The eternal theme of Bunin's life and death. Essay “The Theme of Life and Death in Prose I

The theme of love and death becomes one of the main, main themes of Bunin’s entire work.. In prose they begin to sound from the 10th year, reaching their culmination in the writer’s later works.

In the 1910s, philosophical lyrics took the main place in Bunin's poetry. Looking into the past, the writer sought to grasp certain “eternal” laws of development of a nation, peoples, humanity... The basis of Bunin’s philosophy of life in the 10s was the recognition of earthly existence as only a part of the eternal cosmic history in which the life of man and humanity is dissolved. His lyrics intensify the feeling of the fatal isolation of human life in a narrow time frame, the feeling of man’s loneliness in the world. But Bunin created his main collection of stories dedicated to love later. During these years he began work on “Dark Alleys”, before the war 6 stories were written, and in 1943 11 stories (about a third of the stories) were published in New York, and in 1946 a complete collection was published (36 stories ) in Paris. In total, the book - which Bunin considered the most perfect and defended from any attacks from criticism - contains 40 stories. Dark Alleys”, “Mitya” and even pre-revolutionary works describe love in Bunin’s understanding - a very broad concept. Stepun: Bunin’s love is two truths, spiritual, ideal love, and carnal, passionate love.

The feeling of love becomes for Bunin an expression of indelible hopes, the general tragedy of life, in which he sees, however, the only justification of existence. Love for Bunin’s heroes is “the ultimate, all-encompassing, it is the thirst to contain the entire visible and invisible world in your heart and give it to someone again” (“Brothers”). There cannot be eternal, “maximum” happiness; for Bunin it is always associated with a feeling of catastrophe, death (“Grammar of Love”, “Brothers”, “Easy Breathing”). Bunin's sense of the catastrophic nature of the world was exacerbated by the writer's growing hostility to the immorality and inhumanity of the bourgeois world order.

“Mitya’s Love” 1925- one of Bunin's most significant works. The plot is simple. The young man Mitya loves the girl Katya and is going to marry her. But the girl Katya loves theater and wants to study with the director of the theater group. Mitya is jealous and leaves for the village to clear things up. He is suffering and bored. There are no letters from Katya. Decides to forget her. He gets along with the village girls. Sleeps with Sonya. Disgust, self-loathing. The letter arrives. Katya leaves with the director. Mitya shot himself. The conflict - love-death is evident. In fact, everything is much deeper. Bunin shows subtle emotional experiences. Katya was his ideal, which she destroyed. He loved an abstract girl, he simply dreamed of ideal love. Can't survive the collapse of feelings. A clash of love and passion - Mitya doesn’t understand whether he loves Katya’s soul, her body, all together. Physical love with Sonya fails. It was too vulgar and rude for Mitya’s refined soul.

"Sunstroke" 1927 - They met in the summer, on one of the Volga ships. He is a lieutenant, She is a lovely woman. A spark runs between them. She is married. He calls her to come ashore and they spend the night in a hotel. The scene is described in detail. In the morning he asks her to stay with him, she laughs and says, well, I’ve never done this in my life and I won’t do it again. He puts her on the ship and she leaves. He returns to the hotel, but everything is not the same. Everything has changed, everything is not the same without her. He walked, wandered, dined, drank. It didn't help. When I arrived, there was her hairpin on the table. He lay down on the bed and cried. In the morning he leaves by boat. The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.

It was in love that Bunin saw the “exalted price” of life, in love, which gives the consciousness of the “acquisition” of happiness, although always unstable, lost, just as life itself is unstable in losses. The most revealing stories in this regard are "Cold Autumn", "Henry".

"Cold autumn"- a woman who loves a young man accompanies him to war. Cold evening, very cold. If they kill you, I will die too. He says don’t be upset, then you will live and come to me. He was killed a month later. She survived it. She has a daughter - she worked all her life to raise her. He says that it won’t be long - she will come to him soon. And in her life there was only that evening in the cold autumn.

"Henry"- the main character Glebov is going to the station, getting ready to leave. Says goodbye to his lover. He says no, you can’t see him off. At the station he meets Heinrich - she is a beautiful, unapproachable woman. This is a creative pseudonym, she is a journalist. He says that he is jealous, but his mistress does not pose a danger. They are traveling together. Heinrich needs to go to Austria to visit his writer-lover. She promises to break up with him. Glebov loves her and persuades her to leave for him completely. At first they go together, Heinrich does not agree, then he agrees to come. She's coming down. Glebov travels to Nice. Waiting for a telegram from her when she leaves Vienna. There has been no telegram for several days. He plays, drinks, gets angry. At the end they put a newspaper on his table - there is a note there. In Vienna, the famous journalist Heinrich was shot dead in a cafe by a writer.

Bunin's heroes are usually removed from the public sphere into the sphere of psychological relations. Possible social foundations of the conflict are reduced to the idea of fate, fate weighing on love (“Three rubles”). The hero of the story comes to the city. Resting in a hotel. He is offered to have a good time with the girl. He agrees. He thinks I’ll talk and drink tea. A shy girl, a high school student, arrives. She quickly demands three rubles and is about to undress. He undresses, as if everything is happening in a fog. It turns out that she sold her virginity for three rubles. She admits that she is an orphan, that she only has a high school dress, and she was so afraid that all she could think about was three rubles. They talked until the morning. He offered her his hand and heart. Soon they leave for mineral waters, since she began to get sick often. Three months later he dies.

"Clean Monday" The hero of the story fell in love with her, took her to restaurants and parties. One day she puts on a black dress on the eve of Clean Monday and goes with him to Novodevichy. After that, he calls her to his apartment and gives herself to him. He didn't see her again. But in 14, on Clean Monday, he travels around Moscow and cries and goes to the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery. There's a service there. And as he walks towards her, one of the nuns raises her head. The story ends a whole period of the writer’s thoughts about Russia, its destinies, and from an aesthetic point of view it was the result of his artistic quest. The mystery of the heroine’s character and the inexplicability of her behavior are associated with her initial decision to leave, having gone through the trials of life, from the world, with its temptations, on the eve of life’s cataclysms . The heroine’s departure to the monastery is internally justified by the motive of atonement for some historical apostasy, for the fact that Russia and the world “broke” from their moral foundations into rebellion and rebellion. Leading her along the path of curbing the sensual element towards patriarchy.

"Rusya" - A husband and wife travel by train and find themselves in a place where the husband was a tutor in a country estate. He remembers a love story. There was a girl there, Rusya, that is, Marusya. Beautiful, with a mole. She was modest, almost an artist. She had a crazy mother. They became friends and went boating at night. And she fell in love with him and gave herself to him. We agreed to be husband and wife. Mother found out and said - either me or him. And he left. He goes and realizes that there was no stronger feeling in his life. He speaks rudely to his wife, with whom he apparently has little in common.

You can find the following lines in Bunin's diaries that characterize his attitude towards love: in 1941, he recalls with surprise and even horror his previous attitude towards women; he says that the female body has never been described correctly, and we need to look for the right words - otherwise it turns out somehow vulgar. In other entries he questions the meaning of coitus, citing different categories with question marks. There is something divine in love, in the act of love; and you have to live to my age to understand this, indescribable, which cannot be captured in words, put on a hook; Yes, he’s not the only one, no one has really conveyed this yet,” said Bunin.

26. I. A. Bunin’s novel “The Life of Arsenyev”: the image of an autobiographical hero, genre innovation.

IN 1927-29 years B. writes the first 4 books of the novel, in 1933 - fifth, “Lika”; but the work finally took shape only in 1952 year, when it was published in New York. Then he got "Zh.A." given the Nobel Prize "for the truthful artistic talent with which he created the typical Russian character."

About the genre: this book autobiographical, but not an autobiography, which B. himself spoke about. He did not want the reader’s perception of the memory to turn the novel into a work of purely memoirs. How can you not “Zh.A.” To call it an autobiography cannot be called a novel either - it is no coincidence that B. himself put the word “novel” in quotation marks on the folder with manuscripts. K. Paustovsky wrote very coolly: “This is a thing of a new, not yet named genre. This is an ingot of all earthly sorrows, charms, reflections and joys.” Formally belonging to the genre of a novel, the work practically does not have the most important element of an epic work - a plot. "AND. A." - flood of memories author (very similar to Proust), not always chronologically ordered, popping up as if by chance. The manuscript, as it were, reflects the “course of memory” of the author, and it was the process of recollection that constituted the most important component of B.’s work on “Zh.A.” In general, B. talks about his life, but poetically transforms everything, embodying it in the substance of art. In general, B. dreamed of writing a book “about nothing,” where he would simply talk about his life, about what worried him, so he wrote it.

About the hero: autobiographical, In fact, much: his entire childhood, including the train to Yelets to buy boots, the way the boy saw the prison and the prisoner on the way back, his whole family (George - Julius, etc.), teacher Baskakov before school, the episode when he wets the rook, entering the gymnasium, life with the tradesman Byakin (Rostovtsev in the book), falling in love with Emilia Fechner (Ankhen in the book) and so on. The work in Orel is also biographical. But here falling in love with Lika, which is often compared to Pashchenko, not entirely autobiographical. Thus, Bunin’s wife Muromtsev-Bunina quotes the words of the writer that “Lika is all made up”; she embodies the “generally feminine youth.” Pashchenko was a bitch and ended up going to Bunin’s friend Bibikov, and Lika was all so understanding and died in the end.

As for Arsenyev's spiritual world, he has passion for collecting experiences and traveling, “he realizes in himself a painful, “selfish” desire not to let even the slightest impression disappear.” He has an aggravated sensitivity to everything: “...my vision was such that I saw all seven stars in the Pleiades, with my hearing a mile away I heard the whistle of a marmot in the evening field, I got drunk smelling the smell of lily of the valley or an old book.” The smallest details, fleeting visions - everything is illuminated with rare poetry precisely thanks to the unique and deeply perceiving them to the subject. Throughout the book, Arsenyev is open to the world, constantly striving to see something new, to embrace everything around him - they wrote about Bunin that he is “a man restless by nature, in his youth an eternal wanderer, always going somewhere, sometimes for no reason.” ..." And the whole book is built precisely on memories, and what is significant for memory is not the content of the episode, but intensity associated sensory experience of the world.

BUNIN I.A.

Life of Arsenyev

Alexey Arsenyev was born in the 70s. XIX century in central Russia, on his father’s estate, on the Kamenka farm. His childhood years were spent in the silence of discreet Russian nature. Endless fields with the aromas of herbs and flowers in the summer, vast expanses of snow in the winter gave rise to a heightened sense of beauty, which shaped his inner world and remained for the rest of his life. For hours he could watch the movement of clouds in the high sky, the work of a beetle entangled in ears of grain, the play of the sun's rays on the parquet floor of the living room. Ayudi came into his circle of attention gradually. His mother occupied a special place among them: he felt his “inseparability” with her. My father attracted me with his love of life, cheerful disposition, breadth of nature, and also with his glorious past (he participated in the Crimean War). The brothers were older, and in children's fun the younger sister Olya became the boy's friend. Together they explored the secret corners of the garden, the vegetable garden, the manor buildings - everywhere had its own charm.

Then a man named Baskakov appeared in the house, who became Alyosha’s first teacher. He did not have any teaching experience, and, having quickly taught the boy to write, read, and even French, he did not really introduce the student to the sciences. Its influence lay elsewhere - in a romantic attitude towards history and literature, in the worship of Pushkin and Lermontov, who captured Alyosha’s soul forever. Everything acquired in communication with Baskakov gave impetus to the imagination and poetic perception of life. These carefree days ended when it was time to enter the gymnasium. The parents took their son to the city and settled with the tradesman Rostovtsev. The situation was miserable, the environment was completely alien. Lessons in the gymnasium were conducted in a formal manner; among the teachers there were no interesting people. Throughout his high school years, Alyosha lived only with the dream of vacations, of a trip to his relatives - now in Baturino, the estate of his deceased grandmother, since his father, strapped for funds, sold Kamenka.

When Alyosha entered the 4th grade, a misfortune happened: his brother Georgy was arrested for involvement in the “socialists.” He lived for a long time under a false name, went into hiding, and then came to Baturyn, where, following a denunciation from the clerk of one of the neighbors, the gendarmes took him. This event was a big shock for Alyosha. A year later, he dropped out of high school and returned to his parents' shelter. The father scolded at first, but then decided that his son’s vocation was not service or farming (especially since the farming was in complete decline), but “poetry of the soul and life” and that, perhaps, a new Pushkin or Lermontov would emerge from him. Alyosha himself dreamed of devoting himself to “verbal creativity.” His development was greatly facilitated by long conversations with Georgy, who was released from prison and sent to Baturin under police supervision. From a teenager, Alexey turned into a young man, he matured physically and spiritually, felt the growing strength and joy of being, read a lot, thought about life and death, wandered around the neighborhood, visited neighboring estates.

Soon he experienced his first love, having met at the house of one of his relatives a young girl, Ankhen, who was staying there, and he experienced separation from whom as a true grief, which is why even the St. Petersburg magazine he received on the day of her departure with the publication of his poems did not bring real joy. But then followed light hobbies with young ladies who came to neighboring estates, and then a relationship with a married woman who served as a maid on the estate of Nikolai’s brother. This “madness,” as Alexey called his passion, ended thanks to the fact that Nikolai eventually figured out the culprit of the unseemly story.

In Alexey, the desire to leave his almost ruined home and begin an independent life was maturing more and more palpably. By this time, Georgy had moved to the stalls, and the younger brother decided to go there too. From the first day he was bombarded with many new acquaintances and impressions. George's environment was sharply different from the village. Many of the people included in it went through student circles and movements, visited prisons and exile. During the meetings, conversations boiled over about pressing issues of Russian life, the way of government and the rulers themselves were condemned, the need to fight for a constitution and a republic was proclaimed, and the political positions of literary idols - Korolenko, Chekhov, Tolstoy - were discussed. These table conversations and arguments fueled Alexey’s desire to write, but at the same time he was tormented by his inability to put it into practice.

Vague mental disorder prompted some changes. He decided to see new places, went to Crimea, was in Sevastopol, on the banks of the Donets and, having already decided to return to Baturino, on the way he stopped in Orel to look at the “city of Leskov and Turgenev.” There he found the editorial office of Golos, where he had previously planned to find a job, met editor Nadezhda Avilova and received an offer to collaborate in the publication. After talking about business, Avilova invited him to the dining room, received him at home and introduced her cousin Lika to the guest. Everything was unexpected and pleasant, but he could not even imagine what important role fate had destined for this chance acquaintance.

At first there were just cheerful conversations and walks that brought pleasure, but gradually sympathy for Lika turned into a stronger feeling. Captured by him, Alexey constantly rushed between Baturin and Orel, abandoned his studies and lived only by meetings with the girl, she either brought him closer to her, then pushed him away, then called him out again. Their relationship could not go unnoticed. One fine day, Lika’s father invited Alexei to his place and ended a rather friendly conversation with a decisive disagreement with his daughter’s marriage, explaining that he did not want to see them both wallow in need, because he realized how uncertain the young man’s position was.

Having learned about this, Lika said that she would never go against her father’s will. However, nothing has changed. On the contrary, there was a final rapprochement. Alexey moved to Orel under the pretext of working at Golos and lived in a hotel, Lika moved in with Avilova under the pretext of studying music. But little by little the difference in nature began to show itself: he wanted to share his memories of his poetic childhood, observations of life, literary passions, but all this was alien to her.

But little by little the difference in nature began to show itself: he wanted to share his memories of his poetic childhood, observations of life, literary passions, but all this was alien to her. He was jealous of her gentlemen at city balls and her partners in amateur performances. There was a misunderstanding of each other.

One day, Lika’s father came to Orel, accompanied by a rich young tanner, Bogomolov, whom he introduced as a contender for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Lika spent all her time with them. Alexey stopped talking to her. It ended with her refusing Bogomolov, but still leaving Orel with her father. Alexey was tormented by separation, not knowing how and why to live now. He continued to work at Golos, again began to write and publish what he had written, but he was tormented by the squalor of Oryol life and again decided to embark on wanderings. Having changed several cities, never staying anywhere for long, he finally couldn’t stand it and sent Lika a telegram: “I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.” They met again. Existence apart turned out to be unbearable for both.

Life together began in a small town where Georgy moved. Both worked in the zemstvo statistics department, were constantly together, and visited Baturyn. Relatives treated Lika with warmth. Everything seemed to be getting better. But the roles gradually changed: now Lika lived only by her feelings for Alexei, and he could no longer live only by her. He went on business trips, met different people, reveled in the feeling of freedom, even entered into casual relationships with women, although he still couldn’t imagine himself without Lika. She saw the changes, languished in loneliness, was jealous, was offended by his indifference to her dream of a wedding and a normal family, and in response to Alexei’s assurances of the unchangeability of his feelings, she once said that, apparently, she was something like air for him , without which there is no life, but which you don’t notice. Lika was unable to completely abandon herself and live only by what he lives, and, in despair, writing a farewell note, she left Orel.

Alexei's letters and telegrams remained unanswered until Lika's father reported that she had forbidden her to open her shelter to anyone. Alexey almost shot himself, quit his service, and didn’t show up anywhere. An attempt to see her father was unsuccessful: he was simply not accepted. He returned to Baturyn, and a few months later he learned that Aika came home with pneumonia and died very soon. It was at her request that Alexei was not informed of her death.

He was only twenty years old. There was still a lot to go through, but time did not erase this love from his memory - it remained the most significant event of his life for him.

Stories and novellas: see the text of questions No. 23-25.

Village (1909-1910)

Part I: Once upon a time there lived the Krasovs’ great-grandfather, who was nicknamed the Gypsy. His master hunted him down with greyhounds because he beat off his mistress. The Krasovs’ grandfather received his freedom, went to the city with his family and became a thief. The Krasovs’ parent was a small-time thief, he opened a shop in Durnovka, went bankrupt, took to drinking and died. His sons, Tikhon and Kuzma, also traded for some time, but one day they almost cut each other with knives and decided to separate.

About Tikhon: He opened a tavern and a shop not far from Durnovka, lived with a cook who crushed their child in her sleep, and then married the maid. He became rich and bought the Durnovs' estate. His wife Nastasya Petrovna could not give birth, Tikhon was terribly upset. One lean summer, returning from the fair, Tikhon drove through the Black Settlement, where he spent his childhood. He went to an old cemetery, the inscriptions on the graves seemed deceitful to him. He travels further, meets different people, and gets angrier and angrier. When he turned off the main road, he thought that the main thing was “business” - poverty was everywhere, everyone was broke, and an owner was needed. All of Tikhon’s working days merged into one; the Japanese War and the Revolution became major events. When they began to say that they would take away land from those who had more than five hundred acres, the attitude towards the revolution changed. One day a certain “order” came out and a rumor spread that a riot was being prepared in Durnovka. Tikhon went there, they pressed him to their estate and said that an order had been issued to drive away the outside farm laborers and let the locals take over their work. But the riot ended with the men shouting and destroying several estates. There were also rumors that the Durnovites wanted to kill Tikhon. Tikhon had already turned 50, but his dream of a child still did not leave him. And so he ran into Rodka, who had a beautiful young wife. This young woman had eyelashes that worried Tikhon, and she was beautiful even with “horns” on her head - braids on her head. And then somehow Tikhon approaches the young woman and says that you will wear silk scarves. The young woman did not answer. Afterwards, Tikhon hired the young woman and Rodka to live in his house. Well, Tikhon did not lose his temper in his house and “took control” of Molodoy. Tikhon already had thoughts that Rodka would be run over somewhere, but several months passed and Young did not become pregnant. And he decided to drive Rodka away. It was then that he unexpectedly confronted his brother Kuzma and persuaded him to take control of Durnovka. Kuzma seems to have published his book of poems. Next, a heart-to-heart conversation with my brother about the Russian people, about the church. What follows is nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. Here Tikhon sits and thinks that he doesn’t know his wife well, what kind of person he is. And there is no need to describe his life - there is nothing to say. If his children had not saved his life, he would have been a stranger to them, just like everyone close to him.

Part II About Kuzma . How all his life he dreamed of studying and writing. He wanted to talk about his poverty. His story is the story of all self-taught people. He was born in a country that has over 100 million illiterate people. His neighbor, a galosh filler, taught him and his brother to read and write, and only because he never had a job. I began to write - first a story about a merchant who was killed by robbers, about his dying thoughts and prayers. The bazaar ridiculed him and said how could he know what the merchant was thinking. Then he wrote a song and a knight, who bequeathed a horse to his son. Baar made fun of him again and said that he would rather write about the war. And Kuzma, imitating market taste, began to write about the war. After the death of his mother, he sold the shop, was engaged in trading and loitered, loitered. And he languished that his life was disappearing. Kuzma kept thinking that he needed to write about the people, about the village. The story of the old man Sukhonosov from the suburbs, who lived with one mattress, soiled with bedbugs, and a cloak—an inheritance from his wife—couldn’t get out of his head. He begged, he was sick, he was hungry, he valued his inheritance, he wanted to sell it because he thought it was worth a lot, but he charged such a price that he scared away all the buyers. I traveled first to Voronezh, then to Kyiv. As a result, when he suffered a couple of heart attacks, he decided to quit drinking and lead a working life. Kuzma wanders, looks at the poor lands, remembers his childhood and his father, and Gogol’s exclamation comes to him: “Rus, Rus'! Where are you rushing?" He wandered around until they brought him a note from Kuzma and he moved to Durnovka.

Part III. Kuzma becomes ill, falls ill, and then comes to Tikhon and begins to talk about lazy people, liars, which all Durnovites are. Tikhon says that he is reading a missal. He says that his life was lost, that he had a scoundrel to whom he gave a scarf, she put it on inside out, saved it for the holiday, and when the holiday came, she saw that she had worn it to rags - that’s how Tikhon lived his life. Wedding of Young and Deniska. Kuzma was very upset because he believed that their marriage was nonsense. The story ends with their wedding in the church, how awkward everyone feels.

Loneliness.

Poems about unhappy love. The images of nature correspond to the mood of the main character, whose beloved left him, having stopped loving him. Wind, rain, life died until spring (the time of revival of feelings, love). The trail of the departed woman filled with water, as if with the tears of a hero. Seeing how love leaves him, the hero’s heart is full of pain and groaning:

“Come back, I have become close to you!”

But for a woman there is no past:

She fell out of love and became a stranger to her.

Well! I'll light the fireplace and drink...

It would be nice to buy a dog.

Night.

The poem is dedicated to the feeling of love, as an eternal feeling passing through time. Love will never change or die, it will always live in the hearts of people. Let generations change, but love will be reborn in new people with the same force. The lyrical hero rejoices at the eternity and immutability of feelings, he is pleased that it unites all people. “I am looking for in this world a combination of the Beautiful and the Eternal.” The starry night sky and the seashore unite the hero and his beloved with the lovers who lived before them and also admired this sky

“Like me now, myriads of eyes watched

Their ancient path. And in the depths of centuries

Everyone for whom they shone in the darkness,

Disappeared in it like a footprint among the sands:

There were many of them, tender and loving,

And girls, and boys, and wives,

Nights and stars, transparent silver

Euphrates and Nile, Memphis and Babylon!

He loves, and is happy that this feeling unites him with distant times and previously loved people. Love is glorified as a feeling that unites and reconciles all people.

“I love her for the happiness of merging

In the same love with the love of all times!

Sapsan 1905

A poem about how a lonely hero shot a peregrine falcon, and then it began to seem to him that someone was pouring poison into his room and trying to poison him, and even things began to disappear

"And here comes to me

The guest began to walk. He's up until dawn

He wanders around the house in the moonlight.

I haven't seen him. I heard

Just the crunch of steps. But I can’t sleep.”

Frightened, he went out into the field to find out whether it seemed to him or not. A sad night, a cold moon, footprints in the snow, deserted fields, dead silence. The hero is lonely and only his own silent shadow follows him.

"Who was he, this midnight

An invisible guest? Where is he from

Comes to me at the appointed time

Through the snowdrifts to the balcony?

Or did he find out that I was sad,

Am I alone? what's in my house

Only snow and the sky on a silent night

Looking from the garden in the moonlight?

While wandering through the fields, the hero sees Sapsan. He is lonely and the feeling of love is also alien to him. He is lonely, gray-haired, googly, abandoned. Scary and Incomprehensible.

Like a force incarnate

That Will, that at the midnight hour

Fear united us all -

And she made us enemies.

Evening

The poem is dedicated to the elusiveness of happiness. “We always only remember about happiness. And happiness is everywhere.” It lasts only a moment, and often a person thinks that happiness is gone and does not appreciate what he has, but this, perhaps, is happiness.

“We see little, we know little, And happiness is given only to those who know.” But the hero tries to appreciate every moment of life, he admires nature, enjoys life and its flow

“I see, I hear, I’m happy. Everything is in me."

THE LAST BUMBLE

The poem is dedicated to the transience of time. The hero thinks about the transience of time, the instantaneity of happiness. Summer is leaving, like a warm feeling of unity with nature, the hero is sad, he knows that everything passes sooner or later and is a little envious of the carelessness of the bumblebee, joyfully flying on warm days.

“It is not given to you to know human thoughts,

That the fields have long been empty,

That soon a gloomy wind will blow into the weeds

Golden dry bumblebee!

WORD

But it’s simply a mockery to shorten this poem:

The tombs, mummies and bones are silent, -

Only the word is given life:

From ancient darkness, on the world graveyard,

Only the Letters sound.

And we have no other property!

Know how to take care

At least to the best of my ability, in days of anger and suffering,

Our immortal gift is speech.

Leaf fall 1900

A wonderful example of the fact that Bunin really was a virtuoso in depicting nature. Having read “Falling Leaves,” one involuntarily recalls the lines from the poem “Autumn” by Pushkin, which for Bunin was an ideal in poetry to which one should strive.

"It's a sad time! Ouch charm!

I am pleased with your farewell beauty

I love the lush decay of nature,

Forests dressed in scarlet and gold,

Your farewell beauty is pleasant to me...", etc.

Bunin says this:

“The forest is like a painted tower,

Lilac, gold, crimson,

A cheerful, motley wall

Standing above a bright clearing."

Bunin conveys the smells of the autumn forest (oak, pine), over the summer the forest dried up from the sun, autumn comes into its own. Summer is not over yet: the cobwebs glisten with dew, the last moth flies.

“Today it’s so bright all around,

Such dead silence

In the forest and in the blue heights,

What is possible in this silence

Hear the rustle of a leaf.

This calm is not accidental, like before a disaster or bad weather.

“Last moments of happiness!

Autumn already knows what he is

Deep and silent peace -

A harbinger of long bad weather."

It is gradually getting colder, the thicket is dying. The silence is now different, growing, frightening. The sun shines less, the shadows are shorter. Damp fog, dead autumn night, even the owl is silent.

The forest is numb, the wolf's eyes glow with terrible green fire.

“The forest is like a tower without a watcher,

Everything has darkened and faded..."

The leaves are flying away, the first snow has fallen and melted. Rain. Birds fly away for the winter. Autumn is already passing, the earth is covered in frosty silver. Autumn flies away after the birds.

“Sorry, forest! Sorry, goodbye,

The day will be gentle, good,

And soon soft powder

The dead edge will turn silver."

Winter will come soon and everything will be covered with frost and snowdrifts. The author in the poem talks about the eternal cycle of nature, solemnly occurring at all times.

UDC 821.161.1

Voronezh State University of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Ass. Department of Russian Language and Intercultural Communication Popova Yu.S.

Russia, Voronezh, tel. + 79202262368 e-mail: [email protected]

Voronezh State Architecture and Construction university

The chair of Russian Language and Cross-cultural communication, assistant Popova Y.S.

Russia, Voronezh, + 79202262368 e-mail: [email protected]

Yu.S. Popova

“IS THERE A MEANING IN LIFE THAT IS NOT DESTROYED BY DEATH?”

(LIFE AND DEATH IN THE PROSE OF I.A. BUNINA)

Ontological issues are one of the most important for I.A. Bunin, interest in her can be traced throughout his creative career. From this point of view, the story "The Cup of Life" is key. In it I.A. Bunin sums up his thoughts. The article examines the writer's idea of the meaning of human existence on earth. Spatial and temporal dominants are identified that reveal the main theme of the work.

Key words: life, death, prose, Bunin.

"IS THERE IN THE LIFE A SENSE WHICH IS NOT DESTROYED BY DEATH?"

(THE LIFE AND DEATH IN I.A. BUNIN'S PROSE)

The ontological problematics - one of the major for I.A. Bunin, interest to it is traced on all extent of its creative way. From this point of view the story “The Bowl of a life” is key. In it I.A. Bunin sums up to the reflections. In clause representation of the writer about the sense of existence of the person on the ground is considered. Spatial and time dominants which open the basic subjects of product come to light.

Keywords: life, death, prose, Bunin.

The work of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin enjoys worldwide recognition, and interest in his original personality and his works continues. The phenomenon of his creativity has one peculiarity. He began his literary journey when I.A. lived and worked. Goncharov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A.P. Chekhov, L.N. Tolstoy; continuing to create during the times of I.E. Babel, A.P. Platonova, M.A. Bulgakov. Judgments about I.A. Bunin are polar. For some, he passed by the searches of his time, for others he was sharply modern; but for everyone - a writer going his own way. For some he is passionate, for others he is aristocratically cold. Any of the interpretations is easily confirmed in his artistic heritage. All because he is interested in extreme points: life and death, happiness and suffering, past and present. He either compares them or separates them. Ivan Bunin was dissatisfied with those critics who were in a hurry to classify him among “some kind of idyllics and contemplators.” He always had a negative attitude towards the desire to attribute him to one or another literary movement.

Features of I.A.’s creativity Bunina accurately noted L.V. Krutikova: “Understanding... the personality and work of Ivan Bunin, a great Russian artist, is not an easy task.

And not only because his bright personality, rare talent and long life often evoke opposite judgments and assessments... The most acute contradictions and conflicts of Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries were refracted in the fate and books of Bunin. And they refracted sharply individually, uniquely.”

I.A. Bunin is constantly drawn to look beyond the horizon of life. He strives to solve for himself the “eternal,” “primordial” problems that constantly trouble him. His works are deeply personal, gravitating toward philosophical generalizations about the meaning of existence, life and death, and the continuous flow of time. Similar questions arise in the writer’s works constantly, and he answers them in different ways, without offering any unambiguous solution.

Interest in “eternal questions” can be traced already at an early stage of the writer’s work. “Pines” is a story about the death and funeral of the hunter Mitrofan, “Meliton” is a story about the ancient old man Meliton, standing on the threshold of death and ready for it at any moment. Death appears here in all its menacing, terrible and great mystery. The deceased Mitrofan, who is now “called a dead man, a being of another world alien to us,” becomes important and serious. And death itself “passed through the forests as something large and dark.” I.A. Bunin speaks with reverence about the Christian funeral rite. Meliton is mysterious, strict and stern, almost iconographic. Both heroes are united by a calm attitude towards death. To this tormented I.A. all her life. Bunin's problem: how to free yourself from the fear of death, how to find meaning in death and how to justify it - he will return many times in his stories. But in his further work, the main tone of the stories changes from thoughtfully melancholic to tragic. The tragedy can be explained by external reasons, which undoubtedly influenced I.A. Bunina. These are events in public (1905) and personal life (the death of his son). In understanding this topic, new intonations and new accents appear: pronounced philosophical issues, a sense of the tragedy of existence, but at the same time the ability to fully feel life.

Willingness to calmly face death, to come to terms with the inevitable - this measure I.A. Bunin evaluates human personality. He measures the value of a person by his ability to enjoy life, the measure of “surprise” in front of it, the ability to perceive the beauty and fullness of being.

The result for the creativity of I.A. Bunin is the story “The Cup of Life” (1913), where the writer reveals to us his idea of the meaning of human existence on earth, of its transience.

Researcher L.A. Smirnova notes three main periods in a person’s life: the tremulous glow of a dream, the monotonous fulfillment of duties prepared by fate, and summing up the results of the path already traveled. The four main characters: Alexandra Vasilievna, Selikhov, Iordansky, Gorizontov, spent their lives in exactly this way. I.A. Bunin writes about their youth, then about the period when the main part of life’s journey has already been completed and the heroes find themselves on the verge of death. The author devotes only one chapter to the depiction of the time of youth, illuminated by the expectation of happiness and love. The main part of the work shows how the hopes of the heroes disappear.

Alexandra Vasilyevna is a character who connects the characters in the plot; it is around her memories that the author’s narrative unfolds. As if by accident, Sanya marries Selikhov, who is unloved and does not love her. And then throughout her life she remembers that happy summer that happens in the life of every girl. And when her husband dies, Alexandra Vasilievna unexpectedly experiences “spring tenderness” for the deceased. Towards the end of her life, she feels that life was mundane and monotonous: “And days after days passed, years after years.”

The rest of the heroes do not remember their past, do not think about the future. Time seems to pass by them. They don’t think about death either. Selikhov, as if as a joke, draws up a will. This is a habitual pastime for him. Father Kir, like Selikhov, does not reflect on his life and to Gorizontov’s question: “...why do you live?” does not give an answer. The only dispute between the former rivals, which touched specifically on death, showed that both Selikhov and the priest see death as the end of all existence. Father Cyrus wants to gain the most important advantage over his enemy - to see him off on his final journey. Gorizontov's goal in life is longevity. Caring only about his body, he does not think about death or the soul.

Four heroes, outwardly separated by enmity, jealousy, and contempt, are actually merged into one life. Each hero's existence makes sense to them as long as the others are alive. The death of one leads to the devaluation of the lives of others. Selekhov dies - and Father Cyrus has no reason to live, no one to compete with. After the death of her husband, Alexandra Vasilievna realizes that she has lost her “taste for life.” She feels more acutely than others the exhaustion of the years she has lived and realizes their uselessness: “She felt with sadness that she had nothing to pray for. Only about the kingdom of heaven? Yes, but what rights did she have over him? What did she do? Why was she rewarded?” . Horizons is the last one who thinks he holds the cup of life. In the understanding of this hero, the cup of life is his own body. His rationalism, complacency, self-confidence and mania for longevity completely exclude any spirituality. After all the deaths, Gorizontov feels like a winner, since he prolonged his existence the longest. But the death of those with whom fate connected him showed the aimlessness of his own life.

I.A. Bunin convincingly determines the reasons for the mental collapse of his heroes. “They spent all their strength on competition in achieving fame, prosperity and honor,” on mutual contempt and offensive indifference towards their wives; Alexandra Vasilievna - for the fruitless regret of a youth passed without love, Horizons - for “nourishing and refreshing with water” her body. The flawed fate of the heroes appears as a result of the inability of any of them to realize their potential.

In “The Cup of Life” the motive of the characters’ dependence on the atmosphere of the city of Streletsk is widely represented, where “every official, every tradesman, every shoemaker” had the “cherished desire” to have his own home, where there were bourgeois children - “impudent loafers”, old women - fans of the holy fool Yasha . Everything in Streletsk is insignificant - from the “philosopher” Gorizontov to the “saint Yasha”. Life in the city, flowing according to certain laws, turns out to be not subject to change.

An interesting concept is put forward by researcher I. Nichiporov. He notes that the existence of the heroes is based on a semi-conscious desire to strengthen themselves in existence (social position for Selikhov and Father Kir, the dream of Alexandra Vasilievna’s house, Gorizontov’s “philosophy of life”). “Chronotopic images-leitmotifs” acquire symbolic significance: “The sandy street on which the heroes live marks the fragility and unrootedness of their living space; This semantics is also important when they are likened to “slivers” that have lost their integrity in the flow of time.” In this series is the cross-cutting image of dust-oblivion, which unfolds into a generalizing vision of the ailments of national existence; and the general isolation of Streletsk, who used to “be. simpler and more spacious, as well as the Selikhov house.” This is the feeling of time mercilessly passing, despite Selikhov’s “stopping” of the clock.

The writer wanted to call the work “House”, since it is its space that is of great importance. For Selikhov and Father Kir, the house becomes a means to prove their superiority over others. Both houses were special, keeping the imprint of their

owners. The Selikhov house is comfortable, convenient, but its winter frames were never removed, and the furniture was in covers. Such is the owner - a rich moneylender, “neat, calm and bloodless.” The house of Father Cyrus “... was far visible along the wide street,” only behind its roof “... were the green tops of young poplars,” the gates were always locked, the gateway was lined with heavy timber, as if emphasizing the corpulence, rudeness and severity of the priest. For Alexandra Vasilievna, having her own home was her only desire; hopes for a quiet life were associated with it. Home was the goal and meaning of existence. When he came into her possession, the heroine realized that her life was over. A house, like a city, exists outside of time: owners change, they live and die in it, but it remains unchanged. The motive of hopeless constancy is also confirmed by the motive of childlessness. The heroes have no continuation of life (children), which indicates the wrongness of the chosen path.

One cannot but agree with the opinion of Yu. Maltsev, who claims that the main character of the story is invisible time with its universal and merciless laws. The invisibility of time is emphasized by the very structure of the story - the passage of time is not traced in chronological evolution, life is presented in the story as the immobility of equally spaced segments of existence separated by years, traces of past time lying in the same plane.

Death, therefore, for IA. Bunin is no less significant and mysterious than life. It reveals the meaning of existence not only of the person who is dying, but also of others whose destinies were merged with him into a single “cup of life.”

“A heightened sense of life” is the primary principle of the entire world of IA. Bunin, the core, his concept of life. The image of heightened life - with its unresolved tension, its undimming brightness, the high intrinsic value of any moment, the absence of emptiness - dominates the writer’s entire world.

Bibliography

1. Bunin: pro et contra: personality and creativity of IA. Bunin in the assessment of Russian and foreign thinkers and researchers: Anthology / [comp. and ed. B.V. Averin, D. Riniker, K.V. Stepanov]. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001. 1061 p.

2. Bunin IA. Collected works in nine volumes. M.: Fiction,

3. Krutikova L.V. Prose of Ivan Bunin of the twentieth century // Philological sciences. 1971. Issue. 76. pp. 96-118.

4. Maltsev Yu.V. Ivan Bunin. M.: Posev, 1994. 432 p.

5. Nichiporov I. Poetry is dark, inexpressible in words. M.: Metafora, 2003. 255 p.

6. Slivitskaya O.V. The feeling of death in Bunin’s world // Russian literature. 2002. No. 1. P.64-78.

7. Smirnova LA. Realism by Ivan Bunin. M.: RSUH, 1984. 93 p.

1. Bunin: pro et contra: Bunin's person and creativity in an estimation of Russian and foreign thinkers and researchers: the Anthology / . Spb.: RGHI, 2001. 1061 p.

2. Bunin I.A. ^collected works in nine volumes. M.: Fiction, 1966.

3. Krutikova L.V. Ivan Bunin's Prose of XX century // Philological sciences. 1971. V. 76. Pp. 96-118.

4. Maltsev Y.V. Ivan Bunin. M.: Crop, 1994. 432 p.

5. Nichiporov I. Poetry is dark, in words is inexpressible... M.: Metaphor, 2003. 255 p.

6. Slivitskaya O.V. Feeling of death in Bunin's world // The Russian literature. 2002. No. 1. Pp. 64-78.

7. Smirnova L A. Realism of Ivan Bunin. M.: RGGU, 1984. 93 p.

The theme of life and death becomes one of the main ones in Bunin’s work during the First World War. The contradictions of social life are reflected in heightened oppositions between the basic principles of existence - life and death. During these years, two collections of stories were published from the writer’s pen - “The Cup of Life” (1915) and “The Gentleman from San Francisco” (1916).

For Bunin, the expression of unfulfilled hopes and the general tragedy of life becomes the feeling of love, in which he sees, however, the only justification of existence. This idea of love as the highest value of life will become the main pathos of the emigrant period of the writer’s work.

Love for Bunin’s heroes is “the ultimate, all-encompassing, it is the thirst to contain the entire visible and invisible world in your heart and give it to someone again” (“Brothers”). Eternal, “maximum” happiness cannot exist; in Bunin it is always associated with a feeling of catastrophe, death (“Grammar of Love”, “Chang’s Dreams”). In the story “Grammar of Love” the author talks about the eternal, extraordinary beauty and great power of human feeling , which is so incompatible with the coming “general brutality and savagery.” The love of Bunin’s heroes contains something divinely incomprehensible and at the same time fatal, unrealizable (“Autumn”). The story “Son” is dedicated to the theme of love as an absorbing passion leading to death and destruction.

In the story “Mr. from San Francisco,” Bunin paints a picture of the life of a steamship. The bustle of the salons is just an imitation of life, a game of it, as deceitful as the game of love of a young couple hired by a shipping company to entertain bored passengers. The author shows that bourgeois society does not live, but exists, since it is not familiar with true human feelings, experiences, and suffering. And therefore this life is insignificant in the face of death - “return and eternity.” This is confirmed by the oblivion to which they betrayed the deceased millionaire, before whom they just recently scraped and bowed with tender smiles, to whom they strove to get to a reception, and now his body is being carried in the hold of a ship and no one cares about him, no one mourns his death. Death equalizes everyone; for it there are no class differences and privileges. And this is the highest law of existence, which people in the bourgeois world, striving for accumulation, have forgotten about. What's next? After death, all such actions turn out to be empty, unnecessary, they do not even provide a memory of the person at least for some time.

In the later emigrant period of creativity, the theme of death and its secrets is fatally connected with the theme of love. Bunin sees the “exalted price” of life in love, which gives the consciousness of acquiring happiness, which is as unstable as life itself (“Sunstroke”, “Natalie”, “In Paris”, “Cold Autumn”). Bunin's heroes are usually removed from the sphere of social relations into the sphere of psychological ones. Even the social foundations of the conflict are reduced to the idea of fate, fate weighing on love (“Three Rubles”). The heroes of the book “Dark Alleys,” despite their external diversity, are characterized by a single isolation from the social environment, internal tragic emptiness, and lack of “price of life.” They have no future, the endings of the stories are tragic.

Thus, the philosophical concept of the tragedy and instability of life and love, the constant pressure on them of fate, fate, death, is one of the leading ones in Bunin’s work and is especially strengthened in the late emigrant period. There is no doubt that the formation of such a worldview was influenced by the author’s personal fate, his nostalgia for Russia, isolation from the land that he loved “to the point of heartache” and which for him receded into the realm of memories.

The question raised by Bunin is undoubtedly relevant for modern life. How modern people now strive to preserve their humanity, to follow “eternal truths” in life and to think about the meaning of life not only within the limits of tomorrow, but in relation to the entire period of our stay on earth. Don't we sometimes remind ourselves of the heroes from Bunin's story "The Gentleman from San Francisco"?

From the great to the funny, as we know, there is only one step: the comic is separated from the cosmic by a single consonant. The situation is similar with the words “life” and “death”. Death for Bunin is existence, timeless, metaphysical. “Life” is everyday life, mundaneness, existence within a narrow earthly framework. “Life” was traditionally interpreted negatively in Russian culture, while “Death” was placed on a pedestal (“physical” Helen Bezukhova - and “spiritual” Natasha Rostova, “dead souls” of Gogol’s landowners - and inspired prophecies about the fate of Russia in the author’s lyrical deviations).

“Death” and “Life” were perceived as antonyms - however, this is where difficulties began: Akaki Akakievich’s overcoat “threw” him into eternity, and Anna Karenina’s red handbag turned out to be a sign of future non-existence. Opposites ceased to be incompatible. Let us now see how these concepts “act” in a work not of the 19th century, but of the beginning of the 20th century. - I. Bunin’s story “Mr. from San Francisco.”

The first thing that attracts attention in the story is the huge number of things, substantive details - this is why the story cannot be read quickly. Moreover, if in the works of the last century each detail had its own function, “worked” for a certain idea, then here things and objects are absolutely self-sufficient, existing “just like that”, on their own. Doesn’t such a “dictate of things” destroy other, eternal values? Doesn't such density of everyday life obscure the meaning of existence?

No, that's not happening. Despite the huge number of minute details (the gentleman’s golden fillings and ivory-colored bald head, the pink soup in the hotel, the prince’s patent leather, etc.), the overall picture of the world does not turn out to be split, fragmented, or disintegrating into individual elements. Close-up and long plans constantly replace each other. Life is balanced by the eternal.

Numerous details in Bunin's story are not simply and not only signs of everyday life as something limited and mundane. By lovingly collecting things, Bunin seems to want to preserve the matter of the world, the “fabric of life,” to retain the sounds of existence in things. There is an aestheticization of the thing: pink soup, emerald lawns, white lumps of pigeons, flowery waves - all these details seem to pass from life to the painting of the artist, who captured and thereby forever preserved the unique charm and beauty of the world. “Life” becomes the “keeper of antiquities” - it preserves the eternal and reveals it to the world.

In the story “Mr. from San Francisco,” it is generally impossible to draw a clear line between the eternal and the “material.” There are, as it were, two coordinate systems, two dimensions, two times. One is the time of human life, narrow and limited, unidirectional and irreversible. The other is the time of eternity, space and nature, it always exists, it is endless. Thus, any reproducible detail, detail, thing simultaneously exists in two dimensions. In the first it is an ordinary object image, in the second it is a symbol, a sign of eternity.

For example, the steamship Atlantis, carrying wealthy travelers, can be transformed under the writer’s pen from an ordinary means of transportation into a symbol of human life, into a reminder of the fate of ancient civilizations.

Thus, any thing “read” in the system of infinite time becomes a symbolic image inexhaustible in its depth - Life turns into Death. And it becomes clear to us that in real life rigid, unambiguous assessments are not applicable; it is impossible to clearly divide the world into good and evil, understandable and incomprehensible, high and low. In this world, everything is unpredictable, one thing constantly turns into another, and a parrot falling asleep in a cage “with its paw absurdly lifted up on the top pole” may turn out to be more important than the death of an American millionaire.

Bunin belongs to the last generation of writers from a noble estate, which is closely connected with the nature of central Russia. “Few people can know and love nature like Ivan Bunin can,” wrote Alexander Blok in 1907. It was not for nothing that the Pushkin Prize in 1903 was awarded to Bunin for his collection of poems “Falling Leaves,” glorifying Russian rural nature. In his poems, the poet connected the sadness of the Russian landscape with Russian life into one inseparable whole. “Against the background of a golden iconostasis, in the fire of falling leaves, gilded

At sunset, an abandoned estate appears.” Autumn - the “quiet widow” - is in unusual harmony with empty estates and abandoned farmsteads.
“I am tormented by my native silence, I am tormented by the nests of my native desolation.” Bunin’s stories, which are similar to poetry, are also imbued with this sad poetry of withering, dying, desolation. Here is the beginning of his famous story “Antonov Apples”: “I remember an early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness... ”
And this smell of Antonov apples accompanies him in all his wanderings and in the capitals of the world as a memory of his Motherland: “But in the evenings,” writes Bunin, “I read old poets, close to me in everyday life and in many of my moods, and finally, simply in the area, – central Russia. And the drawers of my table are full of Antonov apples, and the healthy autumn aroma transports me to the countryside, to the landowners’ estates.”
Along with the degeneration of the noble nests, the village is also degenerating. In the story “The Village,” he describes the courtyard of a rich peasant family and sees “darkness and dirt” - both in physical, mental, and moral life.” Bunin writes: “The old man is lying there, dying. He is still alive - and already in Sentsy the coffin has been prepared, pies are already being baked for the funeral. And suddenly the old man gets better. Where was the coffin to go? How can you justify spending? Lukyan was then cursed for five years for them, lived with reproaches from the world, and starved to death.” And here is how Bunin describes the level of political consciousness of the peasants:
– Don’t you know why the court came?
- Judge the deputy... They say he wanted to poison the river.
- A deputy? Fool, is this really what deputies do?
- And the plague knows them...
Bunin's point of view on the people is polemically pointed against those lovers of the people who idealized the people and flattered them. The dying Russian village is framed by a dull Russian landscape: “White grain rushed obliquely, falling on a black, poor village, on bumpy, dirty roads, on horse manure, ice and water; the twilight fog hid the endless fields, this entire great desert with its snows, forests, villages and cities, the kingdom of hunger and death...” The theme of death will receive varied coverage in Bunin’s work. This is both the death of Russia and the death of an individual. Death turns out to be not only the destroyer of all contradictions, but also a source of absolute, purifying power (“Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”).
Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” was understood more deeply by Alexander Tvardovsky: “In the face of love and death, according to Bunin, the social, class, and property lines that separate people are erased by themselves - before them everyone is equal. Averky from “The Thin Grass” dies in the corner of his poor hut:
An unnamed gentleman from San Francisco dies just after getting ready to have a good lunch in the restaurant of a first-class hotel on the warm sea coast. But death is equally terrible in its inevitability. By the way, when this most famous of Bunin’s stories is interpreted only in the sense of denouncing capitalism and a symbolic harbinger of its death, they seem to lose sight of the fact that for the author the idea of the millionaire’s exposure to the common end, of the insignificance and ephemerality of his power in the face of the same death outcome for everyone.”
Death, as it were, allows us to see a person’s life in its true light. Before physical death, the gentleman from San Francisco suffered spiritual death. “Until the age of 58, his life was devoted to accumulation. Having become a millionaire, he wants to get all the pleasures that money can buy. He thought of holding the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at this time the most selective society flocks, where some enthusiastically indulge in automobile and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and others in shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from cages over the emerald lawn, against the backdrop of a sea the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately hit the ground in white lumps - this is not life, this is a form of life devoid of internal content. The consumer society has erased from itself all the human ability for Sympathy and condolences. The death of the gentleman from San Francisco is perceived with displeasure, because “the evening was irreparably ruined,” the hotel owner feels guilty, and gives his word that he will take “all measures in his power” to eliminate the trouble. Money decides everything: guests want to have fun for their money, the owner does not want to lose profit. This explains the disrespect for death, and therefore the moral decline of society, dehumanization in its extreme manifestation.
The deadness of bourgeois society is symbolized by “a thin and flexible pair of hired lovers: a sinfully modest girl with drooping eyelashes, with an innocent hairstyle, and a tall young man with black, as if glued-on hair, pale with powder, in the most elegant patent leather shoes, in narrow, long coattails, tailcoat - a handsome man, looking like a huge leech.”
And no one knew how tired this couple was of pretending to be in love. And what stands underneath them, at the bottom of the dark hold. No one thinks about the futility of life in the face of death. Many of I. A. Bunin’s works and the entire cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” are devoted to the theme of love. “All the stories in this book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys,” Bunin wrote in one of his letters. Bunin himself considered this book the most perfect in craftsmanship. Bunin sang not platonic, but sensual love, surrounded by a romantic aura. Love, in Bunin’s understanding, is contraindicated in everyday life, any duration, even in a desired marriage; it is an insight, “sunstroke”, often leading to death. He describes love in all its states, where it barely dawns and will never come true (“Old Port”), and where it languishes unrecognized (“Ida”), and where it turns into passion (“The Killer”). Love captures all thoughts, all spiritual and physical potentials of a person - but this state cannot last long. So that love does not fizzle out, does not exhaust itself, it is necessary to part - and forever. If the heroes themselves do not do this, then fate intervenes in their lives: one of the lovers dies. The story “Mitya’s Love” ends with the hero’s suicide. Death here is interpreted as the only possibility of liberation from love.

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Essay on literature on the topic: Nature, love, death in the works of Ivan Bunin

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