Ivan Bunin is a most subtle painter of nature. Description of nature in the works of I

Composition

Few people love nature like this
knows how to do it, just like Bunin can do it. World
Bunin is a world of visual
and sound impressions.
A.A. Block

The work of the great Russian writer Ivan Alekseevich Bunin represents a special beautiful world. His stories and tales can remain in the soul for a whole century, making it more receptive to life and the beauty of nature. Native nature is a special reality in the writer’s work. Many of his inspired lines are dedicated to her - both in prose and poetry.

Throughout his life, Bunin deepened his sense of organic connection with nature in its global sense. In his works, he asserted the unique value of every minute lived by a person under open air, in the forest, in the field, on the seashore. The beauty of nature is the only value of the world.

The writer makes his readers his fellow countrymen, regardless of where they were born and live. He invites them to walk together through grain fields, dense forests, steppe roads, ravines overgrown with forest. With special love, Bunin writes about the village, about the birch and linden alleys of the estates. However, he understands that this will not last forever, he will soon die, so his works are tinged with sadness. But here the writer finds something that makes nature and man akin to each other - constant update when death is followed by rebirth.

Bunin loves Russian nature very much, but perceives it mainly through sight. He eagerly watches her, and then conveys all his thoughts and feelings in his works. His pictures of nature are bright, clear, as if he had just photographed them. Bunin notices the smallest details of the life of nature, and then conveys them to the reader. For example, he shows that in moonlit night white horses appear green, and their eyes are purple. Bunin knows many colors and colors, his work is very colorful, and this was his innovation in Russian literature.
Subject native nature always present in Bunin's work. Only over time does it change: the writer talks more and more emotionally about the trees, sky, clouds, river, etc. So, when he writes about a blizzard, he tries to convey its howl and the feeling that covers a person at the same time. Bunin can skillfully convey the howl of the wind, the rustling of leaves, and the barely audible flutter of a butterfly’s wings.

But the most amazing thing in Bunin’s works is the sense of smell. The writer himself said to himself: “I had a sense of smell that distinguished the smell of dewy burdock from the smell of damp grass.” Bunin's works convey many different smells: from the mushroom dampness of a ravine to the hot aroma of the steppes. And everywhere the writer strives for maximum accuracy. This is shown very well and colorfully in the story “Antonov Apples,” when the hero drives through the village and hears the smell of Antonov apples. This smell awakens childhood memories in him and makes him sad, because happy time long gone. And here’s how he described the smells of wormwood: “And it’s getting hotter, the warmth is blowing wider from the steppes, and the bitter wormwood is getting drier and sweeter.”

Very often Bunin turned to nature in his poems. His favorite image was the sky. The sky is a joy for him, because it is so good to look and think in it. The poet reflects in his poems about life, about man, about his destiny:

Why should I enjoy this torment?
This sky, and this ringing,
And the dark meaning with which it is full,
Fit in consonance and sounds?

Happiness for Bunin is complete merging with nature, but it is available only to those who have penetrated the secrets of nature. Nature contains the harmony to which man strives. To be natural, like nature itself, is Bunin’s ideal at all times.

Works about nature are full of purity, light, and the writer’s love. He always admires pictures of his native nature. In addition, the landscape in his works corresponds emotional state hero. Works by I.A. Bunin, showing the beauty and fragility of the natural world, teach us to love and appreciate our native nature.

An essay on a work on the topic: The main themes in the works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin - eternal themes: nature, love, death

Bunin belongs to the last generation of writers from noble estate, which is closely related to the nature of the central zone of Russia. “Few people can know and love nature as Ivan Bunin can,” wrote Alexander Blok in 1907. No wonder Pushkin Prize in 1903 it was awarded to Bunin for the poem “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 by sunset, stands an abandoned estate.” Autumn - the “quiet widow” - is in unusual harmony with empty estates and abandoned farmsteads. “The native silence torments me, the nest of my dear one torments me” 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, relatives to me in everyday life and in many of my moods , finally, just by locality - central Russia. And my desk drawers are full Antonov apples, and the healthy autumn aroma takes me to the countryside, to the estates of the landowners."

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 physical and mental, and moral life"(Vorovsksh).

Bunin writes: “The old man is lying there, dying. He is still alive - and already in Sentsy the coffin has been prepared, they are already baking pies for the funeral. And suddenly the old man recovers. Where was the coffin to go? How to justify the expenditure? They cursed Lukyan for five years, then lived with reproaches for them from the light, starved to death." And here is how Bunin describes the level of political consciousness of the peasants:

Do you know why the court came?

Judge the deputy... They say he wanted to poison the river.

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, flattered them,

The dying Russian village is framed by a dull Russian landscape: “White grain rushed askance, falling on a black, poor village, on bumpy, dirty roads, on horse manure, ice and water; the twilight fog hid endless fields,” all this great desert with its snows , forests, villages and cities - a 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 death individual person. Death turns out to be not only the solution to everything? Contradictions, but also a source of absolute, purifying power (“Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”).

Al understood Bunin's story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" more deeply than anyone else. T. Tvardovsky: “In the face of love and death, according to Bunin, the social, class, property lines that separate people are erased by themselves - everyone is equal before them. Averky from The Thin Grass dies in the corner of his poor hut: the nameless one is just dying going to have a good lunch in the restaurant of a first-class hotel on the coast of a warm sea. But death is equally terrible in its inevitability. By the way, when this most famous of Bunin's stories interpreted only in the sense of denouncing capitalism and a symbolic harbinger of its death, then they seem to lose sight of the fact that for the author the idea of ​​susceptibility and a millionaire is much more important common end, about the insignificance and ephemerality of his power in the face of the same mortal outcome for everyone."

Death, as it were, allows one 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 car and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and still 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 knock their white lumps on earth...1 - this is not life, it is a form of life, devoid of internal content. The consumer society has eradicated from itself all the human ability for Sympathy, condolences. The death of the gentleman from San Francisco is perceived with displeasure. After all, “the evening was irreparably ruined,” the owner the hotel feels guilty, 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, which means 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 hair, as if glued on, 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, the dark hold. No one thinks about the futility of life in the face of death.

Many works by I. A. Bunin and the entire cycle of stories are devoted to the theme of love." Dark alleys". “All of this book is 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 skill. Bunin glorified not platonic, but sensual love, surrounded by a romantic halo. 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 , fate: one of the lovers dies. "Mitya's Love" ends with the hero's suicide. Death here is interpreted as the only possibility of liberation from love.

One can talk endlessly about the work of Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin: his works reflect the extraordinary love of life of their author. “Kuprin’s work reflected life in all its endless diversity, not so much life as a whole, but in fragments, in a whirlwind of accidents.” The heroes of his works come to this celebration of life. “Among them are the unfortunate, among them are prostitutes, downtrodden soldiers, piss...

Russian lyrics are rich poetic images nature. Poets deified motherland, unforgettable Russian open spaces, the beauty of ordinary landscapes. I.A. Bunin was no exception. Once you fell in love with nature home country, he constantly addresses this topic in his poems, conveying unusual colors, sounds, smells of the native land. The theme of nature will become the main one for the lyricist Bunin, many poems will be dedicated to it.

I.A. Bunin captured various moments of existence in his poetry. It is important for the poet to convey the various states of nature. In the poem “April Burnt Down” bright evening…” shows a brief moment of fading of a quiet spring evening.

Bunin conveyed natural changes when “the rooks are sleeping,” “a cold twilight has fallen across the meadows,” “the holes shine with quiet water.” The reader not only feels the charm of an April evening, its special breath, but also feels that “the young, chilled black soil smells of greenery,” hears how “the cranes, calling to each other, carefully move in a crowd,” “sensitively listens to the rustling of the trees.” Everything in nature is lurking and, together with Spring itself, is “waiting for the dawn, holding its breath.” Bunin’s lines exude silence, peace, and an unforgettable feeling of the beauty of existence.

Smell plays a special role in Bunin’s poetry; the reader feels the inexplicable charm of Central Russian nature. In the poem “The fields smell like fresh herbs,” the lyrical hero catches the fragrance “from hayfields and oak groves.” The poem conveys “the cool breath of the meadows.” In nature, everything froze in anticipation of a thunderstorm, which is personified by the poet and appears to be a mysterious stranger with “crazy eyes.”

“Dusk and languor” in nature before a thunderstorm. The poet depicted a brief moment when “the distance grows dark over the fields,” “the cloud grows, covers the sun and turns blue.” Lightning resembles “a sword that flashed for an instant.” Initially, Bunin titled the poem “Under a Cloud,” but then he removed the title, since such a title does not give that full picture which the poet wanted to portray. In general, many poems by I.A. Bunin's stories about nature do not have names, since it is impossible to express the state of nature and convey sensations in two or three words lyrical hero.

The poem “It’s also cold and damp...” depicts a February landscape. IN lyrical work image given God's peace, which transforms and rejuvenates with the onset of spring: “bushes and puddles”, “trees in the bosom of the sky”, bullfinches. The last stanza is significant poetic work. The lyrical hero is attracted by the landscape that does not open,

...And what shines in these colors:

Love and joy of being.

Human feelings, dreams and desires are closely intertwined in Bunin’s poetry with images of nature. Through landscape sketches I.A. Bunin conveys complex world human soul. In the poem “Fairy Tale,” reality and fantasy are mixed, dream and reality, fairy tale and reality are inseparable from each other.

The lyrical hero dreams fairytale dream: deserted shores, Lukomorye, “pink sand”, northern sea.” A picture of a fabulous land opens before the reader. The feeling of unreality of what is happening is conveyed by epithets: “along deserted shores”, “under the wild blue seaside”, “in a remote forest”, “pink sand”, “mirror reflection of the sea”, which create a mood of mysterious expectation of a miracle.

From the final quatrain of the poem it is clear that landscape sketches of a distant desert region help the poet convey a feeling of longing, longing for his irretrievably lost youth:

I dreamed of the northern sea,

Deserted forest lands...

I dreamed of the distance, I dreamed of a fairy tale -

I dreamed of my youth.

The poetic world of I.A. Bunin is diverse, but it is the pictures of nature that reveal in his poetry inner world lyrical hero. The brightest cloudless times human life childhood is considered. It is about him that I.A. writes. Bunin his poem “Childhood”, where also through natural images conveys the feelings and experiences of the lyrical hero. The poet associates childhood with sunny summers, when “it is sweeter to breathe the dry, resinous aroma in the forest.”

The lyrical hero’s feelings of happiness and fullness of life are conveyed by the following poetic epithets, comparisons and metaphors: “wander through these sunny chambers”, “sand is like silk”, “everywhere” bright light", "the bark... is so warm, so warmed up by the sun."

I.A. Bunin is rightfully considered the singer of Russian nature. In the poet's lyrics, landscape sketches reveal the feelings, thoughts, experiences of the lyrical hero, conveying a brief moment of enchantment with the pictures of life.

Love and death are constant motifs of Bunin's poetry and prose. In the face of love and death, all social and class differences are erased. Summing up a person's life, death emphasizes the insignificance and ephemerality of the power of the gentleman from San Francisco from story of the same name Bunin, revealing the meaninglessness of his life philosophy, according to which he decides to “start life” at 58 years old. And before that, he was only busy getting rich.

And now, when it would seem that the master’s dreams of an idle, carefree life have begun to come true, he is overtaken by an accidental, absurd death. She comes as retribution to the master for his passion for selfish goals and momentary pleasures, his inability to comprehend the pettiness of his aspirations in the face of nothingness.

Second important topic creativity of I. Bunin - nature. This is a subtle instrument in the hands of a writer, she knows how to “think”, “talk”, “sad”, “rejoice”, “warn”... Such Attentive attitude to nature is partly due to the fact that he “comes from the village.”

The sky is pale from the heat,

Not a cloud in the hot azure;

The whole world seems to be closed

In a circle of sand in a bright desert.

Bunin was born in 1870 in Voronezh. He spent his childhood on his father’s estate in the Oryol province - in central Russia, where Lermontov, Turgenev, Leskov, Lev Tolstoy were born or worked. Bunin recognized himself as the literary heir of his great countrymen.

He was proud of the fact that he came from an old noble family, which gave Russia many prominent figures both in the field civil service, and in the field of art. Among the writer’s ancestors is V. A. Zhukovsky, famous poet, friend of A.S. Pushkin.

The world of Bunin's childhood was limited to his family, estate, and village. He recalled: “Here, in the deepest silence, in the summer among the grain that approached the very thresholds, and in the winter among the snowdrifts, my childhood passed, full of poetry, sad and peculiar.”

Bunin wrote his first poem at the age of eight. At the age of sixteen his first publication appeared in print, and at eighteen, having left the impoverished estate, in the words of his mother, “with one cross on his chest,” he began to earn his living through literary work.

Oh we always just remember

And happiness is everywhere. Maybe it's

This autumn garden behind the barn

And clean air flowing through the window.

In the bottomless sky with a light white edge

The cloud rises and shines. For a long time

I'm watching him... We see little, we know,

And happiness is given only to those who know.

Simultaneously with poetry, Bunin also wrote stories. He knew and loved the Russian village, to peasant labor was imbued with respect from childhood and even absorbed “an extremely tempting desire to be a man.” It is natural that rustic theme becomes common in his early prose. Before his eyes, Russian peasants and small nobles are becoming poor, the village is going bankrupt, and dying out. As his wife, V.N. Muromtseva-Bunina, later noted, his own poverty brought him benefit - it helped him deeply understand the nature of the Russian peasant.

And in prose, Bunin continued the traditions of Russian classics, using realistic images, types of people taken from life. He did not strive for external entertainment or event-driven plots. His stories contain lyrically colored paintings, everyday sketches, and musical intonations. It is clearly felt that this is the prose of a poet. He himself did not recognize the “division” at all. fiction for poetry and prose."

In pre-revolutionary criticism, Bunin was assigned the characteristic of “the singer of impoverishment and desolation of noble nests,” of estate sadness, of autumn withering. True, his “sad elegies” were considered belated by his contemporaries, since Bunin was born almost 10 years after the abolition of serfdom in 1861, and his attitude to the destruction of the world landowner's estate A. Goncharov, I. Turgenev and many other Russian poets and writers expressed it much earlier. Without witnessing cruel serf relations, Bunin idealized the past and sought to show the unity of the landowner and the peasant, their involvement in native land, national way of life, traditions. As objective and truthful, Bunin reflected the processes that took place in his contemporary life, on the eve of the first Russian revolution of 1905-1907. In this sense, the stories “Bonanza” and “Dreams” with their anti-landowner orientation deserve attention. They were published in M. Gorky’s collection “Knowledge” and were highly appreciated by A. Chekhov

The most significant work The story "The Village" (1910) became the pre-October period of Bunin's work. It reflects the life of peasants, the fate of village people during the years of the first Russian revolution. The story was written during the closest relationship between Bunin and Gorky. The author himself explained that here he sought to paint, “besides the life of the village, and a picture of all Russian life in general.”

There has never been such a heated debate about any other Bunin work as about “The Village.” Advanced criticism supported the writer, seeing the value and significance of the work "in true portrayal the life of a falling, impoverished village, in the revealing pathos of its ugly sides." At the same time, it should be noted that Bunin was unable to comprehend the events taking place from the standpoint of the advanced ideas of his time.

The story shocked Gorky, who heard in it “a hidden, muffled groan about his native land, a painful fear for it.” In his opinion, Bunin forced the “broken and shaky Russian society seriously think about the strict question - to be or not to be Russia?

The heroes of Bunin's stories and stories persistently seek, set goals for themselves and achieve them. And often it is the achieved goal that reveals its moral inconsistency, because it does not give the heroes happiness and satisfaction. This is convincingly confirmed by the story “The Cup of Life”, in which the reader is offered different variants happiness. The heroes, who fell in love with the same girl thirty years ago, stubbornly and persistently strive for their chosen goals. The official Se-lekhov, who married Sana Diesperova, became a rich man, becoming famous throughout the city for his usury. Seminarian Jordan rose to the rank of archpriest, becoming the most significant, respected and influential person in the city. Horizontov also gained fame, although he had neither wealth nor power. Endowed with extraordinary abilities and supernatural memory, he could achieve a lot, but chose the humble way teacher, having passed which “returned to his homeland and became the fairy tale of the city, striking with his appearance, his appetite, his iron constancy in habits, his inhuman calm - his philosophy.” And this philosophy was simple and consisted in using all your strength exclusively to prolong your life. To do this, Gorizontov had to give up both his scientific career and communication with women, because all this was harmful to health, and he had to strictly take care of his huge, ugly body. That is, the goal of Mandrilla (as he was nicknamed in the city) is longevity and enjoyment of it.

In whose hands is the precious cup of life? The fates of the heroes convince us that neither zoological existence, nor wealth, nor vanity can give a person true happiness. Heroes pass by what constitutes highest value human existence - love, the joy of unity with nature, harmony with the surrounding world.