Bunin Clean Monday why love is fleeting. Analysis of the story I

Story " Clean Monday"included in Bunin's series of stories" Dark alleys" This cycle was the last in the author’s life and took eight years of creativity. The cycle was created during the Second World War. The world was collapsing, and the great Russian writer Bunin wrote about love, about the eternal, about the only force capable of preserving life in its highest purpose.

The cross-cutting theme of the cycle is love in all its many faces, the merging of the souls of two unique, inimitable worlds, the souls of lovers.

The story “Clean Monday” contains the important idea that the human soul is a mystery, and especially the female soul. And that every person is looking for his own path in life, often doubting, making mistakes, and happiness - if he finds it.

Bunin begins his story by describing a gray winter day in Moscow. By evening, life in the city became livelier, the residents were freed from the worries of the day: “... the cabbies' sleighs rushed thicker and more vigorously, the crowded, diving trams rattled more heavily - in the dusk one could already see how red stars hissed from the wires, - they hurried along the sidewalks more animatedly blackened passers-by." The landscape prepares the reader to perceive the story of “strange love” between two people whose paths tragically diverged.

The story is striking in its sincerity in describing the hero’s great love for his beloved. Before us is a kind of confession of a man, an attempt to remember long-ago events and understand what happened then. Why did the woman, who said that she had no one except her father and him, leave him without explanation? The hero on whose behalf the story is told evokes sympathy and sympathy. He is smart, handsome, cheerful, talkative, madly in love with the heroine, ready to do anything for her. The writer consistently recreates the history of their relationship.

The image of the heroine is shrouded in mystery. The hero remembers with adoration every feature of her face, hair, dresses, all her southern beauty. It’s not for nothing that at the actors’ “cabbage show” at the Art Theater, the famous Kachalov enthusiastically calls the heroine the Shamakhan queen. They were a wonderful couple, both beautiful, rich, healthy. Outwardly, the heroine behaves quite normally. Accepts the courtship of her lover, flowers, gifts, goes with him to theaters, concerts, restaurants, but inner world its closed to the hero. She is a woman of few words, but sometimes expresses opinions that her friend does not expect from her. He knows almost nothing about her life. With surprise, the hero learns that his beloved often visits churches and knows a lot about the services there. At the same time, she says that she is not religious, but in churches she is fascinated by chants, rituals, solemn spirituality, some kind of secret meaning, which is absent in the bustle of city life. The heroine notices how her friend is burning with love, but she herself cannot answer him in the same way. In her opinion, she is also not fit to be a wife. Her words often contain hints about monasteries where one can go, but the hero does not take this seriously.

In the story, Bunin immerses the reader in the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Moscow. He lists the numerous temples and monasteries of the capital, and together with the heroine admires the texts of ancient chronicles. Here are memories and thoughts about modern culture: Art Theater, evening of poetry by A. Bely, opinion about Bryusov’s novel “ Fire Angel", visiting Chekhov's grave. Many heterogeneous, sometimes incompatible phenomena make up the outline of the heroes’ lives.

Gradually, the tone of the story becomes more and more sad, and in the end - tragic. The heroine decided to break up with the man who loved her and leave Moscow. She is grateful to him for true love to her, so he arranges a farewell and later sends him last letter asking him not to look for her.

The hero cannot believe in the reality of what is happening. Unable to forget his beloved, for the next two years he “disappeared for a long time in the dirtiest taverns, became an alcoholic, sinking more and more in every possible way. Then he began to recover little by little - indifferent, hopeless...” But still in one of the similar ones winter days he drove along the streets where the two of them had been, “and kept crying and crying...”. Obeying some feeling, the hero enters the Martha and Mary Convent and in the crowd of nuns he sees one of them with deep black eyes, looking somewhere into the darkness. It seemed to the hero that she was looking at him.

Bunin does not explain anything. Whether it was really the hero's beloved remains a mystery. But one thing is clear: there was great love, which first illuminated and then turned a person’s life upside down.

“Clean Monday” I.A. Bunin considered his best work. Largely due to its semantic depth and ambiguity of interpretation. The story occupies an important place in the “Dark Alleys” cycle. The time of its writing is considered to be May 1944. During this period of his life, Bunin was in France, far from his homeland, where the Great Patriotic War.

In this light, it is unlikely that the 73-year-old writer devoted his work only to the theme of love. It would be more correct to say that through the description of the relationship between two people, their views and worldviews, the truth is revealed to the reader modern life, its tragic background and the urgency of many moral problems.

At the center of the story is the story of the relationship between a quite wealthy man and a woman, between whom feelings for each other develop. They have an interesting and pleasant time visiting restaurants, theaters, taverns, and many others. etc. The narrator and the main character in one person are drawn to her, but the possibility of marriage is immediately ruled out - the girl clearly believes that she is not suitable for family life.

One day on the eve of Clean Monday on Forgiveness Sunday, she asks to pick her up a little earlier. After which they go to Novodevichy Convent, visit the local cemetery, walk among the graves and remember the funeral of the archbishop. The heroine understands how much the narrator loves her, and the man himself notices the great religiosity of his companion. The woman talks about life in a monastery and herself threatens to go to the most remote of them. True, the narrator does not attach much importance to her words.

The next day in the evening, at the girl’s request, they go to a theatrical skit. A rather strange choice of place - especially considering that the heroine does not like and does not recognize such gatherings. There she drinks champagne, dances and has fun. After which the narrator brings her home at night. The heroine asks the man to come up to her. They are finally getting closer.

The next morning the girl reports that she is leaving for Tver for a while. After 2 weeks, a letter arrives from her in which she says goodbye to the narrator and asks not to look for her, since “I won’t return to Moscow, I’ll go to obedience for now, then maybe I’ll decide to take monastic vows.”

The man fulfills her request. However, he does not disdain spending time in dirty taverns and taverns, indulging in an indifferent existence - “he got drunk, sinking in every possible way, more and more.” Then he comes to his senses for a long time, and two years later he decides to go on a trip to all the places that he and his beloved visited on that Forgiveness Sunday. At some point, the hero is overcome by a kind of hopeless resignation. Arriving at the Marfo-Maryinsky monastery, he finds out that there is a service going on there and even goes inside. Here, in last time the hero sees his beloved, who is participating in the service along with other nuns. At the same time, the girl does not see the man, but her gaze is directed into the darkness, where the narrator stands. After which he quietly leaves the church.

Story composition
The composition of the story is based on three parts. The first serves to introduce the characters, describe their relationships and pastimes. The second part is dedicated to the events of Forgiveness Sunday and Clean Monday. The shortest, but semantically important third part completes the composition.

Reading the works and moving from one part to another, one can see the spiritual maturation of not only the heroine, but also the narrator himself. At the end of the story, we are no longer a frivolous person, but a man who has experienced the bitterness of parting with his beloved, capable of experiencing and comprehending his actions of the past.

Considering that the hero and the narrator are one person, you can see changes in him even with the help of the text itself. The hero's worldview after sad story love changes dramatically. Talking about himself in 1912, the narrator resorts to irony, showing his limitations in the perception of his beloved. Only physical intimacy is important, and the hero himself does not try to understand the woman’s feelings, her religiosity, outlook on life, and much more. etc.

In the final part of the work we see a narrator and a man who understands the meaning of the experience. He evaluates his life retrospectively and the overall tone of writing the story changes, which speaks of the inner maturity of the narrator himself. When reading the third part, one gets the impression that it was written by a completely different person.

By genre features Most researchers classify “Clean Monday” as a short story, because at the center of the plot there is a turning point that forces a different interpretation of the work. We are talking about the heroine leaving for a monastery.

Novella I.A. Bunin is distinguished by a complex spatio-temporal organization. The action takes place at the end of 1911 - beginning of 1912. This is confirmed by the mention of specific dates and textual references to real historical figures that were known and recognizable at the time. For example, the heroes first meet at a lecture by Andrei Bely, and at a theatrical skit the artist Sulerzhitsky appears before the reader, with whom the heroine dances.

Time range small work wide enough. There are three specific dates: 1912 is the time of the plot events, 1914 is the date last meeting heroes, as well as a certain “today” of the narrator. The entire text is filled with additional time references and references: “the graves of Ertel, Chekhov”, “the house where Griboyedov lived”, pre-Petrine Rus' is mentioned, Chaliapin’s concert, the schismatic Rogozhskoe cemetery, Prince Yuri Dolgoruky and much more. It turns out that the events of the story fit into the general historical context and turn out to be not just a specific description of the relationship between a man and a woman, but represent an entire era.

It is no coincidence that a number of researchers call to see in the heroine the image of Russia itself, and to interpret her act as the author’s call not to follow a revolutionary path, but to seek repentance and do everything to change the life of the whole country. Hence the title of the short story “Clean Monday”, which, like the first day of Lent, should become Starting point on the way to better things.

Main characters in the story “Clean Monday” there are only two. This is the heroine and the narrator himself. The reader never learns their names.

At the center of the work is the image of the heroine, and the hero is shown through the prism of their relationship. The girl is smart. He often says philosophically wisely: “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.”

Opposite essences coexist in the heroine; there are many contradictions in her image. On the one hand, she likes luxury, Savor, visiting theaters, restaurants. However, this does not interfere with the internal craving for something different, significant, beautiful, religious. She's addicted literary heritage, and not only domestic, but also European. Often quoted famous works world classics, hagiographic literature tells about ancient rites and funeral.

The girl categorically denies the possibility of marriage and believes that she is not fit to be a wife. The heroine is looking for herself, often in thought. She is smart, beautiful and wealthy, but the narrator was convinced every day: “it looked like she didn’t need anything: no books, no lunches, no theaters, no dinners outside the city...” In this world she is constantly and to some extent pores pointlessly searching for oneself. She is attracted to luxurious happy life, but at the same time she is disgusted with her: “I don’t understand how people won’t get tired of this all their lives, having lunch and dinner every day.” True, she herself “had lunch and dinner with a Moscow understanding of the matter. Her only obvious weakness was good clothes, velvet, silk, expensive fur...” Exactly like this controversial image the heroines are created by I.A. Bunin in his work.

Wanting to find something different for herself, she visits churches and cathedrals. The girl manages to break out of her usual environment, albeit not thanks to love, which turns out to be not so sublime and omnipotent. Faith and withdrawal from worldly life help her find herself. This act confirms the strong and strong-willed character of the heroine. This is how she responds to her own thoughts about the meaning of life, understanding the futility of the one she leads in a secular society. In the monastery, the main thing for a person becomes love for God, service to him and people, while everything vulgar, base, unworthy and ordinary will no longer bother her.

The main idea of ​​the story by I.A. Bunin "Clean Monday"

In this work, Bunin brings to the fore the history of the relationship between two people, but the main meanings are hidden much deeper. It is impossible to interpret this story unambiguously, since it is simultaneously dedicated to love, morality, philosophy, and history. However, the main direction of the writer’s thought comes down to questions of the fate of Russia itself. According to the author, the country must be cleansed of its sins and reborn spiritually, as the heroine of the work “Clean Monday” did.

Glazunova Veronica

REVIEW OF THE STORY “CLEAN MONDAY”

The external events of the story “Clean Monday” are not particularly complex and fit well into the theme of the “Dark Alleys” cycle. This is the story of a beautiful young love between two nameless people- men and women.

Like most of Bunin’s works, “Clean Monday” is the author’s attempt to describe and convey to the reader his understanding of the phenomenon of love, which was done by many great writers before and after Bunin, but at the same time everyone found something special in love that distinguishes it from others feelings. For Bunin, any true, sincere love is great happiness for a person, even if it ends in death or separation. “Sunstroke” is the best definition of love in Bunin’s understanding; it comes suddenly, sharply and radically changing a person’s worldview, his view of the surrounding reality. But when the happiness of love passes, only pain remains - the person is no longer able to return to his former life. “Happiness has no tomorrow; he doesn’t even have yesterday; it does not remember the past, does not think about the future; he has a present - and that is not a day, but a moment,” writes Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev in the story “Asya”. In my opinion, Turgenev’s concept of love is similar to Bunin’s.

But the story “Clean Monday” is not only a story about love; problems of morality and necessity are also mixed in with this. life choice, honesty with yourself.

Bunin paints these two young people as beautiful, self-confident: “We were both rich, healthy, young and so good-looking that in restaurants and at concerts they looked at us.” The author emphasizes that material and physical well-being is by no means a guarantee of happiness. Happiness is in a person’s soul, in his self-awareness and attitude. “Our happiness, my friend,” the heroine quotes Platon Karataev’s words, “is like water in delirium: if you pull it, it’s inflated, but if you pull it out, there’s nothing.”

Beloved in "Clean Monday" - absolutely different people. He, despite his attractiveness and education, is an ordinary person, not distinguished by any special strength of character. She is truly an integral, rare “chosen” nature. And she has serious concerns moral issues, problem of choice later life.

She refuses worldly life, entertainment, secular society and, most importantly, from his love, and goes to the monastery on “Clean Monday,” the first day of Lent. Undoubtedly, this is not a groundless impulse; she went towards it for a very long time - she visited monasteries, churches, cemeteries. Only in contact with the eternal, spiritual did she feel in her place. It may seem strange that she combined these activities with trips to theaters, restaurants, and reading fashion books, communication with bohemian society. This can be explained by her youth, which is characterized by the search for herself, her place in life. Her consciousness is torn, the harmony of her soul is disrupted. She is intensely looking for something of her own, whole, heroic, selfless, and finds her ideal in serving God. The present seems to her pitiful, untenable, and even love for young man cannot keep her in worldly life.

The story “Clean Monday” tells about self-improvement and the ascent of the individual to new stages, to which nothing can be an obstacle, not even such a feeling as love. Bunin's masterful, laconic style allows him to fit so much into a few pages. deep meaning, which can be the basis of an entire novel, and the main character of “Clean Monday” can be compared in importance with many female images of large prose XIX century, for example, with Sonechka Marmeladova.

The story "Clean Monday" is amazingly beautiful and tragic at the same time. The meeting of two people leads to the emergence of a wonderful feeling - love. But love is not only joy, it is a huge torment, against the background of which many problems and troubles seem invisible. The story described exactly how the man and woman met. But the story begins from the moment at which their relationship had already continued for quite a long time. Bunin pays attention to the smallest details, to how “the Moscow gray winter day darkened,” or to where the lovers went for dinner - “to Prague, to the Hermitage, to the Metropol.”

The tragedy of separation is anticipated at the very beginning of the story. Main character doesn't know where their relationship will lead.

He simply prefers not to think about this: “I didn’t know how it would end, and I tried not to think, not to speculate: it was useless - just like talking to her about it: she once and for all turned away conversations about our future.” Why does the heroine reject conversations about the future?

Is she not interested in continuing the relationship with her loved one? Or does she already have some idea about her future? judging by the way Bunin describes the main character, she appears as a completely special woman, unlike many around. She takes courses, not realizing, however, why she needs to study. When asked why she was studying, the girl answered: “Why is everything done in the world? Do we understand anything in our actions?”

The girl loves to surround herself with beautiful things, she is educated, sophisticated, smart. But at the same time, she seems somehow surprisingly detached from everything that...

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a wonderful Russian writer, a great man and difficult fate. He was a recognized classic Russian literature, and also became the first in Russia Nobel laureate. Bunin combined all the stories written from 1937 to 1944 into the book “Dark Alleys”. They are brought together by the motif of memories, the image of Russian nature. He writes about summer, autumn, day and night, about grief, happiness, sometimes a brief moment of joy or pain. Bunin comes to the fore with an appeal to eternal themes love, death and nature. One of the stories included in this collection is “Clean Monday”. I decided to dwell on it in more detail.

The external events of the story “Clean Monday” are not particularly complex and fit well into the theme of the “Dark Alleys” cycle. The action takes place in 1913. A kind, handsome and frivolous young man (nameless, like his girlfriend) shares his memories here. Young people, he and she, met one day at a lecture in a literary and artistic circle and fell in love with each other. They began to meet and spend time together free time. He courted her and wanted more Serious relationships, but she was mysteriously silent, never letting him get out of control. He himself says that he always “tried not to think, not to think out” the actions of his beloved. It’s no wonder that you can understand the silent, mysterious, beautiful woman failed. The main thing for the author was to convey to the reader all its exclusivity, and he succeeded in full. With my eyes passionate admirer the inexplicability of the behavior of his chosen one is constantly “caught”. She indulged in social entertainment, allowed the man to caress her, but refused to have a serious conversation with him. Even more strange was the parallel fascination with restaurants, theatrical "cabbage shows" and cathedrals, holy books. The heroine seems to unite incompatible “styles” in her soul. He dreams of reconciling them. This is exactly how he wants to love the better one, but cannot. Their intimacy still occurs, but after spending just one night together, the lovers part forever, for the heroine on Clean Monday, i.e. on the first day of the pre-Easter fast in 1913, he makes the final decision to enter a monastery, parting with his past. But, hiding in a monastery, he continues to suffer there from the unattainable.

The story is masterfully and concisely written. Each stroke has a clear and hidden meaning. What is the heroine’s latest, sophisticated, secular, black-velvet outfit with her hairstyle like a Shamakhan queen worth? An unexpected and revealing combination. The girl constantly follows in different ways, vividly reminiscent of the differences surrounding it. That's how symbolic meaning female image. He combined a craving for spiritual feat and to all the wealth of the world, doubts, sacrifice and longing for the ideal.

There is another meaning in the story of the author's reflections. The eternal contradictions of human, more specifically, female nature, love, sublime and earthly, sensual, determined the heroine’s trials. Her courage and ability to go through all the prohibitions and temptations help to reveal the mysterious, irresistible power of instinct. But the warmer and more sympathetic the author’s attitude towards the young woman is, the more she resists completely natural, although painful for her, attractions.
In the theme of love, Bunin reveals himself as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many literary artists have dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them found something unique and individual about this theme. It seems to me that the peculiarity of Bunin the artist is that he considers love to be a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of both infinitely elevating and destroying a person.

Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his destiny uniqueness against the backdrop of ordinary life stories, filling special meaning his earthly existence.

Extraordinary strength and sincerity of feeling are characteristic of the heroes Bunin's stories. Love captures all a person’s thoughts, all his strength. In order for love not to fizzle out, it is necessary to part forever, which happens in all of Bunin’s stories. All his heroes live in anticipation of love, search for it, and most often, scorched by it, die. For a writer, love does not last long in the family, in marriage, in everyday life. A short, dazzling flash, which illuminates the souls of lovers to the bottom, leads them to tragic end- death, suicide, separation. The theme of pure and beautiful feeling runs through the entire work of the Russian writer. “All love is great happiness, even if it is not shared” - these words are from the story “Dark Alleys”

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is one of the most prominent Russian writers of the twentieth century. He was excellent at both poetry and prose, as short stories, and novels. But still, I appreciate Ivan Alekseevich’s talent precisely for that part of his work that can be called the “small” genre. And I especially like Bunin’s stories, the main theme of which is love.

These works most clearly reveal the author's talent for describing everything intimate, sometimes quite unusual, for conveying ideas and thoughts. Extraordinary poetry brings sensuality to the narrative, which is so necessary for works with such themes. If you trace Bunin's entire work from beginning to end, you can divide it into periods, based on what theme he prefers in his works. I am interested in the collection “Dark Alleys,” written during the Second World War, because it is entirely devoted to the theme of love; after reading the stories from it, you can try to formulate the main idea, the author’s thought. In my opinion, the main “thesis” of Bunin’s work lies in the quote: “All love is great happiness, even if it is not divided.” But in love dramas collection, namely they form its basis, one can also be convinced that Bunin values ​​only the natural, pure love, high human feeling, rejecting contrived false impressions. Ivan Alekseevich also in his stories inextricably connects love with death, connects the beautiful and the terrible. But this is not a far-fetched composition, the author is thus trying to show readers how close love borders on death, how close the two extremes are to each other.

The most famous stories among readers are “Sunstroke”, “Clean Monday” and “Natalie”. They all fit perfectly into the description of the tragic love story with a sad ending, but in each of them Bunin reveals to us a new aspect, A New Look for love.

The heroes of “Sunstroke” meet completely by chance on a ship. But their fleeting attraction does not pass without a trace for both characters. She tells the lieutenant: “Nothing even similar to what happened has ever happened to me, and there never will be again. The eclipse definitely came over me... Or rather, we both got something like sunstroke" But this shock affects him only when he, having escorted her to the ship, returns to the hotel. His heart “squeezed with an incomprehensible tenderness,” and “he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was overcome by horror and despair,” because he did not know her name or surname. The love that the lieutenant realized too late almost destroys him; he is ready to die for one more day spent with her. But we are convinced that in fact love is a blessing, despite the fact that it ends so quickly, we understand how strong and comprehensive this feeling is.

In the short story “Clean Monday,” so beloved by the author, we are told about unrequited love hero to the mysterious heroine. She is not interested in and even rejects many things accepted in their circle; her complex nature haunts the hero. The heroine’s alienation (“she doesn’t need anything: neither flowers, nor books, nor dinners, nor theaters, nor dinners outside the city...”) is explained on Forgiveness Sunday, when the heroes go together to the cemetery. We learn about her passion for antiquity, Kremlin cathedrals and monasteries. The heroine tries to find meaning and support in the world around her, but she doesn’t find it, even the hero’s love does not bring her happiness. The meaning of the name is that the heroine, not finding beauty and spirituality in modern world, is cleared of her previous life and goes to a monastery, where, as it seems to her, she will be happy.
The main character of the third story, Vitaly Meshchersky, turns out to be guilty of love tragedy, played out between him, cousin Sonya and her friend Natalie. The student cannot decide whether to prefer “passionate bodily intoxication” for Sonya or a sincere and sublime feeling for Natalie. Avoidance of choice ends tragic ending. The author shows us that Vitaly’s feeling for Sonya is feigned, but his love for Natalie is true, proving her superiority.

In stories about love, I. A. Bunin claims that love is a high and beautiful feeling, and a person who is capable of love is highly moral. Despite the fact that love brings not only joy and happiness, but also grief and suffering, it is a great feeling. And I completely agree with this.