There are scarlet rose hips all around. Dark alleys of an ordinary story
Yulia Yurievna Chernokozova is a literature teacher at Novocherkassk Pedagogical College.
Analysis of the story by I.A. Bunin's "Dark Alleys" at a literature lesson in the senior class
“The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were alleys of dark linden trees...”
In accordance with the program, students are introduced to the works of I.A. Bunin is carried out gradually. In basic school they get an idea of his poetic work, read and analyze epic works - “Clean Monday”, “ Sunstroke" In the eleventh grade, when studying a monographic topic on the writer’s work, it is necessary to systematize existing knowledge and help high school students comprehend the peculiarities of the writer’s worldview and skill. It is important to consider each small work chosen for study as part of an integral artistic world containing the unique features of the author’s individuality. Therefore, starting to work on the story “ Dark alleys“, we have identified as the goal the creation of conditions not only for students to fully interpret the text, but also for them to comprehend the artistic concept of the entire cycle. Considering that for eleventh-graders, of course, addressing the theme of love is personally significant, we sought, in the process of analyzing Bunin’s work, to arouse in them a desire to deeply comprehend the author’s concept of love and determine their attitude towards it. I. Bunin’s story is harmonious; despite its small volume and condensed plot, it is unusually meaningful, truly “the best words in the best order.” This allows the lesson to successfully solve another problem - to develop students’ skills through consideration of the elements of the form (in in this case- through the relationship between plot and plot) come to empathy with the author.
We choose the words of the writer himself as the epigraph for the dialogue with students: “We live by everything we live only to the extent that we comprehend the price of what we live by. Usually this price is very small: it rises only in moments of delight - the delight of happiness or misfortune, the vivid consciousness of gain or loss; also - in moments of poetic transformation of the past in memory.”
Before working with the text, we recall with our students what works about love they know, analyze the reader’s impressions of the stories I. Bunin read (as homework, we were asked to read not only “Dark Alleys”, but also two or three other stories from this cycle) and note that by the beginning of the 20th century, it seems that everything that could be said about love had already been said. However, I. Bunin speaks about this feeling in his own way. For the heroes of his works, love is a moment of happiness, which is tragic simply because it is irrevocable. The price of this irrevocable moment is realized not at the moment of absorption in the feeling, but later. “Later” can come fifteen minutes after parting with your beloved (“Sunstroke”), and thirty years later (“Dark Alleys”). Bunin's feeling of love is devoid of vulgarity; even purely physical intimacy is exclusively spiritual. These are always “truly magical” moments.
The story we are interested in relates to the late period of I.A.’s creativity. Bunina. At this time, according to the fair remark of the researcher of the writer L.A. Kolobaeva, in connection with the tendency to expand the epic principle in Bunin’s works, such a genre structure of the story appears, which, as if exceeding its own nature, reaches out to the story and even to the novel, takes on its tasks - through the “moments” of life to view the beginnings and ends , the history of the individual as a whole, her fate, the entire “cup of life”. It is from this point of view that the story “Dark Alleys” is interesting. His analysis should show high school students how “a vulgar, ordinary story” is transformed into “easy breathing” Bunin's story” .
At the beginning analytical conversation Using the text, we find out what this small (only four pages) work by I. Bunin, which gave the name to the whole cycle, is about. Usually the answers are: about love, about a meeting, about the life of two people. What is unusual about the love story of Nikolai Alekseevich and Nadezhda? How does the hero himself respond to her? We conclude that the history of the relationship between two people in itself is no different. Nikolai Alekseevich himself assesses her as “vulgar and ordinary.” However, it was interesting to read, there was no feeling of banality. Why?
Let's try to retell the work, highlighting the main events. It is possible that some student will try to build his retelling in chronological order: love and separation - thirty years of separation - meeting at the post station. If the story corresponds to the plot, you can invite high school students to determine the temporal relationship of events and compare them with how the author narrates them. At the same time, we depict this schematically on the board and in notebooks.
What are the similarities and differences between the schemes?
Which version of the story attracts our attention more? Why?
Together with the students, we note that in both diagrams the episodes that make up the story are highlighted. However, the first scheme is a list of episodes in their chronological sequence, and the second is the same set of episodes, but they are arranged differently, according to the laws of the artistic time of the story: present - past - future. The second option attracts the reader more, since we are interested in the moment of recognition, which motivates attention to the conversation-memory that follows it ex-lovers. This makes us experience wonder, creates a desire to learn about what happened in the past, and encourages empathy.
We update the knowledge of eleventh-graders about the plot and the plot, we propose to correlate these concepts with the diagrams depicted on the board, we help to come to the conclusion that reflection on the features of plot construction in a work helps to better understand the author’s intention, in this case - to show an entire human life through one life situation life.
What events from the lives of the characters did the author choose to tell us the life story of two people? Only meager facts: love that arose thirty years ago, a meeting at the station, the family life of Nikolai Alekseevich, which he told Nadezhda in five sentences.
Were these the only events that happened in the lives of forty-eight-year-old Nadezhda and sixty-year-old Nikolai Alekseevich? Of course not. But why did the writer choose them? They were probably the main ones in the fate of the heroes. Let us find confirmation of this in the text.
Nikolai Alekseevich:“I think that I, too, have lost in you the most precious thing I had in life.” “Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but magical!”
Hope:“Everyone’s youth passes, but love is another matter.” “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” “No matter how much time passed, I still lived alone.” There were many events in Nadezhda’s life: “It’s a long story, sir.” But lived she only loves Nikolai Alekseevich.
Why didn’t I. Bunin tell us the story in more detail? family life Nikolai Alekseevich, because this could have turned out exciting novel? (He loved his wife madly. - She left her. - He adored his son. - He grew up to be a scoundrel.) Because in such a small work it was necessary to reveal only the most important thing, which explains everything in the destinies of people. This main thing turned out to be old love. And although the content of the story is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” reading evokes a special lyrical mood: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys…” The atmosphere of the story is as light and harmonious as the iambic tetrameter of these poetic lines. Nikolai Alekseevich’s memory poetically transformed the moments of lost love and showed the real price of this feeling.
For a hero, love is a wonderful moment, but for Nadezhda? We suggest finding words in the text that confirm that Nadezhda retained her feelings for long years. For her, love is her whole life.
In conclusion, we turn to the epigraph, to the words of I. Bunin, revealing “the main creative aspirations of the writer - his pathos, the principles of selection and artistic transformation of life material.” What does the epigraph say? How does it relate to the story analyzed? What moments in a person’s life make it possible to understand the value of what he lives by? Discussion of questions helps to comprehend the story in a lyrical and philosophical vein, when three elements become the main characters: love, time and memory. Love is a state when “the whole world was in the soul” and the person is ideal. Time inexorably drags you away and makes you forget everything. Memory selects and poetically transforms moments of the past - love. The circle, having begun with love, closes with it. I. Bunin proposed in his story “Dark Alleys” exactly such a situation when the memory of an aging hero allows him to realize that forgotten love as the “best”, the only “truly magical” minutes of life.
“The book has always been an adviser, a comforter, eloquent and calm for me, and I did not want to exhaust its benefits, saving them for the most important occasions.” George Sand
On the channel "Culture" in the program "The Glass Bead Game" the writer Igor Volgin at the end always turns to viewers with an edification: "Read and re-read the classics!"
To the extent possible, I do this. My pencil notes in books (only from my personal library!) help me return to what I read.
After a recent trip to the city of Efremov, Tula region, where the Bunin family museum is located, I finally returned to the work of my favorite writer in Once again. I re-read and analyze.
For example, I finally received an answer to the question: why is the collection of short stories, the hymn of love “Dark Alleys”, named after the first story in it, called exactly that. It turns out that Ivan Alekseevich read a poem by Nikolai Ogarev " An ordinary story", where there are lines:
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The river was quiet, clear,
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
The valley stretched beyond the river,
Calm, lush green;
Nearby, a scarlet rosehip was blooming,
There was an alley of dark linden trees...
The text of “Dark Alleys” says that in his youth the hero of the story, Nikolai Alekseevich, read poems about “dark alleys” to his beloved Nadezhda. The story ends with exactly the lines from Ogarev’s poem, only slightly edited: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys…”
Before its release on television in 2014 feature film Nikita Mikhalkov with the title story of the same name Bunin's "Sunstroke" (1925) I re-read the original source. I was very surprised that this a short story could have been composed big movie. The “Observer” program of October 17, 2014 helped me figure this out, where the curtain was lifted in a conversation between Andrei Maksimov and Nikita Mikhalkov and Boris Lyubimov. It turns out that Vladimir Moiseenko (1963-2011) and Alexander Adabashyan wrote their original script, based on the story itself and the diaries of I.A. Bunin 1918-1920 "Cursed Days".
Reading " Damned days", which I printed out from the Internet, I put everything off until later, preparing myself for the next experience. Now, after the film "Sunstroke" and Mikhalkov's documentary film "The Easy Breath of Ivan Bunin" found on the Internet, I said to myself: it's time.
I knew the writer’s attitude towards revolutions in general from his stories. But the view on the events of 1917-1919 in Russia is clearly expressed in diary entries.
Historically, the goal of any revolution is FREEDOM. As a rule, in this event, at the helm is a LEADER or COLLECTIVE COLLUSION under the baton of “leaders” from the outside. What motivates the LEADER? I.A. Bunin quotes Napoleon’s statement on this matter: “What made the revolution? Ambition. What put an end to it? Also ambition. And what a wonderful excuse freedom was for all of us to fool the crowd!”
Freedom at any cost. Even with such calls as in Odessa in 1919: “Forward, dear ones, don’t count corpses!".
Losses in this case are the costs of the revolutionary moment. After all, there is a bright future ahead: “Factories for the workers, land for the peasants!”, which is what the newspaper “Odessa Communist” (1919) wrote about:
Communist worker
Knows what strength lies in:
He has a love for work
A diary entry dated April 15, 1919, with an unflattering description of a man named Shchepkin, alerted me: “Ten months ago, some Shpan, an extremely lousy and ragged little man, something like the worst traveling salesman, came to me and offered me to be my impresario, to go with him to Nikolaev, to Kharkov, to Kherson, where I will publicly read my works “every evening for a thousand Duma money.” Today I met him on the street: he is now one of the comrades of that crazy scoundrel Professor Shchepkin, the commissioner for theater affairs, he is shaven, well-fed—it’s clear from everything that he’s well-fed—and dressed in a wonderful English coat, thick and soft, with a wide tab at the back.”
I knew only about one Shchepkin, Mikhail Semyonovich (1788-1883), Russian actor, founder of Russian acting school. The Higher Theater School bears his name.
Further, in the diary entry dated April 16, I read: “Prof. Evgeny Shchepkin, “commissar of public education” (Odessa), handed over the management of the university to “seven representatives of the revolutionary student body,” such scoundrels, they say, that even today one would be hard pressed to look for them during the day.”
The name Evgeniy gave me a hint to determine from the reference book that this was none other than Evgeniy Nikolaevich Shchepkin (1860-1920), a Russian historian and teacher, the son of Nikolai Mikhailovich Shchepkin and the grandson of the same Russian actor mentioned earlier.
Bunin’s entry from April 25 about the “commissar of public education” (for some reason Ivan Alekseevich quotes the name of this position) is generally a caricature, there is no trace of it here.
Probably, the 49-year-old writer, already well-known in Russia, had reasons for such categorical and disdainful attitude to the revolutionary figure Shchepkin during the short period of Soviet power in Odessa (April - August 1919), God be his judge. But it’s still surprising what kind of person, descendant famous actor? Dry information reference books gives little idea about him. And his early death on December 12, 1920 makes us think.
My acquaintance with Maximilian Voloshin began unexpectedly with his poem about Russia “The Burning Bush,” written on May 28, 1919 in Koktebel:
Who are you, Russia? Mirage? Obsession?
Have you been? There is? or not?
Whirlpool... rapids... dizziness...
Abyss... madness... delirium...
Everything is unreasonable, unusual:
Waves of victory and destruction...
The thought freezes before the thing's mystery
And the spirit is terrified...
We are infected with conscience: in every Stenka there is Saint Seraphim, Given over to the same hangovers and thirsts, We are tormented by the same will. We perish without dying, We strip the Spirit to the bottom. It’s a wondrous miracle - the Burning Bush burns without being consumed!
Before this acquaintance, I associated the phrase Burning Bush with the Icon Mother of God“The Burning Bush”, which she wrote about in the commentary to Svetlana Tishkina’s article “The Road to the Diocese” http://site/content/view/doroga-v-eparhiyu-/
And here, in the poem, it emphasizes the inviolability of our sacred Russian state.
I met the poet’s beloved woman without knowing who she was. I read to my son a fairy tale in verse by a certain Cherubina de Gabriac, “A Mule Without a Bridle.” It turned out that this was the poetess Elizaveta Dmitrieva, and her pseudonym was invented by Voloshin. Reading about Anna Akhmatova, I learned about love triangle Voloshin-Dmitrieva-Gumilev and about the duel between poets. I also read Marina Tsvetaeva’s prose about her friend Max. I also discovered that the poet’s house in Koktebel was a haven for the Russian cultural elite until the owner’s death in 1932. Filmed about this by director Andrei Osipov documentary"Koktebel Pebbles" (2014). This is, in fact, a portrait of the “Silver Age”.
IN Time of Troubles civil war Maximilian Voloshin, according to the recollections of his contemporaries, in his house in Koktebel saved one by one, and sometimes simultaneously, whites from reds and reds from whites.
An assessment of the personality of this person, who does not hold any revolutionary positions, I.A. Bunin in “Cursed Days” is clearly identified as a traitor to the monarchical foundations of the Russian state.
On two excerpts diary entries out of five I'll stop:
Yesterday the poet Voloshin sat with us for a long time. He ran into a terrible situation with the offer of his services (“to decorate the city for the first of May”). I warned him: don’t run to them, it’s not only low, but also stupid, because they know very well who you were just yesterday. He responded with nonsense: “Art is timeless, outside politics, I will participate in decoration only as a poet and as an artist.” Decorating what? The gallows, and your own too? Still, he ran. And the next day in Izvestia: “Voloshin came to us, every bastard is now in a hurry to cling to us...” Now Voloshin wants to write a “letter to the editor”, full of noble indignation. Even stupider.
Here is Voloshin. The day before yesterday he called upon Russia the “Angel of Vengeance,” who was supposed to “put the delight of murder into a girl’s heart and bloody dreams into a child’s soul.” And yesterday he was a White Guard, and now he is ready to sing the Bolsheviks...
My opinion is that this God-fearing man LOVED PEOPLE, no matter what color of clothing they were dressed in. His restless soul sought justification for the events taking place in Russia at that time. It is enough to read his poems, love for the Motherland is everywhere.
It's over with Russia... Lastly
We talked about her, chatted,
They slurped, drank, spat,
Got dirty in dirty squares,
Sold on the streets: shouldn't it?
Who wants lands, republics, and freedoms,
Civil rights? And the people's homeland
He was dragged out to rot like carrion.
Oh, Lord, open up, waste away,
Send fire, plagues and scourges upon us,
Germans from the west, Mongol from the east,
Give us into slavery again and forever,
To atone humbly and deeply
Judas' sin until the Last Judgment!
"Peace", 1917
All Rus' is a bonfire. Unquenchable Flame
From edge to edge, from century to century
It hums, roars... And the stone cracks.
And every torch is a person.
Are we not, like our ancestors,
Did they let him in? A hurricane
Inflated it, and drowned in acrid smoke
Forests and villages are lit...
"Kitezh", 1919
From the blood shed in battles,
From ashes turned to dust,
From the torment of executed generations,
From souls baptized in blood,
Out of hateful love
From crimes, frenzy -
A righteous Rus' will arise.
I pray for her all the time
And I believe in the eternal plans:
She is forged with a sword blow,
She builds on bones
She is holy in fierce battles,
It is built on burning relics,
It melts in mad prayers.
"Spell", 1920
For a long time I could not get an answer to the question why Maximilian Voloshin did not leave Russia in 1920, when Bunin sailed from Odessa abroad? Accepted Soviet power? Resigned? The opinion of my mother’s friend, a school literature teacher with extensive experience, is authoritative for me. She thinks: no, this broad-hearted man did not accept Soviet power and did not reconcile. He simply outlined his field of activity with his slogan “Art is timeless, outside politics.” The pain is about home country hidden in my heart for the time being.
The poem “Our Lady of Vladimir” from 1929 is another outburst of emotions:
And Our Lady of Vladimir
Rus' led through abomination, blood and shame
On the rapids of the Kyiv boats
Indicating the correct fairway.
But a blind people in a time of wrath
He himself gave away the keys of his shrines,
And the Representative-Virgo left
From their desecrated strongholds...
Faithful guardian and zealous guardian
Mother Vladimirskaya, - to you -
Two keys: golden to Her abode,
Rusty - to our sad fate.
The bell rang for Maximilian Voloshin at the age of 55. His heart is tired.
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin lived to be 83 years old.
God works in mysterious ways!
In Kyiv, "the destruction of the monument to Alexander II has begun." A familiar activity. After all, back in March 17, eagles and coats of arms began to be torn off...
How does this resonate with modern times? The Lenin attack began in Ukraine. Alexander II is the Russian Emperor. Vladimir Ilyich Lenin is the founder of Ukraine as a state and Ukrainians as a nation. This is the attitude towards history!
Now let me return to the beginning of the note with gratitude to my true friends, books. I'll finish famous words A.S. Pushkin:
Oh how many wonderful discoveries we have
Prepare the spirit of enlightenment
And experience, the son of difficult mistakes,
And genius, friend of paradoxes,
And chance, God the inventor.
It was a wonderful spring
They sat on the shore
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black...
The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,
There was an alley of dark linden trees...
Then, for some reason, I imagined how my story began - autumn, bad weather, a high road, a carriage, with an old military man in it... The rest all somehow came together by itself, came up - very easily, unexpectedly - like most of my stories.” .
Bunin quoted N. Ogarev’s poem, which is called an Ordinary Tale” (let’s pay attention to this!), combining two stanzas. Ogarev does it like that
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The river was quiet, clear,
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
The valley stretched beyond the river,
Calmly lushly green,
Nearby, a scarlet rosehip was blooming,
There was an alley of dark linden trees.
It was a wonderful spring! They sat on the shore. She was in the prime of her life, His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if only someone could see them<...>
Probably, Bunin and such people did not go unnoticed
lines of this poem:
I met them later in the world:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight<...>
The fact that “An Ordinary Tale” served as an impetus, an impulse for the creation of Dark Alleys is undoubtedly. But there is also a thematic and compositional connection between Ogarev’s poem and Bunin’s story. The line about the alley of dark linden trees appears twice in the story. At first Nadezhda is in tension
remembers the special moment of explanation with Nikolai Alekseevich
“There was a time, Nikolai Alekseevich, when I called you Nikolenka, and you remember me? And they deigned to read all the poems to me about all sorts of “dark alleys,” she added with an unkind smile.
For Nadezhda, it is not the poems themselves that are important, but the fact that Nikolai Alekseevich reads poems. Hence the dismissive “about all the kitty dark alleys.” Nevertheless, the transformation of the image of Ogarev’s poem in the memory of Nadezhda is essential for the story. “Dark alleys” are not only more natural, more accessible to Nadezhda’s consciousness than “dark linden alleys,” but the main thing is that this is a more generalized, emotionally deep image, containing something unsaid and disturbing. It is no coincidence that “Dark Alleys” became the title of not only the story, but also the book of Bunin’s stories.
And Nikolai Alekseevich recalls Ogarev’s lines, already calming down after meeting Nadezhda:
“Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...” But, my God, what would happen next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense
Nikolai Alekseevich inspires himself and Nadezhda that “everything passes, everything is forgotten.” But Nadezhda thinks differently: “Everyone’s youth passes, but love is another matter,” “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” Nikolai Alekseevich says about the passing of youth and love: “The story is vulgar, ordinary.” And talk again about the fact that his wife left him and his son grew up to be a scoundrel~ “However, all this is also the most ordinary, vulgar story" There is an obvious parallel here with the title (and partly with the content) of Ogarev’s poem.
When the dark comes hard days autumn, the rain is annoyingly knocking on the windows, I usually read Bunin.
So yesterday I accidentally opened an unfamiliar folder on the desktop of my computer, and in it was Bunin’s Diary for 1939-1945. From his notes, you can trace all the key moments of the Second World War, find out how hard life was for him in those years. But something else surprises me: how much he wrote during that difficult time of hunger, when he was no longer young and sick.
. All the brightest stories were written at that time and they made up his most famous and beloved collection by readers, “Dark Alleys.”
And the title for the collection and, perhaps, the very idea of writing such a collection was suggested to Ivan Alekseevich by Ogarev’s poem:
ORDINARY STORY
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The river was quiet, clear,
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
The valley stretched beyond the river,
Calm, lush green;
Nearby, a scarlet rosehip was blooming,
There was an alley of dark linden trees.
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if only someone could see them
Then, at their morning meeting,
And I would look out for their faces
Or would I overhear their speeches -
How sweet his tongue would be,
The original language of love!
He would probably himself, for this moment,
Bloomed at the bottom of a sad soul!..
I met them later in the world:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight;
There was peace on their faces,
Their life flowed brightly and smoothly,
They, meeting each other,
We could laugh in cold blood...
And there, along the river bank,
Where did the scarlet rose hips bloom then?
Just simple fishermen
We went to a dilapidated boat
And they sang songs - and it was dark
What remains is closed to people,
What was said there
And how much has been forgotten.
At the end of the short story “Dark Alleys,” which gave the title to the entire collection, Bunin quotes two lines from this poem:
“The low sun shone yellow on the empty fields, the horses splashed smoothly through the puddles. He looked at the flashing horseshoes, knitting his black eyebrows, and thought:
“Yes, blame yourself. Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical! “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...” But, my God, what would have happened next? What if I hadn't left her? What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the innkeeper, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?” And, closing his eyes, he shook his head.”
October 20, 1938
Tsvetaeva dreamed of having a garden in her declining days, she wrote:
"For this hell,
For this nonsense
Send me a garden
For old age."
But Bunin had it. . .
From his diaries:
6.9.1940
I’m writing and looking into the sunny “lantern” of my room, at its five windows, behind which there is a light fog of everything that lies around with such beauty and spaciousness below us, and a huge whitish-sunny sky. And among all this is my lonely, eternally sad self.
(They brought a newspaper. [...] Churchill’s speech devant la chambre des communes. Over the last 2 months, England lost 558 avions. In August, 1075 civilian deaths occurred, 800 houses were destroyed. German attacks will intensify in September [. ..])
21.4.1940
2 1/2 hours. I walked around the garden - the second area (from the lower road) was already overgrown with tall grass. Still blooming pale pink, light, delicate, very. feminine flowers of some special variety of cherry, 2 gnarled apple trees are blooming with white flowers (also pinkish in buds). Irises are blooming, I found a blooming rosehip branch (easy scarlet color with yellow pollen in the middle), some flowers, like poppies - light, but bright orange color... I sat on a crumbling wicker chair, looking at the light and vague mountains behind Nice like smoke... Paradise! And for how many years now I have seen and felt it!
Lonely, uncomfortable, but to move to Paris... the insignificance of nature, the vile climate!
As always, almost exactly alone in the whole house. [...]
It’s a bright day, a holiday, the sea seems emptier - and they’re calling, calling in the city... I don’t know how to express what’s behind all this.
Many moths hover around the lilac color - white with a greenish tint, transparent. And again bees, bumblebees, flies are born...
23.5.42
I thought again today: there is nothing more beautiful in the world than flowers and birds. More butterflies.
30.4.40
Night, a dark strip of forest in the distance and above it a star - humble, charming. This somewhere, sometime struck me throughout my life in childhood... My God, my God! I once had a childhood, the first days of my life on earth! I just can't believe it! Now just the thought that they were. And now the last ones are coming. [...]
7.5.40
Somehow, as often happens to me out of nowhere, I imagined: evening after a thunderstorm and downpour on the road to the station. Baborykina. Both the sky and the earth - everything is already darkening gloomily. In the distance, above the dark strip of forest, the forest still flares. Someone is standing on the porch of an inn near the highway, clearing dirt from his boots with a whip. There is a dog next to him... This is where “Styopa” came out.
30.7.40
Suddenly I remembered: Moscow, the Maly Theater, the stairs - sometimes very warm, sometimes icy drafts.
20. IX. 40.
Started "Rusya". 22. IX. 40. Wrote “Mom’s Chest” and “On the Pavement Street.” 27. IX. 40. I added “Rus”. 29. IX. 40. Sketched "Wolves". 2. X. 40. Wrote "Antigone". Z.H.40. Wrote "Pasha" and "Smaragd". 5.X.40. Yesterday and today I wrote " Business Cards"." , 20, 21, 22. X. 40. Wrote and finished (at 5 o’clock) “Tanya.” 25 and 26. X. 40. Wrote “In Paris” (first pages – 24. X. 40). 27 and 28 X. 40. Wrote “Galya Ganskaya” (finished at 4:40 on the day 28.10.
7.5.40
“A man and his body are two... When the body desires something, think whether You really desire it. For You are God... Penetrate within yourself to find God within yourself... Do not mistake your body for yourself ... Don't give in to the constant worry about little things that many people spend their time in most of its time. . ."
"One of those who have no rest.
From the thirst for happiness..."
It seems like it has been like me, all my life (even to this day).
30.7.40
“I read about the experiment that two Viennese students did several years ago: they decided to hang themselves so that they would be taken out of the noose a moment before death and they could tell what they experienced. It turned out that they experienced a blinding light and a roar of thunder.”
16.VI. 41. Monday, evening.
The contempt of the first Christians for life, their disgust from it, from its harshness, rudeness, animality. Then the barbarians. And going into caves, crypts, founding monasteries... Will this be the case in the 20th and 21st centuries?
28.VII. Sunday.
I’m reading Krasnov’s novel “God With Us.” I didn’t expect that he was so capable, knew so much and was so entertaining. [...]
2 hours. Yes, I live in paradise. I still can’t get used to such days, to such a view. Today is a particularly magnificent day. I looked out the windows of my lantern. All the valleys and mountains around are in a sunny blue haze. Towards Nice there are wonderful thunderclouds over the mountains. To the right, in pine forest above them, the beauty of the heat, dryness, visible in the tops of the sky. On the right, along our stone stairs bloom small pink flowers two oleanders with their small sharp leaves. And loneliness, loneliness, as always! And the agonizing wait for England's fate to be resolved. In the morning I'm afraid to open the newspaper.
Since ancient times, Jews have been prescribed: always (and especially in happy Days) think about death.
"Belligerants". It can be translated by an old Russian word: anti-wrestlers.
The beacons were lit. First time I saw it from here (with "Jeannette")
22.6.41
WITH new page I am writing a continuation of this day - a great event, Germany this morning declared war on Russia - and the Finns and Romanians have already “invaded” its “limits”.
After breakfast (naked pea soup and salad) I lay down to continue reading Flaubert’s letters (letter from Rome to his mother dated April 8, 1851), when suddenly Zurov shouted: “I.A., Germany declared war on Russia!” I thought he was joking, but Bahr shouted the same thing from below. I ran to the dining room to the radio - yes! We are terribly excited. [...]
Quiet, cloudy day. . .
***
The day before yesterday M. rewrote “The Ballad”. Nobody believes that I almost always make things up - everything, everything. It's a shame! “The Ballad” was invented entirely, from word to word – and all at once in one hour: I once woke up in Paris with the thought that I definitely needed to [send] something to “Posl.N.”, it should be there; drank coffee, sat down at the table - and suddenly, for no apparent reason, he began to write, not knowing what would happen next. And the story is wonderful.
From 8 to 9. V. 44.
It's one o'clock in the morning. I got up from the table - there were a few things left to finish. lines of "Clean Monday". I turned off the light, opened the window to ventilate the room - not the slightest. air movement; full moon, dim night, the whole valley in the thinnest fog, far on the horizon the vague pinkish shine of the sea, silence, the soft freshness of young tree greenery, here and there the clicking of the first nightingales... Lord, extend my strength for my lonely, poor life in this beauty and at work!
14. 5. 44.
21/2 o'clock in the morning (which means it is no longer May 14, but May 15).
During the evening I wrote “Steamboat Saratov”. I opened the window, darkness, silence, cloudy in some places. stars, raw freshness.
23. 5. 44.
In the evening I wrote "Camargue". Very good cold night. . .
20.I. 44
Stop again. day. I visited K[yagin].
Novgorod was taken.
The nights are starry, clear, cold. Whatever you remember (and fragments of memory every minute), everything is painful, sad. Sometimes I sleep until 9 and more hours. And almost every one. in the morning, as soon as you open your eyes, there is some kind of sadness - aimlessness, the end of everything (for me).
I looked through my notes about the former Russia. I keep thinking, if I live long enough, I’ll get to Russia! What for? The old age of the survivors (and the women with whom I once lived), the cemetery of everything that I once lived with...
25.I. 44
[...] Suddenly I remembered Gagarinsk. lane, my youth, my fictitious love for Lop[atina] - which for some reason now lies (5 kilometers from me) in a grave in some Valbona. Isn't this wild?
27.1. 44
Without 1/4 6. I am sitting by the window to the west. On the horizon the sky is green - the sun has just set - closer the entire part of the sky (in front of me) is in a continuous cloud, under which (inaudible - O.M.) is like a fleece and is colored orange-copper.
Now its color is getting redder, the forest valley towards Draguignan is in a purple steam.
All around - towards Nice, towards Cannes - everything is in moderation, rather flowery, it’s true, tomorrow there will be bad weather.
Today, after breakfast, there is great cheerfulness - steak and curry, real coffee and lemon?
Received 2 Swedish. parcels.
The role of N.P. Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Tale” in the fate of the heroes of I.A. Bunin’s story “Dark Alleys.”
Introduction.
In Ivan Bunin’s story “Dark Alleys” (1938), written by a 68-year-old writer, the hero-nobleman, quite mature at that time, reads N.P. Ogarev’s poems “An Ordinary Tale” (1842) to the young serf girl Nadezhda, his short-lived lover. ), in which "dark alleys" are mentioned. According to Bunin’s recollections, his story came to light as a result of his rereading this poem Nikolai Ogarev, who became the author of "An Ordinary Tale" at the age of 29. Indeed, in these two works, created by the young Ogarev and the already quite old, mature Bunin, analogies can be traced. And the title of Bunin’s short story is essentially a quote from Ogarev: “There were dark linden alleys...” How, it would seem, is a poem by a poet who is more familiar to us from history textbooks as a friend of the revolutionary A. Herzen, not so well known to a wide circle of readers, shared emigration with him, served as the birth of "Dark Alleys", an undeniable masterpiece of Russian classics? Like one literary event changed into something else almost a hundred years later? What intersecting temporal paths exist in the vast field of Russian literature? Let's think about these questions, but first we will re-read, following Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, Nikolai Platonovich Ogarev's poem "An Ordinary Tale."
ORDINARY STORY
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The river was quiet, clear,
The sun was rising, the birds were singing;
The valley stretched beyond the river,
Calm, lush green;
Nearby, a scarlet rosehip was blooming,
There was an alley of dark linden trees.
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
Oh, if only someone could see them
And I would look out for their faces
Or would I overhear their speeches -
How sweet his tongue would be,
The original language of love!
He would probably himself, for this moment,
Bloomed at the bottom of a sad soul!..
I met them later in the world:
She was the wife of another
He was married, and about the past
There was not a word in sight;
There was peace on their faces,
Their life flowed brightly and smoothly,
They, meeting each other,
We could laugh in cold blood...
And there, along the river bank,
Where did the scarlet rose hips bloom then?
Just simple fishermen
We went to a dilapidated boat
And they sang songs - and it was dark
What remains is closed to people,
What was said there
And how much has been forgotten.
<1842>
1.
Poems open with a picture have a wonderful spring. Nine quatrains, thirty-six lines. The author divided the story into two unequal parts. The first, of eight lines, is a description of Russian nature, early morning, a quiet, clear river. Dawn. The scarlet rose hips are blooming - that means it's May. The nearby “dark linden alley” is an indication of the proximity of the manor’s estate.
The nobles, a young man and a young lady, meet the dawn together, most likely because one of them was visiting the estate and early in the morning they could take a walk together.
Repeating exactly the first two lines in the second part of the poem -
It was a wonderful spring!
They sat on the shore -
The author describes the young heroes in short but succinct strokes:
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black.
The names of the characters are not given - He, She, They - only personal pronouns that generalize the situation, spreading it widely to all Russians manorial estates Russia in the forties of the nineteenth century.
Let's not think that the author used a special artistic device"peeping" on the development of other people's feelings: most likely, the third hero was chosen by these young people as the confidant of their relationship, because it was he who knew, when they came to the river, what they spoke to each other "in the language of original love." Perhaps Ogarev sees himself in the face of a young man with a barely visible mustache, peering intently into the past.
The literary device of detachment, which gives the opportunity to look at oneself and the characters from the outside, allows the author to closely see the faces of young lovers and for a moment “bloom at the bottom of a sad soul.” Spring in nature, spring in life, spring in love...
“I met them later in the world”... - so the second, long, stanza of seven quatrains told us a seemingly “ordinary story”: the author sees his acquaintances who did not have their common life, in one of noble meetings. She, like Pushkin's Tatiana, is married; he, unlike Onegin, is married. But that's where the slight similarity ends literary situations. What is striking - and the author emphasizes this with great emotional force - is the non-standard use of the Russian literary love tradition: former lovers do not suffer, do not love, do not want to remember their common past, they are self-satisfied, cold-blooded in communicating with each other in the world and seem to laugh at their former innocence. It is likely that each of them solved, first of all, an economic problem in marriage: she married favorably and is happy with her security; he married favorably.
IN time, according to the generally accepted opinion, (not without the persistent pressure of their parents) their youth, freshness, and beauty of youth were sold - their main quickly expendable capital.
IN detailed description new secular habits, cynical in relation to the bright, naive, inexperienced past of the heroes, in the description of a lonely dilapidated boat on the shore of that river of youth and young happiness, a boat to which lovers will no longer descend, lies all the pain of the narrator, his spiritual protest against such a mutual situation betrayal of the ideals of youth. He is the only one who feels sorry for the love that was desecrated in this way, the first bright feeling that He and She abandoned under the pressure of life’s circumstances.
But how much was said about this feeling - and how much was forgotten! - only the main thing knows about this to the lyrical hero, an author suffering from the disharmony of the world, pierced by its imperfections. Probably a lot of passionate and lofty things were said, melting away like smoke, if such sad poems were born.
In the penultimate quatrain, the author again (for the second time) mentions the blooming rosehip of past years. The use of odd repetition is most likely not accidental and is also intended to solve the stated artistic task - to reveal feelings of regret and sadness.
Memories of the past are accompanied by the singing of fishermen by the river, by that boat, in the present. The songs of ordinary peasants, people from the people, of course, sad and mournful, perhaps with an appeal to the Mother River, show the deep class division of Russia, the indifference of the Russian nobles to the problems of the serfs, to their people who nursed them. Remembers that Russian society consists not only of the metropolitan nobility and provincial landowners, and life is not only of high society balls only the author, thereby very different from the representatives of his class.
The epithet “dark” is also used in the text of this poem twice: “there was an alley of dark linden trees” (at the beginning of the poem) and “... it remained dark, closed for people...” (at the end of the work) The adverb “dark” ends line, and the verb “remained” transfers the thought to a new line, starting it. Thus, the location of the word and its stress on the last syllable is emphasized special meaning for the author of the concept “dark”, contrastingly highlighting this color with scarlet rosehip flowers. Many plants bloom in spring. Why does the author focus our attention on the rose hips? One can easily see the analogy between the thorns of a wild rose and the wounding thorns of life (and here is the romance of Russian poetic tradition obvious), but the image of wild flowering scarlet rose hips Moreover, it contrasts with the well-groomed flower beds of the lordly estates, like the “unkempt” element of Russian folk life.
And the linden alleys? After all, they are not only an indication of the nature of central Russia, of the preference of Russian landowners for this particular tree (dried linden blossom was widely used as a medicinal sedative, and what kind of tea party in the lordly estates would be complete without it!) Dark linden trees, most likely densely planted, forming cool fragrant vaults with their crowns, and the mystery of the spiritual life of young people for those around them (hence the epithet “dark”) under these linden trees becomes an artistic device designed to draw the reader’s attention to the depth and complexity of the life of a young soul, whose movements can only be caught, understood and revealed the refined nature of the poet-psychologist, which N. Ogarev is here.
So what still comes to the fore in Ogarev’s poem? Are his young heroes memorable? No, it’s boring with them, they are empty, vulgar, blurry images, you don’t want to think about them, with them there is nothing for the soul to dwell on. And it’s memorable, it touches you heartache and the ability to see the present and the past, the narrator, perhaps, unwittingly revealed to us and unwittingly brought to the fore Russian nature, dear to the heart of every Russian person, filling his ballad with tints of colors and tangible smells of a linden leaf, a blooming rose hip, a peacefully, wisely and calmly flowing river in the outback of the local province and voiced this picture that is dear to him and to us with ethnic songs of peasant fishermen, songs that can cleanse, revive and support a mournful soul.
2.
Heroes of Bunin's short story, a brilliant but already old officer tsarist army, Nikolai Alekseevich, and his former serf lover, Nadezhda, and now the owner of a private hotel on the Tula road, we catch them chance meeting in a hut-tavern, where a sixty-year-old military man returning to St. Petersburg from a business trip comes in, waiting for a change of horses. The old acquaintances did not stay together for long in this clean room with wooden tables and benches, smelling of freshly cooked cabbage soup, but how much life and feelings this unexpected short meeting contained both for the heroes of the story and for its readers. N. Ogarev's poems "An Ordinary Tale" immediately become part of the fabric of Bunin's work in the dynamic dialogue of the characters. Nadezhda reminds her old lover that during their stormy love thirty years ago (and the heroine is now forty-eight years old), “I was deigned to read all the poems about all sorts of “dark alleys.” Most likely illiterate at eighteen years old, the former serf girl remembered Ogarev’s poems for many years lines performed by the young master and now, thirty years later, he quotes them “on one of the big Tula roads,” where her establishment was located. In Ogarev’s words,
Oh, if only someone could see them
Then, at their morning meeting,
And I would look out for their faces
Or I would overhear their speeches...
Shocked by the unexpected meeting, Nikolai Petrovich is extremely frank and honest; he twice (again the unlucky odd number “two”, used as an artistic device by Ogarev) calls his life “an ordinary story,” thus involuntarily using Ogarev’s title, adding to this the epithet “vulgar,” that is, hackneyed, famous, going after everyone one scenario. His wife, whom he “loved madly,” cheated on him and left him “even more insultingly than I did you” (Ogarev’s theme of betrayal). The adored son “turned out to be a scoundrel, a spendthrift, an insolent person, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience” (and again Ogarev’s motifs in the characterization of high-society youth).
This is how now, it turns out, we need to understand the generalizing meaning of the title of N.P.’s work. Ogarev - already in the title “An Ordinary Tale” there is a comprehensive description of the noble class, the main property of its nature and the author’s rejection of its immoral traits are emphasized.
It’s interesting to figure out why thirty-year-old Nikolenka (that’s what Nadya called him then) read exactly these poems to an eighteen-year-old peasant girl, whether his life began with such a betrayal of a young girl, who could then calmly meet him in the world, which is so poignant depicted Ogarev in his sad story. Was the passion for the beautiful Nadezhda a replacement for a violated feeling and at the same time a secret revenge on a flighty friend of her class? The genre of the short story, suggesting understatement, incompleteness, revealing artistic painting several perspectives, provides the opportunity for a varied reading of the reader, and we have the right to put forward such assumptions, simultaneously following two texts, examining their interconnected details.
But it is obvious, when comparing the two works we have chosen, that the still very weakly outlined theme of serfdom and its destructive impact on the souls, destinies, morality of people by N.P. Ogarev, the attitude of the Russian nobility to this shameful phenomenon - takes on paramount importance in I. .A.Bunin. Remembering the beauty of Nadezhda, admiring her eyes and figure, remembering that this girl from the people, who had no equal (and everyone recognized this), not only submitted to his lordly whim, but passionately, for the rest of her life, fell in love with him, that she was sensitive to poetry, even if thirty years later he remembers the lines from Ogarev by heart, the old tsarist polished officer blushes with shame, but cannot help but express his admiration for Nadezhda. Unlike Ogarev's heroes, Bunin's heroes have both conscience and memory. The meeting with the aged Nadezhda, who never consciously married, and the bright flash of memories of their former love further highlighted in the hero’s eyes the dirtiness of intra-family high-society relations and revealed the worthlessness of a life lived in a humiliating marriage. It would seem that the past, as if buried under the layers of life, should never have declared itself, but it flared up in the hero’s soul, just as smoldering coals suddenly flare up in an extinguished fire.
With ineradicable evidence, a former serf, and now a lonely, but independently living free entrepreneur, not only maintaining a private hotel, but also giving money in growth (having known the refined love of the master, giving him “her beauty, her fever,” she could no longer get married for a peasant), who received, as a reward for all her trials, about which “it’s a long time to talk about, sir,” freed from the second landowner (which means the estate along with the serfs was sold by Nikolai Alekseevich) pushed far aside with her spiritual essence, the honestly lived life of all secular the hero's beloved, wife and mistresses. Having received freedom, and with it the initial capital (and this fact worthily distinguishes the heroine from the general mass of serf martyrs), Nadezhda is now independent, independent, as long as she can support herself, run a business, she is respected in her community (the coachman told the master about this on his way back), she stands firmly on her feet, although she is no longer young.
Why did the author, who had been living abroad for a long time, push his heroes at the intersection of Russian roads? To convey to the reader how tangibly, interpenetratingly these two concepts are connected in the genotype of a Russian person - the nobility and the people? So that the endlessly blushing old military man can shake himself out of this shame and thus, with the help of the meeting given by fate, go through its cleansing influence? It is clear that the author, although he himself admires the fruit of his artistic imagination - His Excellency with a “beautiful elongated face with dark eyes", still slim figure military, his tall and the way he “easily ran up to the porch of the hut” - and I am ashamed of my hero, and I feel sorry for him, and I really want to help him somehow morally. One thing is certain: Bunin there, in exile, cannot live without Russia, he constantly thinks about it, it lives indestructibly in him.
In what position could Nikolai Alekseevich abandon Nadezhda? Of course, pregnant. “But, really, you abandoned me very heartlessly - how many times I wanted to lay hands on myself out of resentment alone, not to mention everything else,” - this is how Nadezhda reminds the hero in what position he left her. "Everything else" - this could be the death of an illegitimate baby adopted from a landowner, that " ordinary story", which is found in many works of Russian literature. The blood of Nikolai Alekseevich dissolved in Nadezhda. So the lordship, trampling on its people, but feeding on its juices, dissolved in it. And the Russian serf woman, breastfeeding barchats, nursing them? From infancy the future government official or military man fell asleep to her lullaby songs, it was she, the milk mother, who sometimes became his spiritual mother, from whom he took over, sucking in with her milk and songs, native language. And it was she, at the moment of his advancing manhood, who came to him in the form of a young, but full of strength, physical health, a strong, tanned village woman, pouring into him pure young energy, coming as if from the earth itself.
The fate of Hope shows the indestructible people's power, endurance, Russian love common man to creative work, the spiritual beauty and greatness of the Russian woman - to a large extent, this Nekrasov theme found a kind of refraction in the prose of I.A. Bunin.
To what court could a serf appeal? How could justice be achieved? There were no such state mechanisms for the forced Russian people, and they created their own deep philosophy of long-suffering, love and forgiveness to help them live. The characters' dialogue about forgiveness is filled with different shades of meaning. It is important for Nikolai Alekseevich to be forgiven by Nadezhda, because he does not renounce his guilt towards her, even if the years have passed. “If only God would forgive me. And you, apparently, have forgiven me,” he says “patter,” “taking out a handkerchief and pressing it to his eyes.” To which Nadezhda replies like this: “No, Nikolai Alekseevich, I didn’t forgive. Since our conversation touched on our feelings, I’ll say frankly: I could never forgive you. Just as I had nothing more precious than you in the world at that time, so it will be later.” it didn’t happen. That’s why I can’t forgive you. Well, why remember, they don’t carry the dead from the graveyard.” In Nikolai Alekseevich’s understanding, “forgive” means not holding a grudge, not getting angry, and letting go of a sin. In Nadezhda’s understanding, “forgive” means forgetting, not remembering, not remembering. How can we forget that it was so expensive? Thus, Ogarev’s theme of memory in “An Ordinary Tale” is polemically continued in its own way and refracted by Bunin in “Dark Alleys”.
Farewell scene. Nadezhda kissed Nikolai Alekseevich’s hand (a common gesture for a Russian woman in serf Russia), and he kissed her hand (we agree that this is a completely unusual gesture). It contains the hero’s plea for forgiveness, reconciliation, recognition of previously unrecognized equality, no - humble recognition of her spiritual superiority over him, gratitude for the best moments of life (as it is now clear to him) with her, for the height of the spirit.
This behavior of a Russian old nobleman, at the cost terrible mistakes, losses and disappointments who came to a new life philosophy in relation not only to the woman who gave him her feelings and youth free of charge, but in relation, in her person, to her people, puts Bunin’s hero in one of the first places in the gallery of the best male portraits not only Russian literature abroad, but also Russian literature in general.
Although the main overwhelming feeling in Nikolai Alekseevich’s further journey to St. Petersburg remains a painful feeling of shame, it, according to its spiritual laws, turns into a cleansing feeling of gratitude, freeing from the dirty layers of life, for the best, “truly magical moments” for a woman with such a deep and capacious named Nadezhda. Therefore, on the way to the train, on the Tula road, “cut with many black ruts,” Ogarev’s favorite lines come to mind for the hero: “All around the scarlet rose hips were blooming, there were dark linden alleys...”
So the poems of N.P. Ogarev, reread by I.A. Bunin, brought to life a wonderful short story and became part of amazing story the meeting of two Russian people, entwining their destinies with thorns of suffering, but also with scarlet flowers of true happiness, not bought with money, a history that would have remained “closed to people” if it had not been told to us by the author with such artistic talent.
Note that the hero drives up to the post station “in the cold autumn weather” along a road “drenched in rain,” and leaves without drinking tea from the samovar, already in the low sun, “shine yellow on the empty fields,” although the horses continue "splash smoothly through puddles." Image autumn nature Tula region is deeply artistically combined with " autumn age"of the heroes of the short story and the age of its author himself, in contrast to the "spring age" of the young people of the "Ordinary Tale", which is probably why the philosophical outline of "Dark Alleys" is so undeniably wise. And the yellow light of the already setting sun, and the measured movement of the tarantass, setting the mood for calm thoughts, and the image of an elderly, but still handsome military man with a white mustache and sideburns, “still black-browed,” who had just received a new, strong, unpredictable, but reviving lesson in life, and Nadezhda looking after him from the window of her room, and talking about the merits of the owner of the inn, the driver Klim - in all these pictures, Russia of the 50s-60s of the 19th century, a country of dark mysterious alleys and extraordinary human stories, in its slow but steady forward movement.
