Dark alleys analysis of the story. Analysis of the story by I.A. Bunin "Hope" - we analyze a literary work - analysis in literature lessons - a catalog of articles - a teacher of literature The plot of the story "Dark Alleys"

A cycle of stories called "Dark Alleys" is dedicated to the eternal theme of any kind of art - love. They say about "Dark Alleys" as a kind of encyclopedia of love, which contains the most diverse and incredible stories about this great and often contradictory feeling.

And the stories that were included in Bunin's collection amaze with their diverse plots and extraordinary style, they are the main assistants of Bunin, who wants to portray love at the peak of feelings, tragic love, but from this - and perfect.

Feature of the cycle "Dark Alleys"

The phrase itself, which served as the name for the collection, was taken by the writer from the poem "An Ordinary Tale" by N. Ogaryov, which is dedicated to first love, which did not have the expected continuation.

In the collection itself there is a story with that name, but this does not mean that this story is the main one, no, this expression is the personification of the mood of all stories and stories, a common elusive meaning, a transparent, almost invisible thread connecting the stories with each other.

A feature of the cycle of stories "Dark Alleys" can be called moments when the love of two heroes, for some reason, can no longer continue. Often the executioner of the passionate feelings of Bunin's heroes is death, sometimes unforeseen circumstances or misfortunes, but most importantly, love is never given to come true.

This is the key concept of Bunin's idea of ​​earthly love between two. He wants to show love at the peak of its heyday, he wants to emphasize its real wealth and highest value, that it does not need to turn into life circumstances, like a wedding, marriage, life together ...

Female images of "Dark Alleys"

Particular attention should be paid to unusual female portraits, which are so rich in "Dark Alleys". Ivan Alekseevich writes out images of women with such grace and originality that the female portrait of each story becomes unforgettable and truly intriguing.

Bunin's skill consists in several precise expressions and metaphors that instantly draw in the reader's mind the picture described by the author with many colors, shades and nuances.

The stories "Rus", "Antigone", "Galya Ganskaya" are an exemplary example of various, but vivid images of a Russian woman. The girls whose stories are created by the talented Bunin are somewhat reminiscent of the love stories they experience.

We can say that the key attention of the writer is directed precisely to these two elements of the cycle of stories: women and love. And love stories are just as rich, unique, sometimes fatal and masterful, sometimes so original and incredible that it’s hard to believe in them.

Male images in "Dark Alleys" are weak-willed and insincere, and this also determines the fatal course of all love stories.

Feature of love in "Dark Alleys"

The stories of "Dark Alleys" reveal not only the theme of love, they reveal the depths of the human personality and soul, and the very concept of "love" is presented as the basis of this difficult and not always happy life.

And love does not have to be mutual in order to bring unforgettable impressions, love does not have to turn into something eternal and relentlessly ongoing in order to please and make a person happy.

Bunin shrewdly and subtly shows only "moments" of love, for the sake of which it is worth experiencing everything else, for the sake of which it is worth living.

"Clean Monday" story

The story "Clean Monday" is a mysterious and not fully understood love story. Bunin describes a pair of young lovers who seem to be perfect for each other on the outside, but the catch is that their inner worlds have nothing in common.

The image of a young man is simple and logical, while the image of his beloved is inaccessible and complex, striking her chosen one with its inconsistency. One day she says that she would like to go to a monastery, and this causes complete bewilderment and misunderstanding for the hero.

And the end of this love is as complex and incomprehensible as the heroine herself. After intimacy with a young man, she silently leaves him, then asks him not to ask anything, and soon he learns that she has gone to the monastery.

She made the decision on Clean Monday, when there was an intimacy between lovers, and the symbol of this holiday is a symbol of her purity and torment, from which she wants to get rid of.

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Analysis of Bunin's works

Content

Introduction
A unique master of words, connoisseur and connoisseur of native nature, able to touch the subtlest and most secret strings of the human soul, Ivan Alekseevich Bunin was born in 1870 in Voronezh, into an impoverished noble family. He spent his early childhood in a small family estate (the Butyrki farm in the Yelets district of the Oryol province). The literary abilities of the young Bunin, who from childhood was particularly impressionable, manifested themselves very early - as early as adolescence he began to write poetry and did not leave poetry until the end of his life. This, in our opinion, is another of the rare features of I.A. Bunin - a writer: writers, moving from poetry to prose, almost forever leave poetry. But the prose of Ivan Bunin is essentially deeply poetic. An internal rhythm beats in it, feelings and images reign.
The creative path of I.A. Bunin is distinguished by its duration, almost unparalleled in the history of literature. Speaking with his first works in the late eighties of the 19th century, when the classics of Russian literature lived and worked M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, G.I. Uspensky, L.N. Tolstoy, V.G. Korolenko, A.P. Chekhov, Bunin completed his activities in the early 1950s of the twentieth century. His work is very complex. It experienced the beneficial effect of major contemporary writers, although it developed in its own independent ways. Bunin's works are an alloy of Tolstoy's ability to penetrate deeply into the very essence of the depicted life, to see in the phenomena of the surrounding reality not only the ceremonial form, but the true essence, their often unattractive underside; solemn, upbeat prose of Gogol, his lyrical digressions and descriptions of nature.
Bunin is one of the talented writers of the realistic direction of Russian literature. He completed with his work the “noble” line in Russian literature, represented by such names as S.T. Aksakov, I.S. Turgenev, L.N. Tolstoy.
Bunin also knew the other side of the noble life of the post-reform period - the poverty and lack of money of the nobles themselves, the stratification and fermentation of the village, the bitter feeling of the impossibility of influencing the situation. He is convinced that the Russian nobleman has the same way of life and the same soul as the peasant. Many of his novels and short stories were devoted to the study of this common "soul": "The Village" (1910), "Dry Valley" (1912), "Merry Yard" (1911), "Zakhar Vorobyov" (1912), "Thin Grass" (1913 ), “I keep silent” (1913), in which there is a lot of almost Gorky bitter truth.
Like many of his contemporaries, the writer thought about Russia's place between East and West, about the volcanic element of the eastern nomad, sleeping in the Russian soul. I.A.Bunin traveled a lot: the Middle East, Africa, Italy, Greece. The stories “Shadow of a Bird”, “Sea of ​​Gods”, “Country of Sodom” and others are about this in the collection “Grammar of Love”.
All Bunin's works - regardless of the time of their creation - are embraced by an interest in the eternal mysteries of human existence, a single circle of lyrical and philosophical themes: time, memory, heredity, love, death, human immersion in the world of unknown elements, the doom of human civilization, unknowability on earth final truth. The themes of time and memory set the perspective of Bunin's entire prose.
In 1933, Bunin became the first Russian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature - "for the truthful artistic talent with which he recreated in prose a typical Russian character."
His work is of particular interest to literary critics. More than a dozen works have been written. The most complete study of the life and work of the writer is given in the following works by V.N. Afanasyev (“I.A. Bunin”), L.A. Smirnova (“I.A. I.A. Bunin. Materials for a biography (from 1970 to 1917)"), O.N. Mikhailova ("I.A. Bunin. Essay on creativity", "Strict talent"), L.A. .A. Bunin"), N.M. Kucherovsky ("I.A. Bunin and his prose (1887-1917)"), Yu.I. Aikhenvald (“Silhouettes of Russian Writers”), O.N. Mikhailov (“Literature of the Russian Abroad”), I.A. Karpov (“Prose of Ivan Bunin”) and others
The work is devoted to the study of the poetics of I.A. Bunin.
Subject thesis work is the poetics of stories by I. B. Bunin.
An object- stories by I.B. Bunin.
Relevance work lies in the fact that the study of the poetics of stories allows you to most fully reveal their originality.
aim thesis is a study of the originality of the poetics of stories by I.A. Bunin.
Tasks diploma work:

To characterize the spatio-temporal organization of I. Bunin's stories.
Reveal the role of subject detailing in the literary texts of I.A. Bunin.

The structure of the thesis: introduction, two chapters, conclusion, bibliography.

CHAPTER 1. ARTISTIC SPACE AND TIME IN I.A. Bunina

1.1. Categories of artistic space and time
The concept of space-time continuum is essential for the philological analysis of a literary text, since both time and space serve as constructive principles for organizing a literary work. Artistic time is a form of being of aesthetic reality, a special way of knowing the world.
Features of modeling time in literature are determined by the specifics of this type of art: literature is traditionally regarded as a temporary art; unlike painting, it recreates the concreteness of the passage of time. This feature of a literary work is determined by the properties of the linguistic means that form its figurative structure: “grammar determines for each language an order that distributes ... space in time” 1, transforms spatial characteristics into temporal ones.
The problem of artistic time has long occupied literary theorists, art critics, and linguists. So, A.A. Potebnya, emphasizing that the art of the word is dynamic, showed the limitless possibilities of organizing artistic time in the text. The text was considered by him as a dialectical unity of two compositional and speech forms: description (“image of features that simultaneously exist in space”) and narrative (“Narration turns a number of simultaneous features into a number of successive perceptions, into an image of the movement of gaze and thought from object to object” 2 ).
A.A. Potebnya distinguished between real time and artistic time; having considered the correlation of these categories in the works of folklore, he noted the historical variability of artistic time. The ideas of A.A. Potebnya were further developed in the works of philologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, interest in the problems of artistic time was especially revived in the last decades of the 20th century, which was associated with the rapid development of science, the evolution of views on space and time, with the acceleration of the pace of social life, with the aggravated attention to the problems of memory, origins, traditions. , On the one side; and the future, on the other hand; finally, with the emergence of new forms in art.
“The work, - noted P.A. Florensky, is aesthetically forced to develop ... in a certain sequence” 3 . Time in a work of art is the duration, sequence and correlation of its events, based on their causal, linear or associative relationship.
Time in the text has clearly defined or rather blurred boundaries (events, for example, can cover tens of years, a year, several days, a day, an hour, etc.), which may or, on the contrary, not be indicated in the work in relation to the historical time or time set by the author conditionally. 4
Artistic time is systemic. This is a way of organizing the aesthetic reality of a work, its inner world, and at the same time an image associated with the embodiment of the author's concept, with the reflection of his own picture of the world with a reflection of the name day of the world (for example, M. Bulgakov's novel "The White Guard").
From time as an immanent property of a work, it is advisable to distinguish the time of the flow of the text, which can be considered as the time of the reader; Thus, considering a literary text, we are dealing with the antinomy "the time of the work - the time of the reader." This antinomy in the process of perception of the work can be resolved in different ways. At the same time, the time of the work is also non-uniform: thus, as a result of temporal shifts, “omissions”, highlighting the central events in close-up, the depicted time is compressed, reduced, while comparing and describing simultaneous events, on the contrary, it is stretched.
A comparison of real time and artistic time reveals their differences. The topological properties of real time in the macrocosm are one-dimensionality, continuity, irreversibility, orderliness. In artistic time, all these properties are transformed. It may be multidimensional. This is due to the very nature of a literary work, which has, firstly, an author and presupposes the presence of a reader, and secondly, boundaries: a beginning and an end. Two temporal axes appear in the text - "the axis of narration" and "the axis of the described events": "the axis of the narration is one-dimensional, while the axis of the described events is multidimensional" 5 . Their relationship gives rise to the multidimensionality of artistic time, makes temporal shifts possible, and determines the multiplicity of temporal points of view in the structure of the text. Thus, in a prose work, the narrator's conditional present tense is usually established, which correlates with the narration about the past or future of the characters, with the characteristics of situations in various time dimensions.
In different time planes, the action of the work can unfold (“Double” by A. Pogorelsky, “Russian Nights” by V.F. Odoevsky, “Master and Margarita” by M. Bulgakov, etc.).
Irreversibility (unidirectionality) is not characteristic of artistic time either: the real sequence of events is often violated in the text. According to the law of irreversibility, only folklore time moves. In the literature of the New Age, temporal shifts, violation of the temporal sequence, and switching of temporal registers play an important role. Retrospection as a manifestation of the reversibility of artistic time is the principle of organizing a number of thematic genres (memoirs and autobiographical works, a detective novel). A retrospective in a literary text can also act as a means of revealing its implicit content-subtext.
The multidirectionality, reversibility of artistic time is especially clearly manifested in the literature of the 20th century. If Stern, according to E.M. Forster, “turned the clock upside down”, then “Marcel Proust, even more inventive, reversed the hands ... Gertrude Stein, who tried to banish time from the novel, smashed her watch to smithereens and scattered its fragments around the world..." 6 . It was in the 20th century. there is a “stream of consciousness” novel, a “one day” novel, a sequential time series in which time is destroyed, and time acts only as a component of a person’s psychological existence.
Artistic time is characterized by both continuity and discreteness. "Remaining essentially continuous in the successive change of temporal and spatial facts, the continuum in textual reproduction is simultaneously divided into separate episodes" 7 .
The selection of these episodes is determined by the aesthetic intentions of the author, hence the possibility of temporary gaps, “compression” or, on the contrary, expansion of plot time, see, for example, T. Mann’s remark: “In a wonderful celebration of storytelling and reproduction, gaps play an important and indispensable role.”
The ability to expand or compress time is widely used by writers. So, for example, in I.S. Turgenev’s story “Spring Waters”, the story of Sanin’s love for Gemma stands out in close-up - the most striking event in the hero’s life, its emotional peak; at the same time, artistic time slows down, “stretches out”, while the course of the subsequent life of the hero is transmitted in a generalized, total way: “And there - living in Paris and all the humiliations, all the nasty torments of a slave ... Then - returning to his homeland, a poisoned, devastated life, petty fuss, small chores ... "
Artistic time in the text appears as a dialectical unity of the finite and the infinite. In an endless stream of time, one event or their chain is singled out, their beginning and end are usually fixed. The finale of the work is a signal that the time period presented to the reader has ended, but time continues beyond it. Transformed in a literary text is such a property of works of real time as orderliness. This may be due to the subjective definition of a reference point or a measure of time: for example, in S. Bobrov’s autobiographical story “The Boy”, a holiday serves as a measure of time for the hero: “For a long time I tried to imagine what a year is ... and suddenly I saw in front of me a rather long ribbon of greyish-pearl mist, lying horizontally in front of me, like a towel thrown on the floor.<...>Was this towel divided into months? .. No, it was imperceptible. For seasons?.. Also somehow not very clear... It was clearer otherwise. These were patterns of holidays that colored the year” 8 .
Artistic time is a unity of the private and the general. “As a manifestation of the private, it has the features of individual time and is characterized by a beginning and an end. As a reflection of the boundless world, it is characterized by the infinity of the temporal flow” 9 . A separate temporal situation of a literary text can also act as a unity of discrete and continuous, finite and infinite: “There are seconds, five or six of them pass at a time, and you suddenly feel the presence of eternal harmony, completely achieved ... As if you suddenly feel all nature and suddenly say: Yes, it is true. The plan of the timeless in a literary text is created through the use of repetitions, maxims and aphorisms, all sorts of reminiscences, symbols and other tropes. Artistic time in this respect can be considered as a complementary phenomenon, to the analysis of which N. Bohr's principle of complementarity is applicable (opposite means cannot be synchronously combined, two “experiences” separated in time are needed to obtain a holistic view). The antinomy "finite - infinite" is resolved in a literary text as a result of the use of conjugated, but separated in time and therefore multi-valued means, for example, symbols.
Fundamentally significant for the organization of a work of art are such characteristics of artistic time as the duration / brevity of the depicted event, the homogeneity / heterogeneity of situations, the relationship of time with subject-event content (its fullness / vacancy, “emptiness”). According to these parameters, both works and fragments of text in them, forming certain temporary blocks, can be contrasted.
Artistic time is based on a certain system of linguistic means. This is primarily a system of tense forms of the verb, their sequence and opposition, transposition (figurative use) of tense forms, lexical units with temporal semantics, case forms with the meaning of time, chronological marks, syntactic constructions that create a specific time plan (for example, nominative sentences represent in the text plan of the present), names of historical figures, mythological heroes, nominations of historical events.
Of particular importance for artistic time is the functioning of verb forms, the predominance of static or dynamic in the text, acceleration or deceleration of time depends on their correlation, their sequence determines the transition from one situation to another and, consequently, the movement of time. Compare, for example, the following fragments of E. Zamyatin's story “Mamai”: “Mamai wandered lost in the unfamiliar Zagorodny. Penguin wings got in the way; the head hung like a tap by a broken samovar... And suddenly the head tossed up, the legs began to dance for twenty-five years... "The forms of time act as signals of various subjective spheres in the structure of the narrative, cf. It was quiet, sunny morning. Today he did not work in his mezzanine. Everything is over. They're leaving tomorrow, Ellie is packing up, everything is re-drilled. Again Helsingfors...» 11 .
The functions of the types of temporal forms in a literary text are largely typified. As V. V. Vinogradov notes, narrative ("event") time is determined primarily by the ratio of the dynamic forms of the past tense of the perfect type and the forms of the past imperfect, acting in a procedural-long or qualitatively characterizing meaning. The latter forms are accordingly assigned to descriptions.
The time of the text as a whole is due to the interaction of three temporal "axes": calendar time, displayed mainly by lexical units with the seme time and dates; event time, organized by the connection of all predicates of the text (primarily verb forms); perceptual time expressing the position of the narrator and the character (in this case, different lexical and grammatical means and time shifts are used).
Artistic and grammatical time are closely related, but they should not be equated. “Grammatical time and the time of a verbal work can differ significantly. Action time and author's and reader's time are created by a combination of many factors: among them, grammatical time is only partly...” 12 .
Artistic time is created by all elements of the text, while the means expressing temporal relations interact with the means expressing spatial relations. Let us confine ourselves to one example: for example, the change of constructions with motion predicates (left the city, entered the forest, arrived in the Lower Settlement, drove up to the river, etc.) in the story of A.P. Chekhov's "On the Cart", on the one hand, determines the temporal sequence of situations and forms the plot time of the text, on the other hand, reflects the movement of the character in space and participates in the creation of artistic space. To create an image of time in literary texts, spatial metaphors are regularly used.
The category of artistic time is historically changeable. In the history of culture, different temporal models replace each other.
The most ancient works are characterized by mythological time, a sign of which is the idea of ​​cyclic reincarnations, "world periods". Mythological time, according to K. Levi-Strauss, can be defined as the unity of such characteristics as reversibility-irreversibility, synchronicity-diachronism. The present and the future in mythological time act only as various temporal incarnations of the past, which is an invariant structure. The cyclical structure of mythological time turned out to be essential for the development of art in different eras. "The exceptionally powerful focus of mythological thinking on the establishment of homo- and isomorphisms, on the one hand, made it scientifically fruitful, and on the other hand, caused its periodic revival in various historical epochs" 13 . The idea of ​​time as a change of cycles, "eternal repetition", is present in a number of neo-mythological works of the 20th century. Thus, according to V.V. Ivanov, this concept is close to the image of time in the poetry of V. Khlebnikov, who “deeply felt the ways of science of his time” 14 .
In medieval culture, time was seen primarily as a reflection of eternity, while the concept of it was predominantly eschatological in nature: time begins with the act of creation and ends with the “second coming”. The main direction of time is the orientation towards the future - the coming exodus from time to eternity, while the very metrization of time changes and the role of the present increases significantly, the measurement of which is associated with the spiritual life of a person: “... for the present of past objects, we have memory or memories; for the present of real objects we have a glance, an outlook, a contemplation; for the present, future objects, we have aspiration, hope, hope, ”wrote Augustine. So, in ancient Russian literature, time, as D.S. Likhachev notes, is not as egocentric as in the literature of the New Age. It is characterized by isolation, one-pointedness, strict observance
a real sequence of events, a constant appeal to the eternal: "Medieval literature strives for the timeless, for overcoming time in depicting the highest manifestations of being - the God-established universe" 15 . The achievements of ancient Russian literature in recreating events "from the point of view of eternity" in a transformed form were used by writers of subsequent generations, in particular F.M. Dostoevsky, for whom "the temporal was ... a form of realization of the eternal" 16 . An example of this is the dialogue between Stavrogin and Kirillov in the novel "Demons":
- ... There are minutes, you get to minutes, and time suddenly stops and will be forever.
- Do you hope to reach such a moment?
-Yes.
This is hardly possible in our time, - Nikolai Vsevolodovich also responded without any irony, slowly and, as it were, thoughtfully. - In the Apocalypse, an angel swears that there will be no more time.
I know. This is very true there; clearly and precisely. When the whole person reaches happiness, then there will be no more time, because there is no need 17 .
Since the Renaissance, the evolutionary theory of time has been established in culture and science: spatial events become the basis for the movement of time. Time, therefore, is already understood as eternity, not opposed to time, but moving and being realized in every momentary situation. This is reflected in the literature of the New Age, which boldly violates the principle of the irreversibility of real time.
Finally, the 20th century is a period of particularly bold experimentation with artistic time. The ironic judgment of J.P. Sartre is indicative: “... most of the largest modern writers - Proust, Joyce ... Faulkner, Gide, W. Wulff - each in their own way tried to cripple time. Some of them deprived him of his past and future in order to reduce the moment from pure intuition ... Proust and Faulkner simply "decapitated" him, depriving him of the future, that is, the dimension of action and freedom.
Consideration of artistic time in its development shows that its evolution (reversibility - irreversibility - reversibility) is a progressive movement in which each higher level denies, removes its lower (preceding), contains its wealth and again removes itself in the next, third , steps.
The features of the modeling of artistic time are taken into account when determining the constitutive features of the genus, genre, and direction in literature. So, according to A.A. Potebnya, “lyrics are praesens”, “epos-perfectum” 18; the principle of recreating time can delimit genres: aphorisms and maxims, for example, are characterized by a real constant; reversible artistic time is inherent in memoirs, autobiographical works. The literary direction is also associated with a certain concept of the development of time and the principles of its transmission, while, for example, the measure of adequacy to real time is different. Thus, symbolism is characterized by the realization of the idea of ​​perpetual motion - becoming: the world develops according to the laws of the "triad" (the unity of the world spirit with the Soul of the world - the rejection of the Soul of the world from unity - the defeat of Chaos).
At the same time, the principles of mastering artistic time are individual, it is a feature of the artist's idiostyle (for example, artistic time in the novels of L.N. Tolstoy, for example, differs significantly from the model of time in the works of F.M. Dostoevsky).
Accounting for the features of the embodiment of time in a literary text, consideration of the concept of time in it and, more broadly, in the work of the writer is a necessary part of the analysis of the work; underestimation of this aspect, absolutization of one of the particular manifestations of artistic time, identification of its properties without taking into account both objective real time and subjective time can lead to erroneous interpretations of a literary text, make the analysis incomplete, schematic.
The analysis of artistic time includes the following main points: 1) determination of the features of artistic time in the work under consideration: one-dimensionality or multidimensionality; reversibility or irreversibility; linearity or violation of the time sequence; 2) selection in the temporal structure of the text of temporary plans (planes) presented in the work, and consideration of their interaction; 3) determining the ratio of the author's time (the narrator's time) and the subjective time of the characters; 4) identification of signals that highlight these forms of time; 5) consideration of the entire system of temporal indicators in the text, identification of not only their direct, but also figurative values; 6) determination of the ratio of time historical and everyday, biographical and historical; 7) establishing the connection between artistic time and space.
Text space, i.e. text elements have a certain spatial configuration. Hence the theoretical and practical possibility of spatial interpretation of tropes and figures, the structure of the narrative. So, Ts. Todorov notes: “The most systematic study of the spatial organization in fiction was carried out by Roman Yakobson. In his analyzes of poetry, he showed that all layers of the utterance ... form an established structure based on symmetries, growths, oppositions, parallelisms, etc., which together add up to a real spatial structure” 19 . A similar spatial structure also takes place in prose texts, see, for example, repetitions of various types and the system of oppositions in A.M. Remizov's novel "The Pond". Repetitions in it are elements of the spatial organization of chapters, parts and the text as a whole. So, in the chapter “One Hundred Mustaches - One Hundred Noses”, the phrase “The walls are white-white, they shine from the lamp, as if strewn with grated glass”, is repeated three times, and the leitmotif of the whole novel is the repetition of the sentence, “Stone frog (emphasis added by A.M. Remizov.) moved its ugly webbed paws”, which is usually included in a complex syntactic construction with varying lexical composition.
The study of the text as a specific spatial organization thus involves consideration of its volume, configuration, system of repetitions and oppositions, analysis of such topological properties of space, transformed in the text, as symmetry and coherence. It is also important to take into account the graphic form of the text (see, for example, palindromes, curly verses, the use of brackets, paragraphs, spaces, the special nature of the distribution of words in a verse, line, sentence), etc. “It is often indicated,” notes I. Klyukanov, “that poetic texts are printed differently than other texts. However, to a certain extent, all texts are printed differently than the rest: at the same time, the graphic appearance of the text “signals” about its genre affiliation, about its attachment to one or another type of speech activity and forces one to a certain way of perception ... So - “spatial architectonics” text acquires a kind of normative status. This norm can be violated by an unusual structural placement of graphic signs, which causes a stylistic effect ”20. In a narrow sense, space in relation to a literary text is the spatial organization of its events, inextricably linked with the temporal organization of the work and the system of spatial images of the text. According to Kestner, "space in this case functions in the text as an operative secondary illusion, that through which spatial properties are realized in temporal art." Thus, there is a difference between a broad and a narrow understanding of space. This is due to the distinction between the external point of view on the text as a certain spatial organization, which is perceived by the reader, and the internal point of view, which considers the spatial characteristics of the text itself as a relatively closed inner world that has self-sufficiency. These points of view do not exclude, but complement each other. When analyzing a literary text, it is important to take into account both of these aspects of space: the first is the “spatial architectonics” of the text, the second is the “artistic space”. In the future, the main object of consideration is precisely the artistic space of the work.
The writer reflects real spatio-temporal connections in the work he creates, building his own, perceptual, parallel to the real series, and creates a new - conceptual - space, which becomes a form of implementation of the author's idea. The artist, wrote MM Bakhtin, is characterized by "the ability to see time, to read time in the spatial whole of the world and ... to perceive the filling of space not as a motionless background ... but as a becoming whole, as an event" 21 .
Artistic space is one of the forms of aesthetic reality created by the author. This is the dialectical unity of contradictions: based on the objective connection of spatial characteristics (real or possible), it is subjective, it is infinite and at the same time finite.
In the text, being displayed, the general properties of real space are transformed and have a special character: length, continuity-discontinuity, three-dimensionality - and its particular properties: shape, location, distance, boundaries between different systems. In a particular work, one of the properties of space can come to the fore and be specially played up, see, for example, the geometrization of urban space in A. Bely's novel "Petersburg" and the use in it of images associated with the designation of discrete geometric objects (cube, square, parallelepiped , line, etc.): “There, the houses merged into cubes into a systematic, multi-storey row ... Inspiration took possession of the senator’s soul when the lacquered cube cut the Nevsky line: house numbering was visible there ...”
The spatial characteristics of the events recreated in the text are refracted through the prism of the perception of the author (narrator, character), see, for example: “... The feeling of the city never corresponded to the place where my life flowed in it. Spiritual pressure always threw him into the depths of the described perspective. There, puffing, the clouds trampled about, and, pushing aside their crowd, the smoke of innumerable stoves hung across the sky. There, in lines, as if along the embankments, the porches were dipped into the snow with collapsing houses ... ”(B. Pasternak. Safeguard letter).
In a literary text, the space of the narrator (narrator) and the space of characters are distinguished accordingly. Their interaction makes the artistic space of the entire work multidimensional, voluminous and devoid of homogeneity, while at the same time, the space of the narrator remains dominant in terms of creating the integrity of the text and its internal unity, the mobility of the point of view of which allows you to combine different angles of description and image. The means of expressing spatial relations in the text and indicating various spatial characteristics are linguistic means: syntactic constructions with the meaning of location, existential sentences, prepositional-case forms with local meaning, verbs of motion, verbs with the meaning of finding a feature in space, adverbs of place, toponyms, etc. , see, for example: “Crossing the Irtysh. The steamboat stopped the ferry... On the other side there is a steppe: yurts that look like kerosene tanks, a house, cattle... From that side the Kirghiz are coming...” (M. Prishvin); “A minute later they passed the sleepy desk, went out onto the deep, hub-deep sand, and silently sat down in a dusty cab. A gentle ascent uphill among rare crooked lanterns ... seemed endless ”(I.A. Bunin).
Reproduction (image) of space and an indication of it are included in the work as pieces of a mosaic. Associating, they form a general panorama of space, the image of which can develop into an image of space” 22 . The image of artistic space can be of a different nature, depending on what model of the world (time and space) the writer or poet has (whether space is understood, for example, “in a Newtonian way” or mythopoetically).
In the archaic model of the world, space is not opposed to time, time thickens and becomes a form of space, which is “drawn” into the movement of time. “Mythopoetic space is always filled and always material, besides space, there is also non-space, the embodiment of which is Chaos...” 23 . Mythopoetic ideas about space, which are so essential for writers, have been embodied in a number of mythologemes, which are consistently used in literature in a number of stable images. This is, first of all, the image of a path (road), which can involve movement both horizontally and vertically (see folklore works) and is characterized by the selection of a number of equally significant spatial points, topographic objects - a threshold, a door, a staircase, a bridge, etc. These images, associated with the division of both time and space, metaphorically represent a person's life, its certain moments of crisis, his search on the verge of "one's own" and "alien" worlds, embody movement, point to its limit and symbolize the possibility of choice; they are widely used in poetry and prose, see for example : “Not joy-The news is knocking on the coffin ... / Oh! Wait to cross this prag. / While you are here - nothing has died, / Step over - and the sweet is gone.(V.A. Zhukovsky); "I pretended to be dead in winter / And forever closed the doors, / But still they recognize my voice, / And still believe him again"(A. Akhmatova).
The space modeled in the text can be open and closed (closed), see, for example, the opposition of these two types of space in "Notes from the House of the Dead" by F.M. Dostoevsky: “Ostrog stood on the edge of the fortress, at the very ramparts. It happened that you looked through the cracks of the fence at the light of day: would you see at least something? -and only you will see that the edge of the sky and a high earthen rampart, overgrown with weeds, and back and forth along the rampart, day and night, sentries are walking ... Strong gates are built into one of the sides of the fence, always locked, always guarded day and night sentries; they were unlocked on demand, for release to work. Behind these gates was a bright, free world ... "
In a stable way, associated with a closed, limited space, the image of a wall serves in prose and poetry; ”, opposed to the reversible in the text and multidimensional image of a bird as a symbol of will.
Space can be represented in text as expanding or contracting in relation to a character or a specific object being described. So, in F.M. Dostoevsky’s story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”, the transition from reality to the hero’s dream, and then back to reality, is based on the method of changing spatial characteristics: the closed space of the hero’s “small room” is replaced by an even narrower space of the grave, and then the narrator turns out to be in a different, ever-expanding space, but at the end of the story, the space narrows again, cf .: We raced through darkness and unknown spaces. I have long ceased to see constellations familiar to the eye. It was already morning ... I woke up in the same armchairs, my candle was all burned out, they were sleeping by the chestnut tree, and there was silence around us, rare in our apartment.
The expansion of space can be motivated by the gradual expansion of the hero’s experience, his knowledge of the outside world, see, for example, the novel by I.A. Bunin “The Life of Arseniev”: “A then ... we recognized the barnyard, the stable, the carriage house, the threshing floor, Proval, Vyselki. The world was expanding before us ... The garden is cheerful, green, but already known to us ... And now the barnyard, the stable, the carriage house, the barn on the threshing floor, the Failure ... "
According to the degree of generalization of spatial characteristics, a specific space and an abstract space (not associated with specific local indicators) are distinguished, cf.: “ It smelled of coal, burnt oil, and that smell of disturbing and mysterious space, what always happens at the stations(A. Platonov) - Despite the endless space, the world was comfortable in this early hour"(A. Platonov).
The space actually seen by the character or the narrator is supplemented by an imaginary space. The space given in the character's perception can be characterized by a deformation associated with the reversibility of its elements and a special point of view on it: “Shadows from trees and bushes, like comets, fell with sharp clicks on a sloping plain ... He lowered his head down and saw that the grass ... seemed to grow deep and far and that above it was water transparent like a mountain spring, and the grass seemed to be the bottom of some kind of light, transparent to the very depths of the sea ... "(N.V. Gogol. Viy).
Significant for the figurative system of the work and the degree of space filling. So, in the story of A.M. Gorky “Childhood”, with the help of repetitive lexical means (primarily the word “cramped” and derivatives from it), the “crowding” of the space surrounding the hero is emphasized. The sign of tightness extends both to the external world and to the inner world of the character and interacts with the through repetition of the text - the repetition of the words "longing", "boredom": " Boring, somehow especially boring, almost unbearable; the chest is filled with liquid, warm lead, it presses from the inside, bursting the chest, ribs; it seems to me that I swell up like a bubble, and I feel cramped in a small room, under a coffin-like ceiling. The image of the tightness of space correlates in the story with the through image of "a close, stuffy circle of terrible impressions in which a simple Russian person lived, and still lives to this day."
Elements of the transformed artistic space can be associated in the work with the theme of historical memory, thus historical time interacts with certain spatial images, which are usually intertextual in nature, see, for example, the novel by I.A. Bunin "The Life of Arseniev": “And soon I again set off on wanderings. I was on those very banks of the Donets, where the prince once rushed from captivity “like an ermine into a reed, a white gogol into the water” ... And from Kyiv I went to Kursk, to Putivl. “Saddle, brother, your greyhounds, and my tees are ready, saddled in front of Kursk ...”.
Artistic space is inextricably linked with artistic time. Their relationship in an artistic text is expressed in the following main aspects:
1) two simultaneous situations are depicted in the work as spaced apart, juxtaposed (see, for example, "Hadji Murad" by L.N. Tolstoy, "The White Guard" by M. Bulgakov);
2) the spatial point of view of the observer (character or narrator) is simultaneously his temporal point of view, while the optical point of view can be both static and mobile (dynamic): “... So they completely got out, crossed the bridge, went up to the barrier - and a stone, deserted road looked into my eyes, vaguely whitening and running away into the endless distance ...”(I.A. Bunin. Sukhodol);
3) temporal displacement usually corresponds to a spatial displacement (for example, the transition to the present narrator in I.A. Bunin’s Life of Arseniev is accompanied by a sharp displacement of the spatial position: “A whole life has passed since then. Russia, Eagle, spring ... And now, France, the South, Mediterranean winter days. We ... have been in a foreign country for a long time”;
4) the acceleration of time is accompanied by the compression of space (see, for example, the novels of F.M. Dostoevsky);
5) on the contrary, time dilation can be accompanied by an expansion of space, hence, for example, detailed descriptions of spatial coordinates, scenes, interiors, etc.;
6) the passage of time is transmitted through a change in spatial characteristics: "The signs of time are revealed in space, and space is comprehended and measured by time" 24 . So, in the story of A.M. Gorky "Childhood", in the text of which there are almost no specific temporal indicators (dates, accurate counting of time, signs of historical time), the movement of time is reflected in the spatial movement of the hero, his milestones are the move from Astrakhan to Nizhny, and then moving from one house to another, cf.: “By the spring, the uncles split up ... and the grandfather bought himself a large, interesting house on Polevaya; Grandfather unexpectedly sold the house to a tavern keeper, buying another one, along Kanatnaya Street”;
7) the same speech means can express both temporal and spatial characteristics, see, for example: “... they promised to write, they never wrote, everything was cut off forever, Russia began, exiles, water froze in the morning in a bucket, children grew healthy, the steamer ran along the Yenisei on a bright June day, and then there was St. , theaters, work in a book expedition ... ”(Yu. Trifonov. It was a summer afternoon).
To embody the motif of the movement of time, metaphors and comparisons containing spatial images are regularly used, see, for example: Lived." They passed close, slightly touching the shoulders, and at night ... it was clearly visible: all the same, flat steps were zigzag ”(S.N. Sergeev-Tsensky. Babaev).
Awareness of the relationship of space-time made it possible to single out the category of the chronotope, reflecting their unity. “The essential interconnection of temporal and spatial relations, artistically assimilated in literature,” wrote M. M. Bakhtin, “we will call the chronotope (which literally means “time-space”) 25 . From the point of view of M. M. Bakhtin, the chronotope is a formally meaningful category that has “an essential genre significance... The chronotope, as a formally meaningful category, determines (to a large extent) the image of a person in literature 26 . The chronotope has a certain structure: plot-forming motifs are singled out on its basis - meeting, separation, etc. Appeal to the category of chronotope allows us to build a certain typology of spatio-temporal characteristics inherent in thematic genres: for example, the idyllic chronotope is distinguished, which is characterized by the unity of place, the rhythmic cyclicity of time, attachment of life to a place - home, etc., and adventurous chronotope, which is characterized by a wide spatial background and the time of the "case". On the basis of the chronotope, "localities" (in the terminology of M.M. Bakhtin) are also distinguished - stable images based on the intersection of time and space "series" ( castle, living room, salon, provincial town etc.).
Artistic space, like artistic time, is historically changeable, which is reflected in the change of chronotopes and is associated with a change in the concept of space-time. As an example, let us dwell on the features of the artistic space in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and in the New Age.
“The space of the medieval world is a closed system with sacred centers and secular periphery. The cosmos of Neoplatonic Christianity is graduated and hierarchized. The experience of space is colored with religious and moral tones” 27 . The perception of space in the Middle Ages usually does not imply an individual point of view on an object or a series of objects. As D.S. Likhachev notes, “events in the annals, in the lives of saints, in historical stories are mainly movements in space: campaigns and crossings, covering vast geographical spaces ... Life is a manifestation of oneself in space. This is a journey on a ship in the midst of the sea of ​​life” 28 . Spatial characteristics are consistently symbolic (up-down, west-east, circle, etc.). “The symbolic approach provides that ecstasy of thought, that pre-rationalist vagueness of the boundaries of identification, that content of rational thinking, which elevate the understanding of life to its highest level” 29 . At the same time, medieval man still recognizes himself in many respects as an organic part of nature, so a view of nature from the outside is alien to him. A characteristic feature of medieval folk culture is the awareness of the inextricable connection with nature, the absence of rigid boundaries between the body and the world.
In the Renaissance, the concept of perspective (“viewing”, as defined by A. Dürer) was established. The Renaissance managed to completely rationalize the space. It was during this period that the concept of a closed cosmos was replaced by the concept of infinity, which exists not only as a divine prototype, but also empirically as a natural reality. The image of the Universe is deteologized. The theocentric time of medieval culture is replaced by a three-dimensional space with a fourth dimension - time. This is connected, on the one hand, with the development of an objectifying attitude towards reality in the personality; on the other hand, with the expansion of the sphere of "I" and the subjective principle in art. In works of literature, spatial characteristics are consistently associated with the point of view of the narrator or character (compare with direct perspective in painting), and the significance of the position of the latter gradually increases in literature. A certain system of speech means is being formed, reflecting both the static and dynamic point of view of the character.
In the XX century. a relatively stable object-spatial concept is replaced by an unstable one (see, for example, the impressionistic fluidity of space in time). Bold experimentation with time is complemented by equally bold experimentation with space. Thus, "one day" novels often correspond to "enclosed space" novels. The text can simultaneously combine a spatial point of view "from a bird's eye view" and an image of a locus from a specific position. The interaction of time plans is combined with deliberate spatial uncertainty. Writers often turn to the deformation of space, which is reflected in the special nature of speech means. So, for example, in the novel by K. Simon "Roads of Flanders" the elimination of precise temporal and spatial characteristics is associated with the rejection of personal forms of the verb and replacing them with forms of present participles. The complication of the narrative structure causes the multiplicity of spatial points of view in one work and their interaction (see, for example, the works of M. Bulgakov, Yu. Dombrovsky and others).
At the same time in the literature of the XX century. there is growing interest in mythopoetic images and the mythopoetic model of space-time 30 (see, for example, the poetry of A. Blok, the poetry and prose of A. Bely, and the works of V. Khlebnikov). Thus, changes in the concept of time-space in science and in the worldview of a person are inextricably linked with the nature of the space-time continuum in works of literature and the types of images that embody time and space. The reproduction of space in the text is also determined by the literary direction to which the author belongs: naturalism, for example, seeking to create the impression of genuine activity, is characterized by detailed descriptions of various localities: streets, squares, houses, etc.
Let us now dwell on the method of describing spatial relations in a literary text.
The analysis of spatial relations in a work of art involves:
1) determining the spatial position of the author (narrator) and those characters whose point of view is presented in the text;
2) revealing the nature of these positions (dynamic - static; top - bottom, bird's eye view, etc.) in their connection with a temporal point of view;
3) determination of the main spatial characteristics of the work (the scene and its change, the movement of the character, the type of space, etc.);
4) consideration of the main spatial images of the work; 5) characteristics of speech means expressing spatial relationships. The latter, of course, corresponds to all the possible stages of analysis noted above and forms their basis.
SPATIAL-TIME ORGANIZATIONSTORIES by I.A. Bunin "Epitaph", "NEW ROAD", « gentleman from San Francisco
A work of art is a system in which, as in any other system, all elements are interconnected, interdependent, functional and form integrity, unity.
Every system is hierarchical and multi-level. Separate levels of the system determine certain aspects of its behavior, and integral functioning is the result of the interaction of its sides, levels, hierarchies. Therefore, one or another level of the system can be singled out only conditionally and with the aim of establishing its internal connections with the whole, more in-depth cognition of this whole.
In a literary work, we distinguish three levels: ideological-thematic, plot-compositional and verbal-rhythmic.
To comprehend the artistic whole of the stories of I.A. Bunin
"Epitaph" and "New Road" we choose to analyze the plot and composition, in particular the spatio-temporal organization of works. It should be noted that we refer plot and composition to the generic concept of structure, which we will write as the organization of all components of a work into a system, the establishment of relationships between them. We share the point of view of V.V. Kozhinov on the plot outlined in the academic theory of literature. The definition of composition by V.V. Kozhinov as the interaction of forms of constructing a work, the interconnection of only such components as narration, development, dialogue, monologue. We, like V.V. Kozhinov, follow A. Tolstoy in the definition of composition: "Composition is, first of all, establishing the artist's center of vision." "Composition is the next step after the plot of concretization of the whole. It connects the action with the characters, from which the characters grow, the bearers of the point of view on the depicted action, and correlates the point of view of the characters with the author - the bearer of the concept of the whole. The internal organization of the work in accordance with this concept and is the establishment of the artist's center of vision. "The establishment of the center," thus, we understand more than the establishment of a certain angle. And the composition, from our point of view, establishes the connection not only of descriptions, narration, dialogue and monologue, but of all elements and levels of the work. Composition is “composing, connecting, arranging, building elements of the same type and different types among themselves and their relationship with the whole, not only the external arrangement of the work”, but also “the finest correlation and coordination of deep direct and feedback connections”, a law, a way of connecting textual parts (parallel, philosophical correlation, repetition, contrast, nuanced differences, etc. (a means of expressing the connection between the elements of the work (the ratio of voices, the system of images, the combination of several storylines, the spatio-temporal organization of the work, etc.).
The peculiarity of the plot-compositional organization of Bunin's stories at the turn of the century is the weakening of the plot. In the center of Bunin's lyrical stories are the feelings and thoughts of the narrator. They become the driving force of the plot-compositional construction of the work. The self-moving logic of objective reality is supplanted by the logic of the movement of feelings and thoughts. The logic of thought, the contemplation of the world by the narrator, memories that arose by association, landscape paintings and details, and not events, determine their plot.
The integrity of a literary work, like any integrity, is like an ordered dynamic system. Its structure is also distinguished by its internal orderliness. "Art compensates for the weakening of structural bonds on some levels by their more rigid organization on others." The weakening of the plot in Bunin's prose enhances the significance of the associative links of the elements of the work, one of the forms of which are spatio-temporal relations.
The temporal and spatial relationships of the components as a whole fix the space-time movement of figurative thought in the work and are plot-forming means. Space and time are also types of functional interconnections between different levels of a work, i.e. means of the whole compositional organization of the work.
An important plot-compositional function is performed by time and space in the works we have chosen for analysis.
These works of Bunin express the attitude of the writer to the onset of the new in the life of Russia. The novelty in the stories is evaluated in terms of the value of Russia's past, which is dear to Bunin by the connection between man and nature.
The correlation of the present with the past is the main form of constructing the story "Epitaph".
In the center of the lyrical story "Epitaph" is the consciousness of the hero-narrator, who is extremely close to the author, there are no other subjects of speech in the story, therefore the subjective time of the story is one. However, the artistic time in "Epitaph" is multifaceted. The initial temporal position of the story "Epitaph" is the present. Observation of the present gives rise to remembrance of the past and thoughts of the future. The present fits into the general flow of time. By thinking about the future, a perspective is given to the flow of time, a chronic openness arises.
The hero does not withdraw into himself, he strives to realize the movement of time.
The course of history is restored by the thought and memories of the hero. Retrospection acts as a necessary link in the movement of the plot. In a few minutes of reflection, memories, a detailed picture of the change of seasons, the life of the village in these periods of time and for decades is restored.
Remembrance is the overcoming of momentary time, falling out of non-stop time, it “stretches” the real momentary time in the work, but restores movement in the past. And concrete pictures and images illustrate this movement of time, this time span. The montage of pictures of a steppe village at different times shows the change in the life of the steppe.
When remembering, childhood impressions and the point of view of an already adult hero-narrator are combined, therefore an assessment of the past appears, the past becomes aesthetically significant, it seems to be happiness. The beauty of the life of the steppe and the village in the past is emphasized by images of a white-trunked birch, golden bread, a multi-colored palette of the steppe, and details from the festive and labor life of a peasant.
Such an assessment of the past structurally results in the fact that the description of the past makes up the bulk of the story, the ancient steppe and the village are presented in all seasons.
It turns out that cyclic time (time of the year, stages, months and days within the same season; change of day and night) is also important for emphasizing the moving historical process. The dynamic, sharply tempo character of the seasons serves the same purpose. The significance of semantic changes, temporal transitions is also emphasized by the grammatical forms of the verb. In the fourth part, if the story is conditionally divided into four parts, - thinking about the future - verbs of the future tense; in the third part - a story about the present - verbs of the present tense; in the first and second parts of the story, memories of the time of the well-being of the steppe and its change in subsequent years are verbs of the past tense, as well as the present, since memories reproduce the life of the past so vividly, as if everything is happening in the present, and because maxims are included in the memories about something common to all eras, such as: “Life does not stand still, the old goes away,” etc.
To emphasize not only natural prosperity in the past, but also general well-being, cyclical time combines with the time of everyday life.
Cyclic time demonstrates the relentless movement of time, not only change, but also the renewal of life. And the hero recognizes the regularity of the emergence of the new. (The need for a new one is also motivated by the fact that nature has become impoverished, the peasants are begging and forced to leave their native places in search of happiness).
In "Epitaph", in addition to cyclical and autobiographical time, past, present and future, there are several time layers of past time; historical time after the abolition of serfdom, (at the same time the time of the hero’s childhood), the time preceding this era, when someone “first came to this place, put a cross with a roof on his tithe, called the priest and consecrated the “Protection of the Most Holy Theotokos”, time life in the village and the years following the hero's childhood up to the present time All these time layers are combined.
Although the real course of thought, as noted above, was from the present to the past and the future, the principle of temporal succession is maintained in the construction of the story; first the past is described, then the present, and finally thoughts about the future. Such a construction also emphasizes the course of historical development, the prospect of movement. The story is an epitaph to the past, but not to life. However, if real time flows continuously, in the artistic time of the story between the first and second picture of the past, also between the past and the present, there are time gaps. This feature of the artistic time of the "Epitaph" was already determined by the genre of the work itself.
The artistic space of the story also serves as an embodiment of the author's idea. In the first part of the story, the connection of the village with the city, with the world is cut off ("The path to the city is overgrown"). The circle of observations is closed by the space of the child's acquaintance with the steppe, the village and its environs. In the second part, the space opens up. "Childhood has passed. We were drawn to look beyond what we saw beyond the outskirts of the village." Then the space expands even more: with the impoverishment of the steppe, people began to leave along the road to the city, to distant Siberia. The path to the city was trodden again, inside the village the paths were overgrown. In the third part of the Epitaph, people come from the city to the village to build a new life here, i.e. the ties of the steppe with the world are growing stronger, the paths are trodden in the opposite direction, from the city to the village, to the earth-bearer of wealth, the progenitor of life. The end of the story doesn't sound hopeless. Still, the progressiveness of the new for Bunin is doubtful. New people are trampling the steppe, looking for happiness in its bowels. How will they consecrate the steppe in the future?
An even more decisive offensive of the new is narrated in the story "The New Road".
The symbol of the onset of a new industrial order, both concrete and historical and future, new in general historical terms, here is a train moving deep into the vast forest region.
The story is divided into three parts. Each part describes the hero's observations of the world around her from the window, the interior of the car and the platform. And through the increasingly rarefied enclosed spaces (cars and platforms) and the ever greater density and vastness of the landscape, an idea is given of the further advance of the train into the wilderness of the country.
Nature resists the advancement of the train, for the new, according to Bunin, brings the death of beauty, the rejection of man from it. "These birches and pines are becoming more unfriendly, they are frowning, gathering in crowds denser and denser ...". The future and nature are in conflict.
The story also contrasts beggars, but beautiful in their purity, pristineness, kinship with their native land, men and people who come to the wilderness of forests with railways: a dandy telegraph operator, lackey, young ladies, a young lottery thief, a merchant. The latter are outlined with the author's obvious antipathy.
The peasants, like the forests, reluctantly retreat before the new way of life. The new is fighting, advancing like a conqueror, "like a gigantic dragon." The train confidently rushes forward, "threateningly warning someone with a trembling roar." The story ends with a statement of this evil onset of the new. The coloring of the picture is ominous: "... but the train stubbornly moves forward. And the smoke, like the tail of a comet, floats above it in a long whitish ridge, full of fiery sparks and painted from below with a bloody reflection of the flame." The emotional coloring of the words shows the author's attitude to the advent of a new, capitalist way of life.
The hero, sympathizing with the poor and tortured people and doomed to
destruction to the "beautiful", "virginally rich" land, realizing
that the beauty of the past is being destroyed, thinking about what is common
he had left with "this backwoods" and its people how to help them.
And doubts whether he can "understand their sorrows, help
them, he, apparently, not so much from the recognition of his impotence and not from
"confusion before the process of real life" and fear
in front of her, as critics of the beginning of the century and individual modern literary critics believed, how much from a clear consciousness of the irreversibility of time, the impossibility of returning the past, the inexorability of the onset of the new.
The impression of the decisive offensive of the new is enhanced in the story by the way the speed of the train is depicted. The minutes of the train's departure from St. Petersburg are filled with detailed descriptions. The time of the image here is almost equal to the time of the image. An illusion is created that the departure of the train is really delayed. The slow movement of a moving train is recreated through detailed observation of people and objects moving along the platform. The lasting time is also emphasized by adverbs indicating the duration of the movement of objects, the sequence of actions. For example: “Then the head of the station quickly leaves the office. He had just been having an unpleasant argument with someone, and therefore, sharply commanding: "Third", he throws the cigarette so far that it jumps along the platform for a long time, scattering red sparks in the wind. "Further, on the contrary, the speed of the train is emphasized. The movement of the train , the non-stop movement of time is recreated by the change of time of the day, "running" objects, the expansion and rapid change of space. Artistic time no longer creates the illusion of real time. It is reduced due to only fragmentary pictures of observations, the acceleration of the change of day and night, etc.
The very description of the traveler's point of view becomes a sign of the temporal flow, of continuous movement from the past to the new.
It should be said about one more originality of the spatial composition of this story; the plot space, in connection with the advancement of the train, is linearly directed. As in other works of the turn of the century, associated with the promotion of the subject of the narrative ("Silence", "In August", "Holy Mountains", "Autumn", "Pines"), it consistently changes; one panorama is replaced by another, thus developing the artistic idea of ​​the work. The artistic whole of the stories "Epitaph" and "New Road", revealed through the analysis of the spatio-temporal organization of the works, expresses the writer's attitude to the historical process. Bunin recognized the historical process, the invincibility of the development of life in general and historical life in particular, felt its temporal orientation. But he did not understand the progressive significance of this. I didn’t think that this development would lead to the better, because I poetized the past as a time of man’s fusion with nature, its wisdom and beauty, I saw that the capitalist way of life is tearing a person away from nature, I saw the ruin of noble nests and peasant households and did not accept this new way of life, although he declared his victory. This is the originality of Bunin's historicism.
The story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" occupies a special place in Bunin's work. It is no coincidence that he was and is included in the school curriculum, he is usually singled out by researchers of Bunin's work. And, perhaps, partly due to these circumstances, he was unlucky in his literary interpretation. For ideological and sociological criticism, it was preferable to explain the story based on its surface figurative plan: the ironic coverage of the hero, a wealthy American, was interpreted as an exposure of the bourgeois order of life, with its wealth and poverty, social inequality, the psychology of complacency, etc. But such an understanding of the story narrows and impoverishes its artistic meaning.
"The Gentleman from San Francisco" is not like Bunin's previous stories in tone (there is no lyricism in it), in material and subject matter - this is a story no longer about the Russian village, a peasant and a gentleman, not about love and nature. The World War (the story was written in 1915) distracted the writer from his usual themes and predilections (as in the story "Brothers"). The writer goes beyond the Russian framework, addresses the person peace, of the New World, finding in it "the pride of the New Man with an old heart.
This "old heart", that is, about a person in his deepest essence, about the general foundations of human existence, the foundations of civilization, is discussed in "The Gentleman from San Francisco".
In the story "The Gentleman from San Francisco", which differs from other works by Bunin in the 1910s, nevertheless, the situation that tests the hero is common to many of them - death and attitude towards it. In this case, a completely ordinary case is taken - the death of an old man, albeit unexpected, instantaneous, overtaking a gentleman from San Francisco during his trip to Europe.
Death in this story is not actually a test of the character of the hero, a test of his readiness or confusion in the face of the inevitable, fear or fearlessness, strength or impotence, but a certain nudity creatures of the hero, after the fact throwing its pitiless light on his previous way of life. The "strangeness" of such a death is that it did not enter the consciousness of the gentleman from San Francisco at all. He lives and acts in the same way as most people, by the way, Bunin emphasizes, as if death does not exist at all in the world: "... people still marvel even more than anything and for no reason don't want to believe in death. With all the details, the hero's plan is painted with taste - a fascinating travel route, designed for two years: “The route was developed by a gentleman from San Francisco and extensive. In December and January, he hoped to enjoy the sun of southern Italy, the monuments of antiquity, the tarantella, the serenades of wandering singers, and what people at his age feel especially thinly - the love of young Neapolitans, even if not entirely disinterested; he thought of holding a carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where the most selective society flocks at this time ... ”(I.A. Bunin“ Gentleman from San Francisco ”p. 36). However, all these magnificent plans were not destined come true.
The writer reflects on the phenomenon of an irreparable, it seems even fatal, discrepancy between human plans and their implementation, conceived and actually developed - the motive of almost all of Bunin's work, starting from early stories such as "Kastryuk" ("An, it turned out not according to guessed..." ) or "On the Farm" to the novel "The Life of Arseniev" and "Dark Alleys".
Another strange thing about the death of a gentleman from San Francisco, a "terrible incident" on the ship "Atlantis", lies in the fact that this death is devoid of tragedy, not even any faint shadow of it. It is no coincidence that the author gives a description of this "incident" from the outside, through the eyes of strangers to the hero and completely indifferent people (the reaction of his wife and daughter is outlined in the most general way).
The anti-tragedy and insignificance of the death of the hero are revealed by Bunin in an emphatic, contrasting way, with a very high degree of sharpness for him. The main event of the story, the death of the hero, is referred not to the final, but to its middle, to the center, and this determines the two-part composition of the story. It is important for the author to show the assessment of the hero by others both before and after his death. And these assessments are fundamentally different from each other. The climax (the death of the hero) divides the story into two halves, separating the sparkling background of the hero's life in the first part from the dark and ugly shadows of the second.
In fact, the gentleman from San Francisco appears to us at the beginning in the role significant person both in his own mind and in the perception of others, although expressed by the author with a slight ironic tinge. We read: “He was quite generous on the way and therefore fully believed in the care of all those who fed and watered him, served him from morning to evening, preventing his slightest desire, guarded his cleanliness and peace, dragged his things, called for him porters, delivered his chests to the hotels. So it was everywhere, so it was in navigation, so it should have been in Naples. Or here is a picture of the hero's meeting in Capri: “The island of Capri was damp and dark tonight. But then he came to life for a moment, lit up in some places. On the top of the mountain, on the platform of the funicular, there was again a crowd of those whose duty it was to worthily receive the gentleman from San Francisco.
There were other visitors, but not worthy of attention<...>
The gentleman from San Francisco... was immediately noticed. He and his ladies were hurriedly helped out, they ran ahead of him, showing the way, he was again surrounded by boys and those hefty Capri women who carry suitcases and chests of respectable tourists on their heads. In all this, of course, the magic of wealth is manifested, which everywhere accompanies the gentleman from San Francisco.
However, in the second part of the story, all this seems to crumble into dust, falls to the level of some kind of nightmarish, insulting humiliation. The author of the story draws a series of expressive details and episodes that reveal the instantaneous fall of any significance and value of the hero in the eyes of others (an episode with the mimicking of the manners of the master by the servant Luigi, so servile "to the point of idiocy", the changed tone of the conversation between the owner of the hotel and the wife of the gentleman from San Francisco - "already without any courtesy and no longer in English"). If previously the gentleman from San Francisco had occupied the best room in the hotel, now he was given "the smallest, worst, dampest and coldest room", where he "lyed on a cheap iron bed, under coarse woolen blankets." Bunin then resorts to almost grotesque images (that is, images with a share of fantastic exaggeration), which are usually not characteristic of him. For the gentleman, there is not even a coffin from San Francisco (a detail, however, motivated by the specifics of the conditions: it is difficult to get it on a small island), and his body is placed in ... a box - "a long box of soda water." Then the author, still slowly, with many details, but already humiliating for the hero, describes How now the hero travels, or rather, his remains. At first - on a funny strong horse, inappropriately "in Sicilian discharge", rumbling "all sorts of bells", with a drunk cab driver, who is consoled by "unexpected earnings", "which gave him some gentleman from San Francisco shaking his dead head in a box behind his back...", and then - on the same careless "Atlantis", but already "at the bottom of the dark hold". , like a "monster", a shaft that rotates "with overwhelming the human soul rigor"
The artistic meaning of such paintings, with a change in the attitude of those around them to the hero, lies not only in social terms - in debunking the evil of wealth with its consequences: the inequality of people (upper decks and hold), their alienation from each other and insincerity, the imaginary respect for man and memory of him. Bunin's idea in this case is deeper, philosophical, that is, associated with an attempt to discern the source of the "irregularity" of life in the very nature of man, in the vice of his "heart", that is, in the rooted ideas of mankind about the values ​​of life.
How does the writer manage to fit such a global artistic problem into the narrow framework of the story, that is small genre, limited, as a rule, to a single moment, an episode from the hero's life?
This is achieved by extremely laconic artistic means, the concentration of details, the "condensation" of their figurative meaning, saturated with associations and symbolic ambiguity, with their apparent "simplicity" and unpretentiousness. We have a description life Atlantis, full of outward brilliance, luxury and comfort, a description of the hero's journey, conceived with the intention of seeing the world and "enjoying" life, with a gradual, mostly indirect, lateral illumination of what this enjoyment results in.
The figure of the gentleman from San Francisco is outlined to the extreme externally, without psychologism, without detailed characteristics of the hero's inner life. We see how he, getting ready for dinner, gets dressed, we learn many details of his costume, we observe the process of dressing: “Having shaved, washed himself, put in a few teeth, he, standing in front of a mirror, moistened and cleaned with brushes in a silver frame the remains of pearl hair around of a swarthy-yellow skull, pulled on a strong senile body with a waist plump from increased nutrition, a cream silk tights, and on dry legs with flat feet - black silk socks and ball shoes, squatting, put in order black trousers highly pulled up with silk straps and snow-white, with bulging chest shirt ... "
In such descriptions, something exaggerated, slightly ironic, coming from the author's view of the hero comes through: “And then he again became right to the crown get ready: lit electricity everywhere, filled all the mirrors with the reflection of light and brilliance, furniture and open chests, began to shave, wash and call every minute ... "
We note in passing that in both examples the detail with "mirrors" is accentuated, enhancing the effect of the play of reflections, light and shine around the hero. By the way, the technique of introducing a mirror as a “reflection of reflections” to create the impression of a certain ghostly character was especially widely used by Symbolist poets in Russian literature of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (in the stories of F. Sologub, V. Bryusov, Z. Gippius, the latter belongs to the collection short stories called "Mirrors", 1898).
The description of the character's appearance is not psychological. Even the portrait of the hero is devoid of personality traits, any uniqueness of his personality. In the image of the hero's face, in fact, no face as something special in a person. Only "something Mongolian" is singled out in it: "There was something Mongolian in his yellowish face with trimmed silver mustaches, his large teeth shone with gold fillings, his strong bald head was old ivory."
Bunin's intentional rejection of psychologism in the story is emphasized and motivated: “What did the gentleman from San Francisco feel, what did he think on this so significant evening for him? He, like anyone who has experienced pitching, only really wanted to eat, dreamed with pleasure of the first spoonful of soup, the first sip of wine, and performed the usual business of the toilet even in some excitement, leaving no time for feelings and reflections.
As we see, there is no place for inner life, the life of the soul and mind, there is no time left for it, and it is replaced by something - most likely by the habit of "work". Now this is an ironically filed "toilet business", but earlier, all my life, apparently, work (work, of course, to enrich). "He worked tirelessly ..." - this remark is essential for understanding the fate of the hero.
However, the internal, psychological states of the hero still find their expression in the story, however, indirectly, in the form of a narration from the author, where at some moments the voice of the character is heard, his point of view on what is happening is guessed. Here, for example, dreaming about his journey, he thinks about people: "... he thought of holding a carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where the most Choice Society". Or about visiting San Marino, "where a lot of first class people and where one day the daughter of a gentleman from San Francisco almost became ill: it seemed to her that there was sitting in the hall prince". Words from the hero's vocabulary are deliberately introduced into the author's speech here - "selective society", "people of the very first grade", which betray in him vanity, complacency, "pride" of a man of the New World and disdain for people. Let us also recall his arrival in Capri: “There were other visitors, but not noteworthy- a few Russians who settled in Capri, slovenly and absent-minded, with glasses, beards, with turned up collars of old coats, and a company of long-legged, round-headed German youths ... "
We distinguish the same voice of the hero in the narrative, which is neutral in form, from the third person, when it comes to the impressions of the gentleman from San Francisco about the Italians: “And the gentleman from San Francisco, feeling as he , - already with anguish and anger thought about all these greedy, garlic-stinking little people called Italians ... "
Particularly indicative are those episodes where the hero's perception of ancient monuments, museums of that country, the beauty of which he dreamed of enjoying, is outlined. His tourist day included "inspection deadly clean, and smooth, nice, but boring, snow-lit museums or cold, wax-smelling churches in which everywhere the same...". As you can see, everything in the eyes of the hero is painted with a veil of senile boredom, monotony and even deathlessness and does not at all look like the expected joy and enjoyment of life.
Such sentiments of the Lord are intensified. And it seems that deceives everything is here, even nature: “The morning sun every day deceived: from noon it was invariably gray and it began to rain, but it was getting thicker and colder, then the palm trees at the hotel entrance shone with tin, the city seemed especially dirty and cramped, museums too monotonous, cigar butts of fat cabbies in rubber capes fluttering in the wind are unbearably smelly, the energetic slapping of their whips over thin-necked nags is obviously fake, the shoes of the seniors who sweep the tram rails are terrible, and the women spanking on mud, in the rain with black open heads - ugly short-legged, about the dampness and the stench of rotten fish from the sea foaming near the embankment and there is nothing to say. Coming into contact with the nature of Italy, the hero does not seem to notice her, does not feel her charms and is not able to do this, as the author makes us understand. The writer in the first part where the narration is colored bleaching perception of the hero, deliberately excludes the image of a beautiful country, its nature from its own, author's point of view. This image appears after the death of the hero, in the second part of the story. And then there are pictures full of the sun, bright, joyful colors and enchanting beauty. For example, where the city market is described, a handsome boatman, and then two Abruzzo mountaineers: “They walked - and the whole country, joyful, beautiful, sunny, stretched under them: and the stony humps of the island, which lay almost entirely at their feet, and that fabulous the blue in which he swam, and shining morning vapors over the sea to the east, under the dazzling sun, which was already warming hot, rising higher and higher, and foggy - azure, still not in the morning unsteady massifs of Italy, its near and distant mountains, the beauty of which human words are powerless to express».
This contrast of the author's perception, filled with lyricism, a sense of admiration for the fabulous beauty of Italy, and the joyless, bloodless picture of it, given through the eyes of the hero, sets off all the inner dryness of the gentleman from San Francisco. We note, moreover, that during the voyage on the "Atlantis" across the ocean, there are no internal contacts of the hero with the world of nature, so majestic and grandiose at these moments that the author constantly makes us feel. We never see a hero admiring the beauty, grandeur of the ocean or frightened by its squalls, showing any of his reactions to the surrounding natural elements, however, like all other passengers. "The ocean that went beyond the walls was terrible, but they did not think about it ...". Or else: "The ocean with a rumble went behind the wall like black mountains, a blizzard whistled hard in the heavy gear, the ship was trembling all over, overcoming her<...>, and here, in the bar, they carelessly threw their legs on the arms of their chairs, sipped cognac and liquors ... ".
In the end, one gets the impression of a perfect artificial isolation, artificial intimacy space, in which the hero and all the other characters flickering here reside. The role of artistic space and time in the figurative whole of the story is extraordinarily significant. It skillfully combines categories eternity(the image of death, the ocean as an eternal cosmic element) and temporality of the author's account of time, which is scheduled by days, hours and minutes. Here we have an image days on "Atlantis", with the movement of time inside it punctually marked: "... got up early<...>having put on flannel pajamas, they drank coffee, chocolate, cocoa; then they sat in the baths, did gymnastics, whetting the appetite and well-being, made daily toilets and went to the first breakfast; until eleven o'clock it was necessary to walk briskly on the decks, breathing the cold freshness of the ocean, or play sheflboard and other games to re-stimulate the appetite, and at eleven- to be supported by sandwiches with broth; having refreshed themselves, they read the newspaper with pleasure and calmly waited for the second breakfast, even more nutritious and varied than the first; next two hours devoted to rest; all the decks were then filled with long reed chairs, on which the travelers lay, covered with rugs; at five o'clock they, refreshed and cheerful, were given strong fragrant tea with biscuits; at seven trumpeted about what was the main goal of all this existence, crown him ... And then the gentleman from San Francisco hurried to his rich cabin - to dress.
Before us is an image of the day, given as an image of everyday enjoyment of life, and in it the main event, the “crown”, is dinner. Everything else looks like just preparation for it or completion (walks, sports games serve as a means to stimulate appetite). Further along the story, the author does not skimp on details with a list of dishes for lunch, as if following Gogol, who in Dead Souls unfolded a whole ironic poem of the heroes' food - a kind of "grub-hell", in the words of Andrei Bely.
Picture of the day with an underline in it physiology of life ends with a naturalistic detail - a mention of heating pads for "warming the stomachs", which in the evenings were carried by the maids "to all rooms.
Despite the fact that in such an existence everything is unchanged (here, on Atlantis, nothing happens except for the well-known "incident" forgotten after fifteen minutes), the author throughout the story keeps an accurate timing of what is happening, literally by the minute. Let's take a look at the text: "In ten minutes a family from San Francisco got into a big boat, fifteen stepped on the stones of the embankment..."; "And In a minute a French head waiter lightly knocked on the door of the room of a gentleman from San Francisco ... ".
Such a technique - accurate, by the minute, timing of what is happening (in the absence of any action) - allows the author to create an image of an automatically established order, a mechanism of life spinning idle. Its inertia continues after the death of the gentleman from San Francisco, as if swallowed by this mechanism and immediately forgotten: "In a quarter of an hour in the hotel, everything somehow came in order. "The image of automatic regularity is varied by the author repeatedly:" ... life ... measuredly"; "Life in Naples immediately flowed orderly...".
And all this leaves an impression automatism the life presented here, that is, ultimately, some of its lifelessness.
Noting the role of artistic time, one should pay attention to one date indicated at the very beginning of the story, in the beginning of the plot - fifty-eight years, the age of the hero. The date is associated with a very significant context, a description of the image of the hero's entire previous life, and leads to the beginning of the plot.
He was firmly convinced that he had every right to rest, to enjoy, to travel in every way excellent. For such confidence, he had the argument that, firstly, he was rich, and secondly, had just begun life, despite his fifty-eight years. Until now, he did not live, but only existed, it is true, very not badly, but still placing all hopes on the future. He worked tirelessly - the Chinese, whom he ordered to work for him by the thousands, knew well what this meant! - and finally he saw that a lot had already been done, that he had almost caught up with those whom he had once taken as a model, and decided to take a break. The people to whom he belonged had a habit of starting enjoyment of life from a trip to Europe, to India, to Egypt. So - first with a hint, a general plan, and in the course of the story with all its figurative structure - the essence, the origin of the defect of the "old heart" of a man of the New World, a gentleman from San Francisco, is indicated. The hero, who finally decided to start living, to see the world, never managed to do it. And not only because of death and not even because of old age, but because he was not prepared for this by his entire previous existence. The attempt was doomed from the start. The source of the trouble lies in the very way of life to which the gentleman from San Francisco is devoted, and in which imaginary values ​​and the eternal pursuit of them replace life itself. A certain trap lies in wait for every person on earth: business and money for the sake of existence and existence for the sake of business and money. So a person gets into a vicious, vicious circle, when the means replace the goal - life. The future is delayed and may never come. That is exactly what happened to the gentleman from San Francisco. Until the age of fifty-eight, "he did not live, but existed," obeying once and for all the established, automatic order, and therefore did not learn live- enjoy life, enjoy free communication with people, nature and the beauty of the world.
The story of the gentleman from San Francisco, as Bunin shows it, is from a number of quite ordinary ones. Something similar, the artist wants to tell us, happens to the majority of people who above all value wealth, power and honor. It is no coincidence that the writer never calls his hero by his first name, surname or nickname: all this is too individual, and the story described in the story can happen to anyone.
The story "The Gentleman from San Francisco" is, in fact, the writer's reflection on the values ​​prevailing in the modern world, the power of which over a person deprives him of real life, the very ability for it. This diabolical mockery of a person evokes in the mind of the artist not only irony, it is felt more than once in the story. Let us recall the episodes where dinner is shown as the "crown" of existence, or a description of how the hero dresses with exaggerated solemnity - "exactly to the crown", or when something actor slips in him: "... stage went among them a gentleman from San Francisco. "The author's voice sounds more than once tragically, with bitterness and bewilderment, almost mystical. The image of the ocean, the background of the whole story, grows into the image of the world's cosmic forces, with their mysterious and incomprehensible devilish play, which lies in wait for all human thoughts. At the end of the story, as the embodiment of such evil forces, a conditional, allegorical image of the Devil appears: “ The countless fiery eyes of the ship were barely visible behind the snow to the Devil, who was watching from the rocks of Gibraltar, from the stony gates of the two worlds, behind the ship leaving into the night and blizzard. The Devil was huge as a cliff, but the ship was huge too, many-tiered, many-trumpeted, created by the pride of a New Man with an old heart.».
Thus, the artistic space and time of the story expands to global, cosmic scales. From the point of view of the function of artistic time, we need to think about one more episode in the work. This is an extra-plot (not connected with the main character) episode, where we are talking about a certain person who lived "two thousand years ago"; "having power over millions of people", "indescribably vile", but which, however, "forever remembered" by mankind - a kind of whim of human memory, created, apparently, by the magic of power (another idol of mankind, besides wealth). This very detailed episode, as if accidental and not at all obligatory, addressed to a legend from the history of the island of Capri, nevertheless plays an essential role in the story. 2000 year old the antiquity of the history of Tiberius (apparently, it is he who is being referred to when tourists visit Mount Tiberio), the introduction of this real historical name into the narrative switches our imagination to the distant past of mankind, expands the scale of the artistic time of Bunin's story and makes us all to see what is depicted in it in the light of the "big time". And this gives the story an unusually high degree of artistic generalization. The "small" prose genre, as it were, transcends its boundaries and acquires a new quality. The story becomes philosophical.
etc.................

Bunin's cycle of short stories "Dark Alleys" is the best written by the author in his entire creative career. Despite the simplicity and accessibility of Bunin's style, the analysis of the work requires special knowledge. The work is studied in the 9th grade in literature lessons, its detailed analysis will be useful in preparing for the exam, writing creative papers, test tasks, drawing up a story plan. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with our version of the analysis of “Dark Alleys” according to the plan.

Brief analysis

Year of writing– 1938.

History of creation The story was written in exile. Homesickness, bright memories, escape from reality, war and famine - served as an impetus for writing the story.

Subject- love lost, forgotten in the past; broken destinies, the theme of choice and its consequences.

Composition- traditional for a short story, a story. It consists of three parts: the arrival of the general, a meeting with a former lover and a hasty departure.

Genre- short story (novella).

Direction- realism.

History of creation

In "Dark Alleys" the analysis will be incomplete without the history of the creation of the work and knowledge of some details of the writer's biography. In N. Ogaryov's poem "An Ordinary Tale" Ivan Bunin borrowed the image of dark alleys. This metaphor impressed the writer so much that he endowed it with his own special meaning and made it the title of a cycle of stories. All of them are united by one theme - bright, fateful, memorable for a lifetime of love.

The work, included in the cycle of stories of the same name (1937-1945), was written in 1938, when the author was in exile. During the Second World War, hunger and poverty haunted all the inhabitants of Europe, the French city of Grasse was no exception. It was there that all the best works of Ivan Bunin were written. Returning to memories of the wonderful times of youth, inspiration and creative work gave strength to the author to survive the separation from his homeland and the horrors of war. These eight years away from their homeland became the most productive and most important in Bunin's creative career. Mature age, wonderfully beautiful landscapes, rethinking of historical events and life values ​​- became the impetus for the creation of the most important work of the master of the word.

In the most terrible times, the best, subtle, poignant stories about love were written - the cycle "Dark Alleys". In the soul of every person there are places where he looks infrequently, but with special trepidation: the brightest memories, the most “dear” experiences are stored there. It was these “dark alleys” that the author had in mind when giving the title to his book and the story of the same name. The story was first published in New York in 1943 in the Novaya Zemlya edition.

Subject

Leading theme- the theme of love. Not only the story “Dark Alleys”, but all the works of the cycle are based on this wonderful feeling. Bunin, summing up his life, was firmly convinced that love is the best thing that can be given to a person in life. It is the essence, the beginning and the meaning of everything: a tragic or happy story - there is no difference. If this feeling flashed through a person's life, it means that he did not live it in vain.

Human destinies, the irreversibility of events, the choice that had to be regretted are the leading motives in Bunin's story. The one who loves always wins, he lives and breathes his love, it gives him the strength to move on.

Nikolai Alekseevich, who made his choice in favor of common sense, realizes only at the age of sixty that his love for Nadezhda was the best event in his life. The theme of choice and its consequences is clearly revealed in the plot of the story: a person lives his life with the wrong people, remains unhappy, fate returns the betrayal and deceit that he allowed in his youth in relation to a young girl.

The conclusion is obvious: happiness consists in living in harmony with your feelings, and not in defiance of them. The problem of choice and responsibility for one's own and others' fate is also touched upon in the work. The issue is quite broad, despite the small volume of the story. It is interesting to note the fact that in Bunin's stories, love and marriage are practically incompatible: emotions are swift and vivid, they arise and disappear as quickly as everything in nature. Social status has no meaning where love reigns. It equalizes people, makes meaningless ranks and estates - love has its own priorities and laws.

Composition

Compositionally, the story can be divided into three parts.

The first part: the arrival of the hero at the inn (descriptions of nature and the surrounding area predominate here). Meeting with a former lover - the second semantic part - mainly consists of a dialogue. In the last part, the general leaves the inn - running from his own memories and his past.

Main events- the dialogue between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich is built on two absolutely opposite views on life. She lives with love, finding consolation and joy in it, keeps the memories of her youth. The author puts the idea of ​​a story into the mouth of this wise woman - what the work teaches us: “everything passes, but not everything is forgotten.” In this sense, the characters are opposite in their views, the old general mentions several times that “everything passes”. This is how his life passed, meaningless, joyless, wasted. Criticism took the cycle of stories enthusiastically, despite its courage and frankness.

Main characters

Genre

Dark alleys belongs to the genre of the story, some researchers of Bunin's work tend to consider them short stories.

The theme of love, unexpected abrupt endings, tragic and dramatic plots - all this is characteristic of Bunin's works. It should be noted the lion's share of lyricism in the story - emotions, past, experiences and spiritual quest. The general lyrical orientation is a distinctive feature of Bunin's stories. The author has a unique ability to fit a huge time period into a small epic genre, reveal the character's soul and make the reader think about the most important thing.

The artistic means used by the author are always varied: accurate epithets, vivid metaphors, comparisons and personifications. The technique of parallelism is also close to the author, quite often nature emphasizes the state of mind of the characters.

Artwork test

Analysis Rating

Average rating: 4.6. Total ratings received: 621.

Genre focus The work is a short novel in the style of realism, the main theme of which is reflections on love, lost, forgotten in the past, as well as broken destinies, choices and their consequences.

Composition structure The story is traditional for a short story, consisting of three parts, the first of which tells about the arrival of the protagonist in combination with descriptions of nature and the surrounding area, the second describes his meeting with his former beloved woman, and the third part depicts a hasty departure.

main character story is Nikolai Alexandrovich, presented in the form of a sixty-year-old man, based in life on common sense in the form of his own ego and public opinion.

minor character The work presents Nadezhda, the former beloved of Nikolai, left by him sometime in the past, who met the hero at the end of his life path. Hope personifies a girl who was able to overcome the shame of being associated with a rich man and learned to live an independent, honest life.

Distinctive feature The story is an image of the theme of love, which is presented by the author as a tragic and fatal event that has gone forever along with a dear, bright and wonderful feeling. Love in the story is presented in the form of a litmus test, which helps to test the human personality in relation to fortitude and moral purity.

By means of artistic expression in the story are the author's use of precise epithets, vivid metaphors, comparisons and personifications, as well as the use of parallelism, emphasizing the state of mind of the characters.

The originality of the work consists in the inclusion by the writer in the narrative of unexpected abrupt endings, the tragedy and drama of the plot, combined with lyricism in the form of emotions, experiences and mental anguish.

the story consists in conveying to the readership the concept of happiness, which consists in finding spiritual harmony with one's own feelings and rethinking life values.

Option 2

Bunin worked in the 19th and 20th centuries. His attitude to love was special: in the beginning, people loved each other very much, but in the end, either one of the heroes dies or they part. For Bunin, love is a passionate feeling, but similar to a flash.

To analyze Bunin's work "Dark Alleys", you need to touch on the plot.

General Nikolai Alekseevich is the main character, he comes to his hometown and meets a woman whom he loved many years ago. Nadezhda is the mistress of the yard, he does not recognize her immediately. But Nadezhda did not forget him and loved Nikolai, even tried to lay hands on herself. The protagonist seems to feel guilty for leaving her. Therefore, he tries to apologize, saying that any feelings pass.

It turns out that Nikolai's life was not so easy, he loved his wife, but she cheated on him, and his son grew up a scoundrel and insolent. He is forced to blame himself for what he did in the past, because Nadezhda could not forgive him.

Bunin's work shows that after 35 years, the love between the characters has not faded away. When the general leaves the city, he realizes that Hope is the best thing in his life. He reflects on the life that could have been if the connection between them had not been interrupted.

Bunin put tragedy into his work, because the lovers did not get along.

Hope was able to keep love, but this did not help create an alliance - she was left alone. I didn’t forgive Nikolai either, because the pain was very strong. And Nikolai himself turned out to be weak, did not leave his wife, was afraid of contempt and could not resist society. They could only be submissive to fate.

Bunin shows the sad story of the fate of two people. Love in the world could not resist the foundations of the old society, therefore it became fragile and hopeless. But there is also a positive feature - love brought a lot of good things to the lives of the heroes, it left its mark, which they will always remember.

Almost all of Bunin's work touches on the problem of love, and "Dark Alleys" show how important love is in a person's life. For Blok, love comes first, because it helps a person to improve, change life for the better, gain experience, and also teaches to be kind and sensual.

Sample 3

Dark alleys is both a cycle of stories by Ivan Bunin written in exile, and a separate story included in this cycle, and a metaphor borrowed from the poet Nikolai Ogaryov and rethought by the author. Under the dark alleys, Bunin meant the mysterious soul of a person, carefully keeping all the feelings, memories, emotions, meetings once experienced. The author claimed that everyone has such memories that he refers to again and again, and there are the most precious ones that are rarely disturbed, they are securely stored in the remote corners of the soul - dark alleys.

It is about such memories that the story of Ivan Bunin, which was written in 1938 in exile. In a terrible wartime in the city of Grasse in France, a Russian classic wrote about love. Trying to drown out the longing for the Motherland and escape from the horrors of war, Ivan Alekseevich returns to the bright memories of his youth, first feelings and creative endeavors. During this period, the author wrote his best works, including the story "Dark Alleys".

Bunin's hero Ivan Alekseevich, a sixty-year-old man, a high-ranking military man, finds himself in the places of his youth. In the hostess of the inn, he recognizes the former serf girl Nadezhda, whom he, a young landowner, once seduced, and later left. Their chance meeting makes us turn to the memories that have been kept in those very “dark alleys” all this time. From the conversation of the main characters, it becomes known that Nadezhda never forgave her treacherous master, but she could not stop loving either. And Ivan Alekseevich only thanks to this meeting realized that then, many years ago, he left not just a serf girl, but the best that fate had given him. But he didn’t gain anything else: the son is a spendthrift and a spender, his wife cheated and left.

You might get the impression that the story "Dark Alleys" is about retribution, but in fact it is about love. Ivan Bunin put this feeling above all else. Nadezhda, an aged single woman, is happy because she has had love all these years. And the life of Ivan Alekseevich did not work out precisely because he once underestimated this feeling and followed the path of reason.

In a short story, in addition to betrayal, themes of social inequality, and choice, and responsibility for someone else's fate, and the theme of duty are raised. But there is only one conclusion: if you live with your heart and put love as a gift above all else, then all these problems can be solved.

Analysis of the work Dark Alleys

In one of Ogarev's poems, Bunin was "hooked" by the phrase "... there was an alley of dark lindens ..." Further, the imagination painted autumn, rain, a road, and an old campaigner in a tarantass. This formed the basis of the story.

The idea was this. The hero of the story in his youth seduced a peasant girl. He had already forgotten about her. But life tends to bring surprises. By chance, after many years, passing through familiar places, he stopped in a passing hut. And in a beautiful woman, the mistress of the hut, I recognized the same girl.

The old military man felt ashamed, he blushes, turns pale, mumbles something like a delinquent schoolboy. Life punished him for his deed. He married for love, but never knew the warmth of the family hearth. His wife didn't love him, she cheated on him. And, in the end, she left him. The son grew up a scoundrel and a loafer. Everything in life comes back like a boomerang.

What about Hope? She still loves the former master. She didn't have a personal life. No family, no beloved husband. But at the same time she could not forgive the master. These are the women who both love and hate at the same time.

The military is immersed in memories. Mentally re-lives their relationship. They warm the soul like the sun a minute before sunset. But he does not for a second admit the thought that things could have turned out differently. The then society would have condemned their relationship. He wasn't ready for this. He didn't need them, these relationships. Then it was possible to put an end to the military career.

He lives as social rules and principles dictate. He is a coward by nature. You have to fight for love.

Bunin does not allow love to flow along the family channel, to take shape in a happy marriage. Why does he deprive his heroes of human happiness? Perhaps he thinks that fleeting passion is better? Better this eternal unfinished love? She did not bring happiness to Nadezhda, but she still loves. What does she hope for? Personally, I do not understand this, I do not share the views of the author.

The old campaigner finally begins to see clearly and realizes what he has lost. This is what he says with such bitterness to Nadezhda. He realized that she was the dearest, brightest person for him. But he never understood what cards he had up his sleeve. Life gave him a second chance at happiness, but he did not take advantage of it.

What meaning does Bunin put into the title of the story "Dark Alleys"? What does he mean? Dark corners of the human soul and human memory. Every person has their own secrets. And they sometimes pop up for him in the most unexpected way. There is nothing accidental in life. Chance is a pattern well planned by God, fate or the cosmos.

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Analysis of the story by I.A. Bunin "Muse".

The story was written on October 17, 1938, and was included in the collection "Dark Alleys". The Second World War was approaching, Bunin personally encountered the Nazis in 1936, traveling through Germany: in Lindau he was arrested and subjected to an unceremonious and humiliating search. Although there are no direct references to these events in Bunin's works, they significantly influenced the general mood of his work. The feeling of the catastrophic nature of life, loneliness, the impossibility of happiness, characteristic of Bunin's prose before, only intensifies in these years.

Like all works of the "Dark Alleys" cycle, the story "Muse" reveals the theme of love. The main stylistic principle of the story is antithesis. He manifests himself at all levels.

The narration is conducted from the 1st person in the form of a memory, which means that the view of events is given through the prism of the narrator's perception, therefore, this is a subjective view. Bunin chooses such a form of narration in order to show the image of the narrator from the inside: which of the events of those distant years were the most important for him, what feelings they evoked.

There are two central images in the work: the narrator and the conservator Muse Graf. There is also "someone Zavistovsky", but his image is secondary and in many respects parallel to the image of the narrator.

The narrator is a weak, weak-willed person with no life purpose. He abandoned his estate in the Tambov province to study painting, then just as easily abandoned his hobby when the Muse appeared in his life. He studied with an incompetent but well-known artist, and although he was aware of all the vulgarity of his nature, he continued his studies anyway. He spent his free time in the company of bohemian representatives, all of whose bohemianism is immediately removed by the remark that they were equally committed to "billiards and crayfish with beer." So, at least during his youth, he was not much different from all these ordinary people.

The image of Zavistovsky echoes the image of the narrator, he is "lonely, timid, narrow-minded." That is, just like the narrator, a person who does not particularly stand out from the background of others. But there is something about both of them that drew the attention of the Muse to them. Zavistovsky is a "not bad musician", Muse says about the narrator: "You are quite beautiful", besides, she probably heard about his painting lessons.

These two images are opposed to the image of the main character. The external image of the Muse does not meet the expectations that her name generates. She is a "tall girl in a gray winter hat, gray straight coat, gray boots, ..., acorn-colored eyes", she has "rusty hair". There is neither lightness nor ephemerality in her appearance: "... her knees lay round and weighty", "bulging calves", "elongated feet"; "She sat down comfortably on the sofa, apparently intending to leave soon." It is direct, categorical. In her appeals to the narrator, imperative intonations prevail: “accept”, “remove”, “give”, “order” (whereas in the narrator’s speech we see a passive voice, impersonal constructions “very flattered”, “nothing interesting in me, it seems, No"). This is a strong, decisive, rather eccentric nature. You can’t call her tactful and sensitive to the feelings of others. The author does not say anything about her inner world, we can only guess what caused her offensive tactics. But most likely this is how her desire for happiness is expressed, although the methods of achieving it are somewhat naive. Muse says to the narrator: "But in fact you are my first love."

Such an antagonism between the male and female worlds is characteristic of Bunin's work. The features of Bunin's perception of these worlds are reflected in the joking words of the heroine of the story "Smaragd": "... the worst girl is still better than any young man."

The significance of the appearance of this unusual girl in the life of the narrator is indicated both by the composition of the story and the organization of artistic time and space.

One of the characteristic features of Bunin's work is the laconicism of the narrative. The events described on several pages of the story take a year. The narrator begins the story with winters when he "was no longer the first youth and took it into his head to study painting." He evaluates this period with the words: "Unpleasant and boring I lived!". The space is closed by type: the artist's house, cheap restaurants, rooms of the "Capital".

Then comes the "suddenly" characteristic of Bunin's creativity, when the hero's life changes due to some unexpected event: Muse Count knocks on the narrator's door. It happens in early spring. Two phrases serve as a kind of marker for changing the mood of the narrative:

Winter period of life: “It remains in my memory: the light is constantly pouring down outside the windows, they rattle dully, the horse-drawn carriages are ringing along the Arbat, in the evening it stinks sourly of beer and gas in a dimly lit restaurant ...”

The beginning of spring: "... in the open windows of the double frames there was no longer the winter dampness of sleet and rain, the horseshoes were clattering along the pavement in a non-winter way, and as if the horse-drawn carriages rang more musically, someone knocked on the door of my hallway."

Here there is, as it were, an enlargement of the frame, focusing on one of the key moments in the life of the hero, the narration develops in jerks, it seems that the hero’s heart is beating: “I shouted: who is there?”, “I waited ...”, “I got up , opened ... "Grammatically, this is also expressed by the transition from the past tense to the present: "... a tall girl is standing at the threshold." About this moment, the narrator says: "Where did such happiness come from!". And again, the phrase as a marker of mood, feeling: "I heard the monotonous ringing of horse-drawn horses, the clatter of hooves as if in a dream..." This constant mention of street sounds can speak of the connection between the hero's life and the space of the city.

Further May, summer is coming. The hero, at the request of the Muse, moves to a dacha near Moscow. Now he is surrounded by the natural world, peace and tranquility. This is open space. Even inside the house where the hero lives is spacious: there is almost no furniture in it. Bunin uses the technique of natural parallelism: when the Muse arrives at the hero's dacha, it is usually clear and sunny, everything around breathes freshness. After he escorts the Muse, the sky darkens, it rains, a thunderstorm rages.

June. The muse moves to the narrator.

Autumn. Here, as a harbinger of trouble, Zavistovsky appears.

And now attention is again focused on an important, decisive moment in the life of the hero. Winter again: "Before Christmas, I somehow went to the city. I returned already by the moon." Again, the narrative develops in jerks, like a restless heartbeat: "suddenly fell asleep", "suddenly woke up", "but she left me!", "maybe she returned?", "no, she did not return", etc. Bunin greatly emphasizes the despair of the hero and at the level of the character of filling the space: “an alley of bare trees”, “a poor house”, “a door in scraps of upholstery”, “a burned-out stove”. The muse, with her characteristic categoricalness, says: "It's over and it's clear, the scenes are useless." Here, the absolute end of their relationship is highlighted grammatically, which the hero himself noticed: “You are already talking to me in“ you ”, you could at least not speak with him in front of me.

Image system:

Man Woman

Composition:

There are 2 key points in the construction of the text: meeting with the Muse and parting with her; and 2 links between these moments: life before meeting with the Muse, and life before parting with her. The elements of these pairs are opposed. Also, these pairs themselves are opposed to each other by the nature of the description, emotional richness.

meeting - parting

life before meeting - life before parting

Time:

The story can be divided into 4 parts. The story takes a year. The description of the two days when key events in the hero's life take place is equal in volume to the description of the rest of the time. Since the narration is given in the form of a memory, we conclude that this is a psychological, subjective time. So these two days were the most emotionally filled, the most important for the hero. These days are, as it were, re-experienced by the hero: this is evidenced both by the emotional tension of the narration and the transition to the present tense at the grammatical level.

The development of the relationship between the Muse and the narrator correlates with the seasons. Winter (the hero's life before meeting the Muse), spring-summer (life with the Muse), autumn (Zavistovsky appears), winter (Muse goes to Zavistovsky).

The same pattern can be noted in relation to the times of day. The meeting of the hero and the Muse takes place during the day, their parting takes place at night.

Space:

The periods in the life of the hero, when the Muse is next to him, are contrasted with those when she is not around. This girl, as it were, frees him from the closed space of the city with its constant noise, second-rate restaurants, frees him from vulgar, empty people. At her request, he moves to a dacha near Moscow. Now it is surrounded by an open space, free from everything superfluous, it is easier to breathe in it.

So, we have already determined the theme of the story - this is love. Now let's see how Bunin reveals this topic. According to Bunin, love is tragic, it is fleeting, but it leaves a deep mark on the heart. This story reveals such a facet of love as its similarity with inspiration. It visits the artist against his will, and can leave as suddenly as it came. Here this idea is personified in the Graf Muse. We can only guess about the logic of her actions, she comes to bad artists, mediocre musicians, and colors their life, making it more beautiful and spiritual. But a person in union with the Muse acts as a passive principle, as an object, and not as a subject. And so, when she leaves him, and she inevitably leaves him, he experiences excruciating grief, but realizes his powerlessness to change anything.