A long whip shoots in a dry forest. Analysis of Bunin's poem "Youth"

"Wonderful summer days, calm Black Sea.

The steamer is overloaded with people and luggage - the deck is cluttered from stern to forecastle.

The voyage is long, circular - Crimea, the Caucasus, the Anatolian coast, Constantinople...

Hot sun, blue sky, the sea is purple; endless stops in crowded ports with the deafening roar of winches, with swearing, with shouts of captain's assistants: mine! vira! - and again calm, order and a leisurely path along the mountainous distances, sultryly melting in the sunny haze.

In first class, there is a cool breeze in the wardroom, empty, clean, spacious. And dirt, crowded conditions in a horde of diverse deck passengers near a hot car and a smelly kitchen, on steam under awnings and on anchor chains, on ropes on the forecastle. There is a thick stench everywhere, sometimes hot and pleasant, sometimes warm and nasty, but equally exciting, special, steam-like, intermingled with the freshness of the sea. Here are Russian men and women, crests and Ukrainians, Athonite monks, Kurds, Georgians, Greeks... Kurds - quite wild people, - from morning to evening they sleep, the Georgians either sing or dance in pairs, easily jumping up, throwing them back with flirtatious ease wide sleeve and floating in the parted crowd, clapping their hands in harmony: tash-tash, tash-tash! Russian pilgrims to Palestine have an endless tea party, a long man with sagging shoulders, a narrow yellow beard and straight hair reads Scripture aloud, and some defiantly independent woman in a red jacket and a green gauze scarf with black dry eyes keeps her sharp eyes on him. hair, sitting alone near the kitchen.

We stood at the roadstead in Trebizond for a long time. I went ashore and, when I returned, I saw that a whole new gang of ragged and armed Kurds was rising up the ladder - the retinue of an old man walking in front, large and broad-boned in a white jacket and a gray Circassian coat, tightly belted at the waist. thin waist belt with silver set. The Kurds, who were sailing with us and lying in one deck bridge in a herd, all rose and cleared the free space. The old man's retinue laid out many carpets and pillows there. The old man regally lay down on this bed. His beard was white as boiling water, his dry face was black with tan. And the small brown eyes sparkled with an extraordinary brilliance.

I walked up, squatted down, said “selyam”, and asked in Russian:

From the Caucasus?

He answered friendlyly, also in Russian:

Where are you sailing to?

He answered modestly but proudly:

To Istanbul, sir. To the padishah himself. I am bringing gratitude to the padishah himself, a gift: seven whips. The padishah took seven sons from me to the war, all of them. And everyone was killed in the war. The padishah glorified me seven times.

Tse, tse, tse! - with casual regret said a young plump, handsome and dandy Kerch Greek standing above us with a cigarette in his hand: a cherry damask fez, a gray frock coat with a white vest, gray fashionable trousers and patent leather boots fastened with buttons on the side. - So old and the only one left! - he said, shaking his head.

The old man looked at his fez.

“How stupid,” he answered simply. - You will be old, but I am not old and never will be. Do you know about the monkey?

The handsome man smiled incredulously:

What monkey?

Well, listen! God created heaven and earth, you know?

Well, I know.

Then God created man and said to man: you, man, will live thirty years in the world - you will live well, you will live, you will rejoice, you will think that God created and did everything in the world only for you alone. Are you happy with this? And the man thought: it’s so good, but only thirty years of life! Oh, not enough! Do you hear? - asked the old man with a grin.

“I hear,” the handsome man answered.

Then God created a donkey and said to the donkey: you will carry waterskins and packs, people will ride on you and beat you on the head with a stick. Are you satisfied with this time frame? And the donkey burst into tears, cried and said to God: why do I need so much? God give me just fifteen years of life. “And give me fifteen more,” the man said to God, “please, add from his share!” - And so God did, he agreed. And the man had forty-five years of life. Really, it turned out well for the man? - asked the old man, looking at the handsome man.

“It turned out not bad,” he answered hesitantly, obviously not understanding what all this was about.

Then God created a dog and also gave it thirty years of life. You, God told the dog, will always live angry, you will guard the master’s wealth, you will not trust anyone else, you will lie to passers-by, you will not sleep at night from worry. And, you know, the dog even howled: oh, I’ll have half of this life! And again the man began to ask God: add this half to me too! And again God gave him more. How old is a person now?

“It became sixty,” the handsome man said more cheerfully.

Well, then God created a monkey, gave it also thirty years of life and said that it would live without work and without care, only it would have a very ugly face - you know, bald, wrinkled, bare eyebrows creeping onto its forehead - and that’s all she will try to make people look at her, and everyone will laugh at her.

The handsome man asked:

So, she also refused, asking for only half her life?

And she refused,” said the old man, getting up and taking the mouthpiece of a hookah from the hands of a nearby Kurd. “And the man begged for this half,” he said, lying down again and taking a drag.

He was silent and looked somewhere in front of him, as if he had forgotten about us. Then he began to speak, without addressing anyone:

The man lived his own thirty years as a human being - he ate, drank, fought in war, danced at weddings, loved young women and girls. And he worked for fifteen donkey years and accumulated wealth. And fifteen dogs took care of their wealth, kept lying and getting angry, and didn’t sleep at night. And then he became so ugly and old, like that monkey. And everyone shook their heads and laughed at his old age. All this will happen to you“, - the old man said mockingly to the handsome man, rolling the mouthpiece of the hookah in his teeth.

Why isn’t this happening to you? - asked the handsome man.

Not with me.

Why is this?

“There are few like me,” the old man said firmly. “I wasn’t a donkey, I wasn’t a dog,”Why should I be a monkey? Why should I be old?»

"Youth" Ivan Bunin

A long whip shoots in a dry forest,
Cows are chattering in the bushes,
And blue snowdrops are blooming,
And an oak leaf rustles underfoot.

And the rain clouds are moving,
And a fresh wind blows in a gray field,
And the heart yearns in secret joy,
That life, like the steppe, is empty and large.

Analysis of Bunin's poem "Youth"

The work, written in the spring of 1916, begins with an everyday scene from village life: a shepherd drives out a flock that accidentally wandered onto the edge of the forest. The key technique that defines the features artistic space, becomes alliteration. The whistling of a whip and the crackling of bushes, the rustling of leaves - with the help of these sounds a landscape sketch. The only color accent that stands out in it is the bright blue of snowdrops. Blue in Bunin’s poetics is a symbolic shade; it is associated with open air, highest principle, harmony and hope.

The close-up, focused on primroses or an oak leaf, gives way to a wide panorama in the second stanza. Clouds carrying rain, " fresh breeze" and "gray field" - attention switches to the endless expanses of the Russian steppe.

The final lines are dedicated to feelings lyrical hero. Realizing the immensity of life’s prospects, he feels “secret joy” and light sadness. The state of mind depicted in “Youth” echoes another author’s formula - “the joy of lonely thoughts.” It was stated in the early poem "". The difference is also significant: the lyrical hero managed to free himself from the oppressive feeling of loneliness.

The author compares life with the steppe, based on two key features - “empty and great.” In this case, the definitions are devoid of negative connotations. The emptiness of the steppe is not scarcity, but freedom: in Bunin’s work, the end-to-end image of boundless space symbolizes life paths, legacy of history, dialogue between Western and Eastern mentalities. young hero the immensity and unknown of the future is stunning and a little alarming.

The poet deliberately selects images typical of different seasons. On the one hand, spring flowers and fresh wind, on the other, dry autumn forest and fallen leaves. The style is also mixed: low-life images of cows driven by a shepherd’s whip are juxtaposed with romantic flowers, clouds and wind.

All the details of the landscape appear in the memory of the lyrical hero, reflecting on distant years. This is also confirmed at the syntactic level: numerous repetitions of the conjunction “and” at the beginning of a poetic line string together scattered memories, like beads on a thread. From heterogeneous pictures - realistic and sublimely generalized - a complete image of youth is formed, filled with premonitions of exciting changes.

"Youth"

The student had a large, even nose, looked all wooden, rectangular, tall, wore a long, broad-shouldered frock coat of dark green cloth, narrow (completely military) trousers with stripes, and smart Nikolaev boots. The student was a regular guest, an insider in many rich living rooms - always lively, ready for courtesy, for service, keeping his body in a constant bend forward, shining with a smooth parting. The student appeared at the first performances, in theaters, and after them at Cuba’s, he got along on a first name basis - and so imperceptibly, simply - with some of the golden youth who visited there...

But then his fellow countryman, a friend from the Penza gymnasium, arrived in St. Petersburg and began looking for him with the persistence of a provincial: and it turned out, firstly, that the student lived God knows where, along the Shlisselburg highway. Having reached there, the fellow countryman entered the deepest courtyard of huge brick buildings, which looked dark with a myriad of bare windows and small apartments. He walked for a long time, looking for the janitor, for a long time he reached the threshold of the semi-underground janitor's room, where there was such and such a student; and it turned out, secondly, that it was necessary to ask for the apartment not of the student, but of the widow of so-and-so, his mother, that the student lives with her, just like his sister, whose husband is in a madhouse.

After this, the comrade finally found entrance number nine, or rather, just a back door, and endlessly climbed to the seventh floor along a steep and dark staircase, on one landing of which two gray cats sat motionless opposite a black cat: the cat looked as if in elegant mourning, with white paws and a fluffy white chest, she was clean, well-fed, huddled comfortably and calmly, closed her eyes carelessly, sleepily, while the cats were skinny, rough, sat tensely, raising their shoulders, not taking their narrow, evil eyes, and it was clear that they and the cat had been sitting for a very long time and could sit for at least another day. But on the seventh floor they didn’t open it right away - after the bell rang, as often happens in such apartments, a frightened woman’s voice was heard behind the door: “Mom, they’re calling!” - and someone ran somewhere, splashed something. When they opened the door, the guest found himself in a tiny hallway, in front of old woman, who, for all her outward meekness, became, however, as if she was ready to do anything just to prevent the guest from taking a step further. It was a woman already graying and somehow soft.

What do you want, sir? - she asked politely but stoically.

And the guest muttered:

Excuse me, does student so-and-so live here?

Here. Let me ask, what is your business with him?

I, you see, am his fellow countryman, a schoolmate...

But, forgive me, I don’t remember you. I knew all of Vitya’s comrades, but you...

And then the child, who was standing, hiding behind her skirt, covering his face with a lattice of fingers, and through his fingers closely watching the guest, suddenly began to cry sourly, reluctantly and with disgust, however, continuing to watch him...

And then it turned out that the student lived in a room that was surprisingly narrow and long, and so cold that even the air in it could be seen how cold it was. Between the double frames of her only window lay a thick shaft of smoky, cheap cotton wool, but this did not add any warmth. But a rare order reigned in everything: there was not a fluff on the floor, the iron bed was covered with a gray hard blanket without a single fold, lectures and books - between them the French self-instruction manual of Toussaint - lay on the table with complete observance of symmetry, the treasured broad-shouldered frock coat, hanging on a wooden spreader on the wall behind a clean sheet, Nikolaev's boots shine on the lasts underneath...

And the student at home was not at all the same as in the world, in the living rooms: friendly, but dry, seriously sad. And he kept looking somewhere out of his cold window. Outside the window, from a seven-story height, one could see far away: the endless snowy deserts lay flat, something so boring and unnecessary that it was only possible near St. Petersburg.

A long whip shoots in a dry forest. Analysis of Bunin's poem "Youth"

Analysis of Bunin's poem "Youth"

"Youth"

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