinner. However, December in Naples this year turned out to be stormy: wind, rain, mud on the streets. And the family of the gentleman from San Francisco decides to go to the island of Capri, where, as everyone assures them, it is warm, sunny and lemons bloom.

A small steamer, rolling from side to side on the waves, transports a gentleman from San Francisco with his family, who are seriously suffering from seasickness, to Capri. The funicular takes them to a small stone town at the top of the mountain, they settle into a hotel, where everyone warmly welcomes them, and prepare for dinner, having already fully recovered from seasickness. Having dressed before his wife and daughter, a gentleman from San Francisco heads to a cozy, quiet hotel reading room, opens a newspaper - and suddenly the lines flash before his eyes, his pince-nez flies off his nose, and his body, writhing, slides to the floor. Another hotel guest who was present runs into the dining room screaming, everyone jumps up from their seats, the owner tries to calm the guests, but the evening is already irreparably ruined.

The gentleman from San Francisco is transferred to the smallest and worst room; his wife, daughter, servants stand and look at him, and now what they were waiting for and fearing happened - he dies. The wife of a gentleman from San Francisco asks the owner to allow the body to be moved to their apartment, but the owner refuses: he values ​​these rooms too much, and tourists would begin to avoid them, since the whole of Capri would immediately know about what happened. You can't get a coffin here either - the owner can offer a long box of soda water bottles.

At dawn, a cab driver carries the body of a gentleman from San Francisco to the pier, a steamboat transports him across the Bay of Naples, and the same Atlantis, on which he arrived with honor in the Old World, now carries him, dead, in a tarred coffin, hidden from the living deep below, in the black hold. Meanwhile, on the decks the same life continues as before, everyone has breakfast and lunch in the same way, and the ocean wavering behind the windows is still just as scary.

Easy Breathing 1916

The exposition of the story is a description of the grave of the main character. What follows is a summary of her story. Olya Meshcherskaya is a prosperous, capable and playful schoolgirl, indifferent to the instructions of the class lady. At the age of fifteen she was a recognized beauty, had the most admirers, danced the best at balls and skated. There were rumors that one of the high school students in love with her attempted suicide because of her frivolity.

In the last winter of her life, Olya Meshcherskaya “went completely crazy with fun.” Her behavior prompts the boss to make another remark, reproaching her, among other things, for dressing and acting not like a girl, but like a woman. At this point, Meshcherskaya interrupts her with a calm message that she is a woman and her father’s friend and neighbor, the boss’s brother Alexei Mikhailovich Malyutin, is to blame for this.

A month after this conversation, an ugly Cossack officer shot Meshcherskaya on the station platform among a large crowd of people. To the bailiff he announced that Meshcherskaya was close to him and vowed to be his wife. That day, accompanying him to the station, she said that she had never loved him and offered to read a page from her diary, which described how Malyutin seduced her.

From the diary it followed that this happened when Malyutin came to visit the Meshcherskys and found Olya alone at home. Her attempts to occupy the guest and their walk in the garden are described; Malyutin's comparison of them with Faust and Margarita. After tea, she pretended to be unwell and lay down on the ottoman, and Malyutin moved over to her, first kissed her hand, then kissed her on the lips. Further, Meshcherskaya wrote that after what happened next, she felt such disgust for Malyutin that she was unable to survive it. The action ends at the cemetery, where every Sunday her classy lady, who lives in an illusory world that replaces reality for her, comes to the grave of Olya Meshcherskaya. The subject of her previous fantasies was her brother, a poor and unremarkable ensign, whose future seemed brilliant to her. After the death of her brother, Olya Meshcherskaya takes his place in her mind. She goes to her grave every holiday, does not take her eyes off the oak cross for hours, remembers the pale face in the coffin among the flowers and once overheard the words that Olya spoke to her beloved friend. She read in one book what kind of beauty a woman should have - black eyes, black eyelashes, longer than usual arms, but the main thing is light breathing, and she (Oli) has it: “...listen, how I sigh, “is there really truth?”

Old woman 1916

Full: This stupid old woman from the district sat on the bench in the kitchen and cried like a river.

The Christmas blizzard, swirling across the snowy roofs and snowy empty streets, began to turn dull blue, filled with twilight, and the house grew dark.

There, in the hall, armchairs stood decorously around a table under a velvet tablecloth, above the sofa a picture shone dimly - a greenish circle of the moon in the clouds, a dense Lithuanian forest, three horses, a sleigh from which hunters fired pink rays, and wolves tumbling behind the sleigh; in one corner a dry tropical plant was spreading out of a tub with dead leaves up to the ceiling, and in the other the trunk of a gramophone was gaping like a funnel, coming to life only in the evenings, in the presence of guests, when someone’s hoarse voice screamed from it in feigned despair: “Oh, it’s hard, it’s hard, gentlemen, live with one wife forever!” In the dining room, wet rags lying on the window sills were dripping; in a cage covered with oilcloth, a sick tropical bird was sleeping with its head tucked under its wing - a thin sleep and, due to its unaccustomment to our Christmastide, sad, sad. In a narrow room next to the dining room, a lodger, an elderly bachelor, a high school teacher, who pulled children's hair in class and at home worked diligently on a large, long-term essay: “The Type of Bound Prometheus in World Literature,” slept soundly and snoring. The owners slept heavily and angrily in the bedroom after a terrible scandal at dinner. And the old woman sat on a bench in the darkening kitchen and burst into bitter tears.

The scandal at dinner started again because of her! The landlady, who by age should have long ago been ashamed to be jealous, went crazy with jealousy and finally took her course - she hired an old woman as a cook. The owner, who had been putting on makeup for a long time, but directed all his thoughts only towards the female sex, decided to kill this old woman from the world. Indeed, the old woman was far from good-looking: tall, bent, narrow-shouldered, deaf and blind, stupid from timidity, and, despite all her efforts, she was a terrible cook. She trembled at every step she took, strained herself to please. Her past was not joyful: well, of course, her husband was a robber and a drunkard, then, after his death, other people’s corners and extortions under the windows, long years of hunger, cold, homelessness... And how happy the old woman was that she was again no worse than people - well-fed, warm, shod, dressed, serving with an official!

How she prayed before going to bed, kneeling on the kitchen floor, giving her whole soul to God for the mercy so unexpectedly shown to her, how she asked him not to deprive her of this mercy! But the owner ate it: today at dinner he barked at her so much that her yoga arms tore off from fear, and the bowl of cabbage soup flew to the floor.

And what happened next between the owners! Even the teacher, who had been thinking about Prometheus all lunch, could not stand it, looked away his boar eyes and said:

Don't quarrel, gentlemen, for the sake of this highly solemn holiday!

The house fell silent and calmed down. The smoke of the blizzard turned blue in the yard, snowdrifts appeared above the roofs, the gates and gates were blocked... A pale, big-eared boy in felt boots, an orphan, the landlady's nephew, spent a long time learning his lessons, sitting on the wet window sill in his closet next to the kitchen. He was a diligent boy and decided to memorize what he was given during the Christmas holidays. He did not want to upset his educators and benefactors, he, for their consolation, for the benefit of the fatherland, tried to remember for the rest of his life that two and a half thousand years ago the Greeks (a generally peaceful people, from morning to evening collectively participated in theatrical tragedies and who performed sacrifices, and in his free hours questioned the oracle) once completely defeated the army of the Persian king with the help of the goddess Pallas Athena, but they could have followed the path of civilization further if they had not become pampered, corrupted and died, as was the case, however, with all the ancient peoples who immoderately indulged in idolatry and luxury. And having remembered, he closed the book and scraped the ice from the window glass with his nails for a long time. Then he got up, quietly walked to the door to the kitchen, looked behind the door - and again saw the same thing: the kitchen was quiet and gloomy, the ruble wall clock, whose hands did not move, always showed a quarter past twelve, knocking unusually clearly and hastily, pig, wintering in the kitchen, stands near the stove and, putting her muzzle up to her eyes in a tub of slop, rummages through it... and the old woman sits and cries: she wipes herself with her hem - and the river flows!

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Content

Introduction
A unique master of words, an expert and connoisseur of his native nature, who knew how to touch the subtlest and secret strings of a person’s soul, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born in 1870 in Voronezh, into an impoverished noble family. He spent his early childhood on a small family estate (the Butyrki farm in Yeletsky district, Oryol province). The literary abilities of young Bunin, who was particularly impressionable from childhood, manifested themselves very early - in his adolescence he began writing poetry and did not give up poetry until the end of his life. This, in our opinion, is another of the rare features of I.A. Bunin as a writer: writers, moving from poetry to prose, leave poetry almost forever. But Ivan Bunin’s prose is also deeply poetic in its essence. An internal rhythm beats in it, feelings and images reign.
The creative path of I.A. Bunin is distinguished by its duration, almost unparalleled in the history of literature. Having presented his first works in the late eighties of the 19th century, when the classics of Russian literature M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G.I. Uspensky, L.N. lived and worked. Tolstoy, V.G. Korolenko, A.P. Chekhov, Bunin completed his activities in the early 1950s of the twentieth century. His work is highly complex. It experienced the beneficial influence of major contemporary writers, although it developed in its own independent ways. Bunin's works are a fusion of Tolstoy's ability to penetrate deeply into the very essence of the life depicted, to see in the phenomena of the surrounding reality not only a ceremonial form, but the true essence, their often unattractive underside; Gogol’s solemn, upbeat prose, his lyrical digressions and descriptions of nature.
Bunin is one of the talented writers of the realistic direction of Russian literature. With his work he completed the “noble” line in Russian literature, represented by such names as S.T. Aksakov, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy.
Bunin also knew the other side of noble life in the post-reform period - the poverty and lack of money of the nobles themselves, the stratification and unrest of the village, the bitter feeling of being unable to influence the situation. He is convinced that a Russian nobleman has the same way of life and the same soul as a peasant. Many of his novels and short stories were devoted to the study of this common “soul”: “Village” (1910), “Sukhodol” (1912), “Merry Yard” (1911), “Zakhar Vorobyov” (1912), “Thin Grass” (1913 ), “I'm Still Silent” (1913), in which there is a lot of almost Gorky-esque bitter truth.
Like many of his contemporaries, the writer reflected on Russia’s place between East and West, on the volcanic element of the eastern nomad sleeping in the Russian soul. I.A.Bunin traveled a lot: the Middle East, Africa, Italy, Greece. The stories “Shadow of the Bird”, “Sea of ​​the Gods”, “Country of Sodom” and others in the collection “Grammar of Love” are about this.
All of Bunin's works - regardless of the time of their creation - are encompassed by an interest in the eternal mysteries of human existence, a single circle of lyrical and philosophical themes: time, memory, heredity, love, death, human immersion in the world of unknown elements, the doom of human civilization, unknowability on the final earth truth. The themes of time and memory set the perspective for all of Bunin's prose.
In 1933, Bunin became the first Russian laureate Nobel Prize in literature - “for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated a typical Russian character in prose.”
His work is of particular interest to literary scholars. More than a dozen works have been written. The most complete study of the writer’s life and work is given in the following works by V.N. Afanasyev (“I.A. Bunin”), L.A. Smirnova (“I.A. Bunin. Life and Creativity”), A. Baboreko (“ I.A. Bunin. Materials for a biography (from 1970 to 1917)"), O.N. Mikhailova ("I.A. Bunin. Essay on creativity", "Strict talent"), L.A. Kolobaeva ("Prose I .A.Bunin”), N.M.Kucherovsky (“I.A.Bunin and his prose (1887-1917)”), Yu.I. Aikhenvald (“Silhouettes of Russian Writers”), O.N. Mikhailov (“Literature of Russian Abroad”), I.A. Karpov (“Prose of Ivan Bunin”) and others.
The work is devoted to the study of the poetics of stories by I.A. Bunina.
Subject The thesis is the poetics of I. B. Bunin's stories.
An object- stories by I.B. Bunin.
Relevance The work lies in the fact that the study of the poetics of stories allows us to most fully reveal their originality.
Purpose thesis is a study of the originality of the poetics of I.A. Bunin’s stories.
Tasks thesis:

Characterize the spatio-temporal organization of I. Bunin’s stories.
To identify the role of subject detail in the literary texts of I.A. Bunin.

CHAPTER 1. LITERARY SPACE AND TIME IN I.A.’S STORIES BUNINA

1.1. Categories of artistic space and time
The concept of the space-time continuum is essential for the philological analysis of a literary text, since both time and space serve as constructive principles for the organization of a literary work. Artistic time-a form of existence of aesthetic reality, a special way of understanding the world.
Features of time modeling in literature are determined by the specifics of this type of art: literature is traditionally viewed as a temporary art; unlike painting, it recreates the concreteness of the passage of time. This feature of a literary work is determined by the properties of linguistic means that form its figurative structure: “grammar determines for each language an order that distributes ... space in time” 1, transforms spatial characteristics into temporal ones.
The problem of artistic time has long occupied literary theorists, art historians, and linguists. Thus, A.A. Potebnya, emphasizing that the art of words is dynamic, showed the limitless possibilities of organizing artistic time in the text. He viewed the text as a dialectical unity of two compositional speech forms: description (“depiction of features that simultaneously exist in space”) and narration (“Narration transforms a number of simultaneous features into a series of sequential perceptions, into an image of the movement of gaze and thought from object to object” 2 ).
A.A. Potebnya distinguished between real time and artistic time; Having examined the relationship between these categories in works of folklore, he noted the historical variability of artistic time. The ideas of A.A. Potebnya were further developed in the works of philologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, interest in the problems of artistic time especially revived in the last decades of the 20th century, which was associated with the rapid development of science, the evolution of views on space and time, the acceleration of the pace of social life, and, in connection with this, increased attention to the problems of memory, origins, tradition , On the one side; and the future, on the other hand; finally, with the emergence of new forms in art.
“The work,” noted P.A. Florensky, “is aesthetically forced to develop... in a certain sequence” 3. Time in a work of art is the duration, sequence and correlation of its events, based on their cause-and-effect, linear or associative relationship.
Time in the text has clearly defined or rather blurred boundaries (events, for example, can cover tens of years, a year, several days, a day, an hour, etc.), which may or, on the contrary, not be designated in the work in relation to the historical time or time set by the author conditionally. 4
Artistic time is systemic in nature. This is a way of organizing the aesthetic reality of a work, its inner world, and at the same time an image associated with the embodiment of the author’s concept, reflecting precisely his picture of the world with a reflection of the name day of the world (for example, M. Bulgakov’s novel “The White Guard”).
From time as an immanent property of a work, it is advisable to distinguish the time of the passage of the text, which can be considered as the time of the reader; Thus, when considering a literary text, we are dealing with the antinomy “the time of the work - the time of the reader.” This antinomy in the process of perceiving a work can be resolved in different ways. At the same time, the time of the work is heterogeneous: thus, as a result of temporal shifts, “omissions”, highlighting central events in close-up, the depicted time is compressed and shortened, while when juxtaposing and describing simultaneous events, it, on the contrary, is stretched.
A comparison of real time and artistic time reveals their differences. The topological properties of real time in the macroworld are one-dimensionality, continuity, irreversibility, orderliness. In artistic time, all these properties are transformed. It can be multidimensional. This is due to the very nature of a literary work, which has, firstly, an author and presupposes the presence of a reader, and secondly, boundaries: a beginning and an end. Two time axes appear in the text - the “axis of storytelling” and the “axis of described events”: “the axis of storytelling is one-dimensional, while the axis of described events is multidimensional” 5. Their relationship gives rise to the multidimensionality of artistic time, makes temporal shifts possible, and determines the multiplicity of temporal points of view in the structure of the text. Thus, in a prose work, the narrator’s conditional present tense is usually established, which correlates with the narration about the past or future of the characters, with the characteristics of situations in various time dimensions.
The action of a work can unfold in different time planes (“The Double” by A. Pogorelsky, “Russian Nights” by V.F. Odoevsky, “The Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov, etc.).
Irreversibility (unidirectionality) is also not characteristic of artistic time: the real sequence of events is often disrupted in the text. According to the law of irreversibility, only folklore time moves. In the literature of modern times, temporal displacements, disruption of temporal sequence, and switching of temporal registers play an important role. Retrospection as a manifestation of the reversibility of artistic time is the principle of organization of a number of thematic genres (memoirs and autobiographical works, detective novels). Retrospective in a literary text can also act as a means of revealing its implicit content - subtext.
The multidirectionality and reversibility of artistic time is especially clearly manifested in the literature of the 20th century. If Stern, according to E.M. Forster, “turned the clock upside down,” then “Marcel Proust, even more inventive, swapped the hands... Gertrude Stein, who tried to banish time from the novel, smashed her clock into pieces and scattered its fragments around the world..." 6. It was in the 20th century. a “stream of consciousness” novel arises, a “one day” novel, a sequential time series in which time is destroyed, and time appears only as a component of a person’s psychological existence.
Artistic time is characterized by both continuity and discreteness. “Remaining essentially continuous in the sequential change of temporal and spatial facts, the continuum in textual reproduction is simultaneously divided into separate episodes” 7.
The selection of these episodes is determined by the aesthetic intentions of the author, hence the possibility of temporal lacunae, “compression” or, on the contrary, expansion of plot time, see, for example, T. Mann’s remark: “At the wonderful festival of narration and reproduction, omissions play an important and indispensable role.”
The possibilities of expanding or compressing time are widely used by writers. So, for example, in I. S. Turgenev’s story “Spring Waters” the story of Sanin’s love for Gemma stands out in close-up - the most striking event in the hero’s life, its emotional peak; At the same time, artistic time slows down, “stretches out,” but the course of the hero’s subsequent life is conveyed in a generalized, summary manner: “And then - life in Paris and all the humiliations, all the disgusting torments of a slave... Then - the return to the homeland, a poisoned, devastated life, petty fuss, minor troubles..."
Artistic time in the text appears as a dialectical unity of the finite and the infinite. In the endless flow of time, one event or a chain of events is singled out; their beginning and end are usually fixed. The ending of the work is a signal that the time period presented to the reader has ended, but time continues beyond it. Such a property of real-time works as orderliness is also transformed in a literary text. This may be due to the subjective determination of the starting point or measure of time: for example, in the autobiographical story “Boy” by S. Bobrov, the measure of time for the hero is a holiday: “For a long time I tried to imagine what a year is... and suddenly I saw in front of me was a rather long ribbon of pearl-gray fog, lying horizontally in front of me, like a towel thrown on the floor.<...>Was this towel divided for months?.. No, it was unnoticeable. For seasons?.. It’s also somehow not very clear... It was clearer something else. These were the patterns of the holidays that colored the year” 8.
Artistic time represents the unity of the particular and the general. “As a manifestation of the private, it has the features of individual time and is characterized by a beginning and an end. As a reflection of the limitless world, it is characterized by the infinity of the time flow” 9. A single temporary situation in a literary text can also act as a unity of discrete and continuous, finite and infinite: “There are seconds, five or six of them pass at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, completely achieved... It’s as if you suddenly feel the whole nature and suddenly say: yes, it’s true” 10. The plane of the timeless in a literary text is created through the use of repetitions, maxims and aphorisms, various kinds of reminiscences, symbols and other tropes. In this regard, artistic time can be considered as a complementary phenomenon, to the analysis of which N. Bohr’s principle of complementarity is applicable (opposite means cannot be combined synchronously; to obtain a holistic view, two “experiences” separated in time are needed). The antinomy “finite - infinite” is resolved in a literary text as a result of the use of conjugate, but spaced apart in time and therefore ambiguous means, for example, symbols.
Fundamentally significant for the organization of a work of art are such characteristics of artistic time as the duration/brevity of the depicted event, the homogeneity/heterogeneity of situations, the connection of time with subject-event content (its fullness/emptiness, “emptiness”). According to these parameters, both works and fragments of text in them, forming certain time blocks, can be contrasted.
Artistic time is based on a certain system of linguistic means. This is, first of all, a system of tense forms of the verb, their sequence and opposition, transposition (figurative use) of tense forms, lexical units with temporal semantics, case forms with the meaning of time, chronological marks, syntactic constructions that create a certain time plan (for example, nominative sentences represent in the text there is a plan of the present), names of historical figures, mythological heroes, nominations of historical events.
Of particular importance for artistic time is the functioning of verb forms; the predominance of statics or dynamics in the text, the acceleration or slowdown of time, their sequence determines the transition from one situation to another and, consequently, the movement of time. Compare, for example, the following fragments of E. Zamyatin’s story “Mamai”: “Mamai wandered lost in the unfamiliar Zagorodny. The penguin wings were in the way; the head hung like a faucet on a broken samovar... And suddenly the head jerked up, the legs began to prance like a twenty-five year old...” Forms of time act as signals of various subjective spheres in the structure of the narrative, cf., for example: “Gleb was lying on the sand, resting his head in his hands It was a quiet, sunny morning. He wasn't working on his mezzanine today. It's all over. Tomorrow they are leaving, Ellie is packing up, everything is re-drilled. Helsingfors again..." 11.
The functions of types of tense forms in a literary text are largely typified. As V.V. Vinogradov notes, narrative (“event”) time is determined primarily by the relationship between the dynamic forms of the past tense perfective and the forms of the past imperfect, acting in a procedurally long-term or qualitatively characterizing meaning. The latter forms are correspondingly assigned to the descriptions.
The time of the text as a whole is determined by the interaction of three temporal “axes”: calendar time, displayed mainly by lexical units with seme time and dates; event time, organized by the connection of all predicates of the text (primarily verbal forms); perceptual time, expressing the position of the narrator and the character (in this case, different lexical and grammatical means and temporal shifts are used).
Artistic and grammatical tenses are closely related, but they should not be equated. “Grammatical tense and the tense of a verbal work can diverge significantly. Action time and author's and reader's time are created by a combination of many factors: among them, grammatical time is only partly..." 12.
Artistic time is created by all elements of the text, while the means expressing temporal relations interact with the means expressing spatial relations. Let us limit ourselves to one example: for example, the change of constructions with predicates of movement (left the city, entered the forest, arrived in Nizhneye Gorodishche, drove up to the river, etc.) in the story by A.P. Chekhov's "On the Cart", on the one hand, determines the temporal sequence of situations and forms the plot time of the text, on the other hand, reflects the movement of the character in space and participates in the creation of artistic space. To create an image of time, spatial metaphors are regularly used in literary texts.
The category of artistic time is historically changeable. In the history of culture, different temporal models succeed each other.
The most ancient works are characterized by mythological time, a sign of which is the idea of ​​cyclical reincarnations, “world periods”. Mythological time, according to C. Levi-Strauss, can be defined as the unity of such characteristics as reversibility-irreversibility, synchronicity-diachronicity. The present and the future in mythological time appear only as different temporal hypostases of the past, which is an invariant structure. The cyclical structure of mythological time turned out to be significantly significant for the development of art in different eras. “The exceptionally powerful orientation of mythological thinking towards the establishment of homo- and isomorphisms, on the one hand, made it scientifically fruitful, and on the other, determined its periodic revival in various historical eras” 13. The idea of ​​time as a change of cycles, “eternal repetition”, is present in a number of neo-mythological works of the 20th century. Thus, according to V.V. Ivanov, the image of time in the poetry of V. Khlebnikov, who “deeply felt the ways of science of his time” 14, is close to this concept.
In medieval culture, time was viewed primarily as a reflection of eternity, while the idea of ​​it was predominantly eschatological in nature: time begins with the act of creation and ends with the “second coming.” The main direction of time becomes orientation towards the future - the future exodus from time into eternity, while the metrization of time itself changes and the role of the present, the dimension of which is connected with the spiritual life of a person, significantly increases: “... for the present of past objects we have memory or memories; for the present of real objects we have a look, an outlook, an intuition; for the present of future objects we have aspiration, hope, hope,” wrote Augustine. Thus, in ancient Russian literature, time, as D.S. Likhachev notes, is not as egocentric as in the literature of modern times. It is characterized by isolation, one-pointedness, strict adherence to
real sequence of events, constant appeal to the eternal: “Medieval literature strives for the timeless, to overcome time in the depiction of the highest manifestations of existence - the divine establishment of the universe” 15. The achievements of ancient Russian literature in recreating events “from the angle of eternity” in a transformed form were used by writers of subsequent generations, in particular F.M. Dostoevsky, for whom “the temporal was... a form of realization of the eternal” 16. An example of this is the dialogue between Stavrogin and Kirillov in the novel “Demons”:
- ...There are minutes, you reach minutes, and time suddenly stops and will be forever.
- Do you hope to reach such a moment?
-Yes.
“This is hardly possible in our time,” Nikolai Vsevolodovich responded, also without any irony, slowly and as if thoughtfully. - In the Apocalypse, the angel swears that there will be no more time.
I know. This is very true there; clearly and accurately. When the whole person achieves happiness, there will be no more time, because there is no need 17 .
Since the Renaissance, the evolutionary theory of time has been affirmed in culture and science: spatial events become the basis for the movement of time. Time, thus, is understood as eternity, not opposed to time, but moving and being realized in every instantaneous situation. This is reflected in the literature of modern times, which boldly violates the principle of irreversibility of real time.
Finally, the 20th century was a period of particularly bold experimentation with artistic time. The ironic judgment of J.P. Sartre is indicative: “...most of the largest modern writers - Proust, Joyce... Faulkner, Gide, W. Wulf - each in their own way tried to cripple time. Some of them deprived him of his past and future in order to reduce him to the pure intuition of the moment... Proust and Faulkner simply “decapitated” him, depriving him of the future, that is, the dimension of action and freedom.”
Consideration of artistic time in its development shows that its evolution (reversibility - irreversibility - reversibility) is a forward movement in which each higher stage negates, removes its lower (preceding) one, contains its richness and again removes itself in the next, third , steps.
Features of modeling artistic time are taken into account when determining the constitutive characteristics of the genus, genre, and movement in literature. Thus, according to A.A. Potebnya, “lyrics are praesens,” “epic perfectum” 18; the principle of recreating time can differentiate genres: aphorisms and maxims, for example, are characterized by the present constant; Reversible artistic time is inherent in memoirs and autobiographical works. The literary direction is also associated with a certain concept of the development of time and the principles of its transmission, while, for example, the measure of adequacy to real time is different. Thus, symbolism is characterized by the implementation of the idea of ​​perpetual motion - becoming: the world develops according to the laws of the “triad” (unity of the world spirit with the Soul of the world - rejection of the Soul of the world from unity - defeat of Chaos).
At the same time, the principles of mastering artistic time are individual; this is a feature of the artist’s idiostyle (thus, artistic time in the novels of L.N. Tolstoy, for example, differs significantly from the model of time in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky).
Taking into account the peculiarities of the embodiment of time in a literary text, considering the concept of time in it and, more broadly, in the writer’s work is a necessary component of the analysis of the work; underestimation of this aspect, absolutization of one of the particular manifestations of artistic time, identification of its properties without taking into account both objective real time and subjective time can lead to erroneous interpretations of the artistic text, making the analysis incomplete and schematic.
The analysis of artistic time includes the following main points: 1) determination of the features of artistic time in the work under consideration: one-dimensionality or multidimensionality; reversibility or irreversibility; linearity or disruption of time sequence; 2) highlighting the temporal plans (planes) presented in the work in the temporal structure of the text and considering their interaction; 3) determining the relationship between the author's time (narrator's time) and the subjective time of the characters; 4) identifying signals that highlight these forms of time; 5) consideration of the entire system of time indicators in the text, identifying not only their direct, but also figurative meanings; 6) determining the relationship between historical and everyday time, biographical and historical; 7) establishing a connection between artistic time and space.
The text is spatial, i.e. elements of the text have a certain spatial configuration. Hence the theoretical and practical possibility of spatial interpretation of tropes and figures, the structure of the narrative. Thus, Ts. Todorov notes: “The most systematic study of spatial organization in fiction was conducted by Roman Jacobson. In his analyzes of poetry, he showed that all layers of the utterance... form an established structure based on symmetries, build-ups, oppositions, parallelisms, etc., which together form a real spatial structure” 19. A similar spatial structure also occurs in prose texts; see, for example, repetitions of various types and a system of oppositions in A.M. Remizov’s novel “The Pond.” Repetitions in it are elements of the spatial organization of chapters, parts and the text as a whole. Thus, in the chapter “One Hundred Mustaches - One Hundred Noses,” the phrase “The walls are white and white, they shine from the lamp, as if strewn with grated glass,” is repeated three times, and the leitmotif of the entire novel is the repetition of the sentence, “Stone frog (highlighted by A.M. Remizov.) moved her ugly webbed paws,” which is usually included in a complex syntactic construction with varying lexical composition.
The study of a text as a certain spatial organization thus presupposes consideration of its volume, configuration, system of repetitions and oppositions, analysis of such topological properties of space, transformed in the text, as symmetry and coherence. It is also important to take into account the graphic form of the text (see, for example, palindromes, figured verses, the use of brackets, paragraphs, spaces, the special nature of the distribution of words in a verse, line, sentence), etc. “It is often pointed out,” notes I. Klyukanov, “that poetic texts are printed differently than other texts. However, to a certain extent, all texts are printed differently than others: at the same time, the graphic appearance of the text “signals” its genre affiliation, its attachment to one or another type of speech activity and forces a certain image of perception... So - “spatial architectonics” the text acquires a kind of normative status. This norm may be violated by the unusual structural placement of graphic signs, which causes a stylistic effect.”20 In a narrow sense, space in relation to a literary text is the spatial organization of its events, inextricably linked with the temporal organization of the work and the system of spatial images of the text. According to Kästner’s definition, “space in this case functions in the text as an operative secondary illusion, something through which spatial properties are realized in temporal art.” Thus, there is a distinction between broad and narrow understandings of space. This is due to the distinction between an external point of view on the text as a certain spatial organization that is perceived by the reader, and an internal point of view, considering the spatial characteristics of the text itself as a relatively closed internal world that is self-sufficient. These points of view do not exclude, but complement each other. When analyzing a literary text, it is important to take into account both of these aspects of space: the first is the “spatial architectonics” of the text, the second is the “artistic space”. In what follows, the main object of consideration is the artistic space of the work.
The writer reflects real space-time connections in the work he creates, building his own perceptual series parallel to the real one, and creates a new - conceptual - space, which becomes a form of implementation of the author's idea. An artist, wrote M.M. Bakhtin, is characterized by “the ability to see time, to read time in the spatial whole of the world and... to perceive the filling of space not as a stationary background... but as a becoming whole, as an event” 21.
Artistic space is one of the forms of aesthetic reality created by the author. This is a dialectical unity of contradictions: based on the objective connection of spatial characteristics (real or possible), it is subjective, it is infinite and at the same time finite.
In the text, when displayed, the general properties of real space are transformed and have a special character: extension, continuity-discontinuity, three-dimensionality - and its particular properties: shape, location, distance, boundaries between different systems. In a particular work, one of the properties of space can come to the fore and be specially played out; see, for example, the geometrization of urban space in A. Bely’s novel “Petersburg” and the use in it of images associated with the designation of discrete geometric objects (cube, square, parallelepiped , line, etc.): “There the houses merged in cubes into a systematic, multi-story row... Inspiration took possession of the senator’s soul when a varnished cube cut the Nevsky line: the house numbering was visible there...”
The spatial characteristics of the events recreated in the text are refracted through the prism of the perception of the author (narrator, character), see, for example: “...The feeling of the city never corresponded to the place where my life took place in it. The emotional pressure always threw him into the depths of the described perspective. There, puffing, the clouds trampled, and, pushing aside their crowd, the floating smoke of countless furnaces hung across the sky. There, in lines, exactly along the embankments, the entrances to the decaying houses were dipped into the snow...” (B. Pasternak. Safe-conduct).
In a literary text, there is a corresponding distinction between the space of the narrator (storyteller) and the space of the characters. Their interaction makes the artistic space of the entire work multidimensional, voluminous and devoid of homogeneity, while at the same time, the dominant space in terms of creating the integrity of the text and its internal unity remains the space of the narrator, whose mobility of point of view makes it possible to combine different angles of description and image. Language means serve as means of expressing spatial relationships in the text and indicating various spatial characteristics: syntactic constructions with the meaning of location, existential sentences, prepositional-case forms with local meaning, verbs of motion, verbs with the meaning of detecting a feature in space, adverbs of place, toponyms, etc. , see, for example: “Crossing the Irtysh. The steamer stopped the ferry... On the other side there is a steppe: yurts that look like kerosene tanks, a house, cattle... The Kyrgyz are coming from the other side...” (M. Prishvin); “A minute later they passed the sleepy office, came out into the sand deep, up to the nave, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. The gentle climb up the mountain among rare crooked lanterns... seemed endless” (I.A. Bunin).
The reproduction (image) of space and an indication of it are included in the work like pieces of a mosaic. By associating, they form a general panorama of space, the image of which can develop into an image of space” 22. The image of artistic space can have a different character depending on what model of the world (time and space) the writer or poet has (whether space is understood, for example, “in Newtonian” or mythopoetic).
In the archaic model of the world, space is not opposed to time; time condenses and becomes a form of space, which is “drawn” into the movement of time. “Mythopoetic space is always filled and always material; in addition to space, there is also non-space, the embodiment of which is Chaos...” 23. Mythopoetic ideas about space, so important for writers, are embodied in a number of mythologemes, which are consistently used in literature in a number of stable images. This is, first of all, an image of a path (road), which can involve movement both horizontally and vertically (see works of folklore) and is characterized by the identification of a number of equally significant spatial points, topographical objects - a threshold, a door, a staircase, a bridge, etc. These images, associated with the division of both time and space, metaphorically represent a person’s life, its certain moments of crisis, his quest on the edge of “his” and “alien” worlds, embody movement, point to its limit and symbolize the possibility of choice; they are widely used in poetry and prose, see for example : “It’s not joy - the news is knocking on the grave... / Oh! Wait to cross this step. / While you were here, nothing died, / Step over, and the darling was gone.”(V.A. Zhukovsky); "I pretended to be mortal in winter / And the eternal doors closed forever, / But still they recognize my voice, / And they will still believe him again.”(A. Akhmatova).
The space modeled in the text can be open and closed (closed); see, for example, the contrast between these two types of space in “Notes from House of the Dead» F.M. Dostoevsky: “Our prison stood on the edge of the fortress, right next to the ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence into the light of day: wouldn’t you see anything? - and all you will see is the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and sentries walking back and forth along the rampart, day and night... In one of the sides of the fence there is a strong gate, always locked, always guarded day and night sentries; they were unlocked upon request to be released to work. Behind these gates there was a bright, free world..."
The image of a wall serves as a stable image associated with a closed, limited space in prose and poetry, see, for example, L. Andreev’s story “The Wall” or the repeated images of a stone wall (stone hole) in A. M. Remizov’s autobiographical story “In Captivity” ”, contrasted with the reversible and multidimensional image of the bird as a symbol of will in the text.
Space may be represented in the text as expanding or contracting in relation to a character or a specific object being described. Thus, in F. M. Dostoevsky’s story “The Dream of a Funny Man,” the transition from reality to the hero’s dream, and then back to reality, is based on the technique of changing spatial characteristics: the closed space of the hero’s “small room” is replaced by the even narrower space of the grave, and then the narrator finds himself in a different, ever-expanding space, but at the end of the story the space narrows again, cf.: We rushed through darkness and unknown spaces. I have long ceased to see the constellations familiar to the eye. It was already morning... I woke up in the same chairs, my candle had all burned out, they were sleeping by the chestnut tree, and there was a rare silence all around in our apartment.”
The expansion of space can be motivated by the gradual expansion of the hero’s experience, his knowledge of the outside world, see, for example, I. A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev”: “A then... we recognized the barnyard, stables, carriage house, threshing floor, Proval, Vyselki. The world kept expanding before us... The garden is cheerful, green, but already known to us... And here is the barnyard, the stable, the carriage house, the barn on the threshing floor, the Proval...”
According to the degree of generalization of spatial characteristics, concrete space and abstract space (not associated with specific local indicators) are distinguished, cf.: “ It smelled of coal, burnt oil and that smell of an alarming and mysterious space, what always happens at train stations(A. Platonov) - Despite the endless space, the world was comfortable at this early hour"(A. Platonov).
The space actually visible by the character or narrator is supplemented by imaginary space. The space given in the perception of a character can be characterized by deformation associated with the reversibility of its elements and a special point of view on it: “The shadows from the trees and bushes, like comets, fell with sharp clicks onto the sloping plain... He lowered his head down and saw that the grass... seemed to grow deep and far away and that on top of it there was water as clear as a mountain spring, and the grass seemed like the bottom of some light sea, transparent to the very depths..."(N.V. Gogol. Viy).
The degree of filling of space is also significant for the figurative system of the work. Thus, in the story “Childhood” by A.M. Gorky, with the help of repeated lexical means (primarily the word “cramped” and derivatives from it), the “crowdedness” of the space surrounding the hero is emphasized. The sign of cramped space extends both to the outside world and to the inner world of the character and interacts with the end-to-end repetition of the text - repetition of the words “melancholy”, “boredom”: “ Boring, boring in a special way, almost unbearable; the chest fills with liquid, warm lead, it presses from the inside, bursts the chest, ribs; it seems to me that I am swelling up like a bubble, and I am cramped in a small room, under a coffin-shaped ceiling.” The image of cramped space is correlated in the story with the end-to-end image of “a cramped, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which a simple Russian man lived and still lives.”
Elements of the transformed artistic space can be associated in a work with the theme of historical memory, thereby historical time interacts with certain spatial images, which are usually intertextual in nature, see, for example, I. A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev”: “And soon I began to wander again. I was on the very banks of the Donets, where the prince once threw himself from captivity “as an ermine into the reeds, a white nog into the water”... And from Kyiv I went to Kursk, to Putivl. “Saddle up, brother, your greyhounds, and my ti are ready, saddled at Kursk in front...”
Artistic space is inextricably linked with artistic time. Their relationship in an artistic text is expressed in the following main aspects:
1) two simultaneous situations are depicted in the work as spatially separated, juxtaposed (see, for example, “Hadji Murad” by L.N. Tolstoy, “ White Guard» M. Bulgakov);
2) the spatial point of view of the observer (character or narrator) is at the same time his temporal point of view, while the optical point of view can be either static or moving (dynamic): “...So we finally got out into freedom, crossed the bridge, went up to the barrier - and looked into the eyes of a stone, deserted road, vaguely whitening and running into the endless distance...”(I.A. Bunin. Sukhodol);
3) a temporal shift usually corresponds to a spatial shift (for example, the transition to the present of the narrator in “The Life of Arsenyev” by I.A. Bunin is accompanied by a sharp shift in spatial position: “A whole life has passed since then. Russia, Orel, spring... And now, France, the South, Mediterranean winter days. We... have been in a foreign country for a long time”;
4) the acceleration of time is accompanied by a compression of space (see, for example, the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky);
5) on the contrary, time dilation can be accompanied by an expansion of space, hence, for example, detailed descriptions of spatial coordinates, scene of action, interior, etc.;
6) the passage of time is conveyed through changes in spatial characteristics: “Signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time” 24. Thus, in the story “Childhood” by A.M. Gorky, in the text of which there are almost no specific temporal indicators (dates, exact timing, signs of historical time), the movement of time is reflected in the spatial movement of the hero, his milestones being the move from Astrakhan to Nizhny, and then moving from one house to another, cf.: “By spring, the uncles separated... and my grandfather bought himself a large, interesting house on Polevaya; Grandfather unexpectedly sold the house to the tavern owner, buying another one on Kanatnaya Street”;
7) the same speech means can express both temporal and spatial characteristics, see, for example: “...they promised to write, they never wrote, everything ended forever, Russia began, exiles, the water froze in the bucket by morning, children grew up healthy, the steamer was running along the Yenisei on a bright June day, and then there was St. Petersburg, an apartment on Ligovka, crowds of people in the Tavrichesky courtyard, then the front was three years, carriages, rallies, bread rations, Moscow, “Alpine Goat”, then Gnezdnikovsky, famine , theaters, work on a book expedition...” (Yu. Trifonov. It was a summer afternoon).
To embody the motif of the movement of time, metaphors and comparisons containing spatial images are regularly used, see, for example: “A long staircase grew up going down from days about which it is impossible to say: “ Lived." They passed close by, barely touching your shoulders, and at night... you could clearly see: all the identical, flat steps were going in a zigzag.”(S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky. Babaev).
Awareness of the relationship between space and time made it possible to identify the category of chronotope, reflecting their unity. “We will call the essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically mastered in literature,” wrote M.M. Bakhtin, “a chronotope (which literally means “time-space”) 25. From the point of view of M.M. Bakhtin, chronotope is a formal-substantive category that has “significant genre significance... Chronotope as a formal-substantive category determines (to a large extent) the image of a person in literature 26. The chronotope has a certain structure: on its basis, plot-forming motifs are identified - meeting, separation, etc. Turning to the category of chronotope allows us to construct a certain typology of spatio-temporal characteristics inherent in thematic genres: there are, for example, an idyllic chronotope, which is characterized by the unity of place, the rhythmic cyclicity of time, the attachment of life to a place - home, etc., and an adventurous chronotope, which is characterized by a wide spatial background and time of “case”. On the basis of the chronotope, “localities” are also distinguished (in the terminology of M.M. Bakhtin) - stable images based on the intersection of temporal and spatial “series” ( castle, living room, salon, provincial town etc.).
Artistic space, like artistic time, is historically changeable, which is reflected in the change of chronotopes and is associated with a change in the concept of space-time. As an example, let us dwell on the features of the artistic space in the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Modern times.
“The space of the medieval world is a closed system with sacred centers and secular periphery. The cosmos of Neoplatonic Christianity is graded and hierarchized. The experience of space is colored by religious and moral tones” 27. The perception of space in the Middle Ages does not usually involve an individual point of view on an object or series of objects. As D.S. Likhachev notes, “events in the chronicle, in the lives of saints, in historical stories are mainly movements in space: campaigns and crossings, covering vast geographical spaces... Life is a manifestation of oneself in space. This is a journey on a ship in the midst of the sea of ​​life." 28 Spatial characteristics are consistently symbolic (top-bottom, west-east, circle, etc.). “The symbolic approach provides that rapture of thought, that pre-rationalistic vagueness of the boundaries of identification, that content of rational thinking, which elevate the understanding of life to its highest level” 29. At the same time, medieval man still recognizes himself in many ways as an organic part of nature, so looking at nature from the outside is alien to him. Characteristic folk medieval culture- awareness of the inextricable connection with nature, the absence of rigid boundaries between the body and the world.
During the Renaissance, the concept of perspective (“looking through”, as defined by A. Dürer) was established. The Renaissance managed to completely rationalize space. It was during this period that the concept of a closed cosmos was replaced by the concept of infinity, existing not only as a divine prototype, but also empirically as a natural reality. The image of the Universe is detheologized. The theocentric time of medieval culture is replaced by three-dimensional space with a fourth dimension - time. This is connected, on the one hand, with the development of an objectifying attitude towards reality in the individual; on the other hand, with the expansion of the sphere of “I” and the subjective principle in art. In works of literature, spatial characteristics are consistently associated with the point of view of the narrator or character (compare with direct perspective in painting), and the importance of the latter’s position gradually increases in literature. A certain system of speech means is emerging, reflecting both the static and dynamic point of view of the character.
In the 20th century a relatively stable subject-spatial concept is replaced by an unstable one (see, for example, the impressionistic fluidity of space in time). Bold experimentation with time is complemented by equally bold experimentation with space. Thus, novels of “one day” often correspond to novels of “closed space”. The text can simultaneously combine a bird's eye view of space and an image of the locus from a specific position. The interaction of time plans is combined with deliberate spatial uncertainty. Writers often turn to the deformation of space, which is reflected in the special character speech means. So, for example, in K. Simon’s novel “The Roads of Flanders” the elimination of precise temporal and spatial characteristics is associated with the abandonment of personal forms of the verb and their replacement with forms of present participles. The complication of the narrative structure determines the multiplicity of spatial points of view in one work and their interaction (see, for example, the works of M. Bulgakov, Yu. Dombrovsky, etc.).
At the same time, in the literature of the 20th century. there is increasing interest in mythopoetic images and the mythopoetic model of space-time 30 (see, for example, the poetry of A. Blok, the poetry and prose of A. Bely, the works of V. Khlebnikov). Thus, changes in the concept of time-space in science and in human worldview are inextricably linked with the nature of the space-time continuum in works of literature and the types of images that embody time and space. The reproduction of space in the text is also determined by the literary movement to which the author belongs: naturalism, for example, which strives to create the impression of genuine activity, is characterized by detailed descriptions of various localities: streets, squares, houses, etc.
Let us now dwell on the methodology for describing spatial relationships in a literary text.
Analysis of spatial relationships in a work of art assumes:
1) determination of the spatial position of the author (narrator) and those characters whose point of view is presented in the text;
2) identifying the nature of these positions (dynamic - static; top - bottom, bird's eye view, etc.) in their connection with the time point of view;
3) determination of the main spatial characteristics of the work (location of action and its changes, character movements, type of space, etc.);
4) consideration of the main spatial images of the work; 5) characteristics of speech means expressing spatial relationships. The latter, naturally, corresponds to all possible stages of analysis noted above and forms their basis.
SPATIO-TEMPORAL ORGANIZATIONSTORIES by I.A. Bunin “Epitaph”, “NEW ROAD”", « gentleman from San Francisco"
A work of art is a system in which, as in any other system, all elements are interconnected, interdependent, functional and form integrity, unity.
Every system is characterized by hierarchy and multi-level nature. Individual levels of the system determine certain aspects of its behavior, and holistic functioning is the result of the interaction of its parties, levels, and hierarchies. Consequently, it is possible to single out one or another level of the system only conditionally and with the aim of establishing its internal connections with the whole, a more in-depth knowledge of this whole.
In a literary work, we distinguish three levels: ideological-thematic, plot-compositional and verbal-rhythmic.
To comprehend the artistic whole of I.A. Bunin’s stories
“Epitaph” and “New Road” choose a plot-compositional analysis, in particular the spatio-temporal organization of the works. It should be noted that we relate plot and composition to the generic concept of structure, which we will write as the organization of all components of a work into a system, establishing relationships between them. We share the point of view of V.V. Kozhinov on the plot set out in the academic theory of literature. V.V. Kozhinov’s definition of composition as the interaction of forms of constructing a work, the relationship of only such components as narration, development, dialogue, monologue. We, like V.V. Kozhinov, follow A. Tolstoy in defining composition: “Composition is, first of all, establishing the artist’s center of vision.” The task of composition is to identify forms, a method of connection between parts of the whole, thereby identifying the author’s explanation of the real world Composition is the next stage of concretization of the whole after the plot. It connects the action with the characters from whom grow the heroes who bear the point of view on the depicted action, and the point of view of the heroes correlates with the author - the bearer of the concept of the whole. The internal organization of the work is in accordance with this concept and is the establishment of the artist's center of vision. “Establishing the center,” thus, we understand more broadly than the establishment of a certain perspective. And composition, from our point of view, establishes a connection not only with descriptions, narration, dialogue and monologue, but with all elements and levels of the work. Composition is “the composition, connection, arrangement, construction of elements of the same type and different types among themselves and their relationship with the whole, not only the external layout of the work,” but also “the finest correlation and coordination of deep direct and feedback connections,” a law, a method of connecting text parts (parallel, philosophical correlation, repetition, contrast, nuanced differences, etc. (a means of expressing the connection between the elements of the work (correlation of voices, system of images, combination of several storylines, spatio-temporal organization of the work, etc.).
The originality of the plot and compositional organization of Bunin's stories at the turn of the century is the weakening of the plot. At the center of Bunin's lyrical stories are the feelings and thoughts of the narrator. They become the driving force behind the plot and compositional structure of the work. The self-propelling logic of objective reality is being replaced by the logic of the movement of feelings and thoughts. The logic of thought, the narrator’s contemplation of the world, memories arising by association, landscape paintings and details, and not events, determine their plot.
The integrity of a literary work, like any integrity, is like an ordered dynamic system. Its structure also differs in internal order. “Art compensates for the weakening of structural connections at some levels by organizing them more rigidly at others.” The weakening of the plot in Bunin's prose enhances the significance of the associative connections of the elements of the work, one of the forms of which is spatio-temporal relations.
The temporal and spatial relationships of the components as a whole consolidate the spatio-temporal movement of figurative thought in the work and are plot-forming means. Space and time are also types of functional relationships between different levels of a work, i.e. means of the overall compositional organization of the work.
Time and space also perform an important plot-compositional function in the works we have chosen for analysis.
These works by Bunin express the writer’s attitude to the onset of something new in the life of Russia. What is new in the stories is assessed from the point of view of the value of Russia’s past, which is dear to Bunin due to the connection between man and nature.
The relationship between the present and the past is the main form of constructing the story “Epitaph”.
At the center of the lyrical story “Epitaph” is the consciousness of the hero-narrator, who is extremely close to the author; there are no other subjects of speech in the story, therefore the subjective time of the story is one. However, artistic time in “Epitaph” is multifaceted. The initial time position of the story "Epitaph" is the present. Observing the present gives rise to memories of the past and thoughts about the future. The present fits into the general flow of time. Thinking about the future gives perspective to the flow of time and creates chronic openness.
The hero does not withdraw into himself, he strives to understand the movement of time.
The course of history is restored by the thoughts and memories of the hero. Retrospection acts as a necessary link in the movement of the plot. In a few minutes of reflection and recollection, a detailed picture of the changing seasons and the life of the village during these periods of time and over decades is restored.
Memory is overcoming momentary time, falling out of non-stop time; it “stretches” real momentary time in a work, but restores movement in the past. And specific paintings and images illustrate this movement of time, this temporal extension. A montage of paintings of a steppe village at different times shows the change in life on the steppe.
When remembering, the impressions of childhood and the point of view of an already adult hero-narrator are combined, therefore an appreciation of the past appears, the past becomes aesthetically significant, it seems to be happiness. The beauty of life in the steppe and villages in the past is emphasized by images of white-trunked birch, golden loaves, the multi-colored palette of the steppe, and details from the festive and working life of a peasant.
This assessment of the past structurally results in the fact that the description of the past makes up the majority of the story, the ancient steppe and the village are presented in all seasons.
It turns out that cyclical time (time of year, stages, months and days within one season; the change of day and night) is also important for emphasizing the moving historical process. The dynamic, sharply paced nature of the seasons also serves the same purpose. The significance of semantic changes and temporal transitions is also emphasized by the grammatical forms of the verb. In the fourth part, if the story is conditionally divided into four parts, - thinking about the future - verbs of the future tense; in the third part - a story about the present - present tense verbs; in the first and second parts of the story, memories of the time of prosperity of the steppe and its changes in subsequent years are verbs of the past tense, as well as the present, since memories reproduce the life of the past as vividly as if everything was happening in the present, and because maxims are included in the memories about something common to all eras, such as: “Life does not stand still, the old goes away,” etc.
To emphasize not only the natural prosperity in the past, but also general well-being, cyclical time is combined with everyday, life time.
Cyclical time demonstrates the relentless movement of time, not only change, but also renewal of life. And the hero recognizes the pattern of the emergence of something new. (The need for something new is also motivated by the fact that nature has become impoverished, peasants are begging and are forced to leave their homes in search of happiness).
In "Epitaph", in addition to cyclical and autobiographical time, past, present and future, there are several temporal layers of past time; historical time after the abolition of serfdom, (at the same time the time of the hero’s childhood), the time preceding this era, when someone “was the first to come to this place, put a cross with a roof on his tithe, called the priest and consecrated the “Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos”, time life in the village and the years following the hero’s childhood to the present day.All these time layers are combined.
Although the real train of thought, as noted above, was from the present to the past and future, the principle of temporal sequence is maintained in the construction of the story; first the past is described, then the present and, finally, thoughts about the future. This construction also emphasizes the course of historical development, the prospect of movement. The story is an epitaph for the past, but not for life. However, if real time flows continuously, in the artistic time of the story there are temporary gaps between the first and second pictures of the past, as well as between the past and the present. This feature of the artistic time of “Epitaph” was determined by the genre of the work itself.
The artistic space of the story also serves to embody the author’s idea. In the first part of the story, the connection between the village and the city, with the world is cut off (“The path to the city is overgrown”). The circle of observations is completed by the child’s acquaintance with the steppe, the village and its environs. In the second part, the space opens up. "Childhood has passed. We were drawn to look beyond what we saw beyond the outskirts of the village." Then the space expanded even more: with the impoverishment of the steppe, people began to leave along the road to the city, to distant Siberia. The path to the city has been trodden again, and inside the village the paths are overgrown. In the third part of the “Epitaph”, people come from the city to the village to build a new life here, i.e. The connections between the steppe and the world are strengthening, paths are being trodden in the opposite direction, from city to village, to the land that bears wealth, the progenitor of life. The ending of the story does not sound hopeless. And yet the progressiveness of the new for Bunin is doubtful. New people trample the steppe, looking for happiness in its depths. How will they sanctify the steppe in the future?
An even more decisive onset of the new is told in the story “The New Road.”
A symbol of the onset of a new industrial structure, both concretely historical and future, new in general history, is a train moving into the depths of a vast forest region.
The story is divided into three parts. Each part describes the hero’s observations from the window of her surrounding world, the interior space of the carriage and the platform. And through the ever-increasing sparseness of enclosed spaces (car and platform) and the ever-increasing density and enormity of the landscape, an idea is given of the further advance of the train into the wilderness of the country.
Nature resists the advance of the train, because the new, according to Bunin, brings the death of beauty and the rejection of man from it. “These birches and pines are becoming more and more unfriendly, they frown, gathering in crowds denser and denser...” The future and nature are in conflict.
The story also contrasts beggars, but beautiful in their purity, pristineness, kinship with their native land, men and people who come to the wilderness of forests with railways: a dandy telegraph operator, a footman, young ladies, a young thief-lottery operator, a merchant. The latter are depicted with obvious antipathy of the author.
The men, like the forests, reluctantly give in to the new way of life. The new fights, advances like a conqueror, “like a giant dragon.” The train rushes forward confidently, “threateningly warning someone with a trembling roar.” The story ends with a statement of this evil onset of the new. The coloring of the picture is ominous: "... but the train stubbornly moves forward. And smoke, like the tail of a comet, floats above it in a long whitish ridge, full of fiery sparks and colored from below with a bloody reflection of the flame." The emotional coloring of the words shows the author’s attitude towards the onset of a new, capitalist way of life.
The hero, sympathizing with the poor and tortured people and doomed to
destruction of the “beautiful”, “virginly rich” land, realizing
that the beauty of the past is being destroyed, thinking about what is common
he was left with “this wilderness” and its people how to help them.
And he doubts whether he can “understand their sorrows, help
to them, he apparently did not so much from the recognition of his powerlessness and not from
"confusion before the process of real life" and fear
before it, as critics of the beginning of the century and some modern literary critics believed, how much of it comes from a clear awareness of the irreversibility of time, the impossibility of returning the past, the inexorability of the onset of the new.
The impression of the decisive onset of the new is reinforced in the story by the way the speed of the train is depicted. The minutes of the train's departure from St. Petersburg are filled with detailed descriptions. The image time here is almost equal to the image time. It creates the illusion that the train's departure is actually being delayed. The slow motion of a moving train is recreated through detailed observation of people and objects moving along the platform. Lasting time is also emphasized by adverbs indicating the duration of the movement of objects, the sequence of actions. For example: “Then the station manager quickly comes out of the office. He had just had an unpleasant argument with someone and therefore, sharply commanding: “Third,” he threw the cigarette so far that it bounced on the platform for a long time, scattering red sparks in the wind." Further, on the contrary, the speed of the train’s movement is emphasized. The movement of the train , the non-stop movement of time is recreated by changing the time of day, objects “running” towards, expansion and rapid change of space. Artistic time no longer creates the illusion of real time. It is reduced due to only fragmentary pictures of observations, acceleration of the change of day and night, etc.
The very description from the point of view of a traveling traveler also becomes a sign of a temporary flow, a continuous movement from the past to the new.
One more peculiarity of the spatial composition should be mentioned. this story; The plot space, due to the train moving forward, is linearly directed. As in other works of the turn of the century associated with the advancement of the subject of the narrative ("Silence", "In August", "Holy Mountains", "Autumn", "Pines"), it consistently changes; one panorama gives way to another, thereby developing the artistic idea of ​​the work. The artistic whole of the stories "Epitaph" and "New Road", revealed through the analysis of the spatio-temporal organization of the works, expresses the writer's attitude to the historical process. Bunin admitted historical process, the irresistibility of the development of life in general and historical life in particular, I felt its temporary direction. But I didn’t understand the progressive significance of this. He did not believe that this development led to the better, since he poeticized the past as a time of the unity of man with nature, its wisdom and beauty, he saw that the capitalist way of life separates man from nature, he saw the destruction of noble nests and peasant households and did not accept this new way of life, although he stated his victory. This is the uniqueness of Bunin's historicism.
The story "Mr. from San Francisco" occupies a special place in Bunin's work. It is no coincidence that it was and is included in the school curriculum; it is usually highlighted by researchers of Bunin’s creativity. And, perhaps, partly due to these circumstances, he was unlucky in literary interpretation. For ideological and sociological criticism, the preferred explanation of the story was based on its underlying figurative plan: the ironic coverage of the hero, a rich American, was interpreted as an exposure of the bourgeois order of life, with its wealth and poverty, social inequality, the psychology of complacency, etc. But such an understanding of the story narrows and impoverishes its artistic meaning.
“The Gentleman from San Francisco” is not similar to Bunin’s previous stories in tone (there is no lyricism in it), in material and theme - this is a story no longer about a Russian village, a peasant and a gentleman, not about love and nature. The World War (the story was written in 1915) distracted the writer from his usual themes and passions (as in the story “Brothers”). The writer goes beyond Russian boundaries and addresses people peace, New World, finding in it "the pride of the New Man with an old heart".
It is about this “old heart,” that is, about man in his deepest essence, about the general foundations of human existence, the foundations of civilization, that we are talking about in “The Gentleman from San Francisco.”
The story "Mr. from San Francisco", which differs from Bunin's other works of the 10s, nevertheless uses a situation common to many of them that tests the hero - death and the attitude towards it. In this case, a completely ordinary case is taken - the death of an old man, although unexpected, instantaneous, overtaken by a gentleman from San Francisco during his trip to Europe.
Death in this story is not actually a test of the hero’s character, a test of his readiness or confusion in the face of the inevitable, fear or fearlessness, strength or powerlessness, but a kind of stripper the hero's being, which after the fact casts its merciless light on his previous way of life. The “strange thing” of such a death is that it did not enter the consciousness of the gentleman from San Francisco at all. He lives and acts as, indeed, most people do, Bunin emphasizes, as if death does not exist in the world at all: “... people are still most amazed and for nothing don't want to believe death". With all the details, the hero’s plan is described with taste - an exciting travel route designed for two years: “The route was worked out by a gentleman from San Francisco and was extensive. In December and January, he hoped to enjoy the sun of Southern Italy, ancient monuments, tarantella, serenades of traveling singers and what people of his age feel especially subtly - the love of young Neapolitan women, even if not entirely disinterested; he thought to hold the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where the most selective society flocks at this time...” (I.A. Bunin “Mr. from San Francisco” p. 36). However, all these magnificent plans were not destined come true.
The writer reflects on the phenomenon of an irreparable, it seems even fatal, discrepancy between human plans and their implementation, conceived and actually developed - a motif in almost all of Bunin’s work, starting from early stories like “Kastryuk” (“An, it didn’t turn out as expected...” ) or "On the Farm" before the novel "The Life of Arsenyev" and "Dark Alleys".
Another strange thing about the death of the gentleman from San Francisco, the “terrible incident” on the ship Atlantis, is that this death is devoid of tragedy, even any faint shadow of it. It is no coincidence that the author gives a description of this “incident” from the outside, through the eyes of strangers to the hero and completely indifferent people (the reaction of his wife and daughter is outlined in the most general plan).
The anti-tragic nature and insignificance of the hero’s death are revealed by Bunin in an emphatic, contrasting manner, with a very high degree of sharpness for him. The main event of the story, the death of the hero, is assigned not to the ending, but to its middle, to the center, and this determines the two-part composition of the story. It is important for the author to show the assessments of the hero by those around him both before and after his death. And these assessments are radically different from each other. The climax (the death of the hero) divides the story into two halves, separating the sparkling background of the hero's life in the first part from the dark and ugly shadows of the second.
In fact, the gentleman from San Francisco appears to us at the beginning in the role of significant person both in one’s own consciousness and in the perception of others, although expressed by the author with a slight ironic tinge. We read: “He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, preventing his slightest desire, guarded his cleanliness and peace, carried his things, called porters for him, delivered his chests to hotels. It was like this everywhere, it was like this in sailing, it should have been like this in Naples.” Or here is a picture of the hero’s meeting in Capri: “The island of Capri was damp and dark that evening. But then he came to life for a minute, lighting up in some places. At the top of the mountain, on the platform of the funicular, there was again a crowd of those whose duty it was to receive the gentleman from San Francisco with dignity.
There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention<...>
The gentleman from San Francisco... was immediately noticed. He and his ladies were hastily helped out, they ran ahead in front of him, showing the way, he was again surrounded by boys and those stalwart Capri women who carry the suitcases and chests of respectable tourists on their heads.” In all this, of course, the magic of wealth is manifested, which always accompanies the gentleman from San Francisco.
However, in the second part of the story, all this seems to crumble into dust, reduced to the level of some kind of nightmarish, offensive humiliation. The author of the story draws a series of expressive details and episodes that reveal the instantaneous decline of any significance and value of the hero in the eyes of others (an episode with the mimicry of the master’s manners by the servant Luigi, who was so obsequious “to the point of idiocy”, the changed tone of the conversation between the hotel owner and the wife of the gentleman from San Francisco - "no longer polite and no longer in English"). If previously the gentleman from San Francisco occupied the best room in the hotel, now he was given “the smallest, worst, dampest and coldest room,” where he “lay on a cheap iron bed, under coarse woolen blankets.” Bunin then resorts to almost grotesque images (that is, images with a degree of fantastic exaggeration), which are usually not characteristic of him. For the gentleman, there is not even a coffin from San Francisco (a detail, however, motivated by the specific conditions: on a small island it is difficult to get one), and his body is placed in... a box - “a long soda water box.” Then the author, as before, slowly, with many details, but already humiliating for the hero, describes How Now the hero, or rather, his remains, is traveling. At first - on a funny, strong horse, inappropriately “dressed up in Sicilian style”, rattling “all sorts of bells", with a drunken cab driver, who is consoled by the “unexpected income”, “which gave him some kind gentleman from San Francisco, shaking his dead head in a box behind him...", and then - on the same careless "Atlantis", but already "at the bottom of the dark hold". The hold, presented in images reminiscent of the underworld - with the hard labor of sailors, with "hellish furnaces", gigantic , like a "monster", a shaft that rotates "with suppressing the human soul rigor"
The artistic meaning of such paintings, with a change in the attitude of those around them towards the hero, lies not only in social terms - in the debunking of the evil of wealth with its consequences: inequality of people (upper decks and hold), their alienation from each other and insincerity, imaginary respect for man and memory of him. Bunin’s idea in this case is deeper, more philosophical, that is, associated with an attempt to discern the source of the “wrongness” of life in the very nature of man, in the vice of his “heart,” that is, in the deep-rooted ideas of humanity about the values ​​of existence.
How does the writer manage to fit such a global artistic problem into the tight framework of a story, that is small genre limited, as a rule, to a single moment, an episode from the life of the hero?
This is achieved by extremely laconic artistic means, concentration of details, “condensation” of their figurative meaning, rich in associations and symbolic ambiguity, with their apparent “simplicity” and unpretentiousness. Here is a description everyday life"Atlantis", full of external splendor, luxury and comfort, a description of the journey of the hero, conceived with the intention of seeing the world and "enjoying" life, with a gradual, mostly indirect, lateral illumination of what this pleasure results in.
The figure of the gentleman from San Francisco is extremely outlined externally, without psychologism, without detailed characteristics of the hero’s inner life. We see how he gets dressed, getting ready for dinner, we recognize many of the details of his suit, we observe the process of dressing himself: “Having shaved, washed, well, inserted a few teeth, he, standing in front of the mirror, moistened and tidied up the remnants of pearl hair around with brushes in a silver frame. dark-yellow skull, pulled a creamy silk leotard over a strong, senile body with a waist that was getting fatter from increased nutrition, and black silk socks and ballroom shoes over dry legs with flat feet; shirt bulging out..."
In such descriptions there is something exaggerated, slightly ironic, coming from the author’s view of the hero: “And then he became again right to the crown get ready: turn on electricity everywhere, filled all the mirrors with the reflection of light and shine, furniture and open chests, began to shave, wash and call every minute...”
Let us note in passing that in both examples the detail with “mirrors” is emphasized, enhancing the effect of the play of reflections, light and shine around the hero. By the way, the technique of introducing a mirror as a “reflection of reflections” to create the impression of a certain ghostliness of a character began to be especially widely used by symbolist poets in Russian literature of the late 19th - early 20th centuries (in the stories of F. Sologub, V. Bryusov, Z. Gippius, the latter owns the collection stories called "Mirrors", 1898).
The description of the hero's appearance is not psychological. Even the portrait of the hero is devoid of individual features, any uniqueness of his personality. In the image of the hero's face, in fact, no face as something special about a person. Only “something Mongolian” is highlighted in it: “There was something Mongolian in his yellowish face with a trimmed silver mustache, his large teeth glittered with gold fillings, and his strong bald head was old ivory.”
Bunin’s deliberate refusal from psychologism in the story is emphasized and motivated: “What did the gentleman from San Francisco feel and think on this so significant evening for him? He, like anyone who has experienced a rocking motion, only really wanted to eat, dreamed with pleasure about the first spoon of soup, about the first sip of wine, and performed the usual toilet routine even in some excitement, which left no time for feelings and reflections.”
As we see, there is no place for inner life, the life of the soul and mind, there is no time left for it, and it is replaced by something - most likely a habit of “business.” Now this is an ironically presented “toilet matter”, but before, apparently, all my life it was work (work, of course, to get rich). “He worked tirelessly...” - this remark is essential for understanding the fate of the hero.
However, the internal, psychological states of the hero still find their expression in the story, albeit indirectly, in the form of a narration from the author, where at some moments the character’s voice is heard and his point of view on what is happening is guessed. For example, dreaming about his journey, he thinks about people: “... he thought of holding the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where the most people flock at this time selective society". Or about a visit to San Marino, “where a lot of people gather at noon first class people and where one day the daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco almost felt ill: it seemed to her that he was sitting in the hall prince". Words from the hero’s vocabulary are deliberately introduced into the author’s speech here - “selected society”, “people of the very first class”, which betray in him vanity, complacency, “pride” of a man of the New World and disdain for people. Let us also remember his arrival in Capri: “There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention,- several Russians who settled in Capri, slovenly and absent-minded, with glasses, beards, with raised collars of old coats, and a company of long-legged, round-headed German youths...”
We discern the same voice of the hero in the narration, neutral in form, in the third person, when talking about the impressions of the gentleman from San Francisco about the Italians: “And the gentleman from San Francisco, feeling as it should be for him - quite an old man , - I was already thinking with melancholy and anger about all these greedy, garlic-smelling little people called Italians..."
Particularly indicative are those episodes where the hero’s perception of ancient monuments and museums of the country, the beauty of which he dreamed of enjoying, is outlined. His tourist day included "inspection deathly pure and smoothly, pleasantly, but boring, like snow, illuminated museums or cold, wax-smelling churches in which it's the same everywhere...". As we see, everything in the hero’s eyes is colored by a veil of senile boredom, monotony and even deadness and is not at all like the expected joy and enjoyment of life.
Such sentiments of the Master are intensifying. And it seems that he deceives everything is here, even nature: “The morning sun every day deceived: from midday it invariably turned gray and began to rain, but it became thicker and colder, then the palm trees at the hotel entrance shone with tin, the city seemed particularly dirty and cramped; mud, in the rain with black open heads, ugly short-legged ones, and there’s nothing to say about the dampness and the stench of rotten fish from the foaming sea near the embankment.” Coming into contact with the nature of Italy, the hero does not seem to notice it, does not feel its charm and is unable to do so, as the author makes it clear to us. The writer in the first part, where the narrative is colored discolored perception of the hero, deliberately excludes the image of a beautiful country, its nature from the author’s own point of view. This image appears after the death of the hero, in the second part of the story. And then pictures appear, full of sun, bright, joyful colors and enchanting beauty. For example, where the city market, a handsome boatman, and then two Abruzzese highlanders are described: “They walked - and the whole country, joyful, beautiful, sunny, stretched out beneath them: both the rocky humps of the island, which almost entirely lay at their feet, and that fabulous the blue in which he swam, and shining morning steam over the sea to the east, under the dazzling sun, which was already warming hotly, rising higher and higher, and foggy - azure, still e the unsteady massifs of Italy in the morning, its near and distant mountains, the beauty of which human words are powerless to express».
This contrast of the author’s perception, filled with lyricism, a sense of admiration for the fabulous beauty of Italy, and the joyless, bloodless picture of it, given through the eyes of the hero, sets off all the inner dryness of the gentleman from San Francisco. Let us also note that during the voyage on the Atlantis across the ocean, there are no internal contacts between the hero and the natural world, which is so majestic and grandiose at these moments that the author constantly makes us feel it. We never see the hero admiring the beauty, grandeur of the ocean or frightened by its squalls, showing any reactions to the surrounding natural elements, however, like all the other passengers. “The ocean that walked outside the walls was terrible, but they didn’t think about it...” Or again: “The ocean roared behind the wall like black mountains, the blizzard whistled strongly in the heavy gear, the steamer trembled all over, overpowering it too<...>, and here, in the bar, they carelessly threw their feet on the arms of the chairs, sipped cognac and liqueurs..."
In the end, one gets the impression of complete artificial isolation, artificial intimacy space, in which the hero and all the other characters flashing here reside. The role of artistic space and time in the figurative whole of the story is extremely significant. It skillfully interconnects categories eternity(the image of death, the ocean as an eternal cosmic element) and temporality, that author's account of time, which is scheduled by days, hours and minutes. Here is the image before us day on the Atlantis, with the movement of time punctually marked inside it: “... got up early<...>putting on flannel pajamas, drinking coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then sat in the baths, did gymnastics, stimulating appetite and good health, performed their daily toilets and went to the first breakfast; until eleven o'clock one was supposed to cheerfully walk along the decks, breathing in the cold freshness of the ocean, or play sheffleboard and other games to whet the appetite again, and at eleven- refresh yourself with sandwiches with broth; having refreshed themselves, they read the newspaper with pleasure and calmly waited for the second breakfast, even more nutritious and varied than the first; next two hours devoted to rest; all the decks were then filled with long reed chairs, on which travelers lay, covered with blankets; at five o'clock They, refreshed and cheerful, were given strong fragrant tea and cookies; at seven they announced with trumpet signals what was the main goal of this entire existence, crown him... And then the gentleman from San Francisco hurried to his rich cabin to get dressed.”
Before us is an image of the day, given as an image of everyday enjoyment of life, and in it the main event, the “crown”, is lunch. Everything else looks like just preparation for it or completion (walks, sports games serve as a means to stimulate appetite). Further along the story, the author does not skimp on details with the list of dishes for lunch, as if following Gogol, who in “Dead Souls” unfolded a whole ironic poem about the food of the heroes - a kind of “grub-hell”, in the words of Andrei Bely.
Picture of the day with a highlight in it physiology of everyday life ends with a naturalistic detail - the mention of heating pads for “warming stomachs”, which in the evenings were carried by the maids “to all rooms.
Despite the fact that in such an existence everything is unchanged (here, on Atlantis, nothing happens except for the famous “incident”, forgotten after fifteen minutes), the author throughout the entire narrative keeps precise timing of what is happening, literally minute by minute. Let's take a closer look at the text: "In ten minutes a family from San Francisco boarded a large barge, in fifteen stepped on the stones of the embankment..."; "A In a minute The French head waiter knocked lightly on the door of the gentleman from San Francisco..."
This technique - precise, minute-by-minute timing of what is happening (in the absence of any action) - allows the author to create an image of an automatically established order, a mechanism of life spinning idle. Its inertia continues after the death of the gentleman from San Francisco, as if swallowed by this mechanism and immediately forgotten: "In a quarter of an hour in the hotel everything somehow came into order." The image of automatic regularity is varied by the author several times: "... life... flowed measuredly"; "Life in Naples immediately flowed according to routine...".
And all this leaves an impression automaticity the life presented here, that is, ultimately a certain lifelessness.
Noting the role of artistic time, you should pay attention to one date indicated at the very beginning of the story, in the plot of the plot - fifty-eight years, the age of the hero. The date is connected with a very significant context, a description of the image of the hero’s entire previous life, and leads to the beginning of the plot.
He was firmly convinced that he had every right to rest, to pleasure, to an excellent trip in all respects. For such confidence, he had the argument that, firstly, he was rich, and secondly, had just started life, despite his fifty-eight years. Until this time he did not live, but only existed, true, very well, but still pinning all his hopes on the future. He worked tirelessly - the Chinese, whom he hired thousands of to work for him, knew well what this meant! - and finally saw that a lot had already been done, that he was almost equal to those whom he had once taken as a model, and decided to take a break. The people to whom he belonged were in the habit of starting enjoying life from a trip to Europe, India, Egypt. So - first with a hint, a general plan, and during the course of the story with its entire figurative structure - the essence, the origin of the vice of the “old heart” of a man of the New World, a gentleman from San Francisco, is indicated. The hero, who finally decided to start living and see the world, never managed to do this. And not only because of death and not even because of old age, but because he was not prepared for this with his entire previous existence. The attempt was doomed from the very beginning. The source of the trouble is in the very way of life to which the gentleman from San Francisco is devoted and in which imaginary values ​​and the eternal pursuit of them replace life itself. Every person on earth faces a certain trap: business and money for the sake of existence, and existence for the sake of business and money. This is how a person finds himself in a closed, vicious circle, when means replace the goal - life. The future is delayed and may never come. This is exactly what happened with the gentleman from San Francisco. Until he was fifty-eight years old, “he did not live, but existed,” obeying once and for all the established, automatic order, and therefore he did not learn live- enjoy life, enjoy free communication with people, nature and the beauty of the world.
The story of the gentleman from San Francisco, as Bunin shows it, is quite ordinary. Something similar, the artist wants to tell us, happens to most people who value wealth, power and honor above all else. It is no coincidence that the writer never calls his hero by first name, last name or nickname: all this is too individual, and the story described in the story can happen to anyone.
The story “Mr. from San Francisco” is essentially the writer’s reflection on the values ​​prevailing in the modern world, the power of which over a person and deprives him of real life, the very ability to live it. This devilish mockery of man evokes not only irony in the artist’s mind, it is felt more than once in the story. Let us recall the episodes where dinner is shown as the “crown” of existence, or the description of the exaggerated solemnity with which the hero dresses - “just for the crown,” or when something actorly slips through him: “... as if stage a gentleman from San Francisco went among them." The author's voice is heard more than once tragically, with bitterness and bewilderment, almost mystical. The image of the ocean, the background of the entire narrative, grows into the image of the world's cosmic forces, with their mysterious and incomprehensible devilish game that lies in wait for all human thoughts. At the end of the story, a conventional, allegorical image of the Devil appears as the embodiment of such evil forces: “ The countless fiery eyes of the ship were barely visible behind the snow to the Devil, who was watching from the rocks of Gibraltar, from the rocky gates of two worlds, the ship leaving into the night and blizzard. The devil was huge, like a cliff, but the ship was also huge, multi-tiered, multi-pipe, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart».
This is how the artistic space and time of the story expand to a global, cosmic scale. From the point of view of the function of artistic time, we need to think about one more episode in the work. This is an off-plot (not related to the main character) episode, where we are talking about a certain person who lived “two thousand years ago”; “who had power over millions of people”, “unspeakably vile”, but whom, however, humanity “remembered forever” - a kind of whim of human memory, apparently created by the magic of power (another idol of humanity, besides wealth). This very detailed episode, seemingly random and not at all obligatory, addressed to a legend from the history of the island of Capri, nevertheless plays a significant role in the story. Two thousand year old the remoteness of the history of Tiberius (apparently, it is he who is being talked about when tourists visit Mount Tiberio is mentioned), the introduction of this real historical name into the narrative switches our imagination to the distant past of mankind, expands the scale of the artistic time of Bunin’s story and makes us all see what is depicted in it in the light of the “big time”. And this gives the story an unusually high degree of artistic generality. The “small” prose genre, as it were, transcends its boundaries and acquires a new quality. The story becomes philosophical.
etc.................

A series of stories called “Dark Alleys” is dedicated to the eternal theme of any type of art - love. “Dark Alleys” is spoken of as a kind of encyclopedia of love, which contains the most diverse and incredible stories about this great and often contradictory feeling.

And the stories that are included in Bunin’s collection are stunning with their varied plots and extraordinary style; they are the main assistants of Bunin, who wants to portray love at the peak of feelings, tragic love, but therefore perfect.

Feature of the cycle “Dark Alleys”

The very phrase that served as the title for the collection was taken by the writer from the poem “An Ordinary Tale” by N. Ogarev, which is dedicated to first love, which never had the expected continuation.

In the collection itself there is a story with the same name, but this does not mean that this story is the main one, no, this expression is the personification of the mood of all the stories and tales, a common elusive meaning, a transparent, almost invisible thread connecting the stories with each other.

A special feature of the series of stories “Dark Alleys” can be called moments when the love of two heroes for some reason cannot continue. Often the executioner of the passionate feelings of Bunin’s heroes is death, sometimes unforeseen circumstances or misfortunes, but most importantly, love is never allowed to come true.

This is the key concept of Bunin's idea of ​​earthly love between two. He wants to show love at the peak of its blossoming, he wants to emphasize its true richness and highest value, the fact that it does not need to turn into life circumstances, like a wedding, marriage, life together...

Female images of “Dark Alleys”

Particular attention should be paid to the unusual female portraits that “Dark Alleys” are so rich in. Ivan Alekseevich paints images of women with such grace and originality that female portrait each story becomes unforgettable and truly intriguing.

Bunin's skill lies in several precise expressions and metaphors that instantly paint in the reader's mind the picture described by the author with many colors, shades and nuances.

The stories “Rusya”, “Antigone”, “Galya Ganskaya” are an exemplary example of different but vivid images of a Russian woman. The girls, whose stories were created by the talented Bunin, partly resemble the love stories that they experience.

We can say that the writer’s key attention is directed precisely to these two elements of the cycle of stories: women and love. And the love stories are just as intense, unique, sometimes fatal and willful, sometimes so original and incredible that it’s hard to believe in them.

The male characters in “Dark Alleys” are weak-willed and insincere, and this also determines the fatal course of all love stories.

The peculiarity of love in “Dark Alleys”

The stories of “Dark Alleys” reveal not only the theme of love, they reveal the depths of the human personality and soul, and the very concept of “love” appears as the basis of this difficult and not always happy life.

And love does not have to be mutual in order to bring unforgettable impressions; love does not have to turn into something eternal and tirelessly ongoing in order to please and make a person happy.

Bunin insightfully and subtly shows only the “moments” of love, for the sake of which everything else is worth experiencing, for which it is worth living.

The story "Clean Monday"

The story “Clean Monday” is a mysterious and not fully understood love story. Bunin describes a pair of young lovers who seem to be perfect for each other on the outside, but the catch is that their inner worlds have nothing in common.

The image of the young man is simple and logical, and the image of his beloved is unattainable and complex, striking her chosen one with its inconsistency. One day she says that she would like to go to a monastery, and this causes complete bewilderment and misunderstanding for the hero.

And the end of this love is as complex and incomprehensible as the heroine herself. After intimacy with the young man, she silently leaves him, then asks him not to ask anything, and soon he finds out that she has gone to a monastery.

She made the decision on Clean Monday, when intimacy between lovers occurred, and the symbol of this holiday is a symbol of her purity and torment, which she wants to get rid of.

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