The main themes of Bunin's works. Philosophical problems of Bunin's works: analysis of creativity
Ivan Alekseevich Bunin (1870-1953) is called “the last classic.” In his stories, novellas, and poems, Bunin shows the whole range of problems late XIX- beginning of the 20th century. The themes of his works are so diverse that they seem to be life itself.
The main theme of the early 1900s is the theme of Russia's fading patriarchal past. The most vivid expression of the problem of a change of system, the collapse of all foundations noble society we see in the story « Antonov apples» . Bunin regrets Russia's fading past, idealizing the noble way of life. Bunin's best memories of old life saturated with the smell of Antonov apples. He hopes that together with the dying noble Russia The roots of the nation will still remain in its memory.
In the mid-1910s, the themes and problems of Bunin's stories began to change. He moves away from the topic of Russia's patriarchal past to criticism of bourgeois reality. A striking example this period is his story "Mr. from San Francisco".
Bunin's collection " Dark alleys"is completely dedicated to love. Most of the stories were written during World War II in Grasse, France, amid the “dark, pleading wail of a siren” and the “very loud rumble and hum” of airplanes. According to V.N. Muromtseva, the writer’s wife, while working on a book about love, found it easier to “endure the unbearable.” Apparently, only by thinking about the eternal (namely, love is eternal), a person can worthily survive the transitory, even such a terrible transitory as war.
The theme of love is interpreted differently in Bunin's stories, however, in this understanding, one can undoubtedly find common features. Thus, in the collection there is not a single story where the relationship between a girl and a young man ended in marriage. The writer depicts not ordinary earthly desires, not just the need to procreate, but a real miracle - that high feeling called love. In Bunin's love, as in life, there is always tragedy. After all, love is too strong a shock to last long. Maybe that's why the heroes of his stories break up or even die. But love remains in their hearts forever.
All works in the collection are united by the motif of memories of youth and homeland.
Story "Dark alleys", which gave the collection its title, was written, as Bunin himself admitted, “very easily, unexpectedly.”
The story of the relationship between Nadezhda and Nikolai Alekseevich, the heroes of the story “Dark Alleys,” is simple, like life itself. Thirty years later, people met who once loved each other very much. She is the owner of a “private room” at the post station, he is a “slender old military man” who stopped in the autumn bad weather to rest and have lunch. The owner of the warm and tidy room turned out to be Nadezhda, “a beautiful woman beyond her age,” dark-haired, “with dark down.” upper lip" She found out ex-lover right away, she said that she didn’t get married because she loved him all her life, despite the fact that he “heartlessly” left her. I was never able to forgive. Nikolai Alekseevich married, as it seemed to him, for love, but he was not happy: his wife left him, cheating on the one who “loved her madly”, his son grew up to be a “scoundrel” and a “spendthrift”.
This, it seems, is the whole story, in which nothing can be corrected. And is it necessary to change anything? Does this make sense? Bunin does not give answers to such questions. We don’t know what happened in the former lives of our heroes. However, it seems that at that time Nikolai Alekseevich’s relationship with the beautiful serf Nadezhda seemed like a slight flirtation. Even now he is perplexed: “What nonsense! This same Nadezhda is not the innkeeper, but my wife, the mistress of my St. Petersburg house, the mother of my children?”
Nadezhda has nothing left in her life except memories of her first love, although she lives strong and “gives money in interest.” She is respected for her fairness, her straightforwardness, her intelligence.
Nikolai Alekseevich left, unable to cope with the surging feelings, remembering the magical poems that he once read to his beloved: “The scarlet rose hips were blooming all around, there were dark linden alleys...”.
This means that the mark on the soul remained quite deep, the memories did not recede. And who isn’t flattered to be the only one in life? The splinter in my heart is firmly lodged, now forever. How else? After all, it turned out that more love never happened. The chance is given only once. They needed to take advantage of it, perhaps by going through a break with family, misunderstanding and condemnation from friends, and perhaps even giving up their career. All this is within the capabilities of a real Man, capable of loving and protecting his Woman. For such a person there are no class differences; he does not accept the law of society as mandatory, but challenges it.
But our hero can neither understand nor appreciate his actions, so repentance does not occur. But love lives in the heart of Nadezhda, who does not stoop to reproaches, complaints, or threats. She's full human dignity and grateful to fate, which gave her, at the end of her days, a meeting with the one whom she once called “Nikolenka,” to whom she gave “her beauty, her fever.”
True love demands nothing in return, asks for nothing. “Love is beautiful,” because only love can be answered with love...
The main themes in the works of Ivan Alekseevich Bunin are eternal themes: nature, love, death
Bunin belongs to to the last generation writers from noble estate, which is closely related to the nature of the central zone of Russia. “Few people can know and love nature like Ivan Bunin can,” wrote Alexander Blok in 1907. No wonder the Pushkin Prize was awarded to Bunin in 1903 for his collection of poems “Falling Leaves,” glorifying Russian rural nature. In his poems, the poet connected the sadness of the Russian landscape with Russian life into one inseparable whole. “Against the background of a golden iconostasis, in the fire of falling leaves, gilded by sunset, stands an abandoned estate.” Autumn - the “quiet widow” - is in unusual harmony with empty estates and abandoned farmsteads. “The native silence torments me, the nests of my native desolation torment me.” Bunin’s stories, which are similar to poetry, are also imbued with this sad poetry of withering, dying, desolation. Here is the beginning of his famous story “Antonov Apples”: “I remember early, fresh, quiet morning... I remember a large, all golden, dried up and thinning garden, I remember maple alleys, the subtle aroma of fallen leaves and the smell of Antonov apples, the smell of honey and autumn freshness...” And this smell of Antonov apples accompanies him in all his wanderings and in the capitals world as a memory of the Motherland: “But in the evenings,” writes Bunin, “I read old poets, close to me in everyday life and in many of my moods, and finally, simply in the area, in central Russia. And the drawers of my table are full of Antonov apples, and the healthy autumn aroma transports me to the countryside, to the landowners' estates."
Along with the degeneration of the noble nests, the village is also degenerating. In the story "The Village" he describes the courtyard of a rich peasant family and sees “darkness and dirt” - both in the physical, and in the mental, and in moral life". Bunin writes: "The old man is lying there, dying. He is still alive - and already in Sentsy the coffin has been prepared, pies are already being baked for the funeral. And suddenly the old man gets better. Where was the coffin to go? How to justify spending? Lukyan was then cursed for five years for them, lived with reproaches from the world, and starved to death." And here is how Bunin describes the level of political consciousness of the peasants:
Do you know why the court came?
Judge the deputy... They say he wanted to poison the river.
Deputy? Fool, is this really what deputies do?
And the plague knows them...
Bunin’s point of view on the people is polemically pointed against those lovers of the people who idealized the people and flattered them. The dying Russian village is framed by a dull Russian landscape: “White grain rushed askance, falling on a black, poor village, on bumpy, dirty roads, on horse manure, ice and water; the twilight fog hid endless fields, all this great desert with its snows, forests, villages and cities - the kingdom of hunger and death..."
The theme of death will receive varied coverage in Bunin’s work. This is both the death of Russia and death individual person. Death turns out to be not only the resolver of all contradictions, but also the source of absolute, purifying power (“Transfiguration”, “Mitya’s Love”).
Bunin’s story “The Gentleman from San Francisco” was understood more deeply by Alexander Tvardovsky: “In the face of love and death, according to Bunin, the social, class, and property lines that separate people are erased by themselves - everyone is equal before them.” Averky from “The Thin Grass” dies in the corner of his poor hut: a nameless gentleman from San Francisco dies having just gotten ready to have a good lunch in the restaurant of a first-class hotel on the warm sea coast. But death is equally terrible in its inevitability. By the way, when this most famous of Bunin's stories is interpreted only in the sense of exposure capitalism and the symbolic harbinger of its death, then they seem to lose sight of the fact that for the author it is much more important to think about the susceptibility of a millionaire to a common end, about the insignificance and ephemeral nature of his power in the face of a mortal outcome that is the same for everyone.”
Death, as it were, allows one to see a person’s life in its true light. Before physical death, the gentleman from San Francisco suffered spiritual death.
“Until the age of 58, his life was devoted to accumulation. Having become a millionaire, he wants to get all the pleasures that money can buy: ... he thought of holding the carnival in Nice, in Monte Carlo, where at this time the most selective society flocks, where Some enthusiastically indulge in car and sailing races, others in roulette, others in what is commonly called flirting, and still others in shooting pigeons, which soar very beautifully from cages over the emerald lawn, against the backdrop of a sea the color of forget-me-nots, and immediately knock their white lumps on earth...1 - this is not life, it is a form of life, devoid of internal content. The consumer society has eradicated from itself all the human ability for Sympathy, condolences. The death of the gentleman from San Francisco is perceived with displeasure. After all, “the evening was irreparably ruined,” the owner the hotel feels guilty, gives his word that he will take “all measures in his power" to eliminate the trouble. Money decides everything: guests want to have fun for their money, the owner does not want to lose profit, this explains the disrespect for death, which means moral decline of society, dehumanization in its extreme manifestation.
The deadness of bourgeois society is symbolized by “a thin and flexible pair of hired lovers: a sinfully modest girl with drooping eyelashes, with an innocent hairstyle, and a tall young man with black hair, as if glued on, pale with powder, in the most elegant patent leather shoes, in narrow, long coattails, tailcoat - a handsome man, looking like a huge leech." And no one knew how tired this couple was of pretending to be in love. And what stands underneath them, at the bottom of the dark hold. No one thinks about the futility of life in the face of death.
Many of I. A. Bunin’s works and the entire cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” are devoted to the theme of love. “All the stories in this book are only about love, about its “dark” and most often very gloomy and cruel alleys,” Bunin wrote in one of his letters. Bunin himself considered this book the most perfect in craftsmanship. Bunin sang not platonic, but sensual love, surrounded by a romantic aura. Love, in Bunin’s understanding, is contraindicated in everyday life, any duration, even in a desired marriage; it is an insight, a “sunstroke”, often leading to death. He describes love in all its states, where it barely dawns and will never come true ("Old Port"), and where it languishes unrecognized ("Ida"), and where it turns into passion ("The Killer"). Love captures all thoughts, all spiritual and physical potentials of a person - but this state cannot last long. So that love does not fizzle out, does not exhaust itself, it is necessary to part - and forever. If the heroes themselves do not do this, then rock, fate intervenes in their lives: one of the lovers dies. The story "Mitya's Love" ends with the hero's suicide. Death here is interpreted as the only possibility liberation from love.
Bibliography
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Theme of prose by I.A. Bunin - laureate Nobel Prize 1933 – varied. Life of old noble estates reflected in the stories “Antonov Apples” and “The Grammar of Love”. Dramatic people's fates, the vicissitudes of their relationship, love and hatred are revealed in the works “Easy Breathing”, “The Last Date”, “Chang’s Dreams”. Philosophically revealing character common man in terms of it spiritual formation Bunin fits in the stories “The Thin Grass” and “ Clean Monday». Evils of bourgeois civilization exposed in "Mr. from San Francisco."
One of the most famous stories Bunin’s story “Antonov Apples” is considered to be a lyrical, poetic story about the life of a noble estate. “Antonov apples” have a strong emotional impact on a person, so the story justifiably relates to lyrical prose. At the center of the work are the author’s sincere, confessional memories of the past: here is the incomparable smell of the garden and the apples themselves, here are the sounds that fill nature, and the colorful – bright and impressive – landscapes; and people - relatives and friends. The author's past is covered with a romantic aura, and the smell of Antonov apples becomes a symbol of Russia itself.
Bunin also poeticizes the people themselves who belong to this “old”, passing time. Old man Averky from The Thin Grass, having experienced many tragedies and disappointments in life, did not lose his kindness, humility, spiritual beauty. Before death, he rethinks what he has lived, thereby strengthening his agreement with the world. When he leaves, he does not harbor any grudge against his deceiving son-in-law; admiring his daughter; trying to absorb the beauty of nature and the harmony of the world.
Bunin also poses serious questions in the story “Easy Breathing,” the central theme of which is the theme of beauty. The story was written on the eve of the revolution and reflects the position of the author: Bunin did not accept the revolution as a bloodthirsty element that destroyed everything that was dear to the author - patriarchal way of life, old orders, etc. The heroine of the story - Olya Meshcherskaya - becomes a victim of a new - adult - life, its ideals, to which she did not have time to adapt. Bunin asks himself and the reader a tragic question: “ Who will save beauty in this world?" Unfortunately, the story does not give an encouraging answer, so the beautiful heroine, dying, leaves " easy breath", which dissolves in the Universe.
IN " Easy breathing", As in " Last date", Bunin shows the highest skill narrative style . Plays a huge role in Bunin's stories detail. Remember, for example, the boss’s ball or the office cool lady, elements of Olya Meshcherskaya’s appearance.
Capitalist civilization was perceived by the author in 
hostile, which is clearly presented in the story “The Mister from San Francisco.” The hero is not named, hence the appeal to more than one to a specific person, and to tragic destinies a world stricken by an epidemic of lack of spirituality.
Bunin had a special attitude towards the word: he did not experiment with it, on the contrary, he carefully “nurtured” and processed it. Bunin's word is living, musical; it does not thunder and does not shock. Bunin's word is a harmonious fusion of poetry and prose, giving rise to unforgettable images.
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Eternal themes in Bunin's works. The previous, mainly “village” stories and stories “in fact turned out to be more durable than his works devoted to the actual “eternal” themes - love, death.
This side of his creativity, which received primary development in emigrant period, does not constitute in it what belongs exclusively to Bunin in literature.” Bunin lived long life. He saw victory Soviet Union over Germany in 1945, was happy for his fatherland and spoke loudly about it in print. He read books with interest Soviet writers, admired Tvardovsky’s “Vasily Terkin.”
The writer intended to return to his homeland, but it was too late to do this. In 1953, Bunin died in Paris. But he returned to us with his books, found a grateful reader who fully realized Bunin’s place in Russian artistic culture twentieth century. What caused the attention of contemporaries to Bunin and what now supports active interest to his books? First of all, the versatility of the great artist’s work attracts attention.
Each reader finds motifs close to his own in his work. There is something in Bunin’s books that is spiritually dear to everyone developed people at all times. In the future they will find their way to readers who are not deaf to the beautiful, to the moral, who are capable of rejoicing in the universe and compassion for the unfortunate. Bunin, as we already know, entered literature as a poet.
The first poems were not original in their figurative structure; they basically repeated the themes and intonations of Pushkin, Lermontov, Tyutchev, and partly Nekrasov. But already in his youthful works there were motifs that would largely determine the meaning of later mature creativity Bunina. One of them is Pushkinsky. Here, of course, there is no direct orientation towards Pushkin, but there is an unconscious thirst for what can be called Pushkin’s harmony. What does it consist of? We will find the answer in almost every Pushkin’s creation, especially clearly in “Belkin’s Tales” and “Little Tragedies”. great poet saw a moral divide in human natures: some people are natural, spontaneous, others are unnatural, preferring an artificial, false form of being.
Some care, others do not care about beauty, the true purpose of a person. The former are personified by Pushkin by Mozart, the latter by Salieri. The tragedy gives rise to the thought: the death of a genius at the hands of a craftsman is a consequence of the fragmentation of the world, where spiritual union is difficult to achieve.
But ideally, according to Pushkin, it is possible - as long as the world is organized according to Mozart, and not according to Salieri. This is obviously how young Bunin felt life. Pushkin's antithesis - bright sincerity and disastrous falsehood - receives a specific social characteristic from him. He also talks about nature as the center of the desired harmony. Animation of nature is a favorite technique in Bunin’s lyrics. In the naturalness of being, according to Bunin, the source of the main values human existence: peace, cheerfulness, joy.
The humanization of nature (anthropomorphism), which has long arisen in world literature, including Russian poetry, is repeated persistently by Bunin, enriched with new metaphors. The Tyutchev-like poetry of a thunderstorm as a symbol of the renewal of the world is directly projected onto human life: it is not good without labor and the struggle for happiness (“Don’t frighten me with a thunderstorm”). But Tyutchev’s theme does not repeat itself, but takes on an unexpected, new turn. The poet hears in spring thunderstorm not only thunder, but also silence: “How mysterious you are, thunderstorm! How I love your silence” (“The fields smell…”). Bunin is an observant lyricist, subtly noticing the ambiguity of phenomena. 3.
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Study of the work of Ivan Bunin
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Philosophical issues Bunin’s works include a huge range of topics and questions that were relevant during the writer’s lifetime and which remain relevant today.
Philosophical reflections of Bunin
Philosophical problems which the writer touches on in his works were very different. Here are just a few of them:
The decomposition of the world of the peasants and the collapse of the old rural way of life.
The fate of the Russian people.
Love and loneliness.
The meaning of human life.
The first theme about the decomposition of the world of peasants and the collapse of the village and ordinary way of life can be attributed to Bunin’s work “Village”. This story tells how the life of village men changes, changing not only their way of life, but also their moral values and concepts.
One of the philosophical problems that Ivan Alekseevich raises in his work relates to the fate of the Russian people, who were not happy and were not free. He talked about this in his works “Village” and “Antonov Apples”.
Bunin is known throughout the world as the most beautiful and subtle lyricist. For the writer, love was a special feeling that could not last long. He devotes his cycle of stories “Dark Alleys” to this topic, which is both sad and lyrical.
Bunin, both as a person and as a writer, was concerned about the morality of our society. He dedicated his work “Mr. from San Francisco” to this, where he shows the callousness and indifference of bourgeois society.
All the works of the great master of words are characterized by philosophical issues.
The collapse of peasant life and the world
One of the works where the writer raises philosophical problems is the burning story “The Village”. It contrasts two heroes: Tikhon and Kuzma. Despite the fact that Tikhon and Kuzma are brothers, these images are opposite. It is no coincidence that the author endowed his characters with different qualities. This is a reflection of reality. Tikhon is a wealthy peasant, a kulak, and Kuzma is a poor peasant who himself learned to write poetry and was good at it.
The plot of the story takes the reader to the beginning of the twentieth century, when in the village people were starving, turning into beggars. But in this village the ideas of revolution suddenly appear and the peasants, ragged and hungry, come to life listening to them. But poor, illiterate people do not have the patience to delve into political nuances; they very soon become indifferent to what is happening.
The writer writes with bitterness in the story that these peasants are incapable of decisive actions. They do not interfere in any way, and do not even try to prevent the devastation native land, poor villages, allowing their indifference and inactivity to ruin their native places. Ivan Alekseevich suggests that the reason for this is their lack of independence. This can also be heard from the main character, who admits:
“I can’t think, I’m not educated”
Bunin shows that this deficiency appeared among the peasants due to the fact that for a long time Serfdom existed in the country.
The fate of the Russian people
The author of such wonderful works, both the story “The Village” and the story “Antonov Apples” bitterly talk about how the Russian people suffer and how difficult their fate is. It is known that Bunin himself never belonged to peasant world. His parents were nobles. But Ivan Alekseevich, like many nobles of that time, was attracted to the study of the psychology of the common man. The writer tried to understand the origins and foundations national character a simple man.
Studying the peasant and his history, the author tried to find in him not only negative, but also positive features. Therefore, he does not see a significant difference between a peasant and a landowner, this is especially felt in the plot of the story “Antonov Apples,” which tells how the village lived. The small nobility and peasants worked and celebrated holidays together. This is especially evident during the harvest in the garden, when Antonov apples smell strong and pleasant.
In such times, the author himself loved to wander in the garden, listening to the voices of men, observing changes in nature. The writer also loved fairs, when the fun began, the men played the harmonica, and the women put on beautiful and bright outfits. At such times it was good to wander around the garden and listen to the conversation of the peasants. And although, according to Bunin, nobles are people who carry true high culture, but simple men and peasants also contributed to the formation of Russian culture and spiritual world of your country.
Bunin's love and loneliness
Almost all of Ivan Alekseevich’s works that were written in exile are poetic. For him, love is a small moment that cannot last forever, so the author in his stories shows how it fades away under the influence of life circumstances, or at the will of one of the characters. But the theme leads the reader much deeper - this is loneliness. It can be seen and felt in many works. Far from his homeland, abroad, Bunin missed his native places.
Bunin’s story “In Paris” talks about how love can break out far from the homeland, but it is not real, since two people are completely alone. Nikolai Platanich, the hero of the story “In Paris,” left his homeland long ago, because the white officer could not come to terms with what was happening in his homeland. And here, far from his homeland, he accidentally meets a beautiful woman. They have a lot in common with Olga Alexandrovna. The heroes of the work speak the same language, their views on the world coincide, and they are both alone. Their souls reached out to each other. Far from Russia, from their homeland, they fall in love.
When Nikolai Platanich, the main character, dies suddenly and completely unexpectedly in the subway, Olga Alexandrovna returns to an empty and lonely house, where she experiences incredible sadness, bitterness of loss and emptiness in her soul. This emptiness has now settled in her soul forever, because lost values cannot be replenished far from her native land.
The meaning of human life
The relevance of Bunin's works lies in the fact that he raises questions of morality. This problem of his works concerned not only the society and the time when the writer lived, but also our modern one. This is one of the biggest philosophical problems that will always face human society.
Immorality, according to the great writer, does not appear immediately, and it is impossible to notice it even at the beginning. But then it grows into some kind of crucial moment begins to give rise to the most terrible consequences. The immorality growing in society hits the people themselves, making them suffer.
An excellent confirmation of this could be famous story Ivan Alekseevich "Mr. from San Francisco." Main character doesn't think about morality or his own spiritual development. He only dreams of this - to get rich. And he subordinates everything to this goal. For many years of his life he works hard without developing as a person. And now, when he is already 50 years old, he achieves the material well-being that he has always dreamed of. The main character does not set himself another, higher goal.
Together with his family, where there is no love and mutual understanding, he goes on a long and distant journey, which he pays in advance. Visiting historical monuments it turns out that neither he nor his family are interested in them. Material values crowded out interest in beauty.
The main character of this story has no name. It is Bunin who deliberately does not give the rich millionaire a name, showing that the entire bourgeois world consists of such soulless members. The story vividly and accurately describes another world that is constantly working. They have no money, and they don’t have as much fun as the rich do, and the basis of their life is work. They die in poverty and in the holds, but the fun on the ship does not stop because of this. The cheerful and carefree life does not stop even when one of them dies. The millionaire without a name is simply moved away so that his body is not in the way.
A society where there is no sympathy, pity, where people do not experience any feelings, where they do not know beautiful moments of love - this is a dead society that cannot have a future, but they also do not have a present. And the whole world, which is built on the power of money, is an inanimate world, it is an artificial way of life. After all, even the wife and daughter do not feel compassion for the death of a rich millionaire; rather, it is regret about the spoiled trip. These people do not know why they were born into this world, and therefore they simply ruin their lives. Deep meaning human life inaccessible to them.
The moral foundations of Ivan Bunin's works will never become outdated, so his works will always be readable. The philosophical problems that Ivan Alekseevich shows in his works were continued by other writers. Among them are A. Kuprin, M. Bulgakov, and B. Pasternak. All of them showed love, loyalty, and honesty in their works. After all, a society without these important moral categories it simply cannot exist.