Analysis of the village story. Bunin's concept of Russian life in the story "Village"
The first years after the revolution of 1905-1907. became a desire to study social reality. The works of these years involve us in deep reflections on the history of Russia, its people, and the fate of the Russian revolution. There is an interpenetration of national, historical, contemplative and philosophical thought.
General characteristics of the "Village"
The story “The Village,” created in 1910, has such complex content in an outwardly traditional everyday guise. This is one of the first major works of Ivan Alekseevich, written in prose. The writer worked on its creation for 10 years, starting work back in 1900.
V.V. Voronovsky described this work, which opens the village cycle in Bunin’s work, as a study of the causes of “memorable failures” (that is, the reasons for the defeat of the revolution). However, the semantic content of the story is not limited to this. The story about the doom of the Russian outback, given in “The Village,” is one of the most talented descriptions of the fate of the patriarchal system in the history of modern times. There is a generalized image: the village is a kingdom of death and hunger.
The task that the author set for himself was to portray the Russian people without idealization. Therefore, Ivan Alekseevich conducts a merciless psychological analysis (“Village”). Bunin had a wealth of material for him, which was given to the writer by the way of life, everyday life and psychology of the Russian outback that were well known to him. A miserable, impoverished life, matched by the appearance of people - inertia, passivity, cruel morals - the writer observed all this, drawing conclusions, as well as conducting a thorough analysis.
"Village" (Bunin): the ideological basis of the work
The ideological basis of the story is a reflection on the complexity and problematic nature of the question “Who is to blame?” Kuzma Krasov, one of the main characters, is painfully struggling to resolve this issue. He believes that there is nothing to exact from the unfortunate people, and his brother, Tikhon Krasov, believes that the peasants themselves are to blame for this situation.
The two aforementioned characters are the main characters of this work. Tikhon Krasov personifies the appearance of the new village owner, and Kuzma - the people's intellectual. Bunin believes that the people themselves are to blame for the misfortunes, but does not give a clear answer to the question of what should be done.
The story "Village" (Bunin): composition of the work
The action of the story takes place in the village of Durnovka, which is a collective image of a long-suffering village. This title indicates the idiocy of his life.
The composition is divided into three parts. In the first, Tikhon is in the center, in the second part - Kuzma, in the third, the lives of both brothers are summed up. Based on their destinies, the problems of the Russian village are shown. The images of Kuzma and Tikhon are in many ways opposite.
Tikhon, being a descendant of serfs who managed to get rich and become the owner of an estate, is sure that money is the most reliable thing in the world. This hardworking, savvy and strong-willed man devotes his entire life to the pursuit of wealth. Kuzma Krasov, a lover of truth and a national poet, reflects on the fate of Russia, experiencing the poverty of the people and the backwardness of the peasantry.
Images of Kuzma and Tikhon
Using the example of Kuzma, Bunin shows the emerging features of a new folk psychology; Kuzma reflects on the savagery and laziness of the people, and that the reasons for this are not only the difficult circumstances in which the peasants found themselves, but also in them themselves. In contrast to the character of this hero, Ivan Bunin (“The Village”) portrays Tikhon as calculating and selfish. He gradually increases his capital, and on the path to power and prosperity does not stop at any means. However, despite the chosen direction, he feels despair and emptiness, which are directly related to the look into the future of the country, which opens up pictures of an even more brutal and destructive revolution.
Through disputes, thoughts, and conclusions of the brothers about themselves and their homeland, the writer shows the bright and dark sides of the life of the peasants, revealing the depth of the decline of the peasant world, analyzing it. “The Village” (Bunin) is the author’s deep reflection on the deplorable situation that has created among the peasants.
The third part of the work is devoted to the depiction of the brothers at the moment of crisis - summing up the life path of the main characters in the work “The Village” (Bunin). These heroes experience dissatisfaction with life: Kuzma is consumed by melancholy and hopeless loneliness, Tikhon is preoccupied with personal tragedy (lack of children), as well as the destruction of the foundations of the everyday structure of the village. The brothers realize the hopelessness of the situation in which they find themselves. Despite all the differences in their characters and aspirations, the fate of these two heroes is in many ways similar: despite their enlightenment and prosperity, their social status makes both of them superfluous, unnecessary.
Author's assessment of the revolution
The story "The Village" (Bunin) is a clear, sincere and truthful assessment of Russia during the writer's life. He shows that those who are “rebels” are empty and stupid people who grew up in rudeness and lack of culture, and their protest is just a doomed attempt to change something. However, they are unable to make a revolution in their own consciousness, which remains hopeless and skeletal, as the author’s analysis shows. The village of Bunin is a sad sight.
Portrayal of the peasantry
The men appear before the reader in all their ugliness: beating children and wives, wild drunkenness, torturing animals. Many Durnovites simply do not understand what is happening around them. So, the worker Koshel once visited the Caucasus, but cannot tell anything about it, except that there is “a mountain on a mountain” there. His mind is “poor”; he repels everything incomprehensible and new, but he believes that he recently saw a real witch.
A soldier works as a teacher in Durnovka, the most ordinary-looking guy, who, however, spoke such nonsense that one could only “throw up one’s hands.” Training was presented to him as accustoming him to strict army discipline.
The work "Village" (Bunin) gives us another vivid image - the peasant Gray. He was the poorest in the village, although he had a lot of land. Once upon a time, Gray built a new hut, but it needed to be heated in winter, so he first burned the roof and then sold the hut. This hero refuses to work, sits idle in an unheated home, and the children are afraid of splinters because they are used to living in the dark.
The village is all of Russia, so the fate of the entire country is reflected in the work. Bunin believed that peasants were only capable of a spontaneous and senseless rebellion. The story describes how one day they rebelled throughout the district. It ended with the men burning several estates, shouting “and then fell silent.”
Conclusion
Ivan Alekseevich was accused of hating the people and not knowing the village. But the author would never have created such a poignant story if he had not wholeheartedly rooted for his homeland and peasants, as can be seen in the work “Village.” Bunin, with the content of his story, wanted to show everything wild and dark that prevents people and the country from developing.
The image of the village runs through all of Bunin’s work and appears in two themes: the life and life of peasants and the ruin of noble estates. These topics are sometimes addressed separately from each other, but more often in parallel.
The terrible world of peasant poverty is revealed in the story “Tanka,” which is characteristic of Bunin’s early work. In the family of peasant Korney there is nothing to feed the children. A hungry five-year-old girl, Tanka, is kicked out into the street by her mother. This small, ragged creature, shivering from the cold, personifies the modern village. Bunin sympathizes with us peasants. He emphasizes their spiritual subtlety, delicacy, and penchant for poetic feelings. At the same time, the writer idealizes the image of the master Pavel Antonovich, who took pity and fed Tanka. The master reflects on the girl’s gloomy future and remembers that his nieces are in Florence. "Tanya and Florence!" - how striking the contrast is between the destinies of a peasant girl and the noble ladies. Bunin shows the deep gap between the landowners and the people.
The destruction of noble nests is told in the story “Bai-baki”. The formerly rich estate of Luchezarovka is becoming scarce, turning into a miserable village, which in winter is lost in the snow and seems to be extinct. At night, wolves howl near the house. The master's house is dilapidated, the master Baskakov himself lives from hand to mouth. He thinks that all the good things in life disappeared with the abolition of serfdom. However, Bunin shows that it is not the reforms that are to blame, but the landowners themselves - bobaks, lazy people who were unable to maintain the economy, helpless in everyday life, who corrupted their servants, who are unable to work.
The same theme of departing noble nests is revealed in the lyrical story “Antonov Apples.” This is a story about a whole historical period in the life of Russia receding into the past. Bunin sees a lot of bright and poetic things in his past life. He associates the heady smell of Antonov apples with the beauty of the former village idyll. Tender nostalgic pictures of the past emerge in the hero’s memory - the master’s garden, guests in the sun-drenched large hall, the glorious smell of old bindings in his grandfather’s library, the heady aroma of apples. Idyllic memories alternate with a realistic depiction of the current estate, in which one can see the impoverishment and ruin of the landowners’ nests. Still, the main, defining thing in Bunin’s story is the elegiac tone, the sadness of saying goodbye to the passing noble-patriarchal Russia.
“Antonov Apples” revealed the synthetic nature of Bunin’s style, in which smells, colors, sounds merge together, and the everyday is filled with poetic light and lyricism.
The story “The Village” was a “moan about the native land.” Bunin covers Russian life widely. From Durnovka the space expands, other villages, stations, and district towns come into view. Time is also expanding: modernity is compared with the past - from the times of Kievan Rus to the mid-19th century.
At the center of the story is the life of the Krasov brothers: the kulak Tikhon and the self-taught poet Kuzma. Through the eyes of these people, the main events are presented - the Russian-Japanese War, the revolution of 1905, and the reaction that followed it.
Kuzma Krasov is a man searching for the truth and meaning of life. He is constantly in spiritual movement and growth. Self-taught Kuzma knows Schiller, Gogol, Belinsky, Pushkin. He is concerned about the burning problems of our time. For some time he is interested in Tolstoyism, but a collision with real life shows the inconsistency of the theory of non-resistance. In Kuzma’s consciousness, the principles of humanism are formed, and the barbaric attitude towards man is overcome. Kuzma’s heart aches for Russia and the Russian people, but he sees all its negative qualities and concludes that the people themselves are to blame for their situation: “Would you say the government is to blame? But after all, a slave and a master, and a hat like Senka.”
Bunin paints the life of peasant Russia with gray, dull colors. Durnovka becomes the center and personification of the entire country. Darkness, cold, dirt, stench - this is what surrounds the impoverished peasants. The image of Durnovka’s poorest peasant, Gray, is typical. His nickname matches the whole color of the life depicted. He is lazy, apathetic, indifferent to the fate of his family. In general, the poor Durnovites, “gnawed” by life, are not like those peasants whom Bunin idealized. They are unable to work and have lost their attachment to the land. They are arrogant, cynical, rude and cruel. The eternal peasant morality is leaving their souls.
In general, painting the peasants with gloomy colors, negatively assessing their present, Bunin still shows bright characters and attractive heroes. The image of Young represents the fate of a peasant woman in pre-revolutionary times. It reveals wonderful spiritual qualities. She is very beautiful, but this is a desecrated beauty, a tragically broken fate.
The life of the people in “The Village” appears as an inert, gloomy and stultifying way of life. Even the riots that took place throughout the district cannot change this inertia. “The whole riot ended with the men screaming throughout the district, burning and destroying several usa-debs, and falling silent.” Peasant Rus' is not capable of making a revolution in life. Peasant Russia is degrading.
Bunin shows the process of general decay. The landowners and their heirs depicted by him are flawed, pitiful and absurd people. Their life is just as dull and miserable as the life of the men. The story does not have that elegiac note that colored the life of the nobility in Antonovsky Apples.
Bunin's pessimism regarding the Russian village was also reflected in his decision to portray Tikhon Krasov. It would seem that tenacious, energetic, adapted to life, who has become a master, Tikhon should enjoy life. But he feels the aimlessness of the years he has lived: he has no heir to the family, no one to continue his work - which means there is no future. In the story “The Village,” the life of Russia is shown in a state of deep crisis, from which Bu-nin saw no way out.
In an effort to find the origins of the modern state of the village, Bu-nin turns to the times of serfdom. The story “Sukho-Dol” tells the story of the family estate of the Khrushchev nobles. Material from the site
Bunin epically calmly unfolds the narrative about the patriarchal nature of everyday life, peers into the past, noticing the strange and incomprehensible in the life of the Khrushchev family. It shows the mental and physical degeneration of the nobles, who were incapable of “neither reasonable love, nor reasonable hatred, nor healthy family life, nor work, nor community life.” The writer reflects on the Russian soul, looking in it for the roots of the impoverishment of the noble family.
Sukhodolsk life is full of savagery and horror, but Bunin lyrically recreates its beauty, poetry, the charm of nature, the wisdom and charm of ancient tales, traditions, and folk songs. Life is shown in the interweaving of these two sides. Sukhodol takes on the meaning of a symbol of a departing Russian village. Another symbol of it is the image of the courtyard Natalya, who absorbed both the poetry and the wildness of Sukhodolsk life. In this image, Bunin embodied the motive of meekness, humility, and submission to fate.
In Sukhodol, the writer tried to put forward as a “positive program” the idea of a close connection between a peasant and a master, based on the fact that “the life and soul of Russian nobles are the same as that of peasants,” and therefore there should be brotherhood between them, not hostility. This concept of the “single soul” of the Russian nation was refuted by Bunin himself in other works. “Sukhodol” was an important stage in the search for a historical and philosophical concept of the future of Russia.
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- essay review on Bunin's village
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Reflections on Russia in I. A. Bunin’s story “Village”
Lesson objectives: show what new Bunin brings to the traditional theme of Russian literature; understand the author's position.
Methodological techniques: teacher’s explanations, analytical reading.
During the classes
I. Teacher's opening speech
The story “The Village” was written in 1910 by an already famous, established writer. In the works of the 10s, the epic principle, philosophical reflections on the fate of Russia, on the “soul of the Russian man” intensified. In the stories “Village” and “Sukhodol”, in the stories “Ancient Man”, “The Merry Court”, “Zakhar Vorobyov”, “John Rydalets”, “The Cup of Life”, etc. Bunin sets the task of displaying the main, as he believes, layers of the Russian people - the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, the small nobility, and outline the historical prospects of the country.
The theme of the village and the problems of Russian life associated with it have been central to our literature for a whole century.
II. Conversation
— In the works of which writers does the theme of the village arise?
(Suffice it to recall Turgenev (“Notes of a Hunter,” Fathers and Sons”), Tolstoy (“Morning of the Landowner,” “War and Peace,” Anna Karenina,” “The Power of Darkness”), Chekhov (“Men,” “In the Ravine,” "Gooseberry").)
- What is the plot of the story?
(The story does not have a clear plot. The narrative is based on alternating genre paintings of scenes of everyday village life, portrait sketches of men, descriptions of their housing, and expressive landscapes.)
(All these scenes, paintings, episodes are shown through the prism of the subjective perception of the brothers Tikhon and Kuzma Krasov. The village is seen mainly through the eyes of these characters. The picture of village life, and Russian life in general, emerges from their conversations, disputes, remarks. In this way, the objectivity of the story is achieved ". There is no direct author's assessment, although sometimes it clearly emerges from the characters' remarks. Tikhon concludes with irritation: “Oh, and there is poverty all around! The men have gone completely bankrupt, there are no trynka left in the impoverished estates scattered throughout the district,” and his thoughts merge with his gaze and the opinion of the author. The idea of general impoverishment and ruin of the peasants runs through many episodes.)
— How does Bunin depict the village? Give examples of descriptions.
(The general tone of the image, the general coloring of the story is gloomy and dull. Here is a description of winter in the village: “Behind the blizzards, hard winds blew across the hardened gray pasta of the fields, tore off the last brown leaves from the homeless oak bushes in the ravines”; “The morning was gray, with a harsh northern by the wind. Under the hardened gray snow, the village was gray. Linen hung in gray frozen splints on the crossbars under the roofs of the punek. It froze near the huts - they poured slops, threw out ashes"; "The sun had set, in a house with neglected gray windows there was a dim light, there was a bluish twilight, it was unsociable and cold" (Chapter III). These descriptions are dominated by an obsessive gray color. Autumn in the village is also depicted as uncomfortable, slushy, dirty, even in the pictures of spring and summer there are no joyful colors: "A dry wind swept along the empty streets, along the vines, scorched by the heat. At the thresholds, chickens fussed and buried themselves in the ashes. A wild-colored church stood rudely on a bare pasture. Behind the church, a shallow clay pond under a dung dam glittered in the sun - thick yellow water, in which stood a herd of cows, constantly defecating their needs, and lathered naked man's head." Beggarly, gray, half-starved, wretched life appears in a whole string of peasant images, images of residents of the village of Durnovka, where the main events of the story unfold (let’s note the significance of the toponym “Durnovka”).
(In the middle of Durnovka there is a hut of the most impoverished and idle man with the expressive nickname Gray. This nickname matches the general gray coloring of the village, the whole gray life of the Durnovka residents. “Sery’s appearance justified his nickname: gray, thin, average height, drooping shoulders, a short fur coat, torn , filthy, his felt boots were broken and hemmed with twine." His dark hut was "unpleasantly black", "it was deaf, dead", it was "almost an animal's dwelling" (Chapter III). Crowded space, darkness, stench, cold, illness. A terrible peasant life and inhuman morals - a disgusting life. Where is the love for Russia here?
The villagers are lazy, apathetic, indifferent, and cruel to each other. They have forgotten how to manage the land, they have lost the habit of working in general. Gray, for example, “as if he was still waiting for something,” sat at home, “waiting for little things from the Duma,” “staggered from yard to yard,” striving to drink and eat for free.
The image of a man who, having heard a nightingale, dreamily says: “If only he had a gun!” I would have tumbled like that!” Bunin shows how the psychology of the peasant is perverted and broken, even “the serf inheritance shows how darkness and savagery reign in the village, where violence has become the norm of life.)
Let us recall Pushkin’s famous pun - the epigraphs to the second chapter of “Eugene Onegin”: “O rus!”, (“O village!” Horace, lat.) and “O Rus'!” How do the concepts of “village” and “Russia” relate to Bunin?
(Bunin’s village is a model of Russia. “Yes, it’s all a village, kill it off your nose!” Bunin emphasizes in italics. Reflections on the village are reflections on the fate of the people, on the national character, on the fate of the homeland. Bunin debunks the Slavophile myth of “God’s chosenness” of the Russian people. The horror of life is that a lot of beautiful inclinations are crippled, disfigured. Bunin does not gloat, he deeply worries about Russia, sympathizes with it. He does not call to the past, does not idealize the peasant, patriarchal foundations. In his “Village” there is pain and fear for the fate of the homeland, an attempt to understand what the new, urban, bourgeois civilization of Russia brings to the people, to the individual.)
— What place do the images of Tikhon and Kuzma Krasov occupy in the story?
(Using the example of the fate of the Krasov brothers, Bunin shows “the light and dark, but almost always tragic foundations of life, two sides of the national character. Kuzma is a loser broken by life, who left the village, after long wanderings got a job as a clerk in the city, a self-taught poet, who spends his free time “ self-development... reading, that is." Tikhon is the owner who managed to buy out Durnovo's estate. A strict, strong-willed, tough, powerful man, he "watched every inch of the land like a hawk." In conversations and disputes between brothers, views on Russia, on its prospects. The Krasov brothers are united by the feeling of the doom of the village. Tikhon Ilyich used to say: “I, brother, am a Russian man. I don’t need yours for nothing, but keep in mind: I won’t give you mine! Kuzma does not share his pride: “You see, , you are proud that you are Russian, and I, brother, oh, am far from a Slavophile! (...) don’t boast, for God’s sake, that you are Russians. We are a wild people! " And he adds: “Russian, brother, music: it’s bad to live like a pig, but still I live and will live like a pig!” Potential wealth - black soil - remains only black greasy dirt, and “huts - clay, small, with dung roofs,” even in rich courtyards - squalor: “knee-deep mud all around, there’s a pig lying on the porch. The windows are tiny, and in the living half of the hut... darkness, eternal cramped conditions...” (Chapter II).)
— What are the Krasov brothers arguing about?
(The brothers’ disputes concern different aspects of life: history, literature, politics, customs, morals, everyday life, etc. Both are characterized by philosophical reflections on the meaning of life, on its purpose. Both are no longer young, it’s time to sum up the results, but they are disappointing. “ Life is lost, brother! - says Tikhon. - I had, you know, a dumb cook, I gave her, the fool, a foreign scarf, and she took it and wore it inside out... Do you understand? Out of stupidity and greed. wear everyday life, - they say, I’ll wait for the holiday, - but the holiday came - only rags were left... So here I am... with my life. Truly so! ")
— Are there any bright images in the story?
(Attractive characters appear occasionally in the story: Odnodvorka and her nimble and quick-witted son Senka, a nameless man “with a wonderful kind face in a red beard” who delighted Kuzma with his appearance and his behavior, the wanderer Ivanushka, the young peasant driver - “tattered but handsome a farm laborer, slender, pale, with a reddish beard, with intelligent eyes." From the very tone of the description it is clear what the ideals of a man from the people are, what the sympathies of the author are.
Young is depicted poetically. She looks good even in an ugly peasant outfit, is modest and bashful, affectionate and sympathetic.)
— What is the meaning of the image of Young?
(The image of Molodoy (Evdokia) carries a symbolic meaning. She personifies Russia. Molodoy’s fate is tragic: out of hopelessness, she marries the fool, boor and lazy Deniska. The wedding is rather like a funeral: “everyone was crazy. It was crazy in the church too, crazy , cold and gloomy - from the blizzard, low arches and bars in the windows"; the hand of the Young One, who seemed even more beautiful and deader in the crown, trembled, and the wax of the melting candle dripped onto the frills of her blue dress..." The scene of the wedding "ride" ends " Village." This scene is an allusion to Gogol's Rus'-troika: a wedding train rushing at dusk among a terrible blizzard "into the violent dark turbidity.")
III. Teacher's final words
The Russian character, the Russian people for the most part appear as rich but uncultivated soil. Talent, naivety, spontaneity coexist with impracticality, mismanagement, inability to apply one’s strength to the real work, with underdevelopment of consciousness. But there is no hopelessness in Bunin’s perception. Along with the inertia and hopelessness of life, a state of general discontent, an expectation of change, and a desire to somehow change one’s destiny and the destiny of the country are conveyed. The world of Bunin's village is tragic, but bright, primarily with the feelings and experiences of the author himself.
Bunin's story was highly praised by critics. Many saw in it “deeply pessimistic, almost negative”, “dreary and disgusting colors.” In this regard, let us turn to M. Gorky’s assessment (from a letter to I.A. Bunin, 1910):
“I read the end of “The Village” - with excitement and joy for you, with great joy, because you wrote a paramount thing. This is undoubtedly for me: no one has taken the village so deeply, so historically. (...) I don’t see what you can compare your thing with, I was touched by it - very much. This modest, hidden, muffled groan about my native land is dear to me, noble sorrow is dear, painful fear for it - and all this is new. It hasn't been written like that yet. (...)
Do not consider my speeches about the “Village” to be elevated and exaggerated, they are not. I am almost sure that the Moscow and St. Petersburg Ivans of all parties and colors, who do not remember and do not know, who write critical articles for magazines, will not appreciate the “village”, will not understand either its essence or its form. The threat hidden in it is tactically unacceptable for both the left and the right - no one will notice this threat.
But I know that when the stupefaction and confusion pass, when we are cured of boorish debauchery - it must be either - we are lost! - then serious people will say: “In addition to its primary artistic value, Bunin’s “Village” was an impetus that forced the broken and shaken Russian society to think seriously not about the peasant, not about the people, but about the strict question - to be or not to be Russia? We haven’t yet thought about Russia as a whole, but this work showed us the need to think about the whole country, to think historically.”
2. Find images-symbols, determine their meaning.
3. Determine the role of episodic persons.
Additional material for teachers
1. The place of the story “Village” in the literary process
I. A. Bunin’s first major work, “The Village,” was published in 1910, but even today this story remains relevant and provides significant material for modern literary scholars thinking about the problems of the “Russian soul” and “national character.” These themes in Bunin's work still attract the attention of critics to a small work created by the writer at the beginning of the last century. And this is not accidental, because Russian criticism has always sought to find an answer to the question: what is the “Russian soul” and the Russian person in general? That is why attention to the story “The Village” does not fade away, because it is a very capacious work of Russian literature, in which all the author’s attention is drawn to the burning problems of people’s life and the problems of the Russian village, which objectively reflects the reality of that time.
Bunin's description of village life in Russia did not leave his contemporaries indifferent. Immediately after the publication of the story, different assessments of this work appeared. Some readers were outraged by the deceitfulness of the depiction of the Russian village and its inhabitants, while others found for themselves the main question posed by the author: “...to be or not to be Russia?” (M. Gorky).
Analyzing Bunin’s work, critics could not help but touch upon the theme of the depiction of the “Russian soul”, they could not help but pay attention to “Bunin’s prophecies” regarding the future of Russia, since the entire work is permeated with a description of the current problems of those years, reflections on the fate of the peasantry and, of course, about the uniqueness of the national Russian character.
The writer’s plan for a realistic reflection of reality corresponded to a special genre of the work he wrote - the genre of a chronicle story, where ordinary men are brought to the fore, and witnesses to what is happening, witnesses “from the outside,” are left in the background. The plot of “The Village” also corresponded to the tasks set before the author, which is devoid of intrigue, unexpected events, plot development, and a clear denouement. Everything in Bunin's story is immersed in the elements of slowly moving life, an established way of life. But each compositional part of the work reveals to the reader more and more unexpected and stunning aspects of rural reality.
The story “The Village” is an openly polemical work. True, unlike other works, for example by A.P. Chekhov, in Bunin’s story it is not the intelligentsia who talk about the people, but people who came from peasant backgrounds. A frank and terrible question is asked by one of the heroes of the story: “Is there anyone more fierce than our people?” And in the work the reader finds an answer to it, unfortunately, no less terrible: the Russian people do not want and do not know how to conquer the dark, bestial nature within themselves.
From this answer follows the main problem raised in Bunin’s story: is it the misfortune or guilt of the Russian people that they live such a wretched, terrible and meager life? And using the example of the fate of the two Krasov brothers, the author shows the tragic predetermination of the fate of the Russian people, who depend on the properties of their psyche. One of the brothers is the innkeeper and merchant Tikhon Ilyich Krasov - a strong, tough, cunning man. It embodies strength, activity and perseverance. The other brother, Kuzma, is softer, kinder and more subtle. He embodies spiritual warmth, lyricism and softness. Despite the fact that two siblings are so different from each other, their lives lead to one thing - to powerlessness and spiritual devastation. Even they, who emerged from the people and rose to a higher level, remained unhappy.
Bunin believes that the psyche of the Russian people is to blame for this outcome and gives it his own definition - “a motley soul.” Explaining these words, he cites a statement from the people themselves: “The people themselves said to themselves - “from us, like from a tree, - both a club and an icon” - depending on the circumstances, on who will process this tree: Sergius of Radonezh or Emelyan Pugachev "
It is no coincidence that the ending of the story is a wedding, more like a funeral. After all, Evdokia, nicknamed Young, marries the most depraved and disgusting man in the village. This wedding can be interpreted symbolically: Beauty perishes under the onslaught of ugliness, and a blizzard sweeps away the home. The Russian village is disappearing under snowdrifts, just as ancient cities disappeared under a layer of sand.
Such a gloomy ending follows from the very life of the village with the expressive name of Durnovka. Everything in it is illogical, makes no sense, and most importantly, goes beyond the norm. The village is steadily and quickly dying: family and social ties are being severed, the way of life that has developed over centuries is collapsing. Unable to stop the death of the village and the rebellion of the peasants, he only accelerates this process, as the author of the story painfully narrates.
Bunin in “The Village” very clearly showed that the morality that determined the life of the Russian village in the past has been completely lost. And the existing life without moral principles, the main goal of which is survival, is unworthy of man.
According to the author of the story, he “took the typical,” exactly what happens in the life of a Russian village. Bunin also said that he was primarily interested in the “soul of the Russian man,” “the souls of Russian people in general,” and not the men themselves.
The problems of the Russian character and the life of the people raised in the story worried and still worry literary scholars, so Bunin’s work “The Village” is still relevant in our time and is capable of providing answers to some questions posed by Russian life itself. Bunin’s extraordinary “prophecies” about the “Russian soul” and the “fate of the Russian people” are still relevant to this day.
2. Article by V. V. Rozanov “Don’t trust fiction writers...”
As additional material in the process of studying Bunin’s story “The Village,” you can offer students a discussion of an article by the famous Russian philosopher, literary critic and publicist Vasily Vasilyevich Rozanov (1856-1919). Before proceeding directly to the discussion of the proposed article, it is necessary to say a few words about its author and introduce students to his worldview and philosophy of life.
It is difficult to determine exactly who V.V. Rozanov was - a philosopher, critic or writer. Its place in Russian culture is not easy to give the usual classification. Rozanov’s thought sought to reflect the world in all its manifestations, hence the abundance and diversity of ideas and themes touched upon by his work. Rozanov himself spoke of his writings in the following way: “Twisted sleepers. Checkers. Sand. Stone. Potholes. "What is this? — pavement repair? — No, these are “Rozanov’s Works.” And the tram rushes confidently along the iron rails.”
Rozanov lived and wrote in his own way, was often inconsistent in his philosophical, political and aesthetic ideas and judgments, did not strive for unity and ideas and did not attach importance to the opinions of his contemporaries.
V. Rozanov is considered, first of all, to be one of the brightest and most original representatives of Russian religious philosophy. It was this philosophy that saw its main task in understanding the place and purpose of man in the world. Rozanov has always been a philosopher who thought about the fate of the world.
It is quite reasonable to call V. Rozanov a literary critic, because he always thought about literary development, about writers and their destinies, about the role of books in modern society. It was about the books of his contemporaries that he wrote many articles and reviews, including the article “Don’t believe the fiction writers...”, published in the newspaper “Novoye Vremya” on January 5, 1911.
The article was a kind of reader’s response from Rozanov to N. Oliger’s story “Autumn Song” and to K. Chukovsky’s review of recent literary works. Among them were works by I. Bunin, telling about the Russian peasantry; M. Gorky - about the bourgeoisie; A. Tolstoy - about landowners; Iv. Rukavishnikov - about merchant life, K. Chukovsky in his review spoke about the critical attitude of writers to Russian reality and noted the talent of their authors.
V. Rozanov, in the article “Don’t believe the fiction writers...” does not agree with the depiction of Russian life in these works, believes “that the fiction writers, all five of them, are simply lying.” The critic perceives the proposed works of art from the position of a simple reader, for whom personal everyday experience and common sense serve as criteria for evaluating what he read. Rozanov believes that art should depict the truth of life, therefore writers are obliged to show reality itself, the life of the country and people, in particular, their health, economic and social situation.
Therefore, Rozanov does not intend to agree with the portrayal of the “fiction writers”: “Well, if they are telling the truth, then Russia essentially no longer exists, one empty place, a rotten place that can only be conquered by the “neighboring smart people,” as Smerdyakov already dreamed of in "The Brothers Karamazov"
“But there is another obviousness, quite impressive, that Russia is just standing still, thousands of high school boys and girls are running to study in the morning, and all the faces are so vigorous, fresh; that they come from somewhere, probably from a family where not all “brothers live with sisters”; that some huge “living creatures” are eaten by Russia every day, and it’s unlikely that these are all “cows with cut off nipples, etc. ...”. Giving such arguments for his disagreement with the “fiction writers” regarding the life they depict in the country, Rozanov concludes that they are “simply lying.”
The critic believes that a work of art should “point” to the reader’s own experience, to real life and reality, especially if the work claims to be “realistic”, depicting everything “true” and “typical”. And no matter how the writer “modernizes” reality, such a work must show life familiar to the reader.
Rozanov considers the concept of “truth of art” and the talent of a writer to be inseparable. Can a work be called talented if its author “lies” when depicting reality? A talented writer is one whose view of life and its depiction in a work fully corresponds to the “truth of life” itself.
V. Rozanov believes that one of the reasons for the insufficiently truthful portrayal of life by writers is their limited vision of the world around them, explaining this by the fact that the writing environment, like any professional environment, is closed in on itself. Referring to his life experience, the critic talks about the daily life of “fiction writers,” showing writers in the “Theater Club,” the luxurious palace of the Yusupov princes.
So from what “living” space, from what environment can a writer see reality if his environment is so closed? That is why the writer’s work contains his own idea of the country, the people, the peasantry... And the life of the common people serves for him only as “material” necessary to confirm these ideas. This is where the author’s vision of reality appears in the work. As for the works mentioned by Rozanov, they precisely reflected the author’s views and ideological attitudes characteristic of writers of that time. Almost each of them attributed their own vision of the world to their heroes.
After all that has been said, the words spoken by I. Bunin about his work become clear: “All my life I have suffered from the fact that I cannot express what I want. In essence, I am doing an impossible task. I’m exhausted because I look at the world only with my own eyes and can’t look at it any other way!”
In the article “Don’t trust fiction writers...” V. Rozanov freely and skillfully expressed his point of view on the shortcomings present in the works of certain writers. And he did this without really caring about logical proof, constantly drawing parallels between the realities of literature and the “truth of life” and freely expressing his emotions about disagreement with the mentioned authors in the depiction of reality.
He was one of the first to feel the changes in the life of Russia, namely the mood of the post-revolutionary village, and reflected them in his stories and stories, especially in the story “The Village,” which was published in 1910.
On the pages of the story, the author paints a terrifying picture of the poverty of the Russian people. Bunin wrote that this story marked “the beginning of a whole series of works that sharply depicted the Russian soul, its peculiar interweavings, its light and dark, but almost always tragic foundations.”
The originality and strength of Bunin's story is the show of the dark sides of peasant life, the stupidity of villagers, and the poverty of the everyday life of men. Bunin in his work relied on real facts of reality. He knew the life of the village well and was able to give in his story a vivid and truthful picture of the life of the peasants.
Critics noted that in the story “The Village” there is no cross-cutting plot action and no clear conflict. The narrative alternates between scenes of everyday village life and episodes of clashes between men and the village rich. A wonderful artist, Bunin gives a number of portrait sketches of men and describes their housing. Many landscapes in the story are filled with the philosophical thought of the author, on whose behalf the story is told.
Bunin shows the life of the Russian village through the eyes of the brothers Tikhon and Kuzma Krasov, the main characters of the story. The true appearance of the village arises as a result of lengthy conversations and disputes between Tikhon and Kuzma. The picture of life in the village is bleak, there is no hope of revival among the dead fields and gloomy sky. The whole vast Russia rests on the peasant. How does he live, what does he think about? The author in his story tells the bitter truth. The villagers are rude savages, little different from their livestock - stupid, greedy, cruel, dirty and downtrodden.
Bunin brilliantly tells the story of the Krasov family in a few paragraphs: “The Krasovs’ great-grandfather, nicknamed a gypsy by the courtyard, was hunted down by greyhounds by captain Durnovo. The gypsy took his mistress from him, from his master.” Further, just as simply and calmly outwardly, Bunin describes the fact that the Gypsy started running. “You shouldn’t run from greyhounds,” the author laconically notes.
At the center of the story is the biography of the two Krasov brothers. Tikhon is a powerful man. His only goal is to get rich. Tikhon Krasov “finished off” the ruined master of Durnovka and bought the estate from him. The second brother, Kuzma Krasov, is a weak-willed dreamer, a self-taught intellectual. Against the background of the biography of the Krasovs, Bunin unfolds a broad canvas of the life of the Russian peasantry.
The brothers exchange opinions and talk about the causes of the plight in the countryside. It turns out that here there is “one and a half arshins of black soil, and what a lot!” And five years don’t go by without hunger.” “The city is famous throughout Russia for its grain trade - a hundred people in the whole city eat this bread to their fill.” Bunin's men were robbed not only financially, but also spiritually. There are more than one hundred million illiterate people in the country, people live as in “cave times”, among savagery and ignorance.
Many Durnovites are mentally retarded people who do not understand what is happening around them. For example, worker Koshel once visited the Caucasus, but could not tell anything about it except that there was “a mountain upon a mountain.” Koshel’s mind is poor, he pushes away everything new and incomprehensible, but he believes that he recently saw a witch.
The teacher in Durnovka is a soldier who looks like an ordinary man, but he “talked such nonsense that I had to shrug my shoulders.” His children's education consisted of instilling the strictest army discipline. The author shows us the peasant Gray, “the most poor and idle in the whole village.” He had a lot of land - three acres, but he became completely impoverished.
What prevents Gray from establishing his economy? In better times, Gray managed to build a new brick hut, but in winter it was necessary to heat it, and Gray burned the roof, and then sold the hut. He doesn’t want to work, he sits in his unheated hut, there are holes in the roof, and his children are afraid of a burning splinter, as they are used to living in the dark.
The mental limitations of the peasants give rise to manifestations of senseless cruelty. A man can “kill a neighbor because of a goat” or strangle a child in order to take away a few kopecks. Akim, a rabid, evil man, would gladly shoot singing nightingales with a gun.
“An unhappy people, first of all, unhappy...” laments Kuzma Krasov.
Bunin was sure that the peasants were only capable of rebellion, spontaneous and senseless. The story describes how one day men rebelled almost throughout the entire district. The landowners sought protection from the authorities, but “the whole riot ended with the men screaming throughout the district, burning and destroying several estates and falling silent.”
Bunin was accused of exaggerating, not knowing the village, and hating the people. The writer would never have created such a poignant work if his soul had not worried about his people and the fate of his homeland. In the story “The Village” he showed everything dark and wild that prevents the country and people from developing.
Russia. The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th 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.
