All love is happiness
even if it is not divided.
I. Bunin
Many of I. A. Bunin’s works, and above all his stories about love, reveal to us his subtle and observant soul as a writer-artist, writer-psychologist, writer-lyricist.
Cycle " Dark alleys"is a collection of short stories and life sketches, the main theme of which is a high and bright human feeling. And here Bunin appears as a bold innovator, how frank, naturalistically distinct and at the same time light, transparent, elusive love is in these stories.
All Bunin's stories about love have a unique plot, original lyrical heroes. But they are all united by a common “core”: the suddenness of love insight, the passion and short duration of the relationship, the tragic outcome. This happens because true love, as the writer believed, is doomed to be only a flash and cannot be prolonged.
How love is said about the highest gift of fate in the story “ Sunstroke" But here, too, the tragedy of a high feeling is aggravated precisely by the fact that it is mutual and too beautiful to last without turning into commonplace.
Surprisingly, despite the unhappy endings of the stories, Bunin’s love is almost always perfect, harmonious, mutual, and neither quarrels nor the prose of life can spoil or undermine it. Maybe that's why it's so short? After all, these moments of relationships that elevate both a man and a woman do not pass without a trace, they remain in memory as landmarks and reliable light beacons to which people return throughout their lives. Material from the site
The dissimilarity of the “love plots” of Bunin’s stories helps us understand the diversity, individuality, uniqueness of each love story: happy or unhappy, mutual or unrequited, elevating or destroying... Throughout life, a person can more than once touch this mystery that arises deeply in the heart and turning it over, painting the whole world in bright colors - and every time his love will be new, fresh, unlike the past... I think this is exactly what I. A. Bunin wanted to convey in his stories.
An essay on the works of I. A. Bunin using examples of stories “ Cold autumn” and “Sunstroke.”
The theme of love in the stories of I. A. Bunin
Love has always occupied a key position in the work of many writers. This is how it was with I. A. Bunin. In his works, she is assigned a special role: love is always tragic, it reveals the innermost, even what a person would like to hide from everyone. About this amazing feeling, capable of bringing both great happiness and extreme suffering, I. A. Bunin wrote a series of stories “Dark Alleys”, each of which understands Bunin’s love from different sides.
In the story “Cold Autumn,” the main character fell in love with a man who soon died in the war. He knew that this could happen, and advised his beloved to live without him, to enjoy the world while he waited for her on the other side. The heroine lives, gets married, takes care of her husband’s nephew, but in her own twilight she understands that the time that has passed since the death of her true love cannot be called life, it is only existence. The heroine asks herself: “Yes, and what happened in my life? Only that cold autumn evening.” She's ready to die because death better than life without love. The story ends with a very strong phrase: “I lived, I was happy, now I’ll come back soon.” She is not afraid of death, she waits for it as salvation, the opportunity to finally be with her loved one, even if not in this life.
Also clearly the tragedy of love in the perception of I. A. Bunin is shown in his separate story “Sunstroke”. This is a story of two already mature people who met each other precisely at that moment in life when they needed this meeting. There are no accidents in Bunin's work, it was fate. But the heroes are not teenagers, the woman is bound by obligations, and although the reader sees that this is true love, this meeting leads to absolutely nothing. The heroes get off the ferry in order to be together for at least a few hours, however, parting with the one whom he has already fallen in love with, the lieutenant no longer knows what to do in this city. “It was all so stupid, so ridiculous that he fled from the market.” Nothing makes sense anymore. “The lieutenant sat under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older.” The love of the heroes is mutual, their feelings are sincere, but their meeting leads nowhere, leaving in the heart the sweet bitterness of the feelings they experienced.
“All love is great happiness, even if it is not shared,” says I. A. Bunin. In his understanding, love is a spontaneous feeling, a person cannot control it, but without it life is empty and meaningless. It’s better to burn with love, break your heart, but fall in love, than not experience this feeling at all!
At all times, the theme of love has been the main one; many writers glorified the relationship between a man and a woman. Ivan Alekseevich was no exception; he writes about love in many stories. Love is the purest and bright feeling in the world. The theme of love is eternal in any era.
In Bunin's works, the writer describes the intimate and secret things that happen between two people. The work of Ivan Alekseevich can be divided into periods. Thus, the collection “Dark Alleys,” written during the World War, is dedicated entirely to love. The collection contains so much love and warm feelings, it is simply filled with love.
Bunin believes that love is a great feeling, even if this love is unrequited. The writer believes that any love has the right to life. Also, after reading the stories of Ivan Alekseevich, you can see that love is in his works goes next to death. He seems to draw the line that behind a great bright feeling there can be death.
In some of his stories, Bunin writes that love is not always beautiful and sunny, and maybe the love story will end tragically. So, for example, in the story “Sunstroke” his characters meet on a ship, where a wonderful feeling flares up between them. The girl in love tells the lieutenant that the feeling that visited them was like a sunstroke that clouded their minds. She says that she has never experienced anything like this and is unlikely to ever experience it. Unfortunately, the lieutenant realizes very late how much he fell in love with the girl, because he did not even know her last name or where she lives.
The lieutenant was ready to die for one more day spent with the girl he loved so much. He was overwhelmed with feelings, but they were big and bright.
In another story, Bunin describes the unrequited love of a young guy for a girl who does not pay any attention to him. Nothing pleases a girl and even a guy’s love doesn’t make her happy. At the end of the story, she goes to a monastery, where she thinks she will find happiness.
In another story, Ivan Alekseevich writes about a triangle in which a guy cannot choose between passion and love. The whole story he rushes between girls and everything ends tragically.
In Bunin's works, where he writes about love, all aspects of this feeling are described. After all, love is not only joy and happiness, but also suffering and grief. Love is a great feeling that you often have to fight for.
Essay Theme of love in the works of Bunin
The theme of love has always been and is an integral part of any work. I. A. Bunin revealed it especially clearly in his stories. The writer described love as a tragic and deep feeling; he tried to reveal to the reader all the secret corners of this strong attraction.
In Bunin’s works, such as “Dark Alleys”, “Cold Autumn”, “Sunstroke”, love is shown from several sides. On the one hand, this feeling can bring great happiness, on the other, a bright and ardent feeling inflicts a person’s soul deep wounds, brings days only suffering.
For the author, love was not just a naive feeling, it was strong and real, often accompanied by tragedy, and in some moments, death. The theme of love, in different times creative path, opened from different sides. At the beginning of his work, Bunin described love between young people as something easy, natural and open. She is beautiful and gentle, but at the same time she can bring disappointment. For example, in the story “Dawn All Night” he describes the strong love of a simple girl for a young man. She is ready to give all her youth and soul to her loved one, to completely dissolve in him. But reality can be cruel, and as often happens, falling in love passes and a person begins to look at many things differently. And in this work he clearly describes the breakdown of a relationship that brought only pain and disappointment.
At a certain period of his time, Bunin emigrated from Russia. It was at this time that love became a mature and deep feeling for him. He began to write about her with sadness and longing, remembering his past years of life. This is clearly reflected in the novel “Mitya’s Love,” written by him in 1924. At first everything goes well, feelings are strong and reliable, but later they will lead the main character to death. Bunin wrote not only about the mutual love of two young people, but in some of his works one can also find love triangle: “Caucasus” and “The Fairest of the Sun.” The happiness of some inevitably brings heartache and disappointment for others.
Love played a special role in his great work, “Dark Alleys,” written during the war years. In it, it is depicted as great happiness, despite the fact that it ends in tragedy in the end. The love of two people who met each other in adulthood is shown in the story “Sunstroke.” It was during this period of life that they so needed to experience this true feeling. The love of a lieutenant and a mature woman was doomed in advance and could not unite them for life. But after parting, she left the sweet bitterness of pleasant memories in their hearts.
In all his stories, Bunin glorifies love, its diversity and contradictions. If there is love, a person becomes infinitely bright, manifests true beauty his inner world, values in relation to his loved one. Love in Bunin’s understanding is true, selfless, pure feeling, even if after a sudden outburst and attraction it can lead to tragedy and deep disappointment.
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Mind and feelings.
In exile, where Bunin went after the famous October events, during the years of loneliness and slow oblivion, works on the themes of love, death and human memory. The creations of this cycle, marked by extraordinary poeticization human feeling, revealed the writer’s wonderful talent, his ability to penetrate into the very depths of the heart with their unknown and unknown laws. For Bunin, true love is akin to the eternal beauty of nature, and only a natural, uncontrived feeling is truly beautiful. Bunin does not hide the fact that sublime love brings not only joy, but often conceals the pangs of disappointment and death. In one of his letters, he himself explained why the antithesis of love and death sounds so often in his work, and not only explained, but convincingly proved: “Don’t you already know that love and death are inextricably linked. Every time I experienced a love catastrophe, and there were many of these love catastrophes in my life, or rather, almost every love of mine was a catastrophe, I was close to suicide.”
A similar story Bunin told about tragic love in a short story"Sunstroke". A chance acquaintance on a ship, an ordinary road adventure, a fleeting meeting that ended in tragedy for its participants. “Nothing even similar to what happened has ever happened to me and will never happen again. The eclipse definitely hit me. Or, rather, we both got something like sunstroke,” admits the heroine of the story, “a little nameless woman who never gave her name.” But this blow has not yet touched the hero. Having seen off his friend and carefreely returned to the hotel, the lieutenant suddenly felt that his heart “squeezed with an incomprehensible tenderness” at the memory of her. When he realized that he had lost her forever, “he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was overcome by the horror of despair.” Struck, as if by a blow, by this unexpected love, the lieutenant is ready to die just to return this woman. “He, without hesitation, would die tomorrow if it were possible by some miracle to bring her back, to spend one more, this day, with her, - to spend only to express to her and somehow prove, convince, how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her...”
In the story “Sunstroke” the writer develops his philosophy of love. If in the works written before, love is tragic (“Chang’s Dreams”) because it is not divided, it is lonely, then here its tragedy lies precisely in the fact that it is mutual and too beautiful to last. The breakdown of the meeting is natural and inevitable. Moreover, both lovers know that if their meeting lasts and lives unite, then the miracle, insight, “sunstroke” that struck them will disappear.
In his book “The Liberation of Tolstoy,” Bunin quoted the words of the great Russian writer, once said to him as a young man: “There is no happiness in life, there are only lightnings of it; appreciate them, live by them.”
Bunin considers love to be such “lightnings” of happiness that illuminate a person’s life. “Love does not understand death. Love is life,” Bunin writes out the words of Leo Tolstoy from “War and Peace,” and these words can serve as an epigraph, cross-cutting theme and the tuning fork of “Dark Alleys”.
The cycle of stories that made up the book “Dark Alleys” (1943, 1946) - kind of the only one in Russian literature where everything is about love, was the central event in Bunin’s work recent years.
This book can truly be called an encyclopedia of love. A variety of moments and shades of feelings occupy the writer; he peers, listens, guesses, tries to imagine the whole gamut of complex relationships between the hero and heroine. The writer explores everything, driven by the desire to comprehend the mysterious nature of man.
But first and foremost, of course, he is attracted by genuine earthly love, which, as he believes, represents the fusion, the inseparability of “earth” and “sky”, a certain absolute of love, the harmony of its two opposite principles - a harmony that is constantly sought, but not always found by all true poets of the world...
Such love is not invented by people, it occurs, and perhaps not so rarely. She is a great happiness, but the happiness is short-lived, sometimes instantaneous, just like lightning: it flared up and disappeared. (Therefore, as a rule, there is no talk about married couples in Bunin’s stories at all.) In the book “Dark Alleys,” love is short-lived. And the stronger and more unusual it is, the sooner it is destined to break off. But this lightning of happiness can illuminate a person’s entire memory and life.
The collection of stories “Dark Alleys” consisted of thirty-eight short stories, and each of them has its own tragedy of high feelings. The heroines of the stories: Rusya, Antigone, Natalie and many others - give an idea of the diversity of female types. Love makes their life significant, but not only because it fills it with joy and happiness, but above all because of the inevitability of their own death.
Although in almost all the stories in the collection “Dark Alleys” love is tragic, Bunin argues that all love is great happiness, even if it ends in separation, destruction or death. But this insight, enlightenment comes to them too late, as, for example, to the main character of the story “Natalie”. In this work, Bunin told the love story of student Vitaly Meshchersky, to a girl, the young beauty Natalie Stankevich, for whom he has a sincere and sublime feeling, and to another. Sonya, “passionate bodily intoxication.” Both seem like love to him. But loving two people at once is impossible. Physical attraction to Sonya quickly passes, but great, true love for Natalie remains for life. Exhausted by this hopeless feeling. Meshchersky soon “got used to the state of the mentally ill person that he secretly was, and lived outwardly. like everyone else.” Only for a short moment were the heroes given the true happiness of love, but the author completed the idyllic union with the untimely death of the heroine.
The writer's skill in the stories of “Dark Alleys” reached extraordinary virtuosity and expressiveness. Bunin accurately, frankly and in detail depicts intimate human relationships, but always on that elusive edge where high art does not reduce one iota to even hints of naturalism. But this “miracle” is achieved at the cost of great creative torment, as, indeed, everything written by Bunin.
So. at the end of his days, the Russian artist accomplished his lonely feat... And his book “Dark Alleys” became that integral part of Russian and world literature, which, while people are alive on Earth, varies in different ways the “Song of Songs” of the human heart.
Reason and feelings The theme of love in the prose of I. Bunin (On the example of the story “Natalie”)
Love is so omnipotent that it regenerates ourselves...
F. M. Dostoevsky
His fate had a great influence on the work of I. A. Bunin. Emigration became a truly tragic milestone in the writer’s biography, forever breaking his connection with his native land. If we briefly define the mood of the stories of this period, we can say that the author was overcome by a feeling of loneliness, nostalgia for his homeland, and complete isolation. The central event of the last period of Bunin’s work was the creation of stories that made up the book “Dark Alleys” (1943). Bunin wrote about this collection: “All the stories in this book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys.”
The lives of the heroes in the stories from the collection “Dark Alleys” become more significant due to a deep feeling of love. They experience joyful moments, but Bunin’s love stories most often lead to separation or even death. At the center of Bunin's stories there is usually a woman, and always a different one. It can be a source of both happiness and tragedy. What is the reason for the tragedy that accompanies every great love? Sometimes, as Bunin replies, it is the social inequality of people. Great love is incompatible with ordinary life, and death, taking away one of the lovers, seems to confirm this. But the greatest interest in the book is those works in which tragic love reveals itself as the greatest happiness.
One of the stories in the collection - “Natalie” - is dedicated to the theme of great and all-encompassing love that captured the student Vitaly Meshchersky.
At the very beginning of the story, we are immersed in the writer’s favorite atmosphere of the old landowner’s life. Bunin recreates in detail the interior of the noble estate (antique paintings covering the entire wall, a bureau from his grandfather’s times, silverware) and conveys the beauty of the fragrant summer garden in which nightingales sing. The writer has always been inclined to poeticize ancient life, but in this story detailed descriptions have a special meaning: they are designed to create that peculiar atmosphere against the background of which events unfold.
The hero of the story, Vitaly Meshchersky, finds himself in a strange situation: he feels that he loves both his cousin Sonya and her friend Natasha Stankevich at the same time. And if with Sonya he begins something similar to an ordinary romance (although he really loves her), then the feeling for Natasha is of a completely different kind. Meshchersky adores his cousin's friend and worships her. Just the thought of her covers him with “pure love delight.” Supreme joy The hero of the story sees it even in simply being next to a beautiful girl and looking at her.
The beauty of Natasha Stankevich is truly unearthly. She has golden hair and eyes like “black suns.” And even her name is not just Natasha, but Natalie. Her name itself is associated with something pure, airy and unattainable.
The situation that Bunin recreates in his story is not new in literature and art. The ancient Greek writer and philosopher Plato told us about two Aphrodites: Aphrodite Pandemos - the goddess of carnal love and Aphrodite Urania - the goddess of heavenly love. Dedicated to the same topic famous painting"Heavenly and earthly love" Italian artist Titian.
Bunin transfers the ancient Greek plot to a Russian noble estate. Moreover author's position is visible here quite clearly: he does not condemn his hero, showing each feeling as beautiful in its own way and having the right to exist.
However, Natalie accidentally finds out about the connection between Sonya and Meshchersky, and the idyll collapses, breaking the fates of all three at once. When love dies, life itself dies, in essence. We learn nothing more about Sonya - she simply disappears from the author’s narrative, but for some reason it seems that she, too, did not have happiness in her life. As for Meshchersky and Natalie, their lives are tragic. She marries his relative, whom he once, laughing, prophesied as her husband. Natalie does not love her husband, and soon remains a widow with a little daughter in her arms. And Meshchersky leads a life similar to a painful dream, in which there is no place for joy and happiness. He cannot even imagine that love or marriage could happen in his life. Often, remembering Natalie, Meshchersky thinks that that “love until the grave” that Sonya mockingly told him about still exists. Over time, he seemed to get used to the loss of his love, just as a person who has lost an arm gets used to living without an arm.
Meshchersky is destined to meet Natalie again. Moreover, she responds to his feelings, but the heroes again fail to become happy. Natalie soon dies.
Bunin is convinced of the tragic nature of love, apparently following the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, who believed that Eros and Thanatos (gods of love and death) go hand in hand. Bunin’s heroes, even when in love, feel “as if over an abyss,” realizing somewhere deep inside themselves that happiness is too fragile and an unattainable dream, and if it suddenly happens in life, it passes very quickly.
And yet the writer praises love. In the words of his heroine Natalie, he says: “...is there such a thing as unhappy love?.. Doesn’t the most mournful music in the world give happiness?”
So, Bunin, turning to eternal theme, tries to answer the question: “What is love?” According to the writer, this is something unknown and tragic, but at the same time the most beautiful thing in life, this is what he called “the bewilderment of happiness.”
Mind and feelings. Theme of tragic love. I. Bunin “Dark Alleys”
Bunin considered the collection of stories “Dark Alleys”, created during the Second World War in exile, to be the best thing he wrote in his life. He was a pure source of spiritual inspiration for the writer during this difficult time. The theme of love unites all the short stories in the cycle. Often this feeling is tragic. It brings neither “happiness” nor “unhappiness”. But catastrophism is in the very nature of love, according to I. A. Bunin. What is unrequited love? Is it possible to delay, extend, return it?
The story “Dark Alleys,” which gave the collection its title, was written, as Bunin himself admitted, “very easily, unexpectedly.”
The writer recalls: “I re-read Ogarev’s poems and settled on the famous poem:
It was a wonderful time
They sat on the shore
She was in her prime,
His mustache was barely black...
The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around,
There was an alley of dark linden trees..."
This is how the image of a “dark alley” arises, its original meaning. Subsequently, the thought comes about the “dark alleys” of the human soul, its incomprehensibility.
The story of the relationship between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich, the heroes of the story “Dark Alleys,” is simple, like life itself. Thirty years later, people met who once loved each other very much. She is the owner of a “private room” at the post station, he is a “slender old military man” who stopped in the autumn bad weather to rest and have lunch. The owner of the warm and tidy room turned out to be Nadezhda, “a beautiful woman beyond her age,” dark-haired, “with dark fluff on her upper lip.” She recognized her former lover immediately and said that she did not get married because she had loved him all her life, despite the fact that he “heartlessly” abandoned her. I was never able to forgive. Nikolai Alekseevich married, as it seemed to him, for love, but he was not happy: his wife left him, cheating on the one who “loved her madly,” his son grew up to be a “scoundrel” and a “spendthrift.”
This, it seems, is the whole story, in which nothing can be corrected. And is it necessary to change anything? Does this make sense? Bunin does not give answers to such questions. We don’t know what happened in the former lives of our heroes. However, it seems that at that time Nikolai Alekseevich’s relationship with the beautiful serf Nadezhda seemed like an easy flirtation. Even now he is perplexed: “What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the innkeeper, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?”
Nadezhda has nothing left in her life except memories of her first love, although she lives strong and “gives money in interest.” She is respected for her fairness, her straightforwardness, her intelligence. The former serf remained morally intact and forced herself to be respected.
Nikolai Alekseevich left, unable to cope with the surging feelings, remembering the magical poems that he once read to his beloved: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...”
This means that the mark on the soul remained quite deep, the memories did not recede. And who isn’t flattered to be the only one in life? The splinter in my heart has stuck firmly, now forever. How could it be otherwise? After all, it turned out that more love never happened. The chance is given only once. They needed to take advantage of it, perhaps by going through a break with family, misunderstanding and condemnation from friends, and perhaps even giving up their career. All this is within the capabilities of a real Man, capable of loving and protecting his Woman. For such a person there are no class differences; he does not accept the law of society as mandatory, but challenges it.
But our hero can neither understand nor appreciate his actions, so repentance does not occur. But love lives in the heart of Nadezhda, who does not stoop to reproaches, complaints, or threats. She is full of human dignity and grateful to fate, which gave her, at the end of her days, a meeting with the one whom she once called “Nikolenka,” to whom she gave “her beauty, her fever.”
I believe that true love does not require anything in return, does not ask for anything. “Love is beautiful,” because only love can be answered with love...
Mind and feelings. THEME OF LOVE.I.BUNIN “Sunstroke”
The theme of love is the main one in the work of Ivan Aleksandrovich Bunin. "Sunstroke" is one of his most famous stories. Analysis of this work helps to reveal the author’s views on love and its role in a person’s destiny.
What is typical for Bunin is that he focuses not on platonic feelings, but on romance, passion, and desire. For the beginning of the 20th century, this can be considered a bold innovative decision: no one before Bunin openly glorified and spiritualized bodily feelings. For a married woman, a fleeting relationship was unforgivable, a grave sin.
The author stated: “All love is great happiness, even if it is not shared.” This statement applies to this story as well. In it, love comes like an insight, like a bright flash, like a sunstroke. This is a spontaneous and often tragic feeling, which, nevertheless, is a great gift.
In the story “Sunstroke,” Bunin talks about the fleeting romance of a lieutenant and a married lady who were sailing on the same ship and suddenly became inflamed with passion for each other. The author sees the eternal secret of love in the fact that the heroes are not free in their passion: after the night they part forever, without even knowing each other’s name.
The sun motif in the story gradually changes its color. If at the beginning the luminary is associated with joyful light, life and love, then at the end the hero sees in front of him "aimless sun" and understands what he experienced "terrible sunstroke". The cloudless sky became grayish for him, and the street, resting against it, hunched over. The lieutenant is sad and feels 10 years older: he doesn’t know how to find the lady and tell her that he can no longer live without her. What happened to the heroine remains a mystery, but we guess that falling in love will also leave its mark on her.
Bunin's style of narration is very “dense”. He is a master of the short genre, and in a small volume he manages to fully reveal the images and convey his idea. The story contains many short but powerful descriptive sentences. They are filled with epithets and details.
What’s interesting is that love is a scar that remains in the memory, but does not lie as a burden on the soul. Waking up alone, the hero realizes that he is again able to see smiling people. He himself will soon be able to rejoice: the mental wound can heal and almost not hurt.
“Sunstroke,” the love that Bunin describes in his works has no future. His heroes will never be able to find happiness; they are doomed to suffer. "Sunstroke" reveals once again Bunin's concept love:
“Having fallen in love, we die...”
MIND AND FEELINGS. THEME OF LOVE.I.BUNIN “EASY BREATHING”
The story “Easy Breathing” was written by I. Bunin in 1916. It reflected the philosophical motives of life and death, the beautiful and the ugly, which were the focus of the writer’s attention. In this story, Bunin develops one of the leading problems for his work: love and death. In terms of artistic mastery, “Easy Breathing” is considered the pearl of Bunin’s prose.
The narrative moves in the opposite direction, from the present to the past, the beginning of the story is its ending. From the first lines, the author immerses the reader in the sad atmosphere of the cemetery, describes the grave of a beautiful girl, whose life was absurdly and terribly interrupted in the prime of her life: “In the cemetery, above its clay embankment, there stands a new cross made of oak, strong, heavy, smooth.
April, gray days; The monuments of the spacious county cemetery are still visible far away through the bare trees, and the cold wind rings and rings at the foot of the cross.
Embedded in the cross itself is a rather large, convex porcelain medallion, and in the medallion is a photographic portrait of a schoolgirl with joyful, amazingly lively eyes.
This is Olya Meshcherskaya.”
Bunin makes us feel sorrow at the sight of the grave of a fifteen-year-old girl, bright and beautiful, who died at the very beginning of spring. It was the spring of her life, and she was in it like an unblown bud of a beautiful flower in the future. But a fabulous summer will never come for her. Young life and beauty have disappeared, now eternity hangs over Olya: “the cold wind rings and rings,” without stopping, like a “porcelain wreath” on her grave.
The author introduces us to the life of the heroine of the story, high school student Olya Meshcherskaya, at fourteen and fifteen years old. Throughout her appearance one can see admiring surprise at the extraordinary changes that are happening to her. She quickly became prettier, turning into a girl, her soul was filled with energy and happiness. The heroine is stunned, she still doesn’t know what to do with herself, new and so beautiful, so she simply gives in to the impulses of youth and carefree fun. Nature presented her with an unexpected gift, making her light, cheerful, and happy. The author writes that the heroine was distinguished “in the last two years from the entire gymnasium by her grace, elegance, dexterity, and the clear sparkle of her eyes.” Life is delightfully seething in her, and she happily settles into her new beautiful appearance, trying out its possibilities.
I can’t help but remember the story “Violets,” written by Bunin’s friend and talented Russian prose writer A. I. Kuprin. It talentedly depicts the explosive awakening of the youth of seventh-grader cadet Dmitry Kazakov, who, due to surging feelings, cannot prepare for the exam, with emotion, collects violets outside the walls of the educational building. The young man does not understand what is happening to him, but out of happiness he is ready to embrace the whole world and fall in love with the first girl he meets.
Bunin's Olya Meshcherskaya is kind, sincere and direct person. With her happiness and positive energy, the girl charges everything around her and attracts people to her. Girls from junior classes the gymnasiums are running after her in a crowd, for them she is an ideal. The last winter of Olya’s life seemed to be so beautiful on purpose: “The winter was snowy, sunny, frosty, the sun set early behind the tall spruce forest of the snowy gymnasium garden, invariably fine, radiant, promising and tomorrow there will be frost and sun, a walk on Sobornaya Street; skating rink in the city garden, pink evening, music and this crowd gliding in all directions on the skating rink, in which Olya Meshcherskaya seemed the most carefree, the happiest.” But it only seemed so. This psychological detail points to the awakening of natural forces, characteristic of the youth of every person, when the mind is still asleep and does not control the feelings. Inexperienced, inexperienced Olya easily flies through life like a butterfly to a flame. And misfortune is already following in her wake. Bunin managed to fully convey the tragedy of this dizzying flight.
Freedom of judgment, absence of fear, manifestation of intense joy, demonstration of happiness are considered defiant behavior in society. Olya doesn’t understand how annoying she is to others. Beauty, as a rule, causes envy, misunderstanding, and does not know how to defend itself in a world where everything exceptional is persecuted.
Except main character The story features four more images, one way or another connected with the young schoolgirl. This is the head of the gymnasium, Olya’s class lady, Olya’s father’s acquaintance Alexey Mikhailovich Milyutin and a certain Cossack officer.
None of them treat the girl like a human being, they don’t even make an attempt to understand her inner world. The boss, out of duty, reproaches Meshcherskaya for women's hairstyle, shoes. An elderly man, Milyutin took advantage of Olya’s inexperience and seduced her. Apparently, a casual admirer, a Cossack officer, mistook Meshcherskaya’s behavior for frivolity and licentiousness. He shoots a girl at a train station and kills her. A fifteen-year-old girl is far from a fatal temptress. She, a naive schoolgirl, shows him a piece of paper from her notebook-diary. Like a child, she does not know a way out of a love situation and tries to isolate herself from an annoying admirer with her own childish and confused notes, presenting them as a kind of document. How could you not understand this? But, having committed a crime, an ugly, plebeian-looking officer blames the girl he killed for everything.
Bunin understood love primarily only as passion that flared up suddenly. And passion is always destructive. Bunin's love walks next to death. The story “Easy Breathing” is no exception. This was the great writer’s concept of love. But Bunin claims: death is not omnipotent. Short but bright life Olya Meshcherskaya left a mark on many souls. “The little woman in mourning,” the cool lady Olya, often comes to the grave, remembering her “pale face in the coffin” and the conversation that she once unwittingly overheard. Olya told her friend that the main thing in a woman is “ easy breathing“: “But I have it,” listen to how I inhale, “I really do?”
I believe that if all people were as pure, naive, beautiful as Olya was, and if everyone knew how to enjoy every day, then everyone would be happy. But not everyone has easy breathing. Olya was too different from the society in which she lived. People envied her, did not understand her joy, her happiness, but she did not understand people. Olya was unable to live by the laws by which society lived. The light breath had to dissipate “in this cloudy sky, in this cold spring wind,” because it cannot be tied to the earth.
Literature
Features of the theme of love in the works of I.A. Bunin
Completed:
9th grade student
Teacher:
Markovich L.V.
1 Introduction 3
2 Main part
1) Views of Bunin 6
2) “Dark Alleys” 10
3) "Natalie" 12
4) " Clean Monday» 14
3 Conclusion 17
4 Bibliography 20
introduction
“Love is an intimate and deep feeling directed at another person, human community or idea. Love includes impulse and the will to constancy, taking shape in the ethical demand for fidelity. Love arises as the most free and “unpredictable” expression of the depths of personality; it cannot be forced or overcome,” - this is exactly the definition of love that I.T. Frolov’s philosophical dictionary gives us, but how can a person who has never experienced love, after reading this definition, understand what kind of feeling it is. Certainly not. Love is a feeling that cannot be defined. Each person will have his own, because love is individual and in some sense unique, reflecting the unique features of each person’s life path. In addition, we can say that love is the pursuit of an ideal. When a person falls in love, his love becomes the living embodiment of an ideal that already exists for him not somewhere in the distant future, but today, now, this minute. Having fallen in love, a person begins to see and appreciate in his beloved what sometimes others do not see or appreciate. Love inspires people to write poetry, music, paintings. A person always thinks about love, needs it, waits for it, strives for it. And people no longer have strong feeling than love. Neither fear, nor envy, nor malicious hatred - nothing can overcome love.
In literature, the theme of love is one of the eternal themes. An endless number of works have been and will be written about love.
The topic of my essay is “Features of the theme of love in the collection of stories by I.A. Bunin “Dark Alleys”.”
Bunin's stories made a strong impression on me. When you read works on the same topic by different authors, you seem to involuntarily compare them, noticing similarities and differences. Most often it happens that the plots are different, the authors present the problem differently, but they see it the same way. However, the first time I read Bunin’s stories, I was amazed at how he not only presents, but also sees love. I discovered a completely different, unlike anything else, “Bunin’s love.” I wanted to understand and understand Bunin’s views on love, which is why I chose this topic for the essay.
I believe that the theme of love is relevant, and I would like to express its relevance in the words of the Russian writer Maxim Gorky: “Life without love is not life, but existence. It is impossible to live without love; that is why the soul was given to man, to love.” Indeed, as long as Peace exists on Earth, people will experience this great feeling - love. After reading the collection of stories “Dark Alleys,” I found out that love for Bunin is the greatest happiness bestowed on man. But eternal doom hangs over her. Love is always associated with tragedy, have a happy ending true love does not happen, because a person has to pay for moments of happiness. To prove this, I set myself the following tasks:
Study the biography of Bunin and his views on love.
Research critical literature related to the topic of the essay.
Analyze some of the stories included in the collection “Dark Alleys”.
Draw conclusions and present material on this topic
Bunin's views
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is one of the most prominent Russian writers of the twentieth century. In 1933 he was awarded Nobel Prize in the field of literature. He was excellent at both poetry and prose, as short stories, and novels. Speaking about Bunin, one cannot remain silent about the main circumstance of his literary and everyday fate. In 1917 came social drama a writer who always lived in the interests of Russia. Not understanding October Revolution, the writer left his homeland forever in 1920. Emigration became a truly tragic milestone in Bunin’s biography. Poverty and indifference were painful to bear for Ivan Alekseevich. However, the terrible events with the Nazis coming to power were perceived immeasurably more acutely. Bunin constantly monitored the front and hid people persecuted by the Nazis. He saw the victory of the Russian people over the Germans. In 1945, he was happy for his Fatherland. A. Bobrenko cites the bitter words of Ivan Alekseevich, spoken on March 30, 1943: “... the days pass in great monotony, in weakness and idleness. About a year and a half ago, I wrote a whole book of new stories in a very short time, now I only occasionally pick up the pen - my hands fall off: why and for whom should I write?” We are talking here about stories published under the general title “Dark Alleys.” The first version of the collection appeared in the USA in 1943. Then Bunin, also in a “short time,” enlarges it and publishes it in 1946 in Paris. Working on the collection was a source of spiritual inspiration for Bunin during the war years. The author himself considered the works of the collection “Dark Alleys”, begun and completed
from 1937 to 1944, by his highest achievement. I.V. Odintsova recalled “Bunin’s heated objections to a remark about his glory: “What did this Nobel Prize - and how much I dreamed about it - bring me? Some damn shards. And did foreigners appreciate me? So I wrote my best book, “Dark Alleys,” but not a single French publisher wants to take it.” The stories in this cycle are fictional, which Bunin himself emphasized more than once. However, everything, including their retrospective form, is caused, as always in art, by the state of the author’s soul. A.V. Bakhrakh once asked: “Ivan Alekseevich, have you ever tried to compile your Don Juan list?” To which Bunin replied: “Then it would be better to make a list of unused opportunities, but your tactless question awakened a swarm of memories in me. What an amazing time - youth! There were so many meetings, unforgettable moments! Life passes quickly, and we begin to appreciate it only when everything else is behind us.” Such moments of return to the most vivid, powerful experience are reproduced in the cycle. The mood for him is given by N.P. Ogarev’s poem “An Ordinary Tale,” to which Bunin does not very accurately refer when explaining the origin of his story “Dark Alleys.” The collection “Dark Alleys” became the embodiment of all the writer’s many years of thoughts about love, which he saw everywhere, since for him this concept was very broad. He sees love in a special light. At the same time, it reflects the feelings that each person experienced. From this point of view, love is not some special, abstract concept, but, on the contrary, common to everyone. The main theme of the cycle is the theme of love, but it is no longer just love, but love that reveals the most secret corners of the human soul, love as the basis of life and as that illusory happiness that we all strive for, but, alas, so often miss. “Dark Alleys” is a multifaceted, diverse work. Bunin shows human relationships in all manifestations: sublime passion, quite ordinary desires, novels “out of nothing to do,” animal manifestations of passion.
Bunin is in love with love. For him, this is the most beautiful feeling on earth, incomparable to anything else. And yet love destroys destinies. The writer never tired of repeating that every strong love avoids marriage. An earthly feeling is only a short flash in a person’s life, and Bunin tries to preserve these wonderful moments in his stories. In the collection “Dark Alleys” we will not find a single story where love would end in marriage. Lovers are separated either by relatives, or by circumstances, or by death. It seems that death for Bunin is preferable to a long family life side by side. It shows love at its peak, but never at its decline.
Critics have repeatedly spoken about the tragedy of Bunin’s views, which united love and death. But this is how he himself explained to I.V. Odoevtseva this motive: “Don’t you really know that love and death are inseparable? Every time I experienced a love catastrophe - and there were many of these love catastrophes in my life, or rather, almost every love of mine was a catastrophe - I was close to suicide. This means that the writer did not at all initially, not naturally, connect the light of life and the darkness of non-existence. But only in a catastrophic situation.
The words of one unknown philosopher are very close to the views of the writer: “They sought and idolized love. She was lost and not taken care of. “Love doesn’t exist,” people said, but they themselves died of love.”
According to Bunin, love is a kind of highest main point existence, which illuminates a person’s life, and Bunin sees in the face of love the opposition to death: if a person’s life is filled with love, then it lasts longer. But for Bunin, “happy, lasting” love, with which he simply has nothing to do, is not so important as short-lived love, which, like a flash, illuminates a person’s life, filling it with joyful emotions. Such love in Bunin quickly breaks off, but does not die, and with this idea of love, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin writes a series short stories under the general name "Dark Alleys". First of all, all the stories are united by the motif of memories of youth and homeland. All or almost all of the stories in “Dark Alleys” are told in the past tense. Sometimes it is explicitly stated that past events are being reproduced. “In that distant time, he spent himself especially recklessly...” - “Tanya.” “He didn’t sleep, lay there, smoked and mentally looked at that summer” - “Rusya” “That summer I put on a student cap for the first time” - “Natalie.” In another case, the effect of the past is conveyed more subtly. For example, in "Clean
Monday” “Every evening the coachman rushed me at this hour on a stretching trotter...”, and in the end
definitely: “In the fourteenth year, under New Year, it was the same quiet, sunny evening as that unforgettable one...” Everywhere we talk about what human memory has retained.
At first glance, it may seem that all the stories are similar to each other and satisfy only such thematic divisions of the book as: love, life, death. But these themes coexist and intertwine in every story. Bunin himself designated parts of “Dark Alleys” with Roman numerals: I, II, III, placing the stories under them, probably in a strict sequence known only to him. Vyacheslav Shugaev, in his book “The Experiences of a Reading Man,” tried to decipher Roman numerals in more detail so that the connections and differences between the parts would become clearer. Perhaps we can assume that the main motive, indicated by the number I, is whimsicality, the whimsicality of the emergence of passion, its inappropriateness in the world around us and the necessity of retribution for this inappropriateness: broken, ruined destinies. Number II - the impossibility of separation for those who love - they can
either die or fill later life torments of memories and longing for lost love. Number III – inscrutability female soul, her dark, sublime frenetic service to passion. But perhaps all this is not true. In Bunin, kindred spirits unite in love, there is so much sacrificial devotion in this union, so much frenzied tenderness in the “struggle not equal to two hearts,” that love seems to overflow beyond the limits prepared for it by nature and tragically extinguishes. It was these inexpressible heartaches, caused not by a lack of love, but by its excess, that worried Bunin most of all, as a manifestation, it is appropriate to assume, of a purely Russian understanding of feeling. For love, or rather, tormented by love, Russian people went to the chopping block, to hard labor, shot themselves, went on a spree, and became a monk. We need fervor, akin to religious, in the service of love - this is what Bunin stood for and preached in “Dark Alleys”.
For analysis, I chose, in my opinion, the most striking works from each part.
"Dark Alleys"
This story depicts chance meeting people who loved each other thirty years ago. The situation is quite ordinary: a young nobleman easily parted with the serf girl Nadezhda who was in love with him and married a woman from his circle. And Nadezhda, having received her freedom from the masters, became the mistress of an inn and never got married, had no family, no children, and did not know ordinary everyday happiness. Throughout her life she carried her love for the master who had once seduced her. He is not able to rise to her high feelings, to understand why Nadezhda did not marry “with such beauty that she had.” How can you love one person all your life? Meanwhile, for Nadezhda Nikolenka remained an ideal, the one and only, for the rest of her life. “No matter how much time passed, she lived alone,” she confesses to Nikolai Alekseevich. Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten... I could never forgive you. Just as I didn’t have anything more valuable than you in the world at that time, I didn’t have anything later.” She could not change herself, her feelings. And Nikolai Alekseevich realized that in Nadezhda he had lost “the most precious thing he had in life.” But this is a momentary epiphany. Leaving the inn, he “remembered with shame his words and the fact that he kissed her hand, and was immediately ashamed of his shame.” And yet it was difficult for him to imagine Nadezhda as his wife, the mistress of the St. Petersburg house, the mother of his children. This gentleman attaches too much importance to class prejudices to prefer genuine feelings to them. But he paid for his cowardice with a lack of personal happiness.
How differently the characters in the story interpret what happened to them! For Nikolai Alekseevich, this is “a vulgar, ordinary story,” but for Nadezhda, not dying memories, many years of devotion to love.
Yes, perhaps Nadezhda is not happy now, many years later, but how strong that feeling was, how much joy it brought, that it is impossible to forget about it. That is, love for the heroine is happiness, but happiness with the constant, aching pain of memories.
"Natalie"
The love story of first-year student Meshchersky for the young beauty Natalie Senkevich is conveyed in his memoirs about a long period - from his first acquaintance with the girl to her untimely death. Memory brings out the unusual, incomprehensible in the past and helps to understand it. Meshchersky's friends called him a “monk.” He himself did not want to “violate his purity, to seek love without romance.” Natalie is not only not vicious, but has a proud, refined soul. They immediately fell in love with each other. And the story is about their breakup and long loneliness. There is only one external reason - an unexpectedly awakened feeling on the eve of meeting Natalie, attraction young man to the bodily charms of his cousin Sonya. Internal process very complicated. As always with Bunin, all the eventual turns are barely indicated. The phenomenon that occupies the author is deeply comprehended in its internal development. Already at the end of the second chapter, a contradiction is felt in the hero’s thoughts:
“... how can I now live in this duality - in secret meetings with Sonya and next to Natalie, the very thought of whom already covers me with such pure love delight.” Why is there a rapprochement with Sonya? The writer reveals its external causes - the common desire among young people for early sensuality, the girl’s premature female maturity, her bold and free disposition.
But the main thing is not in them. Meshchersky himself cannot tear himself away from the hot embrace. His memory preserves the intoxication of these meetings. Fully aware of the criminality of his dual behavior, he cannot choose one thing for himself.
The question, “why did God punish me so much, why did he give me two loves at once, so different and so passionate, such painful beauty of Natalie’s adoration and such bodily rapture for Sonya,” seems painfully insoluble to the young man. He first calls both experiences love. Only time will tell the poverty and deceitfulness of purely physical intimacy. It was enough for Meshchersky not to see Sonya for five days, and he forgot his sensual obsession, but it happened too late; Natalie found out about the betrayal. And Natalie’s long-term separation (her marriage with an unloved person, Meshchersky’s own relationship with a peasant woman) only fueled an unquenchable high feeling, giving both a genuine, albeit secret and short, marriage. The author ends the happiness of the lovers with the last, as if casually mentioned, phrase of the story: “In December, she died on Lake Geneva in premature birth.”
Main character, and in this he differs from many, he carries in his soul the rare gift of adoration for his beloved, and has the ability to understand his mistakes (even if not immediately, with great losses). And yet Meshchersky is unhappy for a long time, lonely, shocked by his own, so unexpected guilt.
The story “Natalie” revealed a new facet of the writer’s artistic generalizations. For the first time in Bunin, a person overcomes the imperfection of his consciousness, feels dissatisfaction from purely carnal pleasures, and the memory of them brings sobering. But such an experience is rare. For the most part, other feelings win out. Apparently, this is why the author ends the union of Meshchersky and Natalie with her death.
"Clean Monday"
Recognition of a hero, but how impulsive they are, internally abrupt, uncertain. And the reader immediately understands why to the Narrator (he is nameless, like her) everything seems like an obsession and a surprise. “I don’t know how all this should end”; “For some reason she studied at the courses...”; “What was left for me but hope”; “...for some reason we went to Ordynka.” Moreover, from the very beginning he admits that he “tried not to think, not to overthink it.” Only he is more open, kind, but frankly frivolous, subject to the power of chance and the elements. It was not for him to understand his friend, the complete opposite of himself. The refined skill of the writer was reflected here in the fact that in the language of such a person he was able to convey all the complex, serious nature of the heroine. Wouldn't it have been easier to tell the story from her perspective? But then we wouldn’t feel the exclusivity of this feminine character. “And as much as I was inclined to talkativeness, she was so silent: she was always thinking about something, she seemed to be mentally delving into something” - this is the first impression of mysterious woman. The inconsistency of her behavior is immediately apparent: mockery of abundant food, luxury and participation in lunches and dinners “with a Moscow understanding of the matter”; irony over theatrical and other tinsel and constant social entertainment; accepting a man’s impudent caresses and refusing to have a serious conversation about their relationship. “I didn’t resist anything, but I was silent all the time.” The heroine’s hidden desires also suddenly shocked the fan. They spent every evening in the best restaurants in Moscow, taking advantage of their wealth, youth, striking everyone with their rare beauty. And then, at her suggestion, they ended up in the Novodevichy Convent. It turned out that she goes to the Rogozhskoye cemetery, where the flavor of pre-Petrine Russia is so strong, to the Kremlin cathedrals, to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and is fascinated by ancient Russian texts.
The author expands his impressions of this internally contradictory nature of the heroine with reference to the no less different origins of the capital. Moscow of those years, indeed, was a combination of the hoary antiquity of monasteries, cathedrals with the latest achievements culture: Art theatre, Symbolist works, works by L. Andreev, translated works of Spitzler. The realities of such a varied environment are unobtrusively included in the narrative. Unobtrusively, because the heroine’s inner gaze is directed towards these contradictions. The writer speaks not so much about the intellectual development of this strange woman, but about the struggle in her soul of different aspirations. It is not for nothing that V. Bryusov is mentioned with his novel, not without vulgarity, “ Fire Angel" Przybyshevsky, who spoke out against the “old” morality, “drunken” skits: And on the other hand, the Orthodox monasteries, finally, the heroine uttered the words of the Russian legend: “And the Devil instilled in his wife a flying serpent for fornication. And this serpent appeared to her in human nature, extremely beautiful...” This is the peak of the clash of opposites: “permissiveness,” the vulgarity of pleasures and suppression of the flesh, asceticism, purification of the spirit. It is these incompatible impulses that a woman unites in her being. Again, the subtext expresses the dream of merging the healthy demands of human happiness with the highest spiritual beauty. A dream that goes back to the ideal of love.
The heroine, however, believes in the wisdom of Tolstoy’s Platon Karataev: “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.” Nevertheless, she tries to “drink” her share of joy.
In a kaleidoscope of changing scenes: a restaurant, an evening living room, Novodevichy cemetery, Egorov’s tavern, a skit party Art Theater– the heroine of the story’s decision grows in separate “seeds”: from smiling at her admirer’s talkativeness, to submitting to his caresses, to exclaiming: “It’s true, how you love me!”, to admiring him, “very beautiful”, to the last step - sharing him passions. But, apparently, she got little from that night; in the morning she left for a monastery forever. And there she did not find peace - she continued to grieve.
What does the heroine of the story “Clean Monday” cleanse herself of? It seems clear - from an idle worldly life. Then why, after “Forgiveness Sunday,” does she find herself in the arms of a man? No, there were other sins behind her: pride, contempt for people. She wanted to trust them and her feminine strength, to love the best one she met on life path. And I couldn’t. The story is written with unusual conciseness and virtuosic depiction. Every stroke, color, and detail plays an important role in the external movement of the plot and becomes a sign of some internal trends (what is the heroine’s last black-velvet secular outfit in combination with the hairstyle of the Shamakhan queen). In vague forebodings and mature thoughts, the bright, changeable appearance of this woman, the author embodied his ideas about a contradictory atmosphere, about the complex layers of the human soul, about the birth of something new. moral ideal. It is not surprising that Bunin considered “Clean Monday” best story collection.
Conclusion
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 that is wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories. Over the centuries, many word artists have dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them has found something unique and individual in this theme. From my work it follows 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. Bunin also especially sees the images of the heroes of his stories.
The image of a woman is the attractive force that constantly attracts Bunin. He creates a gallery of such images, each story has its own. The writer addresses fate absolutely different women. Social status ceases to matter when feelings come into play. A woman is inseparable from nature. It is almost always connected to a forest, a field, the sea, or clouds. She is part of it and therefore, apparently, is endowed with such spontaneous, uncontrollable power as wind, lightning, flood. Perhaps, under the influence of this force, so much mental torment was brought into “Dark Alleys”? all the images delight, it seems that the author is in love with each of them. All the feelings that these women experience have a right to exist. Let this be the first bright love, passion for an unworthy person, a feeling of revenge, lust and worship. And it makes absolutely no difference whether you are a peasant or a lady. The main thing is that you are a woman.
Men's images in Bunin's stories they are somewhat darkened, blurred, the characters are not too defined. In almost all the stories, the man is the same: ardent, spiritually vigilant, full of compassion for a woman and somewhat contemplative - this is how a man should be who is worthy of love and finds it. Bunin deliberately does not endow him with characteristic uniqueness, so that it does not prevent the hero in all his love searches and adventures from being heartily attentive, sensually observant and tirelessly admiring a woman, worshiping her spiritual secrets. It is important for the writer to understand what feelings these men experience, what pushes them towards women, why they love them. The reader does not need to know what this or that man is like, what he looks like, what his advantages and disadvantages are. He participates in the story insofar as love is a feeling of two.
Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person’s life, giving his fate a unique flavor against the backdrop of ordinary everyday stories, filling his earthly existence with special meaning. Yes, love has many faces and is often inexplicable. This is an eternal mystery, and every reader of Bunin’s works seeks his own answers, reflecting on the mysteries of love. The perception of this feeling is personal, and therefore someone will treat what is depicted in the book as a “vulgar story,” while others will be shocked by the great gift of love, which, like the talent of a writer, is not given to everyone. Every young person will find in Bunin’s works something consonant with his own thoughts and experiences, will touch great secret love. This is what makes the author of “Dark Alleys” always modern writer causing deep reader interest. Readers may sometimes have a question: does the writer create artificial barriers on the heroes’ path to happiness? No, the fact is that people themselves do not strive to fight. They can experience happiness, but only for a moment, and then it disappears like water into sand. And that’s why many of Bunin’s stories are so tragic. Sometimes in one short line the writer reveals the collapse of hopes, the harsh mockery of fate. The stories of the series “Dark Alleys” are an example of amazing Russian psychological prose, in which love has always been one of the eternal secrets that word artists sought to reveal. Ivan Alekseevich Bunin, in my opinion, was one of those brilliant writers, who came closest to solving this mystery.
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