What is love according to Bunin. Composition on the theme “Love in the stories of Bunin

The theme of love occupies almost the main place in Bunin's work. This theme allows the writer to correlate what is happening in a person’s soul with the phenomena of external life, with the requirements of a society that is based on the relationship of purchase and sale and in which wild and dark instincts sometimes reign. Bunin was one of the first in Russian literature to speak not only about the spiritual, but also about the bodily side of love, touching with extraordinary tact the most intimate, intimate aspects of human relationships. Bunin was the first to dare to say that bodily passion does not necessarily follow a spiritual impulse, which happens in life and vice versa (as happened with the heroes of the story "Sunstroke"). And no matter what plot moves the writer chooses, love in his works is always a great joy and a great disappointment, a deep and insoluble mystery, it is both spring and autumn in a person’s life.

Over the years, Bunin spoke about love with varying degrees of frankness. In his early prose, the characters are young, open and natural. In such stories as "In August", "Autumn", "Dawn all night", everything is extremely simple, brief and significant. The feelings that the characters experience are ambiguous, colored with halftones. And although Bunin talks about people who are alien to us in appearance, life, relationships, we immediately recognize and understand in a new way our own premonitions of happiness, expectations of deep spiritual turns. The rapprochement of Bunin's heroes rarely achieves harmony, more often it disappears as soon as it has arisen. But the thirst for love burns in their souls. A sad farewell to his beloved ends with dreams ("In August"): "Through tears I looked into the distance, and somewhere I dreamed of sultry southern cities, a blue steppe evening and the image of some woman who merged with the girl I loved ... " . The date is remembered because it testifies to a touch of a genuine feeling: "Whether she was better than the others whom I loved, I do not know, but that night she was incomparable" ("Autumn"). And in the story "Dawn all night" it is said about the premonition of love, about the tenderness that a young girl is ready to pour out on her future chosen one. At the same time, youth tends not only to get carried away, but also quickly disappointed. Bunin shows us this painful for many gap between dreams and reality. After a night in the garden, full of nightingale whistling and spring trembling, young Tata suddenly hears in her sleep how her fiancé shoots jackdaws, and realizes that she does not love this rude and mundane man at all.

Nevertheless, in most of Bunin's early stories, the desire for beauty and purity remains the main, genuine movement of the characters' souls. In the 1920s, already in exile, Bunin wrote about love, as if looking back into the past, peering into the departed Russia and those people who are no longer there. This is how we perceive the story "Mitina's Love" (1924). Here Bunin consistently shows how the spiritual formation of the hero takes place, leads him from love to collapse. In the story, life and love are closely intertwined. Mitya's love for Katya, his hopes, jealousy, vague forebodings seem to be covered with a special sadness. Katya, dreaming of an artistic career, spun in the fake life of the capital and cheated on Mitya. His torment, from which he could not save the connection with another woman - the beautiful but down to earth Alenka, led Mitya to commit suicide. Mitin's insecurity, openness, unpreparedness to face harsh reality, inability to suffer make us feel more acutely the inevitability and inadmissibility of what happened.

In a number of Bunin's stories about love, a love triangle is described: husband - wife - lover ("Ida", "Caucasus", "The most beautiful sun"). In these stories, an atmosphere of inviolability of the established order reigns. Marriage is an insurmountable barrier to achieving happiness. And often what is given to one is ruthlessly taken away from another. In the story "Caucasus", a woman leaves with her lover, knowing for sure that from the moment the train leaves, hours of despair begin for her husband, that he will not stand it and rush after her. He is really looking for her, and not having found her, he guesses about the betrayal and shoots himself. Already here the motif of love as a "sunstroke" appears, which has become a special, ringing note of the "Dark Alleys" cycle.

With the prose of the 20-30s, the stories of the cycle "Dark Alleys" are brought together by the motive of memories of youth and homeland. All or almost all stories are in the past tense. The author seems to be trying to penetrate into the depths of the subconscious of the characters. In most stories, the author describes bodily pleasures, beautiful and poetic, born of genuine passion. Even if the first sensual impulse seems frivolous, as in the story "Sunstroke", it still leads to tenderness and self-forgetfulness, and then to true love. This is exactly what happens with the heroes of the stories "Dark Alleys", "Late Hour", "Rusya", "Tanya", "Business Cards", "In a familiar street". The writer writes about lonely people and ordinary lives. That is why the past, overshadowed by young, strong feelings, is drawn as a truly high point, merges with the sounds, smells, colors of nature. As if nature itself leads to the spiritual and physical rapprochement of people who love each other. And nature itself leads them to inevitable separation, and sometimes to death.

The skill of describing everyday details, as well as the sensual description of love, is inherent in all the stories of the cycle, but the story "Clean Monday" written in 1944 appears not just as a story about the great mystery of love and a mysterious female soul, but as a kind of cryptogram. Too much in the psychological line of the story and in its landscape and everyday details seems like a ciphered revelation. Accuracy and abundance of details are not just signs of the times, not just nostalgia for forever lost Moscow, but the opposition of East and West in the soul and appearance of the heroine, leaving love and life for a monastery.

Bunin's heroes greedily catch moments of happiness, grieve if it passes by, lament if the thread that connects them with their loved one breaks. But at the same time, they are never able to fight fate for happiness, to win an ordinary worldly battle. All stories are stories of escape from life, even for a brief moment, even for one evening. Bunin's heroes are selfish and unconsciously cynical, but they still lose the most precious thing - their beloved. And they can only remember the life they had to give up. Therefore, Bunin's love theme is always permeated with the bitterness of loss, parting, death. All love stories end tragically, even if the characters survive. After all, at the same time they lose the best, valuable part of the soul, lose the meaning of existence and find themselves alone.

The problem of deep human feelings is very important for a writer, especially for one who feels subtly and experiences vividly. Therefore, it plays an important role. He devoted many pages of his creations to her. The true feeling and the eternal beauty of nature are often consonant and equal in the works of the writer. The theme of love in Bunin's work goes along with the theme of death. Strong feelings are not only joyful, they often disappoint a person, cause torment and anguish, which can lead to deep depression and even death.

The theme of love in Bunin's work is often associated with the theme of betrayal, because death for the writer is not only a physical condition, but also a psychological category. The one who betrayed his own or someone else's strong feelings, forever died for them, although he continues to drag out his miserable physical existence. Life without love is bland and uninteresting. But not every person is able to experience it, just as not everyone passes the test of it.

An example of how the theme of love is expressed in Bunin's work is the story "Sunstroke" (1925).

It was precisely reminiscent in its strength of the feeling that seized the lieutenant and the little tanned woman on the deck of the steamer. He suddenly invited her to get off at the nearest pier. They went ashore together.

To describe the passionate feelings that the characters experienced when they met, the author uses the following epithets: "impulsively", "frantically"; verbs: "rushed", "suffocated". The narrator explains that their feelings were also strong because the characters had never experienced anything like this in their lives. That is, feelings are endowed with exclusivity and uniqueness.

A joint morning in a hotel is characterized as follows: sunny, hot, happy. This happiness is shaded by the ringing of bells, animated by a bright bazaar on the hotel square with a variety of smells: hay, tar, the complex smell of a Russian county town. Portrait of the heroine: small, a stranger, like a seventeen-year-old girl (you can roughly indicate the age of the heroine - about thirty). She is not prone to embarrassment, cheerful, simple and reasonable.

She tells the lieutenant about the eclipse, the impact. The hero does not yet understand her words, the "blow" has not yet shown its effect on him. He sees her off and returns, still "carefree and light" to the hotel, as the author says, but something is already changing in his mood.

For a gradual increase in anxiety, the description of the room was used: empty, not like that, strange, a cup of tea she had not finished drinking. The sense of loss is heightened by the still lingering scent of her English cologne. The verbs describe the growing excitement of the lieutenant: the heart sank with tenderness, he hurries to smoke, slaps himself with a stack on the tops of his boots, walks up and down the room, a phrase about a strange adventure, tears in his eyes.

Feelings are growing, they need an outlet. The hero needs to isolate himself from their source. He covers the unmade bed with a screen, closes the windows, so as not to hear now that bazaar noise, which at first he liked so much. And he suddenly wanted to die to come to the city where she lives, but realizing that this was impossible, he felt pain, horror, despair and the complete uselessness of his further life without her.

The problem of love is most clearly expressed in the forty stories of the cycle, which make up a whole encyclopedia of feelings. They reflect their diversity, which occupies the writer. Of course, tragedy is more common on the pages of the cycle. But the author sings of the harmony of love, fusion, inseparability of male and female principles. Like a true poet, the author is constantly looking for it, but, unfortunately, he does not always find it.

About love reveals to us his non-trivial approach to their description. He listens to the sounds of love, peers into her images, guesses the silhouettes, trying to recreate the fullness and range of complex nuances of the relationship between a man and a woman.

Love in Bunin's stories is shown from different angles. On the one hand, this feeling, capable of bringing great happiness, on the other hand, a bright and ardent feeling inflicts deep wounds on the soul of a person, delivers only suffering.

"Love in Bunin's stories" - essay

Option 1

Love is an eternal theme that has attracted writers and poets of all eras. It is impossible to resist this feeling, just as it is impossible not to sing it in poetry and prose.

The real singer of love, psychologist and expert of human souls and hearts is I. A. Bunin. None of his works leaves the reader indifferent. Reading Bunin's short stories filled with incredible meaning, you understand that love is not as simple as it seems at first glance.

In most of his works, the author shows love as a powerful force that can either elevate a person or destroy him at one moment. The heroes of Bunin's works die, part, experience unrequited love and remain unhappy. The author emphasizes that true love comes suddenly, when you do not look for it and do not expect it, and remains in the heart forever. Despite all the tragedy and pain that love most often brings to the heroes of Bunin's works, they perceive it as the most beautiful and unique feeling.

All Bunin's works are unique and do not resemble each other. In the story "Sunstroke" the hero, starting an affair with an attractive fellow traveler, finds true love and suffering for life. Due to the pressure of society, the character of the story "Dark Alleys" Nikolai Alekseevich abandons Nadezhda, for which he then pays and remains unhappy. The work "Cold Autumn" and farewell to the groom killed in the war will not leave any reader indifferent.

Unrequited love in the story "Clean Monday" and the tragic story of Olya Meshcherskaya, the heroine of the story "", once again prove that love is eternal. Nothing can truly separate people in love, neither distances of thousands of kilometers, nor death. And, despite the fact that love brings the heroes a lot of suffering, in those moments when they are inspired by this feeling, they are the happiest.

Option 2

At all times, the theme of love was the main one, many writers sang about the relationship between a man and a woman. Ivan Alekseevich was no exception, in many stories he writes about love. Love is the purest and brightest feeling in the world. The theme of love is eternal in any era.

In the works of Bunin, the writer describes the innermost and secret things that happen between two people. The work of Ivan Alekseevich can be divided into periods. So the collection "Dark Alleys" written during the World War is devoted 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 in his works goes along with death. He draws a line, as it were, that death can stand behind a great bright feeling.

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 steamboat, where a wonderful feeling flares up between them. The girl in love tells the lieutenant that the feeling that visited them is like a sunstroke that overshadowed their mind. She says she has never experienced anything like it 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 and where she lives.

The lieutenant was ready to die for another 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 makes a girl happy and even a guy’s love doesn’t make her happy. At the end of the novella, 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 the girls and everything ends tragically.

In the works of Bunin, 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, for which you often have to fight.

Option 3

The theme of love has always been and is an integral part of any work. I. A. Bunin revealed it especially vividly 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", "", "Sunstroke", love is shown from several sides. On the one hand, this feeling, capable of bringing great happiness, on the other hand, a bright and ardent feeling inflicts deep wounds on the soul of a person, delivering 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 even death. The theme of love, in different ways of his creative path, was revealed from different angles. At the beginning of his work, Bunin described love between young people as something light, natural and open. She is beautiful and gentle, but at the same time 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 beloved, 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 breakup of relations that brought only pain and disappointment.

At a certain period of his time, Bunin emigrated from Russia. It was at this time that love for him became a mature and deep feeling. He began to write about her with sadness and longing, recalling his past years of life. This is clearly displayed in the novel "" written by him in 1924. At first everything goes well, the 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 a love triangle: "" and "The most beautiful sun." The happiness of some inevitably brings heartache and disappointment to the third.

Love played a special role in his great work, written during the war years, Dark Alleys. In it, she is displayed as a great happiness, despite the fact that in the end it ends in tragedy. The love of two people who met each other already in adulthood is shown in the story "Sunstroke". It was during this life period 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 in their hearts the sweet bitterness of pleasant memories.

In all his stories, Bunin sings of love, its difference and contradictions. If there is love, a person becomes infinitely radiant, the true beauty of his inner world, values in relation to a loved one, manifests itself. Love in Bunin's understanding is a true, selfless, pure feeling, even if, after a sudden outbreak and attraction, it can lead to tragedy and deep disappointment.

Option 4

Ivan Alekseevich Bunin is one of the most prominent Russian writers of the twentieth century. He remarkably turned out both poetry and prose, both short stories and novels. But still, I appreciate the talent of Ivan Alekseevich precisely for that part of his work that can be called a "small" genre. And I especially like Bunin's stories, the main theme of which is love.

In these works, the author's talent for describing all the innermost, sometimes quite unusual, for conveying ideas and thoughts is most clearly revealed. Extraordinary poetry brings sensuality to the narrative, which is so necessary for works with such themes. If you trace all of Bunin's work from beginning to end, then you can divide it into periods, based on which topic he prefers in his works. I am interested in the collection "Dark Alleys", written during the Second World War, because it is completely devoted to the theme of love, after reading the stories from it, you can try to formulate the main idea, the author's thought.

In my opinion, the main "thesis" of Bunin's work lies in the quote: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not shared." But in the love dramas of the collection, and it is they that form its basis, one can also be convinced that Bunin appreciates only natural, pure love, high human feeling, rejecting far-fetched false impressions. Ivan Alekseevich also in his stories inextricably links love with death, connects the beautiful and the terrible. But this is not a far-fetched composition, the author thus tries to show readers how closely love borders on death, how close the two extremes are from each other.

The stories "Sunstroke", "" and "Natalie" are best known to readers. All of them perfectly fit the description of a tragic love story with a sad ending, but in each of them Bunin opens up a new aspect to us, a new look at love.

The heroes of "Sunstroke" quite by chance meet on a steamer. But their fleeting attraction does not go unnoticed for both characters. She says to the lieutenant: “There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It’s like an eclipse hit me ... Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke. But this shock concerns him only when he, having escorted her to the ship, returns to the hotel. His heart "constricted with incomprehensible tenderness", and "he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror, despair", because he did not know either her name or surname. Love, which the lieutenant realized too late, almost destroys him, he is ready to die for another day spent with her. But we are convinced that in fact love is a blessing, despite the fact that it breaks off so quickly, we understand how strong and comprehensive this feeling is.

In the short story "Clean Monday", so beloved by the author, we are told about the hero's unrequited love for the mysterious heroine. She is not interested in and even rejects many things accepted in their circle, her complex nature haunts the hero. The heroine's aloofness (“she doesn't need anything: neither flowers, nor books, nor dinners, nor theaters, nor dinners outside the city ...”) is explained on Forgiveness Sunday, when the characters go together to the cemetery. We learn about her passion for antiquity, Kremlin cathedrals and monasteries. The heroine tries to find meaning and support in the world around her, but does not find it, even the love of the hero does not bring her happiness. The meaning of the name is that the heroine, not finding beauty and spirituality in the modern world, is cleansed of her previous life and goes to a monastery, where, as she thinks, she will be happy.

The protagonist of the third story, Vitaly Meshchersky, is himself guilty of a love tragedy that broke out between him, his cousin Sonya and her friend Natalie. The student cannot decide whether to prefer "passionate bodily intoxication" for Sonya or a sincere and sublime feeling for Natalie. Departure from choice ends in a tragic ending. The author shows us that Vitaly's feeling for Sonya is feigned, and love for Natalie is true, proves her superiority.

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

Option 5

The theme of love occupies almost the main place in Bunin's work. This theme allows the writer to correlate what is happening in a person’s soul with the phenomena of external life, with the requirements of a society that is based on the relationship of purchase and sale and in which wild and dark instincts sometimes reign. Bunin was one of the first in Russian literature to speak not only about the spiritual, but also about the bodily side of love, touching with extraordinary tact the most intimate, intimate aspects of human relationships. Bunin was the first to dare to say that bodily passion does not necessarily follow a spiritual impulse, which happens in life and vice versa (as happened with the heroes of the story “Sunstroke”). And no matter what plot moves the writer chooses, love in his works is always a great joy and a great disappointment, a deep and insoluble mystery, it is both spring and autumn in a person’s life.

Over the years, Bunin spoke about love with varying degrees of frankness. In his early prose, the characters are young, open and natural. In such stories as "In August", "In Autumn", "Dawn All Night", everything is extremely simple, brief and significant. The feelings that the characters experience are ambiguous, colored with halftones. And although Bunin talks about people who are alien to us in appearance, life, relationships, we immediately recognize and understand in a new way our own premonitions of happiness, expectations of deep spiritual turns. The rapprochement of Bunin's heroes rarely achieves harmony, more often it disappears as soon as it has arisen.

But the thirst for love burns in their souls. A sad farewell to his beloved ends with dreams (“In August”): “Through tears I looked into the distance, and somewhere I dreamed of sultry southern cities, a blue steppe evening and the image of some woman who merged with the girl I loved ...” . The date is remembered because it testifies to a touch of a genuine feeling: “Whether she was better than the others whom I loved, I don’t know, but that night she was incomparable” (“Autumn”). And in the story “Dawn all night” it is said about the premonition of love, about the tenderness that a young girl is ready to pour out on her future chosen one. At the same time, youth tends not only to get carried away, but also quickly disappointed. Bunin shows us this painful for many gap between dreams and reality. After a night in the garden, full of nightingale whistling and spring trembling, young Tata suddenly hears in her sleep how her fiancé shoots jackdaws, and realizes that she does not love this rude and mundane man at all.

Nevertheless, in most of Bunin's early stories, the desire for beauty and purity remains the main, genuine movement of the characters' souls. In the 1920s, already in exile, Bunin wrote about love, as if looking back into the past, peering into the departed Russia and those people who are no longer there. This is how we perceive the story "Mitya's Love" (1924). Here Bunin consistently shows how the spiritual formation of the hero takes place, leads him from love to collapse. In the story, life and love are closely intertwined. Mitya's love for Katya, his hopes, jealousy, vague forebodings seem to be covered with a special sadness. Katya, dreaming of an artistic career, spun in the fake life of the capital and cheated on Mitya. His torment, from which he could not save the connection with another woman - the beautiful but down to earth Alenka, led Mitya to commit suicide. Mitin's insecurity, openness, unpreparedness to face harsh reality, inability to suffer make us feel more acutely the inevitability and inadmissibility of what happened.

In a number of Bunin's stories about love, a love triangle is described: husband - wife - lover (“Ida”, “Caucasus”, “The most beautiful sun”). In these stories, an atmosphere of inviolability of the established order reigns. Marriage is an insurmountable barrier to achieving happiness. And often what is given to one is ruthlessly taken away from another. In the story “Caucasus”, a woman leaves with her lover, knowing for sure that from the moment the train leaves, hours of despair begin for her husband, that he will not stand it and rush after her. He is really looking for her, and not having found her, he guesses about the betrayal and shoots himself. Already here, the motif of love as a “sunstroke” appears, which has become a special, ringing note of the “Dark Alleys” cycle.

With the prose of the 1920s and 1930s, the stories of the “Dark Alleys” cycle are brought together by the motif of memories of youth and homeland. All or almost all stories are in the past tense. The author seems to be trying to penetrate into the depths of the subconscious of the characters. In most stories, the author describes bodily pleasures, beautiful and poetic, born of genuine passion. Even if the first sensual impulse seems frivolous, as in the story “Sunstroke”, it still leads to tenderness and self-forgetfulness, and then to true love. This is exactly what happens with the heroes of the stories “Dark Alleys”, “Late Hour”, “Rusya”, “Tanya”, “Business Cards”, “In a Familiar Street”. The writer writes about lonely people and ordinary lives. That is why the past, overshadowed by young, strong feelings, is drawn as a truly high point, merges with the sounds, smells, colors of nature. As if nature itself leads to the spiritual and physical rapprochement of people who love each other. And nature itself leads them to inevitable separation, and sometimes to death.

The skill of describing everyday details, as well as the sensual description of love, is inherent in all the stories of the cycle, but the story “Clean Monday” written in 1944 appears not just as a story about the great mystery of love and a mysterious female soul, but as a kind of cryptogram. Too much in the psychological line of the story and in its landscape and everyday details seems like a ciphered revelation. Accuracy and abundance of details are not just signs of the times, not just nostalgia for forever lost Moscow, but the opposition of East and West in the soul and appearance of the heroine, leaving love and life for a monastery.

The theme of love in the work of Bunin

The theme of love in the story of I. A. Bunin "Dark alleys"

The fate of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was both happy and tragic. He reached unsurpassed heights in his art, the first among Russian writers to receive the Nobel Prize, was recognized as an outstanding master of the word. But for thirty years Bunin lived in a foreign land, with an unquenched longing for his homeland and constant spiritual closeness with her.

From these experiences was born the greatest artistic value cycle of stories, which was released in 1943 in New York in a truncated composition. The next edition of this cycle took place in Paris in 1946. It included thirty-eight stories. This collection differed from the coverage of love in Soviet literature.

The collection is named after the title of one of the stories included in it. Bunin recalled how this story was written: “I reread Ogaryov’s poems and settled on a famous poem:

It's been a wonderful spring!

They were sitting on the beach

She was in her prime,

His mustache was barely black...

All around the scarlet rose hips bloomed,

There was an alley of dark lindens ...

Then, for some reason, it seemed like how this story begins - autumn, bad weather, a high road, a tarantass, in it an old military man. The rest just sort of fell into place." This is how the idea and the name of the work appeared.

The hero of the story "Dark Alleys", while still a young landowner, seduced the peasant woman Nadezhda. And then his life took its course. And now, after many years, he, already being a military man in high ranks, finds himself passing through those places where he loved in his youth. In the hostess of the visiting hut, he recognizes Nadezhda, who has aged like himself, but is still a beautiful woman.

The meeting of former lovers is the plot outline of the work. Bunin shows himself to be a true connoisseur of the human soul, he subtly conveys the inner experiences of the characters. Their brief conversation contains more emotional than factual information.

Interesting difference in the behavior of the characters. Nikolai Alekseevich is an old military man, he is already under sixty, and he blushes like a delinquent young man in front of this woman: “He blushed to tears.” And Hope? She is calm and gloomy, her every word reeks of bitterness and pain, she seems to pass judgment on her long-standing offender: “What God gives to whom, Nikolai Alekseevich. Everyone passes youth, but love is another matter”, “Everything passes, but not everything is forgotten”.

Although, as it turns out later, life has already punished the old man: he was never happy in life after he abandoned Nadezhda ... And what a name she has - Nadezhda!

It is interesting that this woman still loves her former master: “No matter how much time passed, she lived alone. She knew that you were gone for a long time, that for you it was as if nothing had happened, but ... ”But he does not believe her, because he does not love himself, and he hardly did.

And yet, the hero of Bunin's story has a sensual memory of what was once felt, felt. He recalls youth, unique moments of happiness. The heroine carried her love for him through her whole life, did not marry and could not forgive that her beloved neglected her, she remained unhappy.

And the hero was also unhappy. Here is what Nikolai Alekseevich says in his defense to Nadezhda: “I have never been happy in my life, please don’t think. I'm sorry that maybe I offend your vanity, but I'll tell you frankly - I loved my wife without a memory. And she changed, left me even more insultingly than I did you. And now the heroine is avenged ...

Thus, Bunin's love does not go into the family channel, is not resolved by a happy marriage. Bunin deprives his heroes of eternal happiness, deprives them because they get used to it, and the habit leads to the loss of passion. Love out of habit cannot be better than lightning-fast love, but sincere.

So for the hero of the story “Dark Alleys”, despite the short duration, the experienced feelings remain eternal: they are eternal in the memory of the hero precisely because life is fleeting. And if it were not for this chance meeting at the inn at sunset and youth, the long-standing love for his former serf would not have been overshadowed by anything and would have shone with a marvelous lamp. That is why the old man utters the words with such bitterness: “Be healthy, dear friend. I think that I have lost in you the most precious thing that I had in my life.

The theme of love in Bunin is a cross-cutting motif that permeates all of his work, thus linking the Russian and emigrant periods. It allows him to correlate deep spiritual experiences with the phenomena of external life, and also to penetrate into the secrets of the human soul, based on the influence of objective reality on a person.

The theme of love in the stories of I.A. Bunin "Sunstroke"

The recognized master of the artistic word Ivan Alekseevich Bunin in works about love appears before us as a psychologist who knows how to convey the state of the soul wounded by this wonderful feeling with amazing subtlety. Possessing a rare talent, the ability to love, the writer professes his own philosophy of love in his work.

Reading the stories of I.A. Bunin, we notice that the author's love does not exist in marriage and family, and he is not attracted to quiet family happiness. For him, it is not so much long and cloudless love that is important, but short-term, like lightning that flared up in the darkness and went out, but left its deep imprint in the soul. Love in the writer's stories is a tragedy, madness, a catastrophe, a great feeling that can elevate or destroy a person. A sudden “flash” of love can happen to anyone and at any moment.

Love is passion. We come to this conclusion after getting acquainted with the story, the heroes of which were suddenly overtaken by love. Love, which has no past and future - there is only the present, only "now". A woman and a man do not even have names - just She and He. For the author (and the reader) it does not matter at all.

Without talking about the experiences of the heroine after leaving, the writer describes in detail the state of mind of the hero. An accidental meeting with a “charming, light, little creature”, an unexpected strong feeling, an absurd parting ... And then misunderstanding and mental anguish ... “... a completely new feeling ... that didn’t exist at all when they were together”, appeared in the lieutenant’s soul after that , as he at first thought, "a funny acquaintance." What some people learn in years, he happened to experience in one day.

Perhaps this day turned out to be one of the most difficult in the life of the protagonist. The enormous power of love, like a sunstroke, suddenly “struck” him. The lieutenant leaves the city as if he were a different person. There is no longer any passion, no hatred, no love in his soul, but, having experienced confusion, horror, despair, he now feels himself "aged ten years."

"Truly magical" moments of life gives a person love, warms the soul with bright memories. But love also has its own "dark alleys", so it often dooms Bunin's heroes to suffering, does not lead them to happiness.

The happiness of the main character of the short story "Dark Alleys" did not take place. Hope's boundless love for her master forever made her lonely. A woman who has preserved her former beauty even now remembers the past, lives with memories of it. The love in her soul did not go out for many years. “Youth passes for everyone, but love is another matter,” she admits indifferently to Nikolai Alekseevich, who left her thirty years ago. “There was ... nothing more expensive ... in the world at that time, and then again” for Nadezhda, therefore she “never could” forgive her offender.

Despite the fact that it is difficult for the indecisive and conceited Nikolai Alekseevich, prone to class prejudices, to imagine Nadezhda, the keeper of the inn, as his wife, he becomes sad after an unexpected meeting with her. The sixty-year-old military man understands that this once slender young beauty gave him the best moments of his life. Probably, for the first time he thought about happiness, about responsibility for committed actions. The life that Nikolai Alekseevich had long abandoned will now remain with him only in his memories.

Love at I.A. Bunin is that ghostly happiness that a person strives for, but, unfortunately, very often misses. In it, as in life, light and dark principles always oppose. But the author, who gave us wonderful works about love, was convinced: "All love is a great happiness, even if it is not shared."

Love in Bunin's story "The Caucasus"

"Caucasus" is included in the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys", in which I. A. Bunin, with his inherent writing skills, briefly describes the movements of human souls, hardships and individual aspirations, focusing on the most mysterious and beautiful feeling - love.

The protagonist of the story "Caucasus" comes to Moscow and lives from date to date with the object of his adoration. He appreciates every moment of her appearance, a thin sketch of the portrait of the heroine says a lot - she is pale, excited and beautiful. Bunin focuses on the feelings and experiences of the characters, without giving a detailed description of their appearance. The lovers are united by a mutual feeling and a risky plan - to leave Moscow and escape to the Caucasus.

The marriage of the heroine burdens and disturbs the hearts of young people. The love triangle is a frequent theme in fiction. Such situations clearly show how strong feelings tear a person out of his usual life, bearing irreparable consequences. The heroine's husband is an ambitious officer, he is jealous of his wife and follows her every step. The author does not pay attention to the inner world of the military man, but the human tragedy arises immediately - the spouse in jealousy and suspicion expresses the same love, which has acquired a painful and destructive character.

Strong feelings cannot be boxed in, they cannot be normalized by following any rules. Love manifests itself in a person as an unbridled desire, comparable to the craving for life. Love makes a revolution in the hearts of people, it makes a person go beyond the ordinary, which is what the main characters of the work do. Despite the risk and danger, they still leave the capital to the south.

The happiness of one is the misfortune of another. The officer is looking for his wife in Gelendzhik, in Sochi, in Gagra. He understands that his beloved is gone for him forever. He cannot accept it, he finds the only way out - suicide.

Love is unpredictable and indomitable. Bunin in his work clearly shows the desire of people to put their spiritual aspirations into practice. For some, this is happiness and newfound harmony, for others it is a tragedy and the end of existence. Bunin does not show the further fate of the main characters, their feelings may pass, one of them may be in the place of the deceased officer. But such is the mysterious nature of love, one of the strongest feelings of man.

Love in the works of I. A. Bunin (briefly)

Every love is happiness

even if it is not divided.

Many works, and above all his stories about love, reveal to us his subtle and observant soul as a writer-artist, writer-psychologist, writer-lyricist.

The cycle "Dark Alleys" is a collection of short stories, 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 characters. 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 is because true love, as the writer believed, is doomed to be only a flash and does not tolerate extension.

As the highest gift of fate, it is said about love in the story "Sunstroke". But here, too, the tragedy of high feeling is aggravated precisely by the fact that it is mutual and too beautiful to last without becoming commonplace.

Surprisingly, despite the unhappy endings of the stories, Bunin's love is almost always perfect, harmonious, mutual, 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.

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, uplifting or destroying ... Throughout life, a person can more than once touch this mystery that arises deep in the heart and turns , painting the whole world in bright colors - and each time his love will be new, fresh, unlike the past ... I think that is exactly what I. A. Bunin wanted to convey in his stories.

The theme of love in the work of Bunin and Kuprin occupies a special place. Of course, writers described this feeling in different ways and discovered new aspects of its manifestation. There are also similar features: they talk about both an all-consuming passion and a tragic feeling that cannot stand the test of life situations. The theme of love in the work of Bunin and Kuprin shows it in all its diversity, allowing you to see new facets of this feeling.

Playing with contrasts

The theme of love in the work of Bunin and Kuprin is often shown in opposition to the characters of the main characters. If we analyze their works, it can be noted that in most of them one of the lovers has a stronger character and is ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of his feelings. The other side turns out to be weaker, for which public opinion or personal ambitions are more important than feelings.

This can be seen in the example of the heroes of Bunin's story "Dark Alleys". Both heroes met by chance and remembered the time when they were in love. The heroine, Nadezhda, carried love through her whole life - she never met someone who could outshine the image of Nikolai Alekseevich. He married, however, not having a strong feeling for his wife, but he did not really regret it. To think that the owner of the tavern could become his wife, the mistress of the house - for him it was unthinkable. And if Nadezhda was ready for anything to be with her beloved and continued to love him, then Nikolai Alekseevich is shown as a person for whom social status and public opinion are more important.

The same contrast can be seen in Kuprin's Olesya. The Polissya witch is shown as a girl with a warm heart, capable of great feelings, ready to sacrifice not only her well-being, but also the tranquility of her loved ones for the sake of her lover. Ivan Timofeevich is a man of a gentle nature, his heart is lazy, incapable of experiencing the love of the strength that Olesya had. He did not follow the call of his heart, his movement, so he only had the girl's beads as a memory of this love.

Love in the works of Kuprin

Despite the fact that both writers considered a bright feeling to be a manifestation of goodness, nevertheless, they describe it a little differently. The theme of love in the work of Bunin and Kuprin has various manifestations, if you read their works, you can understand that most often the relationships they describe have differences.

So, A. I. Kuprin most often talks about tragic love, sacrificial, for the writer, true love must certainly be accompanied by life's trials. Because a strong and all-consuming feeling could not bring happiness to loved ones. Such love could not be simple. This can be seen in his works, such as "Olesya", "Garnet Bracelet", "Shulamith" and others. But for the heroes, even such love is happiness, and they are grateful that they had such a strong feeling.

Love in Bunin's stories

For writers, a bright feeling is the most beautiful thing that could happen to a person. Therefore, the theme of love in the work of Bunin and Kuprin occupied a special place, which is why their works so excited readers. But they understood it each in their own way. In the work of I. A. Bunin, love is a flash of emotions, a happy moment that suddenly appears in life, and then just as abruptly ends. Therefore, in his stories, the characters evoke conflicting feelings among readers.

So, in the story "Sunstroke" love-flash is shown, love-instant, illuminating the life of two people for a brief moment. And after they broke up, the main character felt older by many years. Because this fleeting love took away all the best that was in him. Or in the story "Dark Alleys" the main character continued to love, but she could not forgive her lover's weaknesses. And he, although he understood that she gave him the best years, continued to believe that he had done the right thing. And if in the work of Kuprin, love was certainly tragic, then in Bunin it is shown as a more complex feeling.

The unusual side of light feeling

Although love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin is a sincere, real relationship between two people, sometimes love can be completely different. It is this side that is shown in the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco". Although this work is not about love, in one episode it is said that one happy couple walked around the ship and everyone, looking at her, saw two lovers. And only the captain knew that they were hired specifically to play a strong feeling.

It would seem, what could this have to do with the theme of love in the works of Bunin and Kuprin? This also happens - this also applies to actors who play lovers on stage, and such couples who were hired on purpose. But it also happens that a real feeling can arise between such artists. On the other hand, someone, looking at them, gains hope that he will also have love in life.

The role of details in the description

The description of the feeling of love in both A. I. Kuprin and I. A. Bunin takes place against the background of a detailed description of the everyday life of the characters. This allows you to show how a strong feeling flows in a simple life. How can the attitude of heroes to familiar things and phenomena change. And some details of the life of the characters allow you to better understand the nature of the characters. The writers managed to organically combine everyday life and a bright feeling.

Can everyone feel

In the essay "The Theme of Love in the Works of Bunin and Kuprin" it is also worth noting that only strong people can experience a real feeling, sacrifice everything for a lover and love him all his life. After all, why can't the heroes of their works be together? Because a strong personality falls in love with someone who cannot experience a feeling of equal strength. But thanks to such a contrast, the love of such heroes looks even stronger and sincere. A. I. Kuprin and I. A. Bunin wrote about a bright feeling in its various manifestations, so that readers understand that whatever love is, it is happiness, that it happened in life, and a person should be grateful that he has the ability to love.

Bunin wrote a lot about love, its tragedies and rare moments of true happiness. "These works are marked by an extraordinary poeticization of human feelings, they revealed the wonderful talent of the writer, his ability to penetrate into the intimate depths of the heart, with their unknown and unknown laws.

For Bunin, true love has something in common with the eternal beauty of nature, therefore only such a feeling of love is beautiful, which is natural, not false, not invented, for him love and existence without it are two hostile lives, and if it dies

Love, then that other life, is no longer needed.

Raising love, Bunin does not hide the fact that it brings not only joy, happiness, but also very often fraught with torment, grief, disappointment, death. In one of his letters, he himself explained precisely this motive in his work and not only explained, but convincingly proved: “Don't you know yet 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 one of my loves was a catastrophe - I was close to suicide.

Bunin told the story of tragic love in a short story

"Sunstroke". A chance acquaintance on a steamboat, the usual "road adventure", "a fleeting meeting". But how did all this random and fleeting end for the heroes? “There has never been anything even similar to what happened to me, and there will never be again. It's like an eclipse hit me. Or, rather, we both got something like a sunstroke, ”the lieutenant’s companion admits. But this blow has not yet touched the hero.

After seeing off his acquaintance and carelessly returning to the hotel, he suddenly felt that his heart "shrank with an incomprehensible tenderness" at the memory of her. When he realized that he had lost her forever (after all, he didn’t even know his first and last name), “he felt such pain and such uselessness of his entire future life without her that he was seized by horror, despair,” And again, Bunin’s motive enhances the tragedy of a person: love and death are always there. Struck, as if by a blow, by this unexpected love, the lieutenant is ready to die, if only to return this dear and such a beloved creature to him: , this day, to spend only to tell her and prove something, to convince her how painfully and enthusiastically he loves her.

The collection of short stories "Dark Alleys" can be called an encyclopedia of love dramas. The writer created it during the Second World War (1937-1944). Later, when the book was published and readers were shocked by the “eternal drama of love,” Bunin admitted in one of his letters: “She speaks of the tragic and many tender and beautiful things, - I think it's the best and most original thing I've written in my life." And although in many stories the love that the writer told about is tragic, Bunin claims that any love is a great happiness, even if it ends in separation, death, tragedy. Many Bunin's heroes come to this conclusion, having lost, overlooked or destroyed their love themselves.

But this insight, enlightenment comes to the heroes too late, as, for example, to Vitaly Meshchersky, the hero of the story "Natalie". Bunin told the story of student Meshchersky's love for the young beauty Natalya Stankevich, about their breakup, about their long loneliness. The tragedy of this love lies in the character of Meshchersky, who has a sincere and sublime feeling for one girl, and “passionate bodily intoxication” for another, and both seem to him love. But it's impossible to love two people at the same time. Physical attraction to Sonya quickly passes, great, true love for Natalie remains for life. Only for a short moment the true happiness of love was presented to the heroes, but the author completed the idyllic union of Meshchersky and Natalie with the untimely death of the heroine.

In stories about love, I. A. Bunin affirmed the true spiritual values, beauty and greatness of a person capable of a great, selfless feeling, painted love as a high, ideal, beautiful feeling, despite the fact that it brings not only joy and happiness, but more often - grief, suffering, death.