1. A word about the work of A. I. Kuprin.

2. Main themes and creativity:

a) “Moloch” - an image of bourgeois society;

b) image of the army (“Night shift”, “Campaign”, “Duel”);

c) the conflict of a romantic hero with everyday reality (“Olesya”);

d) the theme of the harmony of nature, human beauty (“Emerald”, “White Poodle”, “Dog Happiness”, “Shulamith”);

e) the theme of love (“Garnet Bracelet”).

3. The spiritual atmosphere of the era.

1. The work of A. I. Kuprin is original and interesting; it is striking in the author’s observation and the amazing verisimilitude with which he describes people’s lives. As a realist writer, Kuprin carefully looks at life and highlights the main, essential aspects of it.

2. a) This gave Kuprin the opportunity to create in 1896 a large work “Moloch”, dedicated to the most important topic capitalist development of Russia. Truthfully and without embellishment, the writer depicted the true appearance of bourgeois civilization. In this work, he denounces hypocritical morality, corruption and falsehood in relations between people in a capitalist society.

Kuprin shows a large factory where workers are brutally exploited. The main character, engineer Bobrov, an honest, humane man, is shocked and outraged by this terrible picture. At the same time, the author portrays the workers as a resigned crowd, powerless to take any active action. In “Moloch” there emerged motifs characteristic of all subsequent work of Kuprin. Images of humanist truth-seekers will run through many of his works. These heroes yearn for the beauty of life, rejecting the ugly bourgeois reality of their time.

b) Kuprin dedicated pages filled with enormous revealing power to a description of the tsarist army. The army was a stronghold of autocracy, against which in those years all the progressive forces of Russian society rose up. That is why Kuprin’s works “Night Shift”, “Hike”, and then “Duel” had a great public resonance. The tsarist army, with its incompetent, morally degenerate command, appears on the pages of “The Duel” in all its unsightly appearance. Before us passes a whole gallery of idiots and degenerates, devoid of any glimmer of humanity. They are opposed by the main character of the story, Second Lieutenant Romashov. He protests with all his soul against this nightmare, but is unable to find a way to overcome it. This is where the title of the story comes from - “The Duel”. The theme of the story is the drama of the “little man,” his duel with the ignorant environment, which ends with the death of the hero.

c) But not in all of his works Kuprin adheres to the framework of a strictly realistic direction. His stories also have romantic tendencies. He places romantic heroes in everyday life, in a real environment, next to ordinary people. And very often, therefore, the main conflict in his works becomes the conflict of the romantic hero with everyday life, dullness, and vulgarity.

In the wonderful story “Olesya,” imbued with genuine humanism, Kuprin glorifies people living among nature, untouched by money-grubbing and corrupting bourgeois civilization. Against the backdrop of wild, majestic, beautiful nature live strong, original people - “children of nature.” This is Olesya, who is as simple, natural and beautiful as nature itself. The author clearly romanticizes the image of the “daughter of the forests.” But her behavior, psychologically subtly motivated, allows her to see the real prospects of life. Endowed with unprecedented power, the soul brings harmony into the obviously contradictory relationships of people. Such a rare gift is expressed in love for Ivan Timofeevich. Olesya seems to be returning the naturalness of his experiences that he had briefly lost. Thus, the story describes the love of a realist man and a romantic heroine. Ivan Timofeevich finds himself in the romantic world of the heroine, and she - in his reality.

d) The theme of nature and man worries Kuprin throughout his life. The power and beauty of nature, animals as an integral part of nature, a person who has not lost touch with it, living according to its laws - these are the facets of this topic. Kuprin is fascinated by the beauty of a horse (“Emerald”), the loyalty of a dog (“White Poodle”, “Dog’s Happiness”), and women’s youth (“Shulamith”). Kuprin glorifies the beautiful, harmonious, living world of nature.

e) Only where a person lives in harmony with nature is love beautiful and natural. In the artificial life of people, love, true love, which happens once every hundred years, turns out to be unrecognized, misunderstood and persecuted. IN " Garnet bracelet“The poor official Zheltkov is endowed with this gift of love. Great love becomes the meaning and content of his life. The heroine - Princess Vera Sheina - not only does not respond to his feelings, but also perceives his letters and his gift - a garnet bracelet - as something unnecessary, disturbing her peace and her usual way of life. Only after Zheltkov’s death does she realize that “the love that every woman dreams of” has passed by. Mutual, perfect love did not take place, but this lofty and poetic feeling, albeit concentrated in one soul, opens the way to the beautiful rebirth of another. Here the author shows love as a phenomenon of life, as an unexpected gift - poetic, illuminating life among everyday life, sober reality and sustainable life.

3. Reflecting on the individuality of the hero, his place among others, on the fate of Russia in times of crisis, at the turn of two centuries, Kuprin studied the spiritual atmosphere of the era, depicting “living pictures” of his surroundings.

3. Poetry of Russian symbolism (using the example of the work of one poet)

SYMBOLISM -

the first literary and artistic movement of European modernism, which arose at the end of the 19th century in France in connection with the crisis of the positivist artistic ideology of naturalism. The foundations of the aesthetics of symbolism were laid by Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud, and Stéphane Mallarmé.

Symbolism was associated with contemporary idealistic philosophical movements, the basis of which was the idea of two worlds - the apparent world of everyday reality and the transcendental world of true values (compare: absolute idealism). In accordance with this, symbolism is engaged in the search for a higher reality that is beyond sensory perception. Here the most effective creative tool is the poetic symbol, which allows one to break through the veil of everyday life to transcendental Beauty.

The most general doctrine of symbolism was that art is an intuitive comprehension of world unity through the discovery of symbolic analogies between the earthly and transcendental worlds (compare: the semantics of possible worlds).

Thus, the philosophical ideology of symbolism is always platonism in the broad sense, two-worlds, and the aesthetic ideology is panaestheticism (compare: “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde).

Russian symbolism began at the turn of the century, having absorbed the philosophy of the Russian thinker and poet Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov about the Soul of the World, Eternal Femininity, Beauty that will save the world (this mythology is taken from Dostoevsky’s novel “The Idiot”).

Russian symbolists are traditionally divided into “senior” and “younger”.

The elders - they were also called decadents - D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.N. Gippius, V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont, F.K. Sologub reflected the features of pan-European panaestheticism in their work.

The younger symbolists - Alexander Blok, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Innokenty Annensky - in addition to aestheticism, embodied in their work the aesthetic utopia of the search for the mystical Eternal Femininity.

Russian symbolism is especially characterized by the phenomenon of life-building (see biography), blurring the boundaries between text and reality, living life as a text. The symbolists were the first in Russian culture to construct the concept of intertext. In their work, the idea of the Text with a capital T generally plays a decisive role.

Symbolism did not perceive the text as a reflection of reality. For him it was the opposite. The properties of a literary text were attributed by them to reality itself. The world was presented as a hierarchy of texts. In an effort to recreate the Text-Myth located at the top of the world, symbolists interpret this Text as a global myth about the world. This hierarchy of world-texts was created with the help of the poetics of quotes and reminiscences, that is, the poetics of neo-mythologism, also first used in Russian culture by the Symbolists.

We will briefly show the features of Russian symbolism using the example of the poetry of its outstanding representative Alexander Alexandrovich Blok.

Blok came to literature under the direct influence of the works of Vladimir Solovyov. His early “Poems about a Beautiful Lady” directly reflect the ideology of Solovyov’s dual world, the search for a female ideal that cannot be achieved. The heroine of Blok's early poems, projected onto the image of the poet's wife Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, appears in the form of a vague image of the Eternal Femininity, the Princess, the Bride, the Virgin. The poet's love for the Beautiful Lady is not only platonic and colored by the features of medieval courtliness, which in the most to a greater extent manifested itself in the drama "Rose and Cross", but it is something more than just love in the everyday sense - it is a kind of mystical quest for the Divine under the cover of the erotic principle.

Since the world is doubled, the appearance of the Beautiful Lady can only be sought in the correspondences and analogies that symbolist ideology provides. Even if the appearance of the Beautiful Lady is seen, it is not clear whether it is a genuine appearance or a false one, and if it is genuine, then whether it will change under the influence of the vulgar atmosphere of earthly perception - and this is the most terrible thing for the poet:

I have a feeling about you. The years pass by

All in one form I foresee You.

The whole horizon is on fire - and unbearably clear,

And I wait silently - yearning and loving.

The whole horizon is on fire, and the appearance is near,

But I’m scared: you’ll change your appearance,

And you will arouse impudent suspicion,

Changing the usual features at the end.

In essence, this is exactly what happens in the further development of Blok’s lyrics. But first a few words about compositional structure his poetry in general. IN mature years the poet divided the entire corpus of his poems into three volumes. It was something like the Hegelian triad: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis was the first volume - "Poems about a Beautiful Lady." The antithesis is the second. This is the otherness of the heroine, who has descended to earth and is about to “change her appearance.”

She appears amid the vulgar bustle of the restaurant in the form of a beautiful Stranger.

And slowly, walking between the drunken,

Always without companions, alone,

Breathing spirits and mists,

She sits by the window.

And they breathe ancient beliefs

Her elastic silks

And a hat with mourning feathers,

And in the rings there is a narrow hand.

And chained by a strange intimacy,

I look behind the dark veil,

And I see the enchanted shore

And the enchanted distance.

Then the worst happens: the poet becomes disillusioned with the very idea platonic love- searching for the ideal. This is especially evident in the poem “Above the Lake” from the series “Free Thoughts”. The poet stands in a cemetery above the evening lake and sees a beautiful girl who, as usual, seems to him to be a beautiful stranger, Tekla, as he calls her. She is completely alone, but some vulgar officer comes towards her “with a wobbling butt and legs / Wrapped in the tubes of his pants.” The poet is sure that the stranger will drive away the vulgar, but it turns out that it’s just her husband:

He came up... he shakes her hand!.. they look

His glances into clear eyes!..

I even moved out from behind the crypt...

And suddenly... he kisses her protractedly,

He gives her his hand and leads her to the dacha!

I want to laugh! I run up. I'm quitting

In them with cones, sand, squealing, dancing

Among the graves - invisible and tall...

I shout “Hey, Thekla, Thekla!”...

So, Tekla turns into Thekla and this, in essence, ends the negative part of the poet’s sobering up from Solovyov’s mysticism. The last complex of his lyrics is “Carmen”, and the last parting with the “former” Beautiful Lady is the poem “The Nightingale Garden”. Then follows a catastrophe - a series of revolutions, to which Blok responds with the brilliant poem “The Twelve,” which is both the apotheosis and the end of Russian symbolism. Blok died in 1921, when his heirs, representatives of Russian Acmeism, began to speak about themselves in full voice.

4. Poetry of Russian Acmeism (based on the example of the work of one poet)

ACMEISM -

(ancient Greek akme - the highest degree of flourishing, maturity) a direction of Russian modernism, formed in the 1910s and in its poetic attitudes based on its teacher, Russian symbolism.

The Acmeists, who were part of the “Workshop of Poets” association (Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Kuzmin, Sergei Gorodetsky), were “overcoming symbolism,” as the critic and philologist, future academician V.M. called them in an article of the same name. Zhirmunsky. Acmeism contrasted the transcendental two-worldliness of the Symbolists with the world of simple everyday feelings and everyday spiritual manifestations. Therefore, the Acmeists also called themselves “Adamists,” imagining themselves as the first man Adam, “a naked man on bare earth.” Akhmatova wrote:

I don't need odic armies

And the charm of elegiac undertakings.

For me, everything should be out of place in poetry,

Not like with people.

If only you knew what kind of rubbish

Poems grow without shame,

Like a yellow dandelion by the fence,

Like burdocks and quinoa.

But the simplicity of Acmeism from the very beginning was not that healthy sanguine simplicity that is common among village people. It was an exquisite and certainly autistic (see autistic consciousness, characterology) simplicity of the outer cover of the verse, behind which lay the depths of intense cultural searches.

Akhmatova again:

My chest was so helplessly cold,

But my steps were easy

I put it on my right hand

Glove from the left hand.

An erroneous gesture, an “erroneous action,” to use Freud’s psychoanalytic terminology from his book “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life,” which had already been published in Russia, conveys a powerful inner experience. We can roughly say that all of Akhmatova’s early poetry is “the psychopathology of everyday life”:

I'm out of my mind, oh strange boy,

Wednesday at three o'clock!

Pricked my ring finger

A wasp ringing for me.

I accidentally pressed her

And it seemed she died

But the end of the poisoned sting

It was sharper than a spindle.

Salvation from habitually unhappy love lies in one thing - creativity. Perhaps the best poems of Acmeism are poems about poems, which Acmeism researcher Roman Timenchik called autometa-description:

When I wait for her to come at night,

Life seems to hang by a thread.

What honors, what youth, what freedom

In front of a lovely guest with a pipe in her hand.

And then she came in. Throwing back the covers,

She looked at me carefully.

I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante?

The pages of Hell?" Answers: "I."

Initially, the great Russian poet of the 20th century, Mandelstam, was also faithful to the restrained, “clarified” (that is, proclaiming clarity) poetics of Acmeism. Already the first poem of his famous “Stone” speaks of this:

The sound is cautious and dull

The fruit that fell from the tree

Among the incessant chant

Deep forest silence...

The laconicism of this poem forces researchers to recall the poetics of Japanese haiku (tercets), belonging to the Zen tradition (see Zen thinking) - external colorlessness, behind which lies an intense internal experience:

On a bare branch

Raven sits alone...

Autumn evening!

So it is with Mandelstam in the above poem. It seems that this is just a household sketch. In fact we're talking about about an apple that fell from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that is, about the beginning of history, the beginning of the world (which is why the poem is the first in the collection). At the same time, it can also be Newton’s apple - the apple of discovery, that is, again, the beginning. The image of silence plays a very important role - it refers to Tyutchev and the poetics of Russian romanticism with its cult of the inexpressibility of feelings in words.

The second poem of “The Stone” also refers to Tyutchev. Strings

Oh, my prophetic sadness,

Oh my quiet freedom

echo Tyutchev’s lines: O my prophetic soul!

O heart full of anxiety!

Gradually, the poetics of Acmeism, especially its two main representatives, Akhmatova and Mandelstam, became extremely complicated. The biggest and famous work Akhmatova’s “Poem without a Hero” is built like a box with a double bottom - the riddles of this text are still being solved by many commentators.

The same thing happened with Mandelstam: the excess of cultural information and the peculiarity of the poet’s talent made his mature poetry the most complex in the twentieth century, so complex that sometimes researchers in a separate work analyzed not the whole poem, but only one line of it. We will finish our essay on Acmeism with the same analysis. We are talking about a line from the poem "Swallow" (1920):

An empty boat floats in a dry river.

G.S. Pomerantz believes that this line should be understood as deliberately absurd, in the spirit of a Zen koan. It seems to us that, on the contrary, it is overloaded with meaning. Firstly, the word “shuttle” appears in Mandelstam two more times, and both times in the meaning of a part of a loom (“The shuttle scurries, the spindle hums”). For Mandelstam, the contextual meanings of words are extremely important, as proven by research from the school of Professor K.F. Taranovsky, who specialized in the study of the poetics of Acmeism.

The shuttle thus moves across the river and is crossed across the river. Where is he going? This suggests the context of the poem itself:

I forgot what I wanted to say.

The blind swallow will return to the palace of shadows.

The “Chamber of Shadows” is the kingdom of shadows, the kingdom of the dead of Hades. Charon's empty, dead boat (shuttle) floats to the "hall of shadows" along the dry river of the dead Styx. This is an ancient interpretation.

There may be an eastern interpretation: emptiness is one of the most important concepts in the philosophy of Tao. The Tao is empty because it is the container of everything, Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching. Chuang Tzu said: “Where can I find a person who has forgotten all the words to talk to?” Hence, the oblivion of the word can be considered not as something tragic, but as a break with European tradition speaking and falling to the Eastern, as well as the traditional romantic concept of silence.

A psychoanalytic interpretation is also possible. Then the oblivion of the word will be associated with poetic impotence, and the empty canoe in a dry river with the phallus and (unsuccessful) sexual intercourse. The context of the poem also confirms this interpretation. The visit of a living person to the kingdom of the dead, which is undoubtedly spoken of in this poem, can be associated with the mythological death and resurrection in the spirit of the agrarian cycle as a quest for fertility (see myth), which in a subtle sense can be interpreted as the quest of Orpheus (the first poet) following the lost Eurydice into the kingdom of shadows. I think that in this poem, in the understanding of this line, all three interpretations work simultaneously.

5. Russian futurism (using the example of the work of one poet)

Futurism (from Latin futurum - future) is the general name of the artistic avant-garde movements of the 1910s - early 1920s. XX century, primarily in Italy and Russia.

Unlike Acmeism, futurism as a movement in Russian poetry did not arise in Russia. This phenomenon was entirely brought from the West, where it originated and was theoretically justified. The birthplace of the new modernist movement was Italy, and the main ideologist of Italian and world futurism was the famous writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876-1944), who spoke on February 20, 1909 on the pages of the Saturday issue of the Parisian newspaper Le Figaro with the first “Manifesto of Futurism”, which included its stated “anti-cultural, anti-aesthetic and anti-philosophical” orientation.

Basically, any modernist movement asserted itself in art by rejecting old norms, canons, and traditions. However, futurism was distinguished in this regard by its extremely extremist orientation. This movement claimed to build a new art - “the art of the future”, speaking under the slogan of a nihilistic negation of all previous artistic experience. Marinetti proclaimed the “world-historical task of Futurism,” which was to “spit every day on the altar of art.”

Futurists preached the destruction of the forms and conventions of art in order to merge it with the accelerated life process of the 20th century. They are characterized by a reverence for action, movement, speed, strength and aggression; exaltation of oneself and contempt for the weak; the priority of force, the rapture of war and destruction were asserted. In this regard, futurism in its ideology was very close to both right-wing and left-wing radicals: anarchists, fascists, communists, focused on the revolutionary overthrow of the past.

The Futurist Manifesto consisted of two parts: an introduction text and a program consisting of eleven points-theses of the futurist idea. Milena Wagner notes that “in them Marinetti asserts radical changes in the principle of construction literary text- “destruction of generally accepted syntax”; “the use of a verb in the indefinite mood” in order to convey the meaning of the continuity of life and the elasticity of intuition; the destruction of qualitative adjectives, adverbs, punctuation marks, the omission of conjunctions, the introduction into literature of “perception by analogy” and “maximum disorder” - in a word, everything aimed at conciseness and increasing the “speed of style” in order to create a “living style that is created by itself.” yourself, without meaningless pauses expressed by commas and periods.” All this was suggested as a way to do literary work a means of conveying the “life of matter”, a means of “grasping everything that is elusive and elusive in matter”, “so that literature directly enters the universe and merges with it”...

The words of futuristic works were completely freed from the rigid framework of syntactic periods, from the shackles of logical connections. They were freely located in the space of the page, rejecting the norms of linear writing and forming decorative arabesques or playing out entire dramatic scenes built on the analogy between the shape of a letter and any figure of reality: mountains, people, birds, etc. Thus, words turned into visual signs..."

The final, eleventh paragraph of the “Technical Manifesto” Italian literature“proclaimed one of the most important postulates of the new poetic concept: “to destroy the Self in literature.”

“A man completely spoiled by the library and museum<...>is no longer of absolutely any interest... We are interested in the hardness of a steel plate in itself, that is, in the incomprehensible and inhuman union of its molecules and electrons... The warmth of a piece of iron or wood now excites us more than the smile or tear of a woman.”

The text of the manifesto caused a strong reaction and marked the beginning of a new “genre”, introducing artistic life the exciting element is a fist blow. Now the poet rising on stage began to shock the audience in every possible way: insult, provoke, call for rebellion and violence.

Futurists wrote manifestos, held evenings where these manifestos were read out from the stage and only then published. These evenings usually ended in heated arguments with the public that turned into fights. This is how the movement gained its scandalous, but very wide fame.

Considering the socio-political situation in Russia, the seeds of futurism fell on fertile soil. It was this component of the new trend that was, first of all, enthusiastically received by Russian Cubo-Futurists in the pre-revolutionary years. For most of them, “software opuses” were more important than creativity itself.

Although the shocking technique was widely used by all modernist schools, for the futurists it was the most important, since, like any avant-garde phenomenon, futurism needed increased attention. Indifference was absolutely unacceptable for him; a necessary condition for existence was the atmosphere of a literary scandal. The deliberate extremes in the behavior of the futurists provoked aggressive rejection and pronounced protest from the public. Which, in fact, was what was required.

Russian avant-garde artists of the beginning of the century entered the history of culture as innovators who made a revolution in world art - both in poetry and in other areas of creativity. In addition, many became famous as great brawler. Futurists, Cubo-Futurists and Ego-Futurists, Scientists and Suprematists, Radians and Budtenders, all and sundry captured the imagination of the public. “But in discussions about these artistic revolutionaries,” as A. Obukhova and N. Alekseev rightly noted, “a very important thing is often missed: many of them were brilliant figures in what is now called “promotion” and “public relations.” They turned out to be the harbingers of modern “artistic strategies” - that is, the ability not only to create talented works, but also to find the most successful ways to attract the attention of the public, patrons and buyers.

The Futurists, of course, were radicals. But they knew how to earn money. We have already talked about attracting attention through all sorts of scandals. However, this strategy also worked perfectly for quite material purposes. The heyday of the avant-garde, 1912-1916, included hundreds of exhibitions, poetry readings, performances, reports, and debates. And then all these events were paid, you had to buy an entrance ticket. Prices ranged from 25 kopecks to 5 rubles - a lot of money at that time. [Considering that a handyman then earned 20 rubles a month, and sometimes several thousand people came to exhibitions.] In addition, paintings were also sold; On average, items worth 5-6 thousand royal rubles were left at the exhibition.”

In the press, futurists were often accused of self-interest. For example: “We must give justice to the gentlemen futurists, cubists and other ists, they know how to arrange things. Recently, a futurist married a rich Moscow merchant's wife, taking as a dowry two houses, a carriage house and... three taverns. In general, decadents always somehow “fatally” end up in the company of moneybags and make their happiness around them...”

However, at its core, Russian futurism was still a predominantly poetic movement: the futurists’ manifestos spoke about the reform of speech, poetry, and culture. And in the rebellion itself, in shocking the public, in the scandalous cries of the futurists, there were more aesthetic emotions than revolutionary ones. Almost all of them were inclined both to theorizing and to advertising and theatrical propaganda gestures. This in no way contradicted their understanding of futurism as a movement in art that shapes the future of man, regardless of what styles and genres its creator works in. There was no problem of a single style.

“Despite the apparent closeness of Russian and European futurists, traditions and mentality gave each of the national movements its own characteristics. One of the hallmarks of Russian futurism was the perception of all kinds of styles and trends in art. “Allness” became one of the most important futuristic artistic principles.

Russian futurism did not result in a holistic artistic system; this term denoted a variety of trends in the Russian avant-garde. The system was the avant-garde itself. And it was dubbed futurism in Russia by analogy with Italian.” And this movement turned out to be much more heterogeneous than the symbolism and acmeism that preceded it.

The futurists themselves understood this. One of the participants in the “Mezzanine of Poetry” group, Sergei Tretyakov, wrote: “Everyone who wants to define futurism (in particular literary) as a school, as a literary movement connected by a common technique for processing material, a common style, finds themselves in an extremely difficult situation. They usually have to wander helplessly between dissimilar factions<...>and stop in bewilderment between the “archaic songwriter” Khlebnikov, the “tribune-urbanist” Mayakovsky, the “aesthete-agitator” Burliuk, the “brain-snarling” Kruchenykh. And if we add here “a specialist in indoor aeronautics on a Fokker of syntax” Pasternak, then the landscape will be complete. Those who “fall off” from futurism - Severyanin, Shershenevich and others - will bring even more bewilderment... All these disparate lines coexist under the common roof of futurism, tenaciously holding on to each other!<...>

The fact is that futurism was never a school and the mutual cohesion of disparate people into a group was, of course, not maintained by a factional sign. Futurism would not be itself if it finally settled down on a few found patterns of artistic production and ceased to be a revolutionary fermenting enzyme, tirelessly encouraging invention, the search for new and new forms.<...>The stout bourgeois-philistine way of life, into which past and contemporary art (symbolism) were included as strong parts forming a stable taste of a serene and carefree, prosperous life, was the main stronghold from which futurism pushed off and onto which it collapsed. The blow to aesthetic taste was only a detail of the general planned blow to everyday life. Not a single arch-shocking stanza or futurist manifesto caused such a hubbub and squeal as painted faces, yellow jackets and asymmetrical suits. The brain of a bourgeois could endure any ridicule of Pushkin, but to endure mockery of the cut of trousers, a tie or a flower in a buttonhole was beyond his strength...”

The poetry of Russian futurism was closely connected with avant-garde art. It is no coincidence that many futurist poets were good artists - V. Khlebnikov, V. Kamensky, Elena Guro, V. Mayakovsky, A. Kruchenykh, the Burliuk brothers. At the same time, many avant-garde artists wrote poetry and prose and participated in futurist publications not only as designers, but also as writers. Painting greatly enriched futurism. K. Malevich, P. Filonov, N. Goncharova, M. Larionov almost created what the futurists were striving for.

However, futurism also enriched avant-garde painting in some ways. At least in terms of scandal, the artists were not much inferior to their poetic brothers. At the beginning of the new 20th century, everyone wanted to be innovators. Especially artists who were striving for a single goal - to say the last word, or even better - to become the last cry of our time. And our domestic innovators, as noted in the already cited article from the newspaper “foreigner,” began to use scandal as a fully conscious artistic method. They created different scandals, ranging from mischievous theatrical antics to banal hooliganism. The painter Mikhail Larionov, for example, was repeatedly arrested and fined for outrages committed during the so-called “public debates”, where he generously slapped opponents who disagreed with him, threw a music stand or a table lamp at them...

In general, very soon the words “futurist” and “hooligan” became synonymous for the modern moderate public. The press followed with delight the “exploits” of the creators of new art. This contributed to their fame in wide circles population, aroused increased interest and attracted increasing attention.

The history of Russian futurism was a complex relationship between four main groups, each of which considered itself an exponent of “true” futurism and conducted fierce polemics with other associations, challenging the dominant role in this literary movement. The struggle between them resulted in streams of mutual criticism, which by no means united individual participants in the movement, but, on the contrary, intensified their enmity and isolation. However, from time to time members different groups approached or moved from one to another.

+ We add to the answer information from the ticket about V.V. Mayakovsky

Composition

The theme of love is an eternal theme not only in literature, but also in art in general. Each artist brings something of his own to it: his own understanding of this feeling, his attitude towards it. Writers Silver Age interpreted love relationships in their own way. We can say that they have developed their own philosophy of love.

Bunin and Kuprin are among the most outstanding writers of that time, who went far beyond the Silver Age. Most of their work is devoted to the theme of love. Each of these artists created their own original works. It is impossible to confuse them. But the general meaning of the works of both Bunin and Kuprin can be conveyed by a rhetorical question: “Can love be private?”

Indeed, in Bunin’s “Dark Alleys” there is probably not a single story dedicated to happy love. One way or another, this feeling is short-lived and ends dramatically, if not tragically. But the writer claims that, in spite of everything, love is beautiful. It, albeit for a short moment, illuminates a person’s life and gives him meaning for his further existence. For example, in the story " Cold autumn“The heroine, having lived a long and very difficult life, sums it up: “But, remembering everything that I have experienced since then, I always ask myself: yes, what happened in my life? And I answer myself: only that cold autumn evening.” Only that cold autumn evening when the heroine said goodbye to her fiancé, who was leaving for war. It was so bright and, at the same time, sad and heavy in her soul.

Only at the end of the evening did the heroes talk about the worst thing: what if their beloved does not return from the war? What if they kill him? The heroine does not want and cannot even think about it: “I thought: “What if they really kill me? and will I really forget him at some point - after all, everything is forgotten in the end? And she quickly answered, frightened by her thought: “Don’t say that! I will not survive your death!

The heroine's fiance was actually killed. And the girl survived his death. She even got married and gave birth to a child. After the revolution of 1917, she had to wander around Russia and other countries. But, at the end of her years, thinking about her life, the heroine comes to the conclusion that there was only one love in her life. Moreover, in her life there was only one autumn night, which illuminated the woman’s entire life. In this - her life meaning, its support and support.

The heroes of the stories “Caucasus” and “Clean Monday” do not talk about their lives, do not comprehend it. But in their lives, love-flash, love-rock played a huge role. You can say, it seems to me that she turned the existence of the heroes upside down, changed their way of life and thoughts.

In "Clean Monday" the hero loves his mysterious beloved with passionate love. He wants to receive the same from her in return. But it’s as if his lady love just can’t be happy. Something is gnawing at her and won’t let go. Some kind of sadness prevents the heroine from being happy. “Happiness, happiness... “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,” she says.

Only on the last night before clean monday the heroine completely surrenders to the hero: both physically and spiritually. But after that she announces that she is returning to her home, in Tver. And, probably, he will go to a monastery.

The hero's heart was torn to pieces with grief. He loved this girl with all his soul. But, despite all the suffering, his love for her is a bright spot in life, albeit with an admixture of something bitter, incomprehensible, mysterious.

Love in the story “Caucasus” generally ends tragically. Because of her, a man, the husband of the narrator’s beloved, dies. The feeling of love, according to Bunin, brings a lot of bitterness. It cannot be durable. Love is a flash that quickly passes and carries with it not only creative, but also destructive force. Love, according to the writer, is always associated with fate, mystery, mystery. But, nevertheless, this is the highest happiness that can only be in a person’s life.

A. I. Kuprin fully supports this idea in his work. In the story “The Garnet Bracelet” he depicts a sacrificial and unrequited feeling that completely took possession of the hero. This seemingly unremarkable man, a minor official, had a huge gift. Zheltkov knew how to love. Moreover, he subordinated his entire life, his entire being, to this feeling. Therefore, when he was asked to no longer pay attention to his adored Vera Nikolaevna, the hero simply passes away. He has no reason to live without the princess. In his last letter, he wrote: “It is not my fault, Vera Nikolaevna, that God was pleased to send me, as great happiness, love for you. It so happened that I am not interested in anything in life: neither politics, nor science, nor philosophy, nor concern for the future happiness of people - for me, my whole life lies only in you.”

Zheltkov realizes this and thanks God for the feeling he experiences. The hero does not need anything in return, just write letters to his beloved and give her the most precious thing - a piece of his huge soul.

This hero, it seems to me, could exclaim: “Can love be unhappy?” Reading the works of Bunin and Kuprin, we begin to think about this. And we also begin, it seems to me, to appreciate this feeling more, regardless of its reciprocity.

INTRODUCTION

For the essay, I chose a topic related to the work of the famous Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. The choice of this name is explained by the fact that he is a fairly well-known and interesting writer, but in the school curriculum not much time is devoted to his work, and when working on an essay, you can study the writer’s work in detail. The very life of the writer, his personality makes a strong impression. This is a person of integrity, distinguished by firmness life position, true intelligence and kindness, the ability to understand life.

The purpose of my work:

Reveal the features of the depiction of the theme of love in Kuprin’s works;

Show the significance of this theme in his work.

Show the place of the theme of love in world and Russian literature;

Reveal the peculiarities of understanding this feeling by different authors;

Using the example of a trilogy about love, reveal its different sides and faces;

Show the writer's skill in depicting characters.

Sometimes it seems that everything has been said about love in world literature. What can you tell about love after Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet, after Pushkin’s “Eugene Onegin”, after Leo Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina”? This list of creations that glorify love can be continued. But love has thousands of shades, and each of its manifestations has its own light, its own sadness, its own fracture and its own fragrance.

Kuprin has many subtle and excellent stories about love, about the expectation of love, about its tragic outcomes, about longing and eternal youth in the human soul. Kuprin always and everywhere blessed love. You cannot hide anything from love: either it highlights the true nobility of the human soul, or it reveals vices and base desires. Many writers in their books have tested and will test their heroes, sending them this feeling. Each author tries to explain love in his own way, to contribute to its definition. For Kuprin, love is a gift from God, not available to everyone. Love has its peaks, which only a few out of millions can overcome. Unfortunately, now it is increasingly rare to find great fiery love between a man and a woman. People stopped bowing and revering her. Love has become an ordinary, everyday feeling. The relevance of this work is that it is addressed to an eternal feeling, shows an example of extraordinary, bright, selfless love and makes us, living in such an unromantic and sometimes unspiritual time, once again think about the meaning of the most amazing meeting on the roads of life - the meeting of a Man and a Woman.

creativity kuprin love story

LOVE IS ONE OF THE ETERNAL THEMES OF LITERATURE

The theme of love is eternal, as the very feeling that gave birth to it, has inspired the art of all times and peoples. But in each era it expressed some special moral and aesthetic values. After all, love is a feeling that makes you perform feats and commit crimes, a feeling that can move mountains, change the course of history, a feeling that gives happiness and inspiration and makes you suffer, a feeling without which life has no meaning.

Like all other literatures of the world, Russian literature devotes considerable space to the theme of love, its “specific” weight is no less than in French or English literature. Although " love stories"in its pure form are not found very often in Russian literature; more often, a love plot is burdened with side lines and themes. However, the implementation of this topic in various texts belonging to Russian classical literature, is distinguished by its great originality, which sharply distinguishes it from all other literatures of the world.

This originality lies, first of all, in the fact that Russian literature is characterized by a serious and close look at love and, more broadly, at intimate relationships between a man and a woman. The well-known proverb “you don’t joke with love” can serve as a motto for this attitude. There is only one reason for such seriousness - love in Russian literature almost always belongs to the realm of dramatic and very often tragic pathos, but extremely rarely the history of relations between a man and a woman - whether in prose or poetry - gives reason for fun. Happy ending loved by many foreign writers and sometimes admitted even by Balzac, he is not only absent from Russian literature, he is alien to it. All the famous love stories of Russian classics, from " Poor Lisa" Karamzin to Bunin's "Dark Alleys" proceed very intensely and end very badly.

Tragedy in the development of love themes stems from several sources, the oldest of which is, of course, folk tradition. Only in Russian folklore are love ditties called “suffering,” only in the Russian village a synonym for the word love was the word “to regret.” Thus, the emphasis is placed precisely on the sad, painful side of the relationship between a man and a woman, and the spiritual principle is placed at the head of the relationship. The popular understanding of marriage and love echoes the Christian, Orthodox understanding of marriage as a test of the strength of a person’s spiritual and physical strength, hard work in the name of a common goal.

The understanding of love as a higher power connecting the divine with the human is characteristic of 20th-century literature. It can be argued that writers largely defined the holistic concept of life through comprehension of the essence of love. First of all, this aspiration was expressed in the prose of Alexander Kuprin and Ivan Bunin. Writers were attracted not so much by the history of the relationship of a loving couple or the development of their psychological duel, but by the influence of the experience on the hero’s understanding of himself and the whole world. Therefore, the outline of events in their works is extremely simplified, and attention is focused on moments of insight, turning points in the internal states of the characters:

Love, love - says the legend -

Union of the soul with the dear soul -

Their connection, combination,

And their fatal merger,

And... the fatal duel...

(F. Tyutchev)

Bunin's love stories are a story about the mystery of love. He had his own concept of love: it arises as sunstroke and strikes a person. True love, Bunin believes, has something in common with eternal nature. Only that feeling is beautiful that is natural, not false, not invented. I. Bunin’s book “Dark Alleys” can be considered an encyclopedia of love. The author himself considered her his most perfect creation. The writer poses a difficult artistic task: thirty-eight times (this is the number of stories in the book) write about the same thing - about love. Bunin shows the varied and bizarre faces of love: love is enmity, corrupt love, love is pity, love is compassion, carnal love. The book opens with the story of the same name, “Dark Alleys.” Despite the fact that it is small, the action develops quickly, the author managed to fully reveal the theme of the tragic love of people of different classes. At an inn, an old gray-haired officer Nikolai Alekseevich meets a woman with whom he was in love in his youth, and then abandoned him. She carried her feeling throughout her life. “Everyone’s youth passes, but love is another matter,” says the heroine. This huge passionate feeling passes through her destiny like a bright ray, filling her with happiness, albeit alone. Their love was born in the shadow of the alleys and Nikolai Alekseevich himself will say at the end of the story: “Yes, of course, the best moments. And not the best, but truly magical!” Love, like a “light breath”, visits the heroes and disappears. Fragile and fragile, she is doomed to death: Nikolai Alekseevich abandons Nadezhda, and, having met many years later, they are forced to part again. Love turned into tragedy. The hero now understands which moments of his life were the most important. There was no place for happiness in his life: his wife left him, his son “turned out to be a scoundrel, an insolent man, without a heart, without honor, without a conscience.” The story could not have a happy ending, but still does not leave a painful impression, since according to Bunin, “all love is great happiness.” One short moment is enough to illuminate the entire life of the heroes. In love, as in life, light and dark principles always conflict. Along with the feeling that illuminates life, every lover has his own dark alleys. The best pages are about this love prose another representative of Russian literature - A. Kuprin.

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Lessons 7–8
Stages of life and creativity of A. I. Kuprin.
Love is like highest value peace
in the story “Garnet Bracelet”

Goals : introduce the features of Kuprin’s life and work; develop perception skills lecture material , independent work with a book.

Tasks: note realism as an artistic method of the writer in the traditions of classical Russian literature; conduct an observation of the sound of the eternal themes of love and the “little” man in the story “Garnet Bracelet”, determine the role of the image-symbol in this work.

Progress of lessons

He is one of those writers whom it is enough to point out: read him, this is true art; it is clear to everyone without comment.

F. D. Batyushkov

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... He has the greed of a collector, only he collects not rare coins, but rare incidents of life.

V. Lvov-Rogachevsky

I. Opening remarks teachers.

– Tell us what you can do well. How many of you are involved in sports, music, creativity? Is there something you definitely want to learn?

But this man, at the age of 20, “was successively... a land surveyor, a watermelon loader, a brick carrier, a salesman in Moscow, on Myasnitskaya... He was a forest crawler, loaded and unloaded furniture during the autumn and spring dacha seasons, traveled advanced in the circus, engaged in... acting...".

Let's add: he managed an estate in a remote corner of Polesie, replaced a psalm-reader in a distant rural parish, served as an accountant in the forge of a steel mill, it seems he even tried himself as a circus wrestler...

Later he went out with Balaklava fishermen to winter fish for beluga, sank to the bottom of the sea in a diving suit, rose above the clouds in an airplane and a balloon, kept a foal in his room in order to write the story “Emerald”, was friends with the famous pilot Sergei Utochkin and the even more famous wrestler Ivan Zaikin, with clowns Jacomino and Tahiti Geretti, with trainer Anatoly Durov and his troupe (Durov wrote on the poster about his animals: “Kuprin himself is a writer // There was a friend with them...”)

A.I. Kuprin, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries, had a burning interest “in literally any work.” He was always tormented by a thirst to explore, understand, study how people of all kinds of professions live and work: engineers, factory workers, organ grinders, circus performers, horse thieves, monks, bankers, spies - he longed to learn all the ins and outs about them, because in the study of Russian life he did not tolerate any half-knowledge.

K.I. Chukovsky recalled: “In 1902 in Odessa, newspaper reporter Leon Tretsek introduced Kuprin to the head of one of the fire brigades. He took advantage of this acquaintance, and when a house full of residents caught fire in the center of the city on Ekaterininskaya Street in the middle of the night, Kuprin, wearing a copper helmet, rushed there with a detachment of firefighters and worked in the flames and smoke until the morning.”

Kuprin’s contemporary, writer Teffi, noted his serious attitude towards creativity: “...When he wrote, he worked, and did not amuse himself or play around. And that side of his soul that appeared in creativity was clear and simple, and the compass of his feelings pointed with an arrow to good.” She recalled that as a person, A.I. Kuprin “was not a simpleton at all.”

How did his fate turn out?

II. Lecture by teacher with assistants.

August 26, 1870 In the town of Narovchat, Penza province, a son, Alexander, was born into the family of the collegiate registrar Kuprin.

1874. After the death of his father, he lives with his mother in the Widow's House (a charitable institution “for the care of the elderly and widows who have no means of supporting themselves” of noble origin).

WITH 1877 begins to write poetry. At the age of 6, the boy began his childhood, which he would later call “abused” and “official” in many of his works. In 1880, Sasha Kuprin passed the entrance exams to the 2nd Moscow Military Gymnasium. In his story “At the Turning Point,” Kuprin describes how he was sentenced to ten strokes with rods for a minor offense.

“On a small scale, he experienced everything that a criminal on death row feels.” And he ends the story with the words: “Many years passed until this bloody, long-oozing wound healed in Bulanin’s (Kuprin’s) soul.”

While studying in the cadet corps, he not only writes his poems, but also translates from German and French.

1889- the first story “The Last Debut” was published, for which the school received a punishment, since cadets were forbidden to appear in print. In 1893, he successfully passed the exams at the Academy of the General Staff, but by order of the commander of the Kyiv Military District, Second Lieutenant Kuprin was prohibited from entering the Academy. They said that on the banks of the Dnieper, the local police officer came into conflict with a group of young officers, which included Kuprin. A man of legendary physical strength, Kuprin threw the policeman into the river, and he drew up a protocol “on the utopia of the police rank in the performance of official duties.”

1894– Kuprin, with the rank of lieutenant, leaves the regiment and finds himself in Kyiv “without money, without relatives, without acquaintances.”

A trained student reads by heart.

The writer himself recalled this time as follows: “Suddenly, days of severe lack of money came. I could hardly subsist on bread and kvass. The newspaper where I worked stopped paying me for feuilletons, and only occasionally was it possible to ask the accountant for a ruble as a fee, or at best three rubles. I owed the landlady for the room, and she threatened to “throw my things out on the street.”

I had to think about temporarily moving to a shelter and, since summer was approaching, taking up not literary, but honest work as a loader at the pier. I still did not break with the newspaper and gave notes to the “Urban Incidents” section with the following content:

“Yesterday on Khreshchatyk, Mr. N.’s beautiful purebred dog fell under the wheels of a horse-drawn horse and, crushed, screamed inhuman voice”... I wrote these notes with pleasure... And, what was most surprising, no one: neither the editor nor the readers noticed the obvious mockery...

1896– Kuprin’s first book is published – a book of essays “Kyiv Types”.

1898- lives with his sister’s family in the forestry. He recalled about this time: “... I spent the most fertile months of my life,... absorbed the most powerful, most fruitful impressions,... studied the Russian language and Russian landscape.” Working on the story “Olesya”.

1904–1905- work on the story “The Duel”.

Attentive attitude towards people was manifested not only in the writer’s work.

I. Bunin said about him this way: “Along with great pride, there is a lot of unexpected modesty, along with daring passion, there is a lot of kindness, easygoingness, and shyness.”

A pre-prepared student reads by heart.

K. Chukovsky, in his memoirs about Kuprin, told a story about how he, having learned from a friend about an old woman who was mercilessly beaten by her son, a huge binder, found this man in the port that same day.

At the risk of being mutilated by his fists, Kuprin told him such words that he repented of tormenting his mother. Chukovsky wrote: “I saw this woman when she came to thank Kuprin. Kuprin received her with filial piety and, not wanting us to praise his nobility, said when his guest left:

“Old women in the south smell good: wormwood, chamomile, dry cornflowers and incense.”

1909- awarded the Pushkin Prize.

1911– in the almanac “Earth” the story “Garnet Bracelet” was published, a little later, in 1915 A film based on this work will be made.

1914– did not stay away from military events. A private hospital for the wounded of the First World War was opened in the Kuprin house in Gatchina. The writer himself goes into the army, but is declared unfit for duty. military service due to health reasons.

1919- emigrates abroad during the civil war: first he goes to Helsinki, then he moves to Paris.

IN 1924 the writer received a semi-official offer to return to Soviet Russia, but he refused: “... five years in exile... But still I won’t go... Let’s assume that they won’t skin me alive, they’ll let me graze where and with what I want... I’ll have to somehow get around , spinning, cunning... Yes, sir, we wanted revolution, like a mare to vinegar. It’s true: it would be sweeter and easier to die there.”

Abroad, Kuprin lived poorly, but continued literary activity: worked at a newspaper, wrote the novel “Junker”.

IN 1937 The Kuprin family receives permission to return to Russia and leaves France. The writer was warmly welcomed in Moscow by a new generation of readers, but he was seriously ill.

IN 1938 At Kuprin's request, he is taken to Gatchina. In a Leningrad hospital he undergoes a serious oncological operation.

Note in the form of a plan the features of Kuprin’s work. (Lecture continues.)

1. Kuprin's realism.

His demands on himself as a realist writer had no limits. He boyishly flaunted this vast experience of his in front of other writers, for this was his ambition: to know for certain, not from books, not from hearsay, those things and facts that he talks about in his books.

1) If you want to depict something... first imagine it completely clearly: the smell, the taste. The position of the figure, the expression of the face... Give a rich perception of what you saw, and if you don’t know how to see for yourself, put down the pen.

2) When conveying someone else’s speech, grasp what is characteristic in it: omissions of letters, construction of a phrase. Study, listen to how they say, paint an image with the speech of the speaker himself. This is one of the most important colors... for the ear.

3) 3nay, What, actually, you want to say. Write in such a way that it is clear that you know your subject thoroughly. Go and see, get used to it, listen, take part yourself. Never write from your head.

In the article “The Mystery of the Artist,” O. Mikhailov wrote about Kuprin’s skill:

“Kuprin was... a great historian of life. Everything around him, especially human life and everyday life, served for him as the surest indicator of inner human life and its most complex psychological states...

This knowledge is especially valuable because all of it is a consequence of everyday observations. This gives Kuprin’s prose an unfading freshness and richness... You can open at random volume after volume of Kuprin’s works and in each story find scatterings of deep and versatile knowledge.”

One of Kuprin’s striking and diverse realistic works in terms of themes and issues is the story “The Duel.”

(Individual message based on the material from the textbook and the book by V. Lilin “Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin. A manual for students. - L.: Education, 1975, chapter “Duel.”)

2. Love for the homeland.

Wherever the writer lived, wherever he worked, he always remained truly Russian and was connected to Russia by blood roots. Kuprin admitted:

“There are people who, out of stupidity or despair, claim that you can live without a homeland, or that your homeland is where you are happy. But, forgive me, all this is pretending to oneself. I can't live without Russia. I’ve reached the point where I can’t calmly write a letter there, there’s a lump in my throat... It’s true, “dissolve your bread with tears.”

A trained student reads by heart (or a literary retelling).

In one of Kuprin’s letters to I. Repin we read:

“...It’s not my will, but fate itself that fills the sails of our ship with wind and drives it to Europe... The melancholy is here... Do you know what I’m missing? This is a two-three minute conversation with a policeman from Lyubimovsky district, with a Zaraysk cab driver, with a Tula bathhouse attendant, with a Volodymyr carpenter, with a Mishchevsky bricklayer. I'm exhausted without the Russian language! Sometimes, one clever, clumsy word would put me in a light, warm mood for the whole day...”

3. Kuprin’s heroes are unusual.

In the magazine “Education” for 1907, in the article “Kuprin as a spokesman for the era” one could read:

“...Kuprin’s heroes are sincerely imbued with the consciousness of the meaning and beauty of life, they sincerely sing a hymn to it, but they themselves suffer painfully from it and are hardly able to drag it out safely to the end - even with the help of bromine and alcohol...

Boundless, winged romanticism, more characteristic of our old than new literature, is a distinctive feature of Kuprin’s best works.”

4. The theme of love in Kuprin’s works.

Individual student message.

In his best works, A.I. Kuprin always wrote about love. It is enough to recall his stories and tales such as “The Pomegranate Bracelet,” “Olesya,” and “Shulamith” to understand that the writer not only thought about love himself, but also made his readers think about its power.

Love in Kuprin's works is always unselfish and selfless; it does not expect reward and is often stronger than even death itself. For many of the writer’s heroes, it forever remained the greatest secret in the world and at the same time a tragedy.

They open up more clearly, illuminated by a feeling of love. In Kuprin’s works, love is the kind for which to accomplish any feat, to go to torment, is not labor at all, but joy. No life conveniences, calculations and compromises should concern her.

It was this kind of love that touched the Polesie “witch” Olesya, who fell in love with the “kind, but only weak” Ivan Timofeevich. “Pure and kind” Romashov, the hero of the story “The Duel,” sacrifices himself for the sake of the calculating Shurochka Nikolaeva. Such is both the chivalrous and romantic love of Zheltkov for Princess Vera Nikolaevna (the story “The Garnet Bracelet”), which absorbed his entire being.

Despite the tragic ending, Kuprin's heroes are happy. They believe that the love that illuminated their lives is a truly wonderful feeling. Olesya's only regret is that she does not have a child from her loved one. Zheltkov dies, blessing his beloved woman.

This is how Kuprin describes love. You read and think: this probably doesn’t happen in life. But, contrary to common sense, I want it to be.

Kuprin writes in his story about all-consuming love, which is more valuable than any wealth, any fame, and even more valuable than life itself. "Shulamith".

This is probably his most poetic work, because it was inspired by the biblical “song of songs” - one of the ancient legends about love. The love of the all-powerful and wise King Solomon for the “poor girl from the vineyard” - Shulamith - allowed Kuprin to reveal the full depth and beauty of this feeling. Such great love, as the author writes, “will never pass or be forgotten, because it is strong as death, because every woman who loves is a queen.”

It is not so important whether the real Shulamith ever existed or whether it is just a wonderful legend that has come down to us through millennia. Such love, which “repeats once in a thousand years,” is worthy of inventing it and composing songs and legends about it, writing stories and novels about it. And although the happiness of the heroes does not last long (Shulamith dies tragically, shielding Solomon with her body from a sent killer), the memory of such love will survive centuries.

In the works of A.I. Kuprin, love appears before the reader in its various manifestations. We see her as a tender, fiery, high feeling, and as a tragic passion. But love always elevates a person above other people and makes him equal to God himself, for only in love does a person, like the gods, gain true immortality.

– Summarize what you have studied, tell us about the features of A.I. Kuprin’s work.

III. Working with the text of Kuprin’s story “The Garnet Bracelet.”

1. The teacher's word.

Text analysis will help to find out what are the features artistic method Kuprin were reflected in the story.

K. Paustovsky in “Notes on Kuprin’s prose” writes about this work: Kuprin has one cherished theme. He touches her chastely, reverently and nervously. Otherwise, you can’t touch her. This is the theme of love... One of the most fragrant and yearning stories about love– and the saddest is Kuprin’s “Garnet Bracelet”.

It is characteristic that great love strikes the most ordinary person - the official of the control chamber Zheltkov, bending his back at his office desk.

It is impossible to read the end of the story with its amazingly found refrain without heavy emotional excitement: “Hallowed be thy name!”

What gives “The Garnet Bracelet” a special power is that in it love exists as an unexpected gift - poetic and illuminating life - among everyday life, among sober reality and established everyday life.

2. Analysis of the text of the story by questions.

– How is the theme of love embodied in the story?

The theme of poetic love sounds.

Zheltkov's last letter raises love to tragedy. Read it text. Zheltkov departs this life without complaints, without reproaches, saying like a prayer: “Hallowed be Thy name.”

The death of a hero does not end love. His death reveals a world of unknown feelings to Vera, because Vera did not really love her husband.

To the sounds of a Beethoven sonata, Vera's soul experiences a shock. She understands that love has passed by, which “repeats once every thousand years.”

The image of Zheltkov also helps to reveal the theme of the “little man”, traditional for Russian literature. Prove it.

In "The Garnet Bracelet" there is no sharp criticism of bourgeois society. The ruling classes are depicted in softer colors compared to the provincial philistinism. But in comparison with the enormous feeling of the little official Zheltkov, the hardening of the souls of people who consider themselves above Zheltkov is revealed.

Zheltkov’s spiritual appearance is clearly visible from his letter sent on Vera Sheina’s name day. Zheltkov does not hope for anything, he is ready to give everything. In his words there is humility and worship, nobility.

IN scene of coming to Zheltkov Bulat-Tuganovsky and Prince Shein, the hero has a spiritual superiority, which his sublime feeling gives him.

Vera's husband, Prince Vasily, prone to humor, parodies Zheltkov's feelings, known to the prince from letters received by his wife.

This parody seems vulgar and blasphemous. Kuprin does not paint Prince Vasily as bad and evil, but notes his caste-based disdain for the “lower” classes of society. Nikolai Bulat-Tuganovsky symbolizes everything bad that happens in the aristocracy.

He is a narrow-minded, arrogant, cruel person. It is he who demands that Zheltkov be punished because he dared to look up at his sister Vera.

What did the garnet bracelet become in the story of Zheltkov’s love for Princess Vera?

The reason for the quick ending of the story, which lasted more than eight years, was a birthday gift to Vera Nikolaevna. This gift becomes a symbol of the very love that every woman dreams of.

The garnet bracelet is valuable to Zheltkov because it was worn by the “late mother”; in addition, the ancient bracelet has its own history: according to family legend, it has the ability to impart the gift of foresight to the women wearing it and protects from violent death...

And Vera Nikolaevna actually unexpectedly predicts: “I know that this man will kill himself.” Kuprin compares the five garnets of the bracelet with “five scarlet, bloody lights,” and the princess, looking at the bracelet, anxiously exclaims: “Exactly blood!”

The love that the bracelet symbolizes does not obey any laws or rules. She can go against all the foundations of society. Zheltkov is a small, poor official, and Vera Nikolaevna is a princess, but this circumstance does not bother the hero, he still loves, realizing only that nothing, not even death, will make his wonderful feeling subside: “... Your humble servant before death and after death.”

Unfortunately, Vera Nikolaevna understood the meaning of the bracelet too late. She is overcome by anxiety: “And all her thoughts were chained to that unknown person whom she had never seen and was unlikely to see, to this funny “Pe Pe Zhe.”

The princess is tormented by the most difficult question for her: what was it: love or madness? Zheltkov’s last letter puts everything in its place. He loves. He loves hopelessly, passionately and follows his love to the end. He accepts his feeling as a gift from God, as a great happiness: “It’s not my fault, Vera Nikolaevna, that God was pleased to send me, as a great happiness, love for you.”

And, without cursing fate, he passes away, and people are left with only the symbol of this beautiful love - a garnet bracelet.

3. Report on the work of the research group.

Comparative analysis of A. Chekhov’s story “The Lady with the Dog” and Kuprin’s story “The Garnet Bracelet”.

1. Kuprin as a student and follower of A.P. Chekhov. The realism of A.P. Chekhov and the romantic worldview of A.I. Kuprin.

2. “The Lady with the Dog” (1899) and “The Garnet Bracelet (1910)” are two classic love stories, but each belongs to its own time.

3. Love, which grew out of accidental adultery, overshadowed two ordinary people in the story “The Lady with the Dog.” How to explain Chekhov’s remark “This love of theirs changed them both”? What, from your point of view, confirms the depth of feelings of Chekhov’s heroes and what refutes it?

4. G. S. Zheltkov’s love for Princess Vera is “the kind of love that women dream about and that men are no longer capable of.” Romantic image of the heroine Kuprin. Knightly image of a hero. How do you think Chekhov would have handled a similar plot, similar details?

5. The theme of “heroic action” in the stories of Chekhov and Kuprin.

6. The role of details in Chekhov and Kuprin. “Settings of seaside autumn” in chapter. 1–11 "Ladies with a Dog" and in "Garnet Bracelet". Why does Chekhov transfer the brightest love scenes of the heroes from Yalta to Moscow and provincial town WITH.? Why, on the contrary, does Kuprin “move” a story that “really” took place in St. Petersburg to a seaside city?

7. B than principled, the polar difference between the “concepts of love” in Chekhov’s story and in Kuprin’s story? Which of the stories seems lighter, more humane, and closer to reality to you personally? Which of these two stories is closest to you?

Homework. Write a miniature essay “Love in the works of Kuprin” (based on the story “Garnet Bracelet” and the story “Olesya”); re-read Kuprin’s story “Olesya”, make bookmarks with quotes based on the images of the main characters.

Individually: prepare a message on the topic “Landscape in Kuprin’s story “Olesya”.

Main themes and ideas of prose A. I. Kuprina .

1. A word about the work of A. I. Kuprin.

2. Main themes and creativity:

a) “Moloch” - an image of bourgeois society;

b) image of the army (“Night shift”, “Campaign”, “Duel”);

c) the conflict of a romantic hero with everyday reality (“Olesya”);

d) the theme of the harmony of nature, human beauty (“Emerald”, “White Poodle”, “Dog Happiness”, “Shulamith”);

e) the theme of love (“Garnet Bracelet”).

3. The spiritual atmosphere of the era.

2. a) This gave Kuprin the opportunity to create in 1896 a major work “Moloch”, dedicated to the most important theme of the capitalist development of Russia. Truthfully and without embellishment, the writer depicted the true appearance of bourgeois civilization. In this work, he denounces hypocritical morality, corruption and falsehood in relations between people in a capitalist society.

c) But not in all of his works Kuprin adheres to the framework of a strictly realistic direction. His stories also have romantic tendencies. He places romantic heroes in everyday life, in real settings, next to ordinary people. And very often, therefore, the main conflict in his works becomes the conflict of the romantic hero with everyday life, dullness, and vulgarity.

e) Only where a person lives in harmony with nature is love beautiful and natural. In the artificial life of people, love, true love, which happens once every hundred years, turns out to be unrecognized, misunderstood and persecuted. In “The Garnet Bracelet,” the poor official Zheltkov is endowed with this gift of love. Great love becomes the meaning and content of his life. The heroine - Princess Vera Sheina - not only does not respond to his feelings, but also perceives his letters and his gift - a garnet bracelet - as something unnecessary, disturbing her peace and her usual way of life. Only after Zheltkov’s death does she realize that “the love that every woman dreams of” has passed by. Mutual, perfect love did not take place, but this lofty and poetic feeling, albeit concentrated in one soul, opens the way to the beautiful rebirth of another. Here the author shows love as a phenomenon of life, as an unexpected gift - poetic, illuminating life among everyday life, sober reality and sustainable life.

Theme of love in prose A.I. Kuprina .

Option 1

Kuprin portrays true love as the highest value of the world, as an incomprehensible mystery. For such an all-consuming feeling there is no question “to be or not to be?” It is devoid of doubt, and therefore is often fraught with tragedy. “Love is always a tragedy,” wrote Kuprin, “always struggle and achievement, always joy and fear, resurrection and death.”
Kuprin was deeply convinced that even an unrequited feeling can transform a person’s life. He wisely and touchingly spoke about this in “The Garnet Bracelet,” a sad story about the modest telegraph official Zheltkov, who was so hopelessly and selflessly in love with Countess Vera Sheina.
Pathetic, romantic in the nature of its figurative embodiment, the central theme of love is combined in “Pomegranate Bracelet” with a carefully reproduced everyday background and reliefly outlined figures of people whose lives have not come into contact with the feeling of great love. The poor official Zheltkov, who has loved Princess Vera Nikolaevna for eight years, while dying, thanks her for the fact that she was for him “the only joy in life, the only consolation, the only thought,” and a fellow prosecutor, who thinks that love can be stopped by administrative measures, - people of two different life dimensions. But Kuprin’s living environment is not clear-cut. He especially highlighted the figure of the old General Anosov, who is sure that high love exists, but it “must be a tragedy. The greatest secret in the world”, which knows no compromises.

Option 2

The theme of love in the prose of A. I. Kuprin

1. The theme of love is one of the main ones in the work of A. I. Kuprin.

2. Plot, idea of the story “Garnet Bracelet”.

3. The great power of love.

1. Each person’s love has its own light, its own sadness, its own happiness, its own fragrance. A.I. Kuprin’s favorite heroes strive for love and beauty, but they cannot find beauty in a life where vulgarity and spiritual slavery reign. Many of them do not find happiness or die in a collision with a hostile world, but with all their existence, with all their dreams, they affirm the idea of the possibility of happiness on earth.

Love is a cherished theme for Kuprin. The pages of “Olesya” and “Shulamithi” are filled with majestic and all-pervading love, eternal tragedy and eternal mystery. Love, which revives a person, reveals all human abilities, penetrates into the most hidden corners of the soul, enters the reader’s heart from the pages of “The Garnet Bracelet.” In this work, amazing in its poetry, the author glorifies the gift of unearthly love, equating it to high art.

2. The plot of the story is based on a funny incident from life. The only thing the author changed was the ending. But what is surprising is that, under the writer’s pen, an anecdotal situation turns into a hymn of love. Kuprin believed that love is a gift from God. Not many people are capable of a beautiful, sublime feeling. The hero of “The Duel” Nazansky speaks about love like this:

“She is the lot of the chosen ones. Here's an example: all people have hearing, but millions have it like fish, and one of these millions is Beethoven. So in everything: in poetry, in art, in wisdom... And love has its peaks, accessible only to a few out of millions.” And such love illuminates the “little man,” telegraph operator Zheltkov. She becomes a great happiness and a great tragedy for him. He loves the beautiful Princess Vera, without hoping for reciprocity. As General Anosov accurately notes, “love must be a tragedy. The greatest secret in the world! No life conveniences, calculations or compromises should concern her.” For Zheltkov, nothing exists except love, which “contains the whole meaning of life - the entire Universe!” But the tragedy of the story is not only that Zheltkov and Princess Vera belong to different classes, and not even that he is in love with a married woman, but that those around him get along well in life without true love and see everything in this feeling anything but holy and pure affection.

There is an opinion, repeatedly expressed by critics, that there is some flaw in the image of Zheltkov, because for him the whole world has narrowed down to love for a woman. Kuprin, with his story, confirms that for his hero it is not the world that narrows to love, but love that expands to the size of the whole world. It is so great that it obscures everything, it no longer becomes a part of life, even the largest one, but life itself. Therefore, without the woman he loves, Zheltkov has nothing left to live with. But Zheltkov decided to die in the name of his beloved, so as not to bother her with his existence. He sacrifices himself for the sake of her happiness, and does not die from hopelessness, having lost the only meaning of life. Zheltkov was never closely acquainted with Vera Sheina, and therefore the “absentia” loss of Vera would not have been the end of love and life for him. After all, love, no matter where he was, was always with him and instilled vitality in him. He did not see Vera so often that, having stopped following her, he would lose his great feeling. Such love can overcome any distance. But if love can call into question the honor of the woman you love, and love is life, then there is no higher joy and bliss than sacrificing your life.

However, the terrible thing is that Vera herself “is in a sweet slumber” and is not yet able to understand that “her path in life was crossed by precisely the kind of love that women dream about and that men are no longer capable of.” Kuprin created a story not about the birth of Vera’s love, but specifically about her awakening from sleep. The very appearance of a garnet bracelet with a letter from Zheltkov brings excited anticipation into the heroine’s life. At the sight of “five scarlet bloody lights trembling inside five pomegranates,” so different from the usual expensive gifts of her husband and sister, she feels uneasy. Everything that happens further sharpens the consciousness of the exclusivity of the love that has passed by, and when the denouement comes, the princess sees on Zheltkov’s dead face “that very peaceful expression”, as “on the masks of the great sufferers - Pushkin and Napoleon.” The greatness of the feeling experienced by a simple person is comprehended by her to the sounds of a Beethoven sonata, as if conveying to the heroine his shock, his pain and happiness, and unexpectedly displaces everything vain from the soul, instilling a reciprocal ennobling suffering. Zheltkov's last letter raises the theme of love to high tragedy. It is dying, so each line is filled with especially deep meaning. But what is even more important is that the death of the hero does not end the sound of the pathetic motives of omnipotent love. Zheltkov, dying, bequeaths his love to the world and Vera. The great love of an unknown person enters her life and will exist in her mind as an indelible memory of the sacrament with which she came into contact and the meaning of which she was unable to understand in time.

Kuprin chooses the name of the heroine not by chance - Vera. Vera remains in this vain world, when Zheltkov dies, she learned what true love is. But even in the world there remains the belief that Zheltkov was not the only person endowed with such an unearthly feeling.

3. The emotional wave, growing throughout the story, reaches its utmost intensity in the final chapter, where the theme of great and purifying love is fully revealed in the majestic chords of Beethoven’s brilliant sonata. Music powerfully takes possession of the heroine, and words are composed in her soul that seem to be whispered by the one who loved her. more life man: “Hallowed be Thy name!..” In these last words there is both a plea for love and deep sorrow about its unattainability. This is where that great contact of souls takes place, one of which understood the other too late.

topic

Kuprin

prose

Basic

topics

Basic educational program of basic general education MBOU "Secondary school No. 46"
Main educational program
Drama, expressing judgment about basic idea and the form of its implementation; ...story compositions. The meaning of the name. A.I. Kuprin. The story "The Wonderful Doctor". Real... Russian literature. Russian psychologism prose. Basic topics and images of Russian poetry of the XIX...
Basic professional educational program of the State budgetary educational institution of secondary vocational education
Educational program
AND prose. Poetics of I. A. Bunin. Critics about Bunin* (V. Bryusov, Y. Aikhenvald, Z. Shakhovskaya, O. Mikhailov). A.I. Kuprin. Intelligence... topics abstracts The Society and its regulators. Constitutionalism and constitutional ideas in Russia and the world. Constitution of the Russian Federation – basic ...