Every person has experienced love at least once in his life - whether it be love for a mother or father, a man or a woman, his child or a friend. Thanks to this all-consuming feeling, people become kinder, more emotional. The theme of love is touched upon in the work of many great writers and poets, it was she who inspired them to create their immortal works.
The great Russian writer A.I.Kuprin wrote a number of works in which he sang pure, ideal, sublime love. Under the pen of A.I. Kuprin
Such wonderful works as the stories “Pomegranate Bracelet”, “Shulamith”, “Olesya”, “Duel” and many others were born that are dedicated to this light feeling. In these works, the writer showed love of a different nature and different people, but its essence is unchanged - it is limitless.
The story "Olesya", written by AI Kuprin in 1898, shows the all-consuming love of Olesya, a girl from a remote Polesie village, to the master Ivan Timofeevich. During the hunt, Ivan Timofeevich meets Olesya, the granddaughter of the witch Manuilikha. The girl fascinates him with her beauty, delights with pride and self-confidence. And Ivan Timofeevich attracts Olesya with his kindness and intelligence. The main characters fall in love with each other, completely surrendering to their feelings.
Olesya in love shows her best qualities - sensitivity, delicacy, observation, an innate mind and subconscious knowledge of life's secrets. For the sake of her love, she is ready for anything. But this feeling made Olesya defenseless, leading her to death. In comparison with Olesya's love, Ivan Timofeevich's feeling for her is more like a fleeting attraction.
By offering the girl his hand and heart, the main character implies that Olesya, who cannot live away from nature, will move to his city. Vanya does not even think to give up civilization for the sake of Olesya. He turned out to be weak, resigned himself to the prevailing circumstances and did not take any action to be with his beloved.
In the story "Pomegranate Bracelet" love is presented as an unrequited, unselfish, romantic feeling that the protagonist Zheltkov, a small employee, feels for Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina.
The meaning of Zheltkov's life was his letters to his beloved woman, full of pure, selfless love. The princess's husband, a fair and kind person, treats Zheltkov with sympathy and, discarding all prejudices, shows respect for his feelings. However, Zheltkov, realizing the impossibility of his dream and losing all hope of reciprocity, commits suicide.
Moreover, even in the last minutes of his life, he thinks only of his beloved. And only after the death of the protagonist, Vera Nikolaevna realizes that "the love that every woman dreams of has passed her by." This work is deeply tragic and speaks of how important it is to timely understand the love of another person and reciprocate.
In his works A.I. Kuprin demonstrated love as a sincere, devoted and selfless feeling. This feeling is every person's dream, for which you can sacrifice everything. This is eternal all-conquering love that will make people happy and kind, and the world around us beautiful.
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 this is a fairly well-known and interesting writer, but in the school curriculum not so 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 a writer, his personality makes a strong impression. This is a whole person, distinguished by a firmness in life, true intelligence and kindness, the ability to understand life.
The purpose of my work:
To reveal the features of the image of the theme of love in the works of Kuprin;
Show the meaning of this theme in his work.
Show the place of the theme of love in world and Russian literature;
To reveal the peculiarities of understanding this feeling by different authors;
To reveal, using the example of a trilogy about love, its different sides and faces;
Show the skill of the writer in the portrayal of heroes.
Sometimes it seems that everything is 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 "Anna Karenina" by Leo Tolstoy? You can continue this list of creations that praised love. But love has a thousand shades, and each of its manifestations has its own light, its own sorrow, its own fracture and its own fragrance.
Kuprin has many subtle and excellent stories about love, about waiting for love, about its tragic outcomes, about longing and eternal youth in a person's soul. Kuprin always and everywhere blessed love. You cannot hide anything from love: either it highlights the true nobility of the human soul, or vices and base desires. Many writers in their books have tested and will test their characters by 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 are capable of overpowering a few out of millions. Unfortunately, now it is less and less common to meet a great fiery love between a man and a woman. People stopped adoring and reverence for her. Love has become a common, 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 soulless 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, inspired the art of all times and peoples. But in each epoch she expressed some special moral and aesthetic values. After all, love is a feeling that makes you perform feats and go to crime, 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 in 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 their pure form are not so common in Russian literature, more often a love story is burdened with side lines and themes. However, the implementation of this theme in various texts belonging to Russian classical literature is distinguished by its great originality, sharply distinguishing it from all other literatures in the world.
This originality lies, first of all, in the fact that Russian literature is characterized by a serious and intent look at love and, more broadly, at the intimate relationship between a man and a woman. The motto of such an attitude can be the well-known proverb "do not joke with love." There is only one reason for this seriousness - love in Russian literature almost always belongs to the realm of dramatic and very often tragic pathos, but it is extremely rare that the history of the relationship between a man and a woman - whether in prose or poetry - gives rise to fun. The happy ending, loved by many foreign writers and sometimes even allowed by Balzac, is not simply absent in Russian literature, it is alien to her. All the famous love stories of Russian classics, from "Poor Liza" by Karamzin to "Dark Alley" by Bunin, run very intensely and end very badly.
The tragedy in the development of love themes stems from several sources, the most ancient of which is, of course, folk tradition. Only in Russian folklore love ditties are called "suffering", only in the Russian countryside was the word "sorry" synonymous with love. 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 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 that unites the divine with the human is characteristic of 20th century literature. It can be argued that the writers largely determined the integral concept of life through comprehending the essence of love. First of all, this aspiration was expressed in the prose of Alexander Kuprin and Ivan Bunin. The writers were attracted not so much by the history of the relationship of a loving couple or the development of her psychological duel, but by the influence of the experience on the hero's understanding of himself and the whole world. Therefore, the event outline in their works is extremely simplified, and attention is focused on the moments of insight, the turning internal states of the characters:
Love, love - legend says -
Union of the soul with the soul dear -
Their connection, combination,
And their fatal fusion,
And ... the fatal duel ...
(F. Tyutchev)
Bunin's love stories are a story about the secret of love. He had his own concept of love: it arises like a sunstroke and strikes a person. In true love, Bunin believes, there is something in common with eternal nature. Beautiful is only that feeling that is natural, not false, not invented. The book by I. Bunin "Dark Alleys" can be considered an encyclopedia of love. The author himself considered her to be his most perfect creation. The writer poses a difficult artistic task: thirty-eight times (this is the number of stories in the book) to write about the same thing - about love. Bunin shows various and whimsical faces of love: love is enmity, venal 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. An old gray-haired officer Nikolai Alekseevich at an inn meets a woman with whom he was in love in his youth, and then left. 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 fate as 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 "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 a tragedy. The hero now understands what moments of his life were the main ones. There was no place for happiness in his life: his wife left him, his son "came out a scoundrel, an impudent man, without a heart, without honor, without conscience." The story could not have a happy ending, but still does not leave a painful impression, since, according to Bunin, "all love is a great happiness." One short moment is enough to illuminate the entire life of the heroes. In love, as in life, light and dark principles are always opposed. Along with the feeling that illuminates life, every lover has his own dark alleys. This is what the best pages of the love prose of another representative of Russian literature - A. Kuprin - are about.
The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin, two Russian writers dating back to the first half of the 20th century, is common in their works. The heroes of their stories and stories are characterized by extraordinary sincerity and strength of feeling. It subjugates all human thoughts. However, the theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin is almost always revealed tragically. The main characters are invariably doomed to suffering. In order to preserve their feeling, they should part forever. We see such an ending in all of Ivan Alekseevich's stories. The topic of tragic love is revealed in great detail.
Love in the works of Bunin
The heroes of his works live in anticipation of love. They strive to find her and often die, burned by her. This feeling in his works is selfless, disinterested. It requires no reward. One can say about such love: "Strong as death". It will be a joy for her, not a misfortune to go to torture.
Bunin's love does not live long - in marriage, in the family, in everyday life. This is a dazzling short flash that illuminated to the very depths of the hearts and souls of lovers. A tragic ending, death, nothingness, suicide is inevitable.
Ivan Alekseevich created a whole cycle of stories dedicated to the description of the various shades of this feeling. In it, you probably won't find a single piece with a happy ending. The feeling described by the author is, one way or another, short-lived and ends, if not tragically, then at least dramatically. One of the most famous stories in this cycle is Sunstroke.
In it, the heroine goes to a monastery, and the hero suffers from longing for her. He loved this girl with all his soul. However, in spite of everything, his feeling for her remains a bright spot in his life, albeit with an admixture of something mysterious, incomprehensible, bitter.
Love of the heroes of the works "Olesya" and "Garnet Bracelet"
The theme of love is the main theme in Kuprin's work. Alexander Ivanovich created many works dedicated to this feeling. In the story "Olesya" by Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin, the heroine fell in love with a "kind, but only weak" person. The theme of tragic love in Kuprin's work is also revealed in his other work - "Pomegranate Bracelet".
The author tells the story of a poor employee Zheltkov, describing his feelings for a wealthy married princess Vera Nikolaevna. For him, the only way out is suicide. Before doing it, he says, like a prayer, the words: "Hallowed be thy name." In Kuprin's works, heroes may seem unhappy. However, this is only partially true. They are already happy that there was once love in their life, and this is the most wonderful feeling. Thus, the theme of tragic love in Kuprin's work has a life-affirming connotation. Olesya from the story of the same name regrets only that she did not have a child left from her beloved. Zheltkov dies, pronouncing a blessing on his beloved woman. These are romantic and beautiful love stories that are so rare in real life ...
The heroes of Kuprin's works are dreamy personalities endowed with an ardent imagination. However, they are at the same time laconic and impractical. These traits are fully revealed after they pass the test of love.
So, for example, Zheltkov did not talk about love for Vera, thereby dooming himself to torment and suffering. However, he could not hide his feelings, so he wrote letters to her. Zheltkov from the story "Pomegranate Bracelet" experienced an unrequited, sacrificial feeling that completely seized him. It would seem that this is a petty official, an unremarkable person. However, he had a truly great gift - he knew how to love. He subordinated his whole being, his whole soul to this feeling. When her husband asked him not to bother her with his letters anymore, Zheltkov decided to leave this life. He simply could not imagine existence without a princess.
Description of nature, opposition of love and life
Kuprin's description of nature plays a very important role. It is the background against which events take place. In particular, the love that broke out between Ivan Timofeevich and Olesya is presented against the background of a spring forest. The theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin is characterized by the fact that in the works of these authors a high feeling is powerless in front of ambitions, calculation and the cruelty of life. After a collision with everyday life, it disappears. Instead, only a feeling of satiety remains.
Love is passing by
In the works of these authors, everyday life and love, routine and this high feeling cannot be combined. However, it also happens that people, not noticing their happiness, pass by him. And from this side the theme is revealed. For example, the heroine of the "Pomegranate Bracelet" Princess Vera late notices Zheltkov's feelings for her, but at the end of the work she learns what all-consuming, disinterested love means. For a brief moment, she illuminated her life.
Human imperfection and life-affirming moments
In the person himself, there is probably something that prevents all of us from noticing goodness and beauty. This is selfishness, which is often expressed in the desire to be happy at any cost, even if the other person suffers from it. In the works of Kuprin and Bunin, we find all these reflections. However, despite the drama that is present in them, you can see something life-affirming in the stories and stories. A high feeling helps the characters of Kuprin and Bunin to go beyond the circle of vulgarity and routine that surrounds them. And it doesn't matter that only for a moment, that the price of this moment is often a whole life.
Finally
So, we answered the question of how the topic is revealed.In conclusion, we note that the stories and stories of these authors teach us the ability to discern a real feeling, to be able not to miss it and not hide it, because one day it may be too late. Both Bunin and Kuprin believe that love is given to a person in order to illuminate his life, to open his eyes.
It can be noted that both the one and the other author in works dedicated to this feeling, most often resort to the reception of contrast. They contrast two lovers in their stories and stories. These are different people both morally and spiritually. In addition, they often have a big difference in social status.
Kuprin has always loved Russia dearly and dearly. This feeling is reflected in his work. The main themes of the realist writer are ordinary working people, wonderful in work and revelry Balaklava fishermen, philosophizing lieutenants and tortured privates, the magnificent nature of Russia with its inhabitants, a circus and children, as well as a number of works in which there is a place for the mystical and even fantastic ...
The experiences and accumulated life experience gained in military educational institutions and in the service, Kuprin conveys in his works through the image of a "little" person oppressed by an insultingly alien and hostile environment. Theme oppression and abuse of the "little" person transmitted
in the story "Duel" (1905), the story "Inquiry" (1894), as well as in Kuprin's early work - the story "At the Turning Point" ("Cadets", 1900). In the story "At the Break" Kuprin captured in detail the morals crippling a child's soul, the inertness of the bosses, "the universal cult of the fist", which gave the weak to be torn apart by the stronger, finally, desperate longing for family
and home". The same deep sympathy for the common man permeated Kuprin's early stories from army life ("Inquiry"
and "Warrant Officer of the Army"), as well as stories exposing bribe officials and rogues ("Unspoken Audit" and "Petitioner").
Work at the factories of the Donetsk Basin in 1896 served as material for a cycle of essays on the situation of workers, which were later transformed into Kuprin's first major work - the story "Molokhov". The theme of these stories and stories was ordinary working people.
Kuprin continues to develop further the topic of ordinary, ordinary people, workers of different professions... Another well-known group of works dedicated to ordinary people is the essays by Listrigones. The essays develop the theme of the life of the Balaklava fishermen, their hard work is praised,
as well as healthy and courageous people living a harsh but rich life. This theme began to develop even in the essays "The Lord's Fish", "Silence" and "Mackerel" (published under the general title "Balaklava" in 1908), as well as in subsequent essays: "Theft"
and Beluga, issued under the general title Listrigones. Among the works written far from the Motherland, Kuprin's story "Svetlana" (1934) should be noted.
In his story "The Pit" Kuprin opens a very unusual topic for the literature of that time, theme women at the bottom of their lives... Kuprin describes the images of prostitutes, creating lively and beautiful characters. The author has deep sympathy for his characters, causing regret and deep compassion. Unfortunately, the story "The Pit" did not become an outstanding phenomenon in Russian literature. It's related
that " the naturalistic descriptiveness that arose in Yama was in contradiction with those aesthetic principles that were embodied in a number of his previous works - with faith in man,
with the glorification of beauty, hatred of social forces that destroy beauty". Kuprin did not intend to admire the "bottom", but when reading the story, one gets the feeling that the author sometimes admires the paintings he creates. In his story, Kuprin showed a man already disfigured by society, slipping to the bottom of bourgeois society, and not the process of mutilating the human personality. Such a contradictory work for the author himself, however, did not deviate from his main theme, the theme of the "little" man, while adding the theme of bourgeois society.
Theme bourgeois society, or rather Kuprin's criticism of the bourgeois intelligentsia is presented in the stories "The Murderer", "Offense", "Delirium" and the fairy tale "Mechanical Justice". These works are linked by a common idea of \u200b\u200bprotest against violence against humans.
Acting activity Kuprin contributed to the writing of works about the circus, about simple and noble people - wrestlers, clowns, trainers, acrobats. Several short stories are devoted to this topic.
and Kuprin's stories: "Olga Sur" (1929), "Bad Pun" (1929), "Blondel" (1933), "White Poodle".
One of the common themes in the work of A.I. Kuprin is nature theme, love and respect for the surrounding world. Kuprin, as a realist writer, quite fully and colorfully describes the landscapes of his beloved homeland
and other places. In the descriptions of nature, one can feel deep sympathy and love for these places, as well as respect for its inhabitants. The theme of the surrounding world
in Kuprin's work it is present in many of his works: somewhere it is shown in ordinary descriptions of the area, somewhere it helps to understand the plot of the work and the state of mind of the heroes, and somewhere it is the key theme of the work. Among Kuprin's stories, there are several about the world around them, where the most ordinary animals become heroes, who turn into heroes on the pages of the work. Among the stories of animals in Kuprin's work, the stories "White Poodle", "Watchdog and Zhulka", "Emerald", "Ralph", "Yu-yu", "Elephant" stood out. These stories were written by the author in different years, however they are united by a common idea - to show readers the capabilities and abilities of animals, their dignity
and quality, as well as to convince future writers to pay attention to the natural world and its representatives.
Speaking about the theme of nature, one should not forget that in his works Kuprin wrote a lot about children and for children. Kuprin was very fond of children.
He treated them in a friendly manner and believed that they should not be treated lightly, in a jest. Kuprin wrote many works for children,
these include works of the legend-fairy tale genre ("Blue Star"), as well as several works about animals.
No less important in Kuprin's work was the topic love
and romantic feelings... This theme is filled with lines of such
famous works like the story "Olesya", "Garnet Bracelet"
and the novel "The Wheel of Time", written in Marseilles, as well as the early story "A Strange Case" and many other works.
The story "Olesya" touches upon the topic common working people,
theme pursuit of nature, and also in the plot of the story there is also mysticism. The theme of love in the story "Olesya" is conveyed through the romance of a love
and a dramatic feeling.
« Love to self-denial and even to self-destruction, readiness to perish in the name of a beloved woman ..."- exactly in this
understanding reveals the theme of love in Kuprin's early story
"A Strange Case" (1895), and later in "Garnet Bracelet". K. Paustovsky wrote about the theme of love in the story "Garnet Bracelet":
“... love exists as an unexpected gift - poetic,
illuminating life, in the midst of everyday life, in the midst of sober reality
and well-established life” .
Theme wars Kuprin's works are most fully represented
in the story "Cantaloupe". In a story, unpretentious and "plotless",
the author, through the character of the hero, denounces the hypocrite, “ ... ominously paints the figures of bourgeois money-grubbing, for whom the people's grief is a source of new profits» .
In his works, Kuprin considered war theme Not only
from the side of oppression and profit-making bourgeois money-grubbing.
In his works about the war, the writer tells about the life of ordinary Russian people, who had to fulfill their duty to their homeland. Creating images of heroes, Kuprin endows them with warmth and good-natured humor. A military pilot became such a hero
in the story "Sashka and Yashka".
During the years of exile, Kuprin yearns for his homeland, as he writes about in his essay "Homeland". The theme of longing for Russia is clearly expressed in Kuprin's major work - the story "Janet". In his autobiography "Juncker" Kuprin additionally opens the topic of Moscow, Moscow " forty forty» .
In addition to his usual, already established topics, Kuprin tries himself
in genres such as fantastic novel, fairy tale legend, religious legend and others. However, creating some kind of fiction, changing images
and the surrounding world of the heroes of the works, Kuprin remains true to his principles of realism.
In his works of the fantastic genre, he only reveals the ability to combine the fantastic with the concrete life. This skill is revealed in the fantastic story "The Star of Solomon".
Kuprin's works in the genre of a legend-fairy tale are very interesting and entertaining. A bit humorous, vital and instructive, they found their reader, both among children and adults. A particularly witty and instructive tale was "Blue Star", which in its motive resembles a fairy tale Andersen "Ugly duck". This genre includes the works "The Four Beggars" and "Hero, Leander and the Shepherd."
By genre religious legends Kuprin addresses during the war.
The works "Two Saints" and "Garden of the Most Pure Virgin" (1915) expressed deep respect and sympathy for the common people, oppressed
and humiliated.
Kuprin is known to literature not only as writerbut also how journalist, publicist and even editor.
While still a young writer, in 1894 Kuprin submitted a petition
about retirement and moved to Kiev. The writer works in newspapers, writes stories, essays, notes. The result of this half-writing, half-reporter work was two collections: the essays "Kiev types" (1896) and the stories "Miniatures" (1897).
After 1902 Kuprin participated in the publication of the magazine "Peace of God" as an editor, and also published several of his works in it: "In the circus", "Swamp" (1902), "Kor" (1904), "From the street" (1904 ), however, to the editorial work that interfered with his work, he soon cooled off.
Content
I. Introduction ……………………………………………………………… 3
II Main part
1. Curriculum Vitae. I.A. Bunin. 4
A.I.Kuprin 6
2. Philosophy of love in the understanding of A.I.Kuprin ………………… .9
3. The theme of love in the works of I. A. Bunin. fourteen
4. Image of love in the works of contemporary authors. nineteen
III Conclusion. 26
IV. Literature ……………………………………………………… ..27
I introduction
The theme of love is called the eternal theme. Over the centuries, many writers and poets dedicated their works to the great feeling of love, and each of them found something unique, individual in this topic: W. Shakespeare, who praised the most beautiful, most tragic story about Romeo and Juliet, A.S. Pushkin and his famous poems: "I loved you: love can still be ...", the heroes of the work of MA Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita", whose love overcomes all obstacles on the way to their happiness. This list can be continued and supplemented by modern authors and their heroes dreaming of love: Roman and Yulka G. Shcherbakova, simple and sweet Sonechka L. Ulitskaya, heroes of stories by L. Petrushevskaya, V. Tokareva.
The purpose of my essay: to investigate the theme of love in the works of the 20th century writers I.A.Bunin, A.I. Kuprin and contemporary writers, authors of the 21st century L. Ulitskaya, A. Matveeva.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
1) get acquainted with the main stages of the biography and work of these writers;
2) to reveal the philosophy of love as understood by AI Kuprin (based on the story “Pomegranate Bracelet” and the story “Olesya”);
3) identify the features of the image of love in the stories of I.A. Bunin;
4) to present the work of L. Ulitskaya and A. Matveeva from the point of view of continuing the traditions of the love theme in Russian literature.
II Main part
1. Curriculum Vitae. I.A. Bunin (1870 - 1953).
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is a wonderful Russian writer, poet and prose writer, a man of great and complex destiny. He was born in Voronezh in an impoverished noble family. Childhood was spent in the village. Early on he knew the bitterness of poverty, caring for a piece of bread.
In his youth, the writer tried many professions: he served as an extra, librarian, worked in newspapers.
At the age of seventeen, Bunin published his first poems, and from that time on, forever linked his fate with literature.
The fate of Bunin was marked by two circumstances that did not pass without a trace for him: being a nobleman by birth, he did not even receive a gymnasium education. And after leaving - he never had his own home (hotels, private apartments, living on a visit and out of grace, always temporary and other people's shelters).
In 1895 he came to St. Petersburg, and by the end of the last century he was already the author of several books: "To the End of the World" (1897), "Under the Open Air" (1898), literary translation of "Song of Hiawatha" by G. Longfellow, poems and stories.
Bunin deeply felt the beauty of his native nature, perfectly knew the life and manners of the village, its customs, traditions and language. Bunin is a lyricist. His book "In the open air" is a lyrical diary of the seasons, from the first signs of spring to winter landscapes, through which the image of the homeland, close to his heart, appears.
Bunin's stories of the 1890s, created in the traditions of 19th century realistic literature, open up the world of village life. Truthfully the author tells about the life of an intellectual - a proletarian with his mental troubles, about the horror of the senseless vegetation of people "without family - tribe" ("Halt", "Tanka", "News from the Motherland", "Teacher", "Without family - tribe", "Late at night"). Bunin believes that with the loss of life of beauty, the loss of its meaning is inevitable.
Throughout his long life, the writer traveled to many countries in Europe and Asia. Impressions from these trips served as material for his travel sketches ("The Shadow of the Bird", "In Judea", "Temple of the Sun" and others) and stories ("The Brothers" and "The Lord from San Francisco").
Bunin did not accept the October Revolution decisively and categorically, rejecting as "bloody madness" and "general madness" any violent attempt to rebuild human society. He reflected his feelings in the diary of the revolutionary years "Cursed Days" - a work of violent rejection of the revolution, published in exile.
In 1920, Bunin went abroad and fully learned the fate of an emigrant writer.
There were few poems written in the 20s and 40s, but among them are lyrical masterpieces - “And flowers, and bumblebees, and grass, and ears of corn ...”, “Michael,” “The bird has a nest, the beast has a hole ...”, “ Rooster on a church cross. " Published in 1929 in Paris, Bunin's book, the poet "Selected Poems," confirmed the author's right to one of the first places in Russian poetry.
In emigration, ten new books of prose were written - The Rose of Jericho (1924), Sunstroke (1927), God's Tree (1930), and others, including the story of Mitya's Love (1925). This story is about the power of love, with its tragic incompatibility of the carnal and spiritual, when the hero's suicide becomes the only "deliverance" from the routine of life.
In 1927 - 1933 Bunin worked on his largest work - "The Life of Arseniev". In this "fictional autobiography" the author reconstructs the past of Russia, his childhood and youth.
In 1933, Bunin was awarded the Nobel Prize "for his true artistic talent, with which he recreated the typical Russian character in fiction."
By the end of the 30s, Bunin felt more and more homesickness, during the Great Patriotic War he rejoiced at the successes and victories of the Soviet and allied troops. I met the victory with great joy.
During these years Bunin created stories that were included in the collection "Dark Alleys", stories only about love. The author considered this collection to be the most perfect in skill, especially the story "Clean Monday".
In exile, Bunin constantly revised his already published works. Shortly before his death, he asked to publish his works only according to the latest author's edition.
Alexander Ivanovich Kuprin (1870-1938) - a talented writer of the early XX century.
Kuprin was born in the village of Narovchatovo, Penza Region, in the family of a clerical employee.
His fate is surprising and tragic: early orphanhood (his father died when the boy was one year old), continuous seventeen-year seclusion in state institutions (an orphanage, a military gymnasium, a cadet corps, a cadet school).
But gradually Kuprin matured the dream of becoming a "poet or novelist." Poems written by him at the age of 13-17 have survived. Years of military service in the provinces gave Kuprin the opportunity to learn the everyday life of the tsarist army, which he later described in many works. In the story "In the Dark", stories "Psyche" "Moonlit Night", written in these years, artificial plots still prevail. One of the first works based on personally experienced and seen was a story from the army life "From the Distant Past" ("Inquiry") (1894).
With "Inquiry" begins a chain of works by Kuprin, connected with the life of the Russian army and gradually leading to the stories "Duel" "Lodging" (1897), "Night shift" (1899), "Warrant officer" (1897), "Campaign" (1901) ), etc. In August 1894, Kuprin retired and went on a wandering in the south of Russia. At the Kiev docks, he unloads barges with watermelons, in Kiev he organizes an athletic society. In 1896, he worked for several months at one of the Donbass factories, in Volyn he served as a forest ranger, estate manager, psalmist, engaged in dentistry, played in a provincial troupe, worked as a land surveyor, and became close to circus performers. Kuprin's stock of observations is complemented by persistent self-education and reading. It was during these years that Kuprin became a professional writer, gradually publishing his works in various newspapers.
In 1896, the story "Molokh" was published, based on Donetsk impressions. The main theme of this story - the theme of Russian capitalism, Moloch - sounded unusually new and significant. The author tried to use allegory to express the idea of \u200b\u200bthe inhumanity of the industrial revolution. Almost to the end of the story, the workers are shown as the patient victims of Moloch, very often they are compared with children. And the result of the story is logical - an explosion, a black wall of workers against a background of flames. These images were intended to convey the idea of \u200b\u200ba popular revolt. The story "Molokh" became a landmark work not only for Kuprin, but for all Russian literature.
In 1898, the story "Olesya" was published - one of the first works in which Kuprin appears before the readers as a magnificent artist of love. The theme of beautiful, wild and majestic nature, which was previously close to him, is firmly included in the writer's work. The gentle, generous love of the forest "sorceress" Olesya is opposed to the timidity and indecision of her beloved, "urban" person.
In St. Petersburg magazines Kuprin publishes the stories "Swamp" (1902), "Horse thieves" (1903), "White Poodle" (1904) and others. In the heroes of these stories, the author admires the steadfastness, loyalty in friendship, the incorruptible dignity of ordinary people. In 1905, the story "Duel" was published, dedicated to M. Gorky. Kuprin wrote to Gorky "Everything that is bold and violent in my story belongs to you."
Attention to all manifestations of living things, vigilance of observation distinguish Kuprin's stories about animals "Emerald" (1906), "Starlings" (1906), "Zaviraika 7" (1906), "Yu-yu". Kuprin writes about the love that illuminates human life in the stories "Sulamith" (1908), "Garnet Bracelet" (1911), depicting the bright passion of the biblical beauty Sulamith and the tender, hopeless and selfless feeling of the little official Zheltkov.
A variety of subjects suggested to Kuprin his life experience. He rises in a hot air balloon, in 1910 he flew on one of the first airplanes in Russia, studied diving and sank to the seabed, proud of his friendship with the Balaklava fishermen. All this adorns the pages of his works with bright colors, the spirit of healthy romance. The heroes of Kuprin's story and stories are people of the most diverse classes and social groups of tsarist Russia, from capitalist millionaires to tramps and beggars. Kuprin wrote "about everyone and for everyone" ...
The writer spent many years in exile. He paid a heavy price for this mistake in life - he paid with a cruel yearning for the Motherland and a creative decline.
“The more talented a person is, the more difficult it is for him without Russia,” he writes in one of his letters. However, in 1937 Kuprin returned to Moscow. He publishes the essay "Native Moscow"; new creative plans are ripening for him. But Kuprin's health was undermined, and in August 1938 he was gone.
2. Philosophy of love in the understanding of A. I. Kuprin
"Olesya" is the first truly original story of the artist, written boldly, in his own way. "Olesya" and the later story "The River of Life" (1906) Kuprin attributed to his best works. "Here is life, freshness, - said the writer, - the struggle with the old, obsolete, impulses for a new, better"
"Olesya" is one of Kuprin's most inspired stories about love, man and life. Here, the world of intimate feelings and the beauty of nature are combined with everyday pictures of rural backwaters, the romance of true love - with the cruel customs of Perebrod peasants.
The writer introduces us to the atmosphere of a harsh village life with poverty, ignorance, bribes, savagery, drunkenness. To this world of evil and ignorance, the artist opposes another world - the truth of harmony and beauty, written out just as real and full-blooded. Moreover, it is the light atmosphere of great true love that inspires the story, infecting with impulses "for a new, better". “Love is the brightest and most understandable reproduction of my I. Not in strength, not in dexterity, not in mind, not in talent… individuality is not expressed in creativity. But in love ”- so, clearly exaggerating, wrote Kuprin to his friend F. Batyushkov.
In one thing, the writer turned out to be right: in love, the whole person, his character, world perception, structure of feelings is manifested. In the books of the great Russian writers, love is inseparable from the rhythm of the era, from the breath of time. Beginning with Pushkin, artists tested the character of a contemporary not only by social and political deeds, but also by the sphere of his personal feelings. A true hero was not only a person - a fighter, a doer, a thinker, but also a person of great feelings, capable of deeply experiencing, inspiring love. Kuprin in Olesya continues the humanistic line of Russian literature. He checks the modern man - the intellectual of the end of the century - from the inside, by the highest measure.
The story is built on a comparison of two heroes, two natures, two world relations. On the one hand, there is an educated intellectual, a representative of urban culture, quite humane Ivan Timofeevich, on the other, Olesya is a “child of nature,” a person who has not been influenced by urban civilization. The ratio of natures speaks for itself. Compared to Ivan Timofeevich, a man of a kind, but weak, "lazy" heart, Olesya rises with nobility, integrity, proud confidence in her strength.
If in relations with Yarmola and the village people, Ivan Timofeevich looks bold, humane and noble, then in communication with Olesya there are also negative aspects of his personality. His feelings turn out to be timid, the movements of the soul - constrained, inconsistent. "Fearful expectation", "vile fear", the hero's indecision set off the wealth of the soul, courage and freedom of Olesya.
Freely, without any special tricks, Kuprin draws the appearance of the Polissya beauty, forcing us to follow the richness of shades of her spiritual world, always original, sincere and deep. There are few books in Russian and world literature where such an earthly and poetic image of a girl living in harmony with nature and her feelings would arise. Olesya is Kuprin's artistic discovery.
The correct artistic instinct helped the writer to reveal the beauty of the human person, generously endowed by nature. Naivety and imperiousness, femininity and proud independence, "flexible, mobile mind", "primitive and vivid imagination", touching courage, delicacy and innate tact, involvement in the innermost secrets of nature and spiritual generosity - these qualities are distinguished by the writer, drawing the charming appearance of Olesya, of a whole, original, free nature, which flashed like a rare gem in the surrounding darkness and ignorance.
Revealing the originality and talent of Olesya, Kuprin touched upon those mysterious phenomena of the human psyche that are being solved by science to this day. He talks about the unrecognized powers of intuition, premonitions, and the wisdom of thousands of years of experience. Realistically comprehending Olesya's "witchcraft" charms, the writer expressed a fair conviction that "that unconscious, instinctive, vague, strange knowledge gained by chance experience, were available to Olesya, which, ahead of exact science by whole centuries, live, mixed with funny and wild beliefs, in a dark, closed mass of people, passed on as the greatest secret from generation to generation. "
For the first time in the story, Kuprin's cherished thought is so fully expressed: a person can be beautiful if he develops, and does not destroy, bodily, spiritual and intellectual abilities given to him by nature.
Subsequently, Kuprin will say that only with the triumph of freedom will a person be happy in love. In Olesya, the writer revealed this possible happiness of free, unrestrained and unclouded love. In fact, the flowering of love and the human personality is the poetic core of the story.
With an amazing sense of tact, Kuprin makes us go through the alarming period of the birth of love, "full of vague, painfully sad feelings", and her happiest seconds of "pure, full, all-consuming delight", and long joyful meetings of lovers in a dense pine forest. The world of spring jubilant nature - mysterious and beautiful - merges in the story with an equally beautiful outflow of human feelings.
The light, fabulous atmosphere of the story does not fade even after the tragic denouement. Over everything insignificant, petty and evil, real, great earthly love wins, which is remembered without bitterness - "easily and joyfully." The finishing touch of the story is characteristic: a string of red beads on the corner of the window frame amidst the dirty mess of a hastily abandoned "hut on chicken legs." This detail gives compositional and semantic completeness to the work. A string of red beads is the last tribute to Olesya's generous heart, the memory of "her tender, generous love."
The cycle of works of 1908 - 1911 about love ends with the "Garnet Bracelet". The creative history of the story is curious. Back in 1910, Kuprin wrote to Batyushkov: “Do you remember this — the sad story of the little telegraph official P.P. Zheltkov, who was so hopelessly, touchingly and selflessly in love with Lyubimov’s wife (D.N. is now the governor in Vilno)”. We find further deciphering of real facts and prototypes of the story in the memoirs of Lev Lyubimov (son of D.N. Lyubimov). In his book "In a Foreign Land" he says that "the canvas of the" Garnet Bracelet "Kuprin drew from their" family chronicle ". "The prototypes for some of the characters were members of my family, in particular, for Prince Vasily Lvovich Shein - my father, with whom Kuprin was on friendly terms." The prototype of the heroine - Princess Vera Nikolaevna Sheina - was Lyubimov's mother, Lyudmila Ivanovna, who, indeed, received anonymous letters, and then a garnet bracelet from a telegraph official who was hopelessly in love with her. As L. Lyubimov notes, it was “a curious incident, most likely of an anecdotal nature.
Kuprin used an anecdotal story to create a story about real, big, selfless and selfless love, which "is repeated only once in a thousand years." “A curious case” Kuprin illuminated with the light of his ideas about love as a great feeling, equal in inspiration, sublimity and purity only to great art.
In many ways, following the facts of life, Kuprin nevertheless gave them a different content, interpreted the events in his own way, introducing a tragic ending. In life, everything ended well, suicide did not happen. The dramatic ending, invented by the writer, gave extraordinary strength and weight to Zheltkov's feeling. His love conquered death and prejudices, it lifted Princess Vera Sheina above vain prosperity, love sounded like the great music of Beethoven. It is no accident that Beethoven's Second Sonata was staged as an epigraph to the story, the sounds of which sound in the finale and serve as a hymn of pure and selfless love.
And yet "Garnet Bracelet" does not leave such a light and inspired impression as "Olesya". The special tonality of the story was subtly noted by K. Paustovsky, who said about it: “the bitter charm of the Garnet Bracelet”. Indeed, the "Pomegranate Bracelet" is permeated with a lofty dream of love, but at the same time it sounds a bitter, sorrowful thought about the inability of contemporaries to have a great real feeling.
The bitterness of the story is also in the tragic love of Zheltkov. Love won, but it passed as a kind of disembodied shadow, reviving only in the memories and stories of the heroes. Perhaps too real - the everyday basis of the story interfered with the author's intention. Perhaps the prototype of Zheltkov, his nature, did not carry that joyful, majestic force that was necessary to create the apotheosis of love, the apotheosis of personality. After all, Zheltkov's love harbored not only inspiration, but also inferiority associated with the limitations of the very personality of a telegraph official.
If for Olesya love is a part of being, a part of the multicolored world around her, for Zheltkov, on the contrary, the whole world narrows down to love, which he confesses in his dying letter to Princess Vera. “It so happened,” he writes, “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, all life is only in you”. For Zheltkov, there is only love for a single woman. It is quite natural that the loss of it becomes the end of his life. He has nothing else to live with. Love did not expand, did not deepen his connection with the world. As a result, the tragic ending, along with the hymn of love, expressed another, no less important thought (although, perhaps, Kuprin himself did not realize it): one cannot live by love alone.
3.The theme of love in the works of I. A. Bunin
In the theme of love, Bunin is revealed as a man of amazing talent, a subtle psychologist who knows how to convey a state of mind wounded by love. The writer does not avoid complex, frank topics, depicting the most intimate human experiences in his stories.
In 1924 he wrote the story "Mitya's Love", the next year - "The Case of Kornet Elagin" and "Sunstroke." And in the late 30s and during the Second World War, Bunin created 38 small love stories that made him the book "Dark Alleys", published in 1946. Bunin considered this book to be his "best work in terms of compactness, painting and literary skill."
Love in Bunin's depiction amazes not only with the power of artistic depiction, but also with its subordination to some internal laws unknown to man. They rarely break through to the surface: most people will not experience their fatal impact until the end of their days. Such an image of love unexpectedly gives the sober, "merciless" Bunin talent a romantic glow. The closeness of love and death, their conjugation were obvious facts for Bunin, never doubted. However, the catastrophic nature of being, the fragility of human relations and existence itself - all these favorite Bunin themes after gigantic social cataclysms that shook Russia, filled with a new formidable meaning, as, for example, can be seen in the story "Mitya's Love." “Love is beautiful” and “Love is doomed” - these concepts, finally combining, coincided, carrying in the depths, in the grain of each story, the personal grief of Bunin the emigrant.
Bunin's love lyrics are not great in quantity. It reflects the poet's confused thoughts and feelings about the secret of love ... One of the main motives of love lyrics is loneliness, inaccessibility or impossibility of happiness. For example, "How light, how elegant is spring! ..", "A calm gaze, like the gaze of a deer ...", "At a late hour, we were with her in the field ...", "Loneliness", "Sadness of eyelashes, shining and black ..." and etc.
Bunin's love lyrics are passionate, sensual, saturated with a thirst for love and always full of tragedy, unfulfilled hopes, memories of past youth and departed love.
I.A. Bunin has a peculiar view of love relationships that distinguishes him from many other writers of that time.
In Russian classical literature of that time, the theme of love has always occupied an important place, and preference was given to spiritual, "platonic" love over sensuality, carnal, physical passion, which was often debunked. The purity of Turgenev's women has become a household name. Russian literature is predominantly "first love" literature.
The image of love in Bunin's work is a special synthesis of spirit and flesh. According to Bunin, it is impossible to comprehend the spirit without knowing the flesh. I. Bunin defended in his works a pure attitude to the carnal and bodily. He had no concept of female sin, as in Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Kreutzer Sonata by L.N. Tolstoy, there was no wary, hostile attitude towards the feminine principle, characteristic of N.V. Gogol, but there was no vulgarization of love. His love is an earthly joy, a mysterious attraction of one sex to another.
The theme of love and death (often in contact with Bunin) are devoted to the works - "The grammar of love", "Light breath", "Mitya's love", "Caucasus", "In Paris", "Galya Ganskaya", "Henry", "Natalie", "Cold Autumn" and others. It has long been and very truly noted that love in Bunin's work is tragic. The writer tries to unravel the secret of love and the secret of death, why they often touch in life, what is the meaning of this. Why the nobleman Khvoshchinsky goes crazy after his death beloved - peasant Lushka and then almost deifies her image ("The Grammar of Love"). Why does the young schoolgirl Olya Meshcherskaya, who, as it seemed to her, an amazing gift of “easy breathing,” die, just beginning to flourish? The author does not answer these questions, but makes it clear with his works that this has a certain meaning of earthly human life.
The characters of "Dark Alley" do not resist nature, often their actions are absolutely illogical and contrary to generally accepted morality (an example of this is the sudden passion of the characters in the story "Sunstroke"). Bunin's love “on the brink” is almost a violation of the norm, going beyond the ordinary. For Bunin, this immorality even, one might say, is a certain sign of the authenticity of love, since ordinary morality, like everything established by people, turns out to be a conventional scheme, into which the elements of natural, living life do not fit.
When describing risky details related to the body, when the author must be impartial so as not to cross the delicate line separating art from pornography. Bunin, on the contrary, worries too much - to a spasm in his throat, to a passionate tremor: “... it just darkened in her eyes at the sight of her pinkish body with a tan on shiny shoulders ... her eyes turned black and widened even more, her lips parted feverishly "(" Galya Ganskaya "). For Bunin, everything connected with gender is pure and significant, everything is covered with mystery and even holiness.
As a rule, the happiness of love in "Dark Alley" is followed by parting or death. Heroes revel in closeness, but it leads to separation, death, murder. Happiness cannot last forever. Natalie "died in a premature birth on Lake Geneva." Galya Ganskaya was poisoned. In the story "Dark Alleys" the master Nikolai Alekseevich abandons the peasant girl Nadezhda - for him this story is vulgar and ordinary, and she loved him "all century." In the story "Russia", the lovers are separated by the hysterical mother of Russia.
Bunin allows his heroes only to taste the forbidden fruit, enjoy it - and then deprives them of happiness, hope, joy, even life. The hero of the story "Natalie" loved two at once, but did not find family happiness with either. In the story "Heinrich" there is an abundance of female images for every taste. But the hero remains lonely and free from the "wives of men."
Bunin's love does not pass into the family mainstream, it is not allowed by a happy marriage. Bunin deprives his heroes of eternal happiness, deprives them because they get used to him, and the habit leads to the loss of love. Habitual love cannot be better than lightning love, but sincere. The hero of the story "Dark Alleys" cannot tie himself in family ties with the peasant woman Nadezhda, but by marrying another woman of his own circle, he does not acquire family happiness. The wife was unfaithful, the son is a wretch and a scoundrel, the family itself turned out to be "the most ordinary vulgar story." However, despite its short duration, love still remains eternal: it is eternal in the memory of the hero precisely because it is fleeting in life.
A distinctive feature of love in Bunin's depiction is a combination of seemingly incompatible things. The strange connection between love and death is constantly emphasized by Bunin, and therefore it is no coincidence that the title of the collection “Dark Alleys” here does not mean “shady” at all - these are dark, tragic, tangled labyrinths of love.
True love is great happiness, even if it ends in separation, death, tragedy. To this conclusion, even if it is late, many Bunin's heroes come to this conclusion, having lost, overlooked or themselves destroyed their love. In this late repentance, late spiritual resurrection, the enlightenment of the heroes, there is that cleansing melody that speaks of the imperfection of people who have not yet learned to live. To recognize and cherish real feelings, and about the imperfection of life itself, social conditions, the environment, circumstances that often hinder truly human relationships, and most importantly, about those high emotions that leave an unfading trail of spiritual beauty, generosity, devotion and purity. Love is a mysterious element that transforms a person's life, gives his destiny uniqueness against the background of ordinary everyday stories, fills his earthly existence with a special meaning.
This mystery of being becomes the theme of Bunin's story "The Grammar of Love" (1915). The hero of the work, a certain Ivlev, dropping into the house of the recently deceased landowner Khvoshchinsky on his way, reflects on "incomprehensible love, into some kind of ecstatic life that has transformed an entire human life, which, maybe it should have been the most ordinary life ”, if not for the strange charm of the maid Lushka. It seems to me that the mystery is hidden not in the appearance of Lushka, who “was not at all good herself,” but in the character of the landowner himself, who idolized his beloved. “But what kind of person was this Khvoshchinsky? Crazy or just some kind of dazed, all focused soul? " According to the landlord neighbors. Khvoshchinsky "had a reputation in the county for a rare clever girl. And suddenly this love, this Lushka, fell on him, then her unexpected death - and everything went to dust: he shut himself up in the house, in the room where Lushka lived and died, and for more than twenty years I sat on her bed ... "What can you call this twenty-year seclusion? Insanity? For Bunin, the answer to this question is not at all unambiguous.
The fate of Khvoshchinsky strangely fascinates and worries Ivlev. He understands that Lushka has entered his life forever, awakened in him "a complex feeling, similar to what he once experienced in one Italian town when looking at the relics of one saint." the price of "a small book" The Grammar of Love ", which the old landowner did not part with, cherishing the memories of Lushka? Ivlev would like to understand what the life of a madman in love was filled with, what his orphaned soul ate for many years. And after the hero of the story, reveal the secret of this inexplicable feelings will try "grandchildren and great-grandchildren" who have heard "a voluptuous legend about the hearts of those who loved", and with them the reader of Bunin's work.
An attempt to understand the nature of love feelings by the author in the story "Sunstroke" (1925), "Strange Adventure", shakes the soul of the lieutenant. After parting with a beautiful stranger, he cannot find peace. At the thought of the impossibility of meeting this woman again, “he felt such pain and the uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by the horror of despair.” The author convinces the reader of the seriousness of the feelings experienced by the hero of the story. The lieutenant feels “terribly unhappy in this city” ... "Where to go? What to do?" he thinks, lost. The depth of the hero's spiritual insight is clearly expressed in the final phrase of the story: "The lieutenant was sitting under a canopy on the deck, feeling ten years older." How to explain what happened to him? Maybe the hero came into contact with that great feeling that people call love, and the feeling of the impossibility of loss led him to the realization of the tragedy of being?
The torment of a loving soul, the bitterness of loss, the sweet pain of memories - love leaves such unhealed wounds in the fates of the Bunin heroes, and time has no power over it.
It seems to me that the peculiarity of Bunin as an artist lies in the fact that he considers love a tragedy, a catastrophe, madness, a great feeling, capable of both infinitely exalting and destroying a person.
4. Image of love in the works of contemporary authors.
The theme of love is one of the most important themes in contemporary Russian literature. Much has changed in our life, but a person with his boundless desire to find love, to penetrate into its secrets remains the same.
In the 90s of the twentieth century, a new democratic government came to replace the totalitarian regime, which declared freedom of speech. Against this background, somehow by itself, not too noticeably there was a sexual revolution. A feminist movement also appeared in Russia. All this led to the emergence of the so-called "women's prose" in modern literature. Women writers tend to focus on what their readers are most excited about, i.e. to the theme of love. In the first place are “women's novels” - the sugary-sentimental melodramas of the “women's series” According to the literary critic V.G. Ivanitsky, “women's novels” are fairy tales repainted in modern colors and moved to modern scenery They have an epic, pseudo-folklore nature, maximally smoothed and simplified. There is a demand for it! This literature is built on proven clichés, traditional stereotypes of "femininity" and "masculinity" - stereotypes so hated by any person with taste. "
In addition to this low-quality literary production, which is undoubtedly influenced by the West, there are wonderful and vibrant authors who write serious and deep works about love.
Lyudmila Ulitskaya belongs to a family with its own traditions, with its own history. Both her great-grandfathers - Jewish artisans - were watchmakers, more than once subjected to pogroms. Watchmakers - artisans - educated their children. One grandfather graduated from Moscow University in 1917, Faculty of Law. Another grandfather - the Commercial School, the Conservatory, served 17 years in camps in several receptions. He wrote two books: on demography and music theory. He died in exile in 1955. The parents were researchers. L. Ulitskaya followed in their footsteps, graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Moscow State University, specializing in biology - geneticist. She worked at the Institute of General Genetics, was guilty before the KGB - she read some books, reprinted them. This was the end of his scientific career.
She wrote her first story, Poor Relatives, in 1989. She took care of her sick mother, gave birth to sons, worked as a head of the Jewish theater. She wrote the stories "Sonechka" in 1992, "Medea and her children", "Merry funeral", in recent years has become one of the brightest phenomena of modern prose, attracting both the reader and criticism.
"Medea and Her Children" is a family chronicle. The story of Medea and her sister Alexandra, who seduced Medea's husband and gave birth to his daughter Nina, is repeated in the next generation, when Nina and her niece Masha fall in love with the same man, which as a result leads Masha to commit suicide. Are children responsible for the sins of their fathers? In an interview, L. Ulitskaya says this about the understanding of love in modern society:
“Love, betrayal, jealousy, love-based suicide - all these things are as ancient as man himself. They are truly human actions - animals, as far as I know, do not commit suicide because of unhappy love, in extreme cases they will tear an opponent apart. But every time there are generally accepted reactions - from imprisonment in a monastery - to a duel, from stoning - to an ordinary divorce.
People who grew up after the great sexual revolution sometimes think that everything can be agreed upon, abandon prejudices, and despise outdated rules. And within the framework of the mutually granted sexual freedom to preserve the marriage and raise children.
I have met several such unions in my life. I suspect that in such a contractual relationship, one of the spouses is still a secretly suffering party, but having no other choice but to accept the proposed conditions. As a rule, such a contractual relationship sooner or later falls apart. And not every psyche can withstand what the "enlightened mind agrees to"
Anna Matveeva was born in 1972 in Sverdlovsk. She graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of USU .. But, despite her youth, Matveeva is already a well-known prose writer and essayist. Her story "Dyatlov Pass" reached the final of the Ivan Petrovich Belkin Literary Prize. The short story "Saint Helena", included in this collection, was in 2004 awarded the international literary prize "Lo Stellato", which is awarded in Italy for the best story.
She worked in the "Oblastnaya Gazeta", press secretary ("Gold - Platinum - Bank").
She won twice in the story contest of the Cosmopolitan magazine (1997, 1998). She has published several books. Published in the magazines "Ural", "New World". Lives in the city of Yekaterinburg.
Matveyeva's plots, one way or another, are built around the "female" theme. Judging by the external parameters, it seems that the author's attitude to this issue is skeptical. Her heroines are young women with a masculine mindset, strong-willed, independent, but, alas, unhappy in their personal lives.
Matveeva writes about love. “Moreover, it delivers the plot, not in some kind of metaphorical or metaphysical key, but one to one, not shying away from the elements of melodrama. She is always curious to compare rivals - how they look, how they are dressed. It is curious to evaluate the subject of rivalry, moreover, with the eye of a woman rather than a writer. In her stories, it often happens that well-known people meet after passing the first distance in life - from youth to youth. Here the author is interested in who succeeded and who became a failure. Some have "aged", and some not very much, who have acquired a presentation, and who, on the contrary, have dropped. It seems that all the heroes of Matveyeva are her former classmates, with whom she “meets” in her own prose ”.
Another characteristic feature. The heroes of Anna Matveyeva differ from the traditional "little people" of compassionate Russian prose in that they do not live in poverty, but, on the contrary, earn money and lead an appropriate lifestyle. And since the author is accurate in details (lines of expensive clothes, sights of tours), the texts acquire a certain touch of glossiness.
However, in the absence of "professional correctness", Anna Matveeva's prose is natural. In fact, a melodrama is very difficult to write, labor cannot achieve anything here: one must have a special gift of a storyteller, the ability to "animate" the hero and subsequently provoke him correctly. The young writer has such a bouquet of abilities. The little story "Pas-de-trois", which gave the name to the entire book, is pure melodrama.
The heroine named Katya Shirokova, one of the performers of the pas de trois against the background of Italian antiquities and modern landscapes, soars in the sky of her love for a married man. It was not by chance that she found herself in the same tour group as her chosen one Misha Idolov and his wife Nina. Waiting for an easy and final victory over the old one - she is already 35! - the wife should end in Rome, the beloved - for dad's money - the city. In general, the heroes of A. Matveeva do not know material problems. If they get bored with their native industrial landscape, they immediately leave for some foreign country. Sit in the Tuileries - "on a thin chair, which rests its legs against the sand, lined with pigeon legs" - or take a walk in Madrid, or even better (a variant of poor Katya, who was defeated by an old wife) - give up on Capri, live there for a month - another ...
Katya, she is a glorious - by definition of a rival - an intelligent girl, moreover, a future art critic, who now and then gets her dear Misha with her erudition. (“I still really want to show you the baths of Caracalla.” - “Karaka what?”). But the dust shaken out of old books into a young head did not bury the natural mind under it. Katya is able to learn, understand people. She also copes with the difficult situation that she got into due to the selfishness of youth and the lack of parental love. For all her material well-being, in a spiritual sense, Katya, like many children of the New Russians, is an orphan. She is exactly that fish soaring in the sky. Misha Idolov “gave her what her father and mother refused. Warmth, admiration, respect, friendship. And only then - love. "
However, she decides to leave Misha. "You are so much better than me, and he, by the way, too, that it would be wrong ..." - "How long have you begun to evaluate actions from this point of view?" - Nina mimicked.
“When I have children,” Katya thought as she lay in the bed of the Pantalon Hotel, “it doesn't matter if I’m a boy or a girl, I will love them. It is so simple".
She looks for a father in someone else's husband, and in his wife she finds, if not a mother, then an older friend. Although, as it turns out, Nina at her age also contributed to the destruction of Katya's family. Alexey Petrovich, Katya's father, is her first lover. “My daughter, Nina thought, will become an adult very soon, she will definitely meet a married man, fall in love with him, and who can guarantee that this man will not turn out to be Katya Shirokova's husband? .. However, this is not the worst option…”
The glorious girl Katya becomes an inadvertent and therefore more effective instrument of retaliation. She refuses the Idol, but her impulse (equally noble and selfish) saves nothing. “Looking at her, Nina suddenly felt that she didn’t need Misha Idolov now — even in the name of Dasha, she didn’t need it. She will not be able to sit next to him, as before, hug him while awake, and there will never be another thousand rituals forged by time. The impetuous tarantella ends, the last chords sound, and the three, welded together by common days, break up for the sake of bright solo performances. "
"Pas de trois" is an elegant little story about the education of feelings. All her heroes are young enough and recognizably modern New Russian people. Its novelty is in the emotional tone in which the eternal problems of the love triangle are solved. No exaltation, no tragedies, everything is everyday - businesslike, rational. One way or another, but you have to live, work, give birth and raise children. And do not expect holidays and gifts from life. Moreover, you can buy them. Like a trip to Rome or Paris. But the sadness of love - humbly - muffled - still sounds in the finale of the story. A love that constantly happens despite the stubborn opposition of the world. After all, for him, both today and yesterday, it is a kind of surplus, only a short and sufficient flash for the birth of a new life. The quantum nature of love resists turning it into a constant and convenient source of heat. "
If in the story the truth of everyday life triumphs, the usual low truths, then in the stories - an uplifting deception. Already the first of them - "Supertanya", playing on the names of Pushkin's heroes, where Lensky (Vova), naturally, dies, and Eugene, as it should, at first rejects a married girl in love - ends with the victory of love. Tatiana is waiting for the death of her rich and cool, but not beloved husband and connects with her dear Eugenicus. The story sounds ironic and sad, like a fairy tale. “Evgenik and Tanya seemed to have disappeared in the damp air of the great city, their traces disappear in the St. Petersburg courtyards, and only Larina, they say, has their address, but be sure - she will not tell anyone ...”
Light irony, gentle humor, a condescending attitude towards human weaknesses and shortcomings, the ability to compensate for the discomfort of everyday existence with the efforts of the mind and heart - all this, of course, attracts and will attract the widest reader. Anna Matveeva was originally a non-guild writer, although current literature exists mainly due to such fiction writers who were shortly attached to their time. The problem, of course, is that its potential mass reader does not buy books today. Those who read love portable novels in paperbacks fall short of Matveyeva's prose. They need a tougher drug. The stories that Matveeva tells happened before, are happening now and will always happen. People will always fall in love, change, be jealous.
III.Conclusion
Analyzing the works of Bunin and Kuprin, as well as contemporary authors - L. Ulitskaya and A. Matveeva, I came to the following conclusions.
Love in Russian literature is portrayed as one of the main human values. According to Kuprin, “individuality is expressed not in strength, not in dexterity, not in intelligence, not in creativity. But in love! "
An extraordinary strength and sincerity of feeling is characteristic of the heroes of the stories of Bunin and Kuprin. Love, as it were, says: "Where I stand, it cannot be dirty." A natural fusion of the frankly sensual and the ideal creates an artistic impression: the spirit penetrates into the flesh and ennobles it. This, in my opinion, is the philosophy of love in the true sense.
The creativity of both Bunin and Kuprin attracts with their love of life, humanism, love and compassion for man. Convexity of the image, simple and clear language, precise and subtle drawing, lack of edification, psychologism of characters - all this brings them closer to the best classical tradition in Russian literature.
L. Ulitskaya and A. Matveeva - masters of modern prose - are also alien to didactic straightforwardness, in their stories and stories there is such a rare pedagogical charge in modern fiction. They remind not so much that “know how to cherish love”, as about the complexity of life in the world of freedom and seeming permissiveness. This life requires great wisdom, the ability to look at things soberly. It also requires more psychological security. The stories that modern authors have told us are certainly immoral, but the material was presented without disgusting naturalism. Emphasis on psychology, not physiology. This involuntarily reminds of the traditions of the great Russian literature.
Literature
1.Agenosov V.V. Russian literature of the twentieth century. - M .: Bustard, 1997.
2.Bunin I.A. Poems. Stories. Stories.- M .: Bustard: Veche, 2002.
3Ivanitsky V.G. From women's literature to the “women's novel.” - Social sciences and modernity, no. 4.2000.
4. Krutikova L. V. A. I. Kuprin. - Leningrad., 1971.
5.Kuprin A.I. The story. Stories. - M .: Bustard: Veche, 2002.
6. Matveeva A Pas - de - trois. Stories. Stories. - Yekaterinburg, "U-Factoria", 2001.
7.Remizova M.P. Hello, young prose ... - Banner # 12,2003.
8. Slavnikova O.K. Forbidden Fruit - New World No. 3,2002. ...
9. Slivitskaya O. V. On the nature of Bunin's "external depiction". - Russian literature №1,1994.
10 Shcheglova E.N. L. Ulitskaya and her world.- Neva No. 7,2003 (p.183-188)
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