The theme of the work is Clean Monday. The history of the creation of the story “Clean Monday” I

In 1937, Ivan Bunin began work on his best book. The collection “Dark Alleys” was first published after the end of World War II. This book is a collection of short tragic love stories. One of Bunin's most famous stories is “Clean Monday”. An analysis and summary of the work is presented in today's article.

"Dark alleys"

The analysis of Bunin’s “Clean Monday” should begin with a brief history of the creation of the work. This is one of the last stories included in the collection “Dark Alleys”. Bunin completed work on the work “Clean Monday” on May 12, 1944. The story was first published in New York.

The writer was probably pleased with this essay. After all, in his diary, Bunin wrote: “I thank God for the opportunity to create Clean Monday.”

Bunin, in each of his works included in the collection “Dark Alleys,” reveals to the reader the tragedy and catastrophism of love. This feeling is beyond human control. It suddenly comes into his life, gives fleeting happiness, and then certainly causes unbearable pain.

The narration in the story “Clean Monday” by Bunin is told in the first person. The author does not name the names of his heroes. Love breaks out between two young people. They are both beautiful, rich, healthy and seemingly full of energy. But something is missing in their relationship.

They visit restaurants, concerts, theaters. They discuss books and plays. True, the girl often shows indifference, even hostility. “You don’t like everything,” the main character once says, but he himself does not attach any significance to his words. A passionate romance is followed by a sudden separation - sudden for the young man, not for her. The ending is typical of Bunin's style. What caused the break between the lovers?

On the eve of the Orthodox holiday

The story describes their first meeting, but the narrative begins with events that occur some time after they met. The girl attends courses, reads a lot, and otherwise leads an idle lifestyle. And she seems quite happy with everything. But this is only at first glance. He is so absorbed in his feeling, his love for her, that he is not even aware of the other side of her soul.

It is worth paying attention to the title of the story - “Clean Monday”. The meaning of Bunin's story is quite deep. On the eve of the holy day, the lovers have their first conversation about religiosity. Before this, the main character had no idea that the girl was attracted to everything connected with the church. In his absence, she visits Moscow monasteries, moreover, she is thinking about becoming a monk.

Clean Monday is the beginning of Lent. On this day, cleansing rituals are carried out, the transition from fast food to Lenten restrictions.

Parting

One day they go to the Novodevichy Convent. By the way, this is a rather unusual route for him. Previously, they spent time exclusively in entertainment venues. The visit to the monastery is, of course, the idea of ​​the protagonist's beloved.

The next day, intimacy occurs between them for the first time. And then the girl leaves for Tver, from there she sends a letter to her lover. In this message she asks not to wait for her. She became a novice in one of the Tver monasteries, and perhaps she will decide to take monastic vows. He will never see her again.

After receiving the last letter from his beloved, the hero began to drink, go downhill, and then finally came to his senses. One day, after a long time, I saw a nun in a Moscow church, in whom I recognized my former beloved. Perhaps the image of his beloved was too firmly entrenched in his mind, and it was not her at all? He didn't tell her anything. He turned and walked out of the temple gates. This is the summary of Bunin’s “Clean Monday”.

Love and tragedy

Bunin's heroes do not find happiness. In "Clean Monday", as in other works of the Russian classic, we are talking about love, which brings only bitterness and disappointment. What is the tragedy of the heroes of this story?

Probably the fact that, being close, they did not know each other at all. Each person is a whole Universe. And sometimes even loved ones cannot unravel his inner world. Bunin spoke about loneliness among people, about love, which is impossible without complete mutual understanding. An analysis of a work of art cannot be done without characterizing the main characters. What do we know about the girl who, living in prosperity and being loved, went to a monastery?

main character

When analyzing Bunin’s “Clean Monday”, it is worth paying attention to the portrait of a nameless girl that the author creates at the beginning of the work. She led an idle life. She read a lot, studied music, and loved visiting restaurants. But she did all this somehow indifferently, without much interest.

She is educated, well-read, and enjoys immersing herself in the world of luxurious social life. She likes good cuisine, but she wonders “how people don’t get bored having lunch and dinner every day”? She calls acting skits vulgar, while she ends the relationship with her lover by visiting the theater. Bunin's heroine cannot understand what his purpose in this life is. She is not one of those who is content to live in luxury and talk about literature and art.

The inner world of the main character is very rich. She constantly thinks and is in a spiritual search. The girl is attracted by the surrounding reality, but at the same time frightens her. Love becomes not a salvation for her, but a problem that terribly burdens her, forcing her to make the only correct sudden decision.

The main character refuses worldly joys, and this shows her strong nature. “Clean Monday” is not the only story from the collection “Dark Alleys” in which the author paid a lot of attention to the female image.

Bunin brought to the fore the hero's experiences. At the same time, he showed a rather controversial female character. The heroine is satisfied with the lifestyle she leads, but all sorts of details, little things, depress her. Finally, she decides to go to a monastery, thereby destroying the life of the man who loves her. True, by doing this she causes suffering to herself. After all, in the letter that the girl sends to her lover there are the words: “May God give me the strength not to answer you.”

Main character

Little is known about the future fate of the young man. He had a hard time being separated from his beloved. He disappeared into the dirtiest taverns, drank and became miserable. But still he came to his senses and returned to his previous way of life. It can be assumed that the pain that this strange, extraordinary and somewhat exalted girl inflicted on him will never subside.

In order to find out who the writer was during his lifetime, you just need to read his books. But is the biography of Ivan Bunin really so tragic? Was there true love in his life?

Ivan Bunin

The writer's first wife, Anna Tsakni, was the daughter of an Odessa Greek, editor of a popular magazine at that time. They got married in 1898. Soon a son was born, who did not live even five years. The child died of meningitis. Bunin took the death of his son very hard. The relationship between the spouses went wrong, but his wife did not give him a divorce for a long time. Even after he connected his life with Vera Muromtseva.

The writer's second wife became his "patient shadow." Muromtseva replaced his secretary, mother, and friend. She did not leave him even when he began an affair with Galina Kuznetsova. Yet it was Galina Muromtseva who was next to the writer in the last days of his life. The creator of “Dark Alleys” was not deprived of love.

Bunin's tragic love story forms the basis of the story "Clean Monday". Two people suddenly meet, and a beautiful and pure feeling flares up between them. Love brings not only joy, lovers experience enormous torment that torments their souls. The work by Ivan Bunin describes a meeting between a man and a woman, which made them forget about all their problems.

The author begins his story not from the very beginning of the novel, but immediately from its development, when the love of two people reaches its climax. I. Bunin perfectly describes all the details of this day: the Moscow day was not only winter, but, according to the author’s description, dark and gray. The lovers dined in different places: today it could be “Prague”, and tomorrow they ate at the “Hermitage”, then it could be “Metropol”, or some other establishment.

From the very beginning of Bunin's work, there is a premonition of some kind of misfortune, a great tragedy. The main character tries not to think about what will happen tomorrow, about what this relationship might lead to. He understood that he shouldn’t talk about the future with someone who was so close to him. After all, she simply did not like these conversations and she did not answer any of his questions.

But why didn’t the main character want to, like many girls, dream about the future and make plans? Maybe this is a momentary attraction that should end soon? Or does she already know everything that is about to happen to her in the future? Ivan Bunin describes his heroine as if she were a perfect woman who cannot be compared with other beautiful female images.

The main character is studying in courses, not understanding how she manages to do this later in life. The Bunin girl is well educated, she has a sense of sophistication and intelligence. Everything in her house should be beautiful. But the world around her is not at all interested in her, she distances herself from it. From her behavior it seemed that she was indifferent to theaters, and to flowers, and to books, and to dinners. And this indifference does not prevent her from completely immersing herself in life and enjoying it, reading books and getting impressions.

The beautiful couple seemed ideal to the people around them; they were even watched as they went. And there was something to envy! Young, beautiful, rich - all these characteristics suited this couple. This happy idyll turns out to be strange, since the girl does not want to become the wife of the main character. This makes you think about the sincerity of the lover’s and the man’s feelings. For all his questions, the girl finds only one explanation: she does not know how to be a wife.

It is clear that the girl does not understand what her purpose in life is. Her soul is tossing: a luxurious life attracts her, but she wants something else. That is why she constantly arrives in thoughts and reflections. The feelings that the girl experiences are incomprehensible to her, and the main character cannot understand them either.

She is attracted to religion, the girl goes to church with pleasure, and admires holiness. The heroine herself cannot understand why this attracts her so much. One day she decides to take an important step - to cut her hair as a nun. Without telling her lover anything, the girl leaves. After a while, the main character receives a letter from her, where the young woman reports her action, but she doesn’t even try to explain.

The main character finds it difficult to cope with the actions of his beloved woman. One day he was able to see her by chance among the nuns. It is no coincidence that Bunin gives his work the title “Clean Monday.” The day before this day, the lovers had a serious conversation about religion. The main character was surprised for the first time by the thoughts of his bride, they were so new and interesting to him.

External contentment with life hid the depth of this nature, her subtlety and religiosity, her constant torment, which brought the girl to the monastery of a nun. Deep internal searches also help explain the young woman’s indifference to social life. She did not see herself among everything that surrounded her. Happy and mutual love does not help her find harmony in her soul. In this Bunin story, love and tragedy are inseparable. Love is given to the heroes as a kind of test that they have to pass.

The love tragedy of the main characters lies in the fact that they could not fully understand each other and could not correctly evaluate the individuals who had found their soul mate. Bunin, with his story “Clean Monday,” affirms the idea that every person is a huge and rich world. The inner world of a young woman is rich spiritually, but her thoughts and reflections do not find support in this world. Love for the main character is no longer a salvation for her, but the girl sees this as a problem.

The heroine’s strong will helps her to leave love, to abandon it, to abandon it forever. In the monastery, her spiritual search ceases, and the young woman develops new affection and love. The heroine finds the meaning of life in love for God. Everything petty and vulgar now does not concern her; now no one disturbs her loneliness and peace.

Bunin's story is both tragic and sad. Every person faces a moral choice and must make it correctly. The heroine chooses her own path in life, and the main character, while continuing to love her, cannot find himself in this life. His fate is sad and tragic. The young woman’s act towards him is cruel. They both suffer: the hero because of the act of his beloved, and she of her own free will.

The theme of love is an eternal theme. It was addressed by poets and writers of different times, and each tried to interpret this multifaceted feeling in their own way.

I. A Bunin gives his vision of the topic in the cycle of stories “Dark Alleys”. The collection includes thirty-eight stories, all of them are about love, but none of them creates a feeling of repetition, and after reading all the works in the cycle there is no feeling of exhaustion of the topic.

At the center of the story “Clean Monday” is the story of a mysterious and mysterious love. Its heroes are a young couple of lovers. Both of them are “rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts” those around them watched them go. But the inner world of the heroes is not so similar.

He is blinded by his love. Every Saturday he brings flowers to his chosen one, every now and then spoils her with boxes of chocolate, tries to please her with new books he brought, every evening he invites her to a restaurant, then to the theater, or to some party. Completely absorbed in the feeling of adoration, he cannot and does not really try to understand what a complex inner world lies behind the beautiful appearance of the one he fell in love with. Repeatedly he thinks about the unusualness and strangeness of their relationship, but never once puts an end to these thoughts. "Odd love!" - he remarks. Another time he says: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...”. He is surprised at why she “once and for all stopped talking about their future”; he is surprised at how she perceives his gifts, how she behaves in moments of rapprochement. Everything about her is a mystery to him.

The image of the hero is devoid of the psychological depth that the heroine is endowed with. There is no logical motivation in her actions. Every day visiting those establishments where a young lover invites her, she one day notices that she wants to go to the Novo Maiden Convent, because “it’s all taverns and taverns.” The hero has no idea where these thoughts come from, what they are for, what suddenly happened to his chosen one. And a little later she declares that there is nothing to be surprised about, that he simply does not know her. It turns out that she often visits the Kremlin cathedrals, and this happens when her lover “doesn’t drag” her around restaurants. There, and not in entertainment establishments, she finds a sense of harmony and peace of mind. She loves “Russian chronicles, Russian legends” and her stories about this are filled with depth. She says she is not fit to be a wife. Thinking about happiness, quotes Platon Karataev. But the hero still cannot understand what is going on in her soul, he is “indescribably happy with every hour spent near her” and that’s all.

As in the other stories of the “Dark Alleys” series, Bunin does not show in “Clean Monday” love that develops into a state of lasting earthly happiness. Love here also does not end with a happy marriage, and we do not find the image of a woman-mother here. The heroine, having entered into a physically intimate relationship with her beloved, silently leaves, begging him not to ask anything, and then informs him by letter of her departure to the monastery. She rushed for a long time between the momentary and the eternal and, on the night of Clean Monday, surrendering to the hero, she made her final choice. On Clean Monday, the first day of fasting, a person begins to cleanse himself of everything bad. This holiday became a turning point in the relationships between the heroes.

Love in “Clean Monday” is happiness and torment, a great mystery, an incomprehensible riddle. This story is one of the pearls of Bunin’s work, captivating the reader with its rare charm and depth.

I. A. Bunin's story "Clean Monday" was written on May 12, 1944, when it was already clear to the whole world. that the Soviet army is victorious over Nazi Germany. It was then that Bunin reconsidered his attitude towards Soviet Russia, which he did not accept after the October Revolution, as a result of which he went abroad.

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The writer had a desire to turn to the origins, the beginning of all the disasters that befell Russia.

The story is included in the collection "Dark Alleys", but is distinguished by its originality. Bunin himself considered this story the best of all that he wrote. The author’s diary contains an entry from 1944 on the night of May 8-9: “It’s one o’clock in the morning. I got up from the table and just had to finish writing a few pages of “Clean Monday.” I turned off the light, opened the window to ventilate the room - not the slightest movement of air... ". He asks the Lord to give him the strength to complete the story. This means that the writer attached great importance to this work. And already on May 12, he makes an entry in his diary, where he thanks God for allowing him to write “Clean Monday.”

Before us is a poetic portrait of the Silver Age with its ideological confusion and spiritual quest. Let's try to follow the author step by step to understand what makes this work unique.

The story opens with a city sketch.

“The Moscow gray winter day was darkening, the gas in the lanterns was coldly lit, the store windows were warmly illuminated - and the evening life of Moscow, freed from daytime affairs, flared up...” Already in one sentence there are epithets: “warm” - “cold”, perhaps indicating on complex and contradictory phenomena and characters. The Moscow evening bustle is emphasized by many details and comparisons: “the cab sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily,” “green stars fell from the wires with a hiss.” ..Before us, life is vanity, life is temptation and seduction, it is not without reason that when describing the sparks falling from the wires of a tram, the author uses not only the metaphor “green stars”, but also the epithet “with hissing”, which associatively evokes the image of the serpent - the tempter in biblical garden. The motives of vanity and temptation are leading in the story.

The narration comes from the perspective of the hero, not the heroine, which is very important. It is enigmatic, mysterious and incomprehensible, complex and contradictory, and remains so until the end of the story - not fully explained. He is simple, understandable, easy to communicate, and does not have the heroine’s reflection. There are no names, perhaps because young people personify the pre-revolutionary era and their images carry some kind of symbolic subtext, which we will try to identify.

The text is full of many historical and cultural details that require special comment. A young man lives at the Red Gate. This is a monument to the Elizabethan Baroque. At the beginning of the 18th century - the Triumphal Gate for the ceremonial entry of Peter the Great. Because of their beauty they began to be called Red. In 1927, the gates were dismantled to streamline traffic. The name of the metro station "Red Gate" has been preserved. I think the hero’s place of residence is associated with celebration and celebration. And the heroine lives near the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, which was conceived by Alexander the First as gratitude to God for intercession for Russia and a monument to the glorious deeds of the Russian people in the Patriotic War of 1812. The main altar is dedicated to the Nativity of Christ - December 25 - on this day the enemy was expelled from Russia. The temple was destroyed by the Bolsheviks on December 5, 1931, and has now been restored. For a long time, on the site of the temple there was a swimming pool "Moscow".

Every evening the hero races on a stretching trotter from the Red Gate to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. He has his own coachman, who alone in the story has a name: his name is Fedor. But the text is filled with the names of writers and cultural figures of the Silver Age, which accurately and in detail recreates the atmosphere of that time. Every evening the hero takes his beloved to dine at fashionable and expensive restaurants: to Prague, to the Hermitage, to Metropol, then the young people visit theaters, concerts, and after events they go to restaurants again: to Yar (the restaurant on the corner Kuznetsky Most and Neglinnaya Street), to "Strelna" - a country restaurant in Moscow with a huge winter garden.

The young man calls his relationship with the heroine strange: the girl avoided all conversations about the future, was mysterious and incomprehensible to him, they were not close to the end, and this kept the hero “in unresolved tension, in painful anticipation,” but the young man was “incredibly happy every hour spent near her."

An important role in the characterization of the heroine is played by the interior, which combines both eastern and western details. For example, a wide Turkish sofa (East) and an expensive piano (West). The girl was learning the “slow, somnambulistically beautiful beginning of the Moonlight Sonata.” The heroine herself is only at the beginning of her path, she is at a crossroads, she can’t decide where to go, what to strive for. But the hero doesn’t ask himself any questions, he just lives and enjoys every moment, rejoices at every moment. It would seem, what is there to be sad about? Both are rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that they are followed everywhere with envious glances.

It is no coincidence that a portrait of a barefoot Tolstoy hangs above the heroine’s sofa. At the end of his life, the great old man left home to start a new life, striving for moral self-improvement. Therefore, the heroine’s departure from worldly life to enter a monastery at the end of the story does not seem so unexpected.

Portraits of heroes are of no small importance in the story. He, originally from the Penza province, is handsome for some reason with a southern, hot beauty. "Some kind of Sicilian." And the young man’s character is southern, lively, always ready for a happy smile, for a good joke. In general, he personifies the West with its focus on success and personal happiness. the girl has “some kind of Indian, Persian beauty: a dark-amber face; magnificent and somewhat ominous hair in its thick blackness; eyebrows softly shining like black sable fur; eyes black as velvet coal; captivating mouth with velvety crimson lips it was shaded with dark fluff..." The heroine's obvious weakness was good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur. Most often, she wore a garnet velvet dress and matching shoes with gold clasps. But she attended the courses as a modest student and ate breakfast in a vegetarian canteen on Arbat for 30 kopecks. The heroine seems to be choosing between luxury and simplicity, she constantly thinks about something, reads a lot, sometimes does not leave the house for three or four days.

The story of how the young people met is interesting. In December 1912, they attended a lecture by Andrei Bely at the Art Circle. Here Bunin deliberately violates chronological accuracy. The fact is that in 1912-1913 Bely was not in Moscow, but in Germany. But it is more important for the author to recreate the very spirit of the era, its diversity. Other cultural figures of the Silver Age are also mentioned. In particular, the story “Fire Angel” by Valery Bryusov is mentioned, which the heroine did not finish reading due to its stiltedness. She also left Chaliapin’s concert, considering that the famous singer had “been too daring.” She has her own opinion on everything, her likes and dislikes. At the beginning of the story, fashionable writers of the time are mentioned, whom the girl reads: Hofmannsthal, Pshebyshevsky. Schnitzler, Tetmeier.

It is worth paying attention to the description of Moscow, visible from the heroine’s window. She settled on the fifth floor of a corner room opposite the Cathedral of Christ the Savior solely for the view from the window: “...behind one window lay low in the distance a huge picture of the snow-gray Moscow across the river; in the other, to the left, part of the Kremlin was visible; moderately close, the too-new bulk of Christ the Savior was white, in the golden dome of which the jackdaws, forever hovering around it, were reflected with bluish spots... "Strange city!" - the hero thinks. What strange thing did he see in Moscow? Two origins: eastern and western. “St. Basil and the Savior on Bor, Italian cathedrals - and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls...” - this is how the young man reflects.

Another “talking” detail in the characterization of the heroine is her silk arkhaluk - the inheritance of her Astrakhan grandmother, again an oriental motif.

Love and happiness... The heroes disagree on these philosophical issues. For him, love is happiness. She claims that she is not suitable for marriage, and in response to his phrase: “Yes, after all, this is not love, not love...” - responds from the darkness: “Maybe. Who knows what happiness is?” She quotes the words of Platon Karataev from L. N. Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace”: “Our happiness, my friend, is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.” The hero calls these words eastern wisdom.

Two days in the life of the heroes are described in detail. The first is Forgiveness Sunday. On this day, the young man learned a lot about his beloved. She quotes a line from the Lenten prayer of Efim the Syrian: “Lord, master of my life...” - and invites the hero to the Novodevichy Convent, and also reports that she was at the Rogozhskoye cemetery - the famous, schismatic one, and was present at the funeral of the archbishop. knows words such as "ripids", "triciria". The young man is amazed: he did not know that she was so religious. But the girl objects: “This is not religiosity.” She herself doesn’t know what it is. The girl admires the church services in the Kremlin cathedrals, the deacons and singers of the church choir, compares them with the heroes of the Battle of Kulikovo, the monks sent by St. Sergius of Radonezh to help Dmitry Donskoy in the confrontation with the Golden Horde. Think. the names of Peresvet and Oslyabi have symbolic connotations. Former warriors - heroes go to a monastery, and then again perform a military feat. After all, the girl is also preparing for a spiritual feat.

Let's consider the landscape given at the time the heroes visited the Novodevichy Convent. Some details emphasize the beauty of this “peaceful, sunny” evening: frost on the trees, the creaking of steps in silence in the snow, the golden enamel of the sunset, the gray corals of branches in frost. Everything is filled with peace, silence and harmony, some kind of warm sadness. A feeling of anxiety is caused by the “brick and bloody walls of the monastery, chatty jackdaws that look like nuns. For some reason the heroes went to Ordynka, looked for Griboyedov’s house, but never found it. Griboedov’s name is not mentioned by chance. A Westerner in his views, he died in embassy in the East in Persia at the hands of an angry, fanatical crowd.

The next episode of this evening takes place in the famous Yegorov tavern in Okhotny Ryad, where the Old Testament merchants washed down fiery pancakes with grainy caviar with frozen champagne (pancakes are a symbol of Russian Maslenitsa, champagne is a symbol of Western culture). Here the heroine draws attention to the icon of the Mother of God of Three Hands and says with admiration: “Good! There are wild men below, and here are pancakes with champagne and the Mother of God of Three Hands. Three hands! After all, this is India!” The heroine is wrong, of course. The three-handed woman is in no way connected with the Indian god Shiva, but the rapprochement with the East is symbolic. The girl quotes lines from Russian chronicles, remembers how she went to the Chudov Monastery on Strastnaya last year: “Oh, how good it was! There were puddles everywhere, the air was already soft, spring-like, my soul was somehow tender, sad, and all the time there was a feeling of homeland, her antiquities..." With a quiet light in her eyes she says, "I love Russian chronicles, I love Russian legends so much that I keep re-reading what I especially like until I memorize it by heart." The heroine retells "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia." Bunin deliberately combines two episodes of this ancient Russian story. In one, a snake “in human nature, exceedingly beautiful” began to appear to the wife of the autocratic noble Prince of Murom Pavel. Devilish temptation and seduction - this is exactly how the girl perceives the young man. And the second episode is connected with the images of the holy believers Peter and Fevronia, who went to the monastery and reposed on the same day and hour.

Now let’s analyze the episode “On Clean Monday”. The heroine invites a young man to the “cabbage party” of the Art Theater. The young man perceives this invitation as just another “Moscow quirk.” Since the girl used to consider these skits vulgar, she still answered cheerfully and in English: “Ol right!” I think that this is also a characteristic of a hero associated with the West. By the way, Bunin himself also did not like the skits and had never been there, so in a letter to B. Zaitsev he asked whether he accurately recreated the atmosphere of the skits; it was important for him to be accurate in all the details.

The episode opens with a description of the heroine's apartment. The young man opened the door with his key, but did not immediately enter from the dark hallway. He was struck by the bright light, everything was lit: chandeliers, candelabra on the sides of the mirror and a tall lamp under a light lampshade behind the head of the sofa. The beginning of the “Moonlight Sonata” sounded - increasingly rising, sounding the further, the more languid, more inviting, in somnambulist-blissful sadness.

A parallel can be drawn with Margarita’s preparations for Satan’s Ball at Bulgakov’s. All the lights were on in Margarita's bedroom. The three-leaf window glowed with furious electric fire. A mirror is also mentioned - a dressing table as a way of passing from one world to another.

The appearance of the heroine is recreated in detail: a straight and somewhat theatrical pose, a black velvet dress that made her thinner, a festive headdress of jet-black hair, the dark amber color of her bare arms, shoulders, the tender and full beginning of her breasts, the sparkle of diamond earrings along her slightly powdered cheeks, the velvety purple of her lips ; At her temples, black shiny braids curled in half-rings toward her eyes, giving her the look of an oriental beauty from a popular print. The hero is amazed by such a brilliant beauty of his beloved, he has a confused face, and she treats her appearance with slight irony: “Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage... I would respond to applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and to the left, up and into the stalls, and she herself would imperceptibly but carefully move the train away with her foot so as not to step on it..."

“The Cabbage Man” is Satan’s ball, where the heroine succumbed to all temptations: she smoked a lot and kept sipping champagne, watching intently as the big Stanislavsky with white hair and black eyebrows and the stocky Moskvin in pince-nez on his trough-shaped face performed a desperate cancan to the laughter of the audience.. ." Kachalov called the heroine “the tsar-maiden, the Shamakhan queen,” and this definition emphasizes both the Russian and oriental beauty of the heroine.

All this carnival action takes place on Clean Monday, the beginning of Lent. This means that there was no Clean Monday in the religious sense. It was on this night that the heroine leaves the young man with her for the first time. And at dawn, quietly and evenly, she tells him that she is leaving for Tver for an indefinite time, but promises to write about the future.

The young man walked home through the sticky snow past the Iveron Chapel. "the inside of which was burning hotly and shining with whole bonfires of candles. Here, too, there is a bright light, but this is a different light - the light of fasting and repentance, the light of prayers. He stood in the crowd of old women and the beggar, trampled on his knees, took off his hat. Some unfortunate old woman said to him, wincing from pitiful tears: “Oh, don’t kill yourself like that! Sin! Sin!"

Two weeks later he received a letter with a gentle but firm request not to look for her. she decided to go to obedience and hopes to decide to take monastic vows.

The hero's life turned into absolute hell: he disappeared into the dirtiest taverns, became an alcoholic, and sank lower and lower. Then he gradually began to recover - indifferent, hopeless. Two years have passed since that Clean Monday. In 14, on New Year's Eve, the hero goes to the Kremlin, drives into the empty Archangel Cathedral, stands for a long time, without praying, as if expecting something. Driving along Ordynka, he remembered his past happiness and cried and cried. .. The hero stopped at the gates of the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery, where they did not want to let him in because of the service, where Elizaveta Feodorovna was present. Having given the watchman a ruble, he entered the courtyard and saw how icons and banners were being carried out of the church, and behind them, all in white, long, thin-faced, tall, slowly, earnestly walking with lowered eyes, with a large candle in her hand, the Grand Duchess, and behind her is a white line of nuns. One of those walking in the middle suddenly raised her head, covered with a white shawl, and fixed her dark eyes on the darkness, as if she felt his presence. Thus ends this amazing story.

How do you understand the expression: “Strange love!” said by the hero of the story “Clean Monday”

Clean Monday is considered the beginning of fasting; it is the first day after Maslenitsa, on which many servants of the Lord begin to fast. It was not by chance that Bunin chose this title for his story: here is the observance of fasting, which obliges a person not only to himself, but also to the Lord, here is the making of a decision that changes your whole life, placing a person in an honest framework of existence, which he for himself “ invented" once upon a time. Bunin shows with what feelings, with what impatience, with what renunciation of the world and attachment to everyday life she greets her Clean Monday. Let’s try to more fully reveal the meaning of the name “Clean Monday”. The author could have called the story “purification”, “rebirth”, and everything would have been this Clean Monday. Fasting involves proof of faith in a person's God, through the denial of one's physical needs, a new discovery of oneself, the discovery of one's true spiritual world, that is, rebirth. The heroine was eventually reborn, found her true self, without suffering, as he did, about the loss of those physical (earthly) connections. Her soul found the place that she thinks was destined for her and calmed down.

Let's try to understand for ourselves what feelings lie at the heart of the work. In the relationship between the hero and heroine, it is immediately clear, from the first pages, what their entire union rests on: “...And as for my love, you know very well that, besides my father and you, I have no one in the world. In any case, you are my first and last. Is this not enough for you? But enough about this..." She made a reservation: besides them, she has God, there is her inner spiritual world, with which she eventually retired. But she understands everything, this is enough for him, he is only able to see in himself “...at that time he was handsome for some reason, with a southern, hot beauty, he was even “indecently handsome,” in her “... and she had some kind of beauty then Indian, Persian...” and even in the surrounding majestic things “... and something Kyrgyz in the tips of the towers on the Kremlin walls...” “what he wants to see. A beautiful person surrounded by beautiful things is happy for some time by definition, and he also believes in his love for her. But there is no love! When she made him understand that he was waiting for happiness, but would not wait, that happiness was like water in delirium - soon “... when you pull it out, there is nothing.” How nothing turned out after their night. He waved it off: “Oh, God be with her, with this eastern wisdom!” You might think that he is truly blinded by love, but no, and later this will be proven conclusively. There was no way he could hear her emotional outburst. She was so happy when they were at the Novodevichy Convent: “It’s true, how you love me!” But he is blind and deaf. When she invites him to visit another monastery: “I laughed:
- Back to the monastery?
- No, it’s just me...”

For him, she is just a toy, an ornament with which he enjoys appearing in society and enjoys admiring her. Even when she directly told him that she would go to the monastery (in the Yegorov tavern), he did not react in any way, all his thoughts at that moment were from excitement, not caused by love, but by what - he himself does not know - and it seems that it is precisely that that worries him This. And the last thing that proves that this is not blind love, but an incomprehensible feeling is that with blind love, jealousy is cruel and boundless, where was it when the heroine wrote a “pretzel” with Sulerzhitsky, when Kachalov insulted him in her presence: “What kind of handsome guy is this? I hate it." A sense of ownership, aesthetic superiority - this is what makes the hero think that he loves. She doesn’t love him, this becomes immediately clear from her hints, from her conversations. “...Who knows what love is?” She tries in vain to draw his attention to her inner world, first with invitations to churches, monasteries, then she tried to arouse jealousy in him, remaining a mystery to him, she even tried to prepare him for separation. This is the problem of the story: she is a thing for him, a toy, very expensive jewelry, she is trying to reveal herself to at least someone, and all against the background of the fact that they are both looking for love, which does not exist (young people know how to fall in love, they do not know how to love ).

Bunin, it seems to me, is on the side of the heroine, preparing the reader for the future denouement: first she visits the cemetery, then churches, on Maslenitsa they eat pancakes, which means that cleansing will occur on Clean Monday. A skillfully constructed composition of the story, based on the contradictions between his world and hers: the beauty of churches and cemeteries - the dirt of taverns, drunkenness at "kapusniks". She manages to live in his world, for example, she sometimes smokes a lot, has fun, but he is a stranger in her world. Her world is imbued with the spirit of divine meaning: “Lord, master of my life...”, “... And on two choirs there are two choirs, also all Peresvet...”, “There was a city in the Russian land called Murom...”, etc. Comparing two worlds, from which the author himself chooses the heroine’s world. In the end, he is even forbidden to enter the church, but for money the doors are opened, apparently so that he understands its secret.

Now, if I were a singer and sang on the stage, I would respond to applause with a friendly smile and slight bows to the right and left, up and to the stalls, and I would imperceptibly but carefully move the train away with my foot so as not to step on it...